In an excellent interview between John MacArthur and Phil Johnson here we find this from Dr. MacArthur:

“Modernism was a bad philosophy. Post-modernism is another bad philosophy. But in both cases, they assault the Scripture. Modernism made reason, human reason, the king. Reason was supreme in modernism. Thomas Payne, The Age of Reason, The Enlightenment, all of those things, the Renaissance. Out of that came the worship of the human mind and the mind trumps God. Now mystery trumps the Bible. The human mind trumps the Bible in modernism, mystery trumps the Bible in post-modernism. It is at the foundation an unwillingness to accept the clear teaching of Scripture.” (Online source) (Emphasis mine.)

The interview was about the dangers of the Emergent church, but contains a valuable warning for normal Bible-believing evangelicals as well. While we might not have succumbed to the “certainty of uncertainty” or embraced Emergentville’s  New Age mysticism (now termed New Spirituality), we still have “mental problems”. Possible symptoms:

• Spending more time in “what does this verse mean to me” private opinion sessions than we do actually studying the Bible for what it says.
• Assuming that every little whisper in our heads is The Holy Spirit speaking to us, because as believers “we have the mind of Christ”.
• Searching for ‘deeper’ meanings in Scripture that are not found on clearly its pages, or in its context.
• Inventing, out of our imaginations, allegories, metaphors, and fanciful sounding teachings that tickle itching ears but have absolutely no value for Christian growth and maturity.

This a very short list of a few ways we “worship” our own minds. You might think that too strong a word, or even completely uncalled for. I don’t. I’ve been there and back – all of the above. What, if not worshiping our minds, is it?

And that my friends, simply speaking, is Idolatry.

Think about it. . .