Calvin once described the human heart as "a perpetual factory of idols" (Institutes 1:108), Richard Gaffin concurs and expands upon this:
Because we are, each of us, the image of God, we will worship, in fact we must worship, someone or something, either our original, as we should, or, with the illusion that we are the original or our own ultimate point of reference, ourselves. If the latter, we will give ourselves over, with the full, still efficient resources of our imaging capacities, to some figment, some distorted image, focused on ourselves or on some aspect of the world, ultimately seen as an extension of ourselves. What Calvin observed long ago is no less true today: the human heart, our image-bearing and image-fashioning nature, is an idol factory.
(Richard Gaffin, "Speech and the Image of God," in The Pattern of Sound Doctrine: Systematic Theology at the Westminster Seminaries, Essays in Honor of Robert B. Strimple (2004), p. 186.
For a superb outline on the idolatry of the human heart, see C.J. Mahaney’s teachings on The Idol Factory.
