Israel & Rachel Campbell "SOUP" Podcast
Welcome to Season 3 of the Campbell Soup Podcast with Israel and Rachel Campbell. We are celebrating over 10,800 downloads and counting, thanks to listeners like you. We started this podcast with a simple idea: discipleship should be more than a classroom, it should be a way of life. When Jesus walked with His disciples, the lessons did not happen behind a podium but along the road, around meals, and through conversations about real life. That is exactly what we do here.
Each episode is like sitting down to a hearty bowl of soup, warm, nourishing, and full of flavor. We talk about life, love, parenting, relationships, faith, and whatever else bubbles up along the way. Some moments will make you laugh, others might make you think, but every conversation is stirred with honesty, hope, and a little humor. So pull up a chair, grab your spoon, and join us for another season of real talk, real life, and real discipleship, one spoonful at a time.
Israel & Rachel Campbell "SOUP" Podcast
High-Functioning Idolatry
What if the most “spiritual” parts of your life have quietly taken God’s place? We open a candid conversation about high-functioning idolatry—the subtle way good gifts like family, ministry systems, church culture, politics, education, and even worship styles become the things we trust most. Through personal stories, Old Testament insights, and honest self-audit, we unpack how fear disguises itself as prudence and how easy it is to rely on what we can control while calling it faith.
We don’t stop at diagnosis. Together we outline three concrete practices that re-center our hope: choosing assignments that require God to move, listening beyond our circle with Spirit-led curiosity, and worshiping with our resources through generosity, tithing, service, and availability. Along the way, we revisit Jonah 2:8 and Judges 21:25, reflect on the bronze serpent that became an idol, and contrast systems that help with systems that quietly replace the Spirit. The thread running through it all is the love of God—stronger than cultural turbulence and steadier than any outcome we can engineer.
If your prayer life feels flat, your schedule too tight for interruption, or your peace tethered to headlines and bank balances, this episode is an invitation to trade control for communion. Hear how dependence revives faith, how compassion grows when we sit with people who see differently, and how generosity breaks the grip of lesser kings. Listen, reflect, and then take one courageous step that only makes sense if God shows up.
If this resonated, subscribe, share it with a friend, and leave a review to help others find the show. What’s one “good thing” you’re ready to put back in its proper place?
Welcome back, everybody, to the Campbell's Soup Podcast.
SPEAKER_00:Soup, soup, soup.
SPEAKER_01:My favorite time of the year or week. This is my favorite time of the week because I get to visit with you. Oh and you just have to sit and chat, chat, chat for half an hour straight.
SPEAKER_00:I cannot leave, can I? No. Would it be weird if I got? I actually do. This is, I agree with you. I love, I love the subjects. I love the talks. I love when you get teary-eyed because you're passionate about an issue. And I also like the behind the scenes that nobody else sees when it's not working and we're like a little bit frustrated, and then it works, and we're like, hi, welcome to the Canvas suit.
SPEAKER_01:No, we pretty much we're good friends.
SPEAKER_00:We're great friends, but when like the technology doesn't work and then all the time. No, bring me back my flip phone. That would be amazing.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, but today we are going to talk about a very interesting conversation that Israel and I, most of our podcasts are basically stemmed out of our walks and what we talk about. And so this is one of those where we were talking about something in Israel's like, hey, let's put that in our notes for a good podcast because you know we want to talk about life. We want to talk about where you really are, where we really are. And so there's been some events going on in our world that has kind of brought about this really important, I think, conversation with Christians. This is a Christian conversation. This isn't one for your non-safe friends. This is one for those of you that are believers. And we really want to talk straight about a conversation that's really pertinent to society today and what we could be involved in in our lives. And the the subject today that we're going to talk about is high-functioning idolatry. And we were talking about how I had this uncle who was very successful. And he was a high-functioning alcoholic. He could not go through a day without drinking quite a bit, but he also held a really good job. And when you would be with him, you could have great conversations. He was always very fun. And but the family knew that he actually was struggling with alcoholism. And it was a secret that was being kept. And it was intriguing to me to be able to be close to him and know the stories about him because he was amazing at being functional. But he also was very much struggling with massive addiction to alcohol. And I was thinking about that, and I was just talking to Israel on our walk about how Christians can become high-functioning in their idolatry. And what is idolatry? Idolatry is trusting and worshiping and putting your hope in anything besides God. And I think that we live in society in a church culture right now that is prone to idolatry, but it kind of looks very spiritual.
SPEAKER_00:Well, that's the thing, is sometimes I feel like I, when I when you said idolatry, you know, my mind immediately goes to Old Testament, yeah, yeah, Baal, Moloch, and and all of that kind of the ashera poles and all this kind of stuff. And you're like, oh, well, what do you mean by that? But it really is true because when you break down what idolatry is, is looking to anything other than looking to God. And when you break it down that way, you go, oh yeah, we still do have idolatry. And in America, we might be the most idolatrous, whether it, I mean, there's so many different things that we could have as idols. But then when you say high-functioning idolatry as Christians, that really helps kind of define some areas that we aren't trusting God in, correct?
SPEAKER_01:Right. Yeah. And one of the scriptures that I just wanted to bring up is Judges 21, 25, when the children of God really wanted to have a king. They were demanding a king, right? And it says this in Judges 21, 25, in those days, Israel had no king. And everyone did as they saw fit. And there began this spirit of like demanding their way, even with God. And that was kind of the root and the beginning of this real season of wow, God gave them what they wanted. But when you play it out in the Old Testament, was it God's perfect plan? I don't know.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, totally. And it's so, I mean, just, you know, you know, I love the Old Testament, but ever since you've brought that up, I'm just like looking at some of those Old Testament stories and a new lens, going, yeah, but that's us today. And I think it's so easy to just flip through those pages. Oh, they worshiped Baal. No big deal. Okay, you know, I would have worshiped God. But then really in 2025, what are the things that I am actually trusting in more than I'm trusting God? And now I'm just a high functioning idolater, you know, and I've just learned how to do it and mask it pretty good. Nobody really knows, like what your uncle, they didn't even really realize because you just learned how to function in it. And now we've made all these excuses, and then we're our relationship with God isn't as sharp as it could be, right?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. And if you listen, like if you go on Instagram or you hear people, there is high-functioning idolatry, even with leaders. And I think we just need to be aware of it and make sure to guard our heart against it. So, what would high-functioning idolatry kind of look like? Because high functioning just means that it sounds really spiritual, but really it's not putting God in control. And so here's a couple of things that we could be having high-functioning idolatry with is when we put our trust in our strong family. Of course. And here's the thing: God has called us to have a strong family, but we don't put our hope in the strength of our family. We put our hope in God. Maybe idolatry could look like having hope in the healthy church you belong to, or having hope in your country or your government, acting like Christians. That's actually idolatrous because they are not God. You could have idolatry by trusting in the safety of your community, or having idolatry in the number in your bank account, or maybe in your career that you've built, or maybe you there's idolatry when you trust in your own looks and your personality to get you through instead of God's strength and grace. Maybe it looks like having trust and putting your trust in the connections that you've made, or your own education. If you have how many letters behind your name, and that's what you can always fall back on and trust. And it can become idolatrous. There can be idolatry in your good name. As pastors, we could have idolatry and trusting in systems that we create and begin to run our church, not by the prodding and leading of the Holy Spirit, but by um the systems that we know are going to keep our church strong, or maybe it's in the way that we do our worship and the culture that we create within our church. All of that can become high-functioning idolatry. And actually, it makes us sometimes miss God because He wants to do new things and we're so set in trusting in what we're used to that it can become like this spiritual. It sounds good, but it's not good.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, that's so good. And that when you're saying that, I was thinking of that Old Testament story, it must be an Exodus, children of Israel. There's a plague that breaks out from them doing something or whatever. And the answer was to make serpents and you were to put it on the cross. And if you looked at them or whatever, the plague would go or whatever. But the ends up happening is they started worshiping that instead of God. And it's so easy to do, isn't it? Like, because when you were saying, as a pastor, it's like, yeah, we can worship our style, we can worship uh this is our church culture. You know what I mean? That's a big buzzword that we do. And so we could worship culture instead of worshiping God. We can even worship and make an idol of creation over worshiping the creator. And so it's, and like you said, it's so I love the way that you said it because it was high functioning, because it's like we don't really call it out on each other, we don't go idol worshiper. You know what I mean? We don't be like, oh, they're such an idol worshiper, but we just function in that and we can do life with it, and we don't look like our Old Testament stories of, oh, they were cutting themselves and doing all that, but we're high functioning in those areas.
SPEAKER_01:It is so true. And we're we're saying this to maybe just get you thinking about wow, what do I put in between me and God's provision? And all of the things that I listed, you know, those are good things. They're the they're they're actually things that are the blessing of the Lord. Every single one of those things are beautiful, good things that God wants us to have, but he also wants us to ultimately not have those things have us. Yeah, it's where it consumes us.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, I love that. You just brought up that that they're all good things. Yeah, and I was just thinking of the Old Testament ones, you know, they would be made out of metal or they'd be made out of wood, all things that actually God created, but then turned into a form of idolatry. And so I love that. That it's like again, it's not the oh, I'm not gonna go to Pier one imports because they have little Buddhas and those are idols. Right. No, it is the things that we look good, but we'll begin to worship or put our trust in them, put our hope in them, yeah, put our energy into them more than God is our energy into protecting that thing. Yeah, isn't that true?
SPEAKER_01:And not trusting God. And I just want to read this. I think this is such an interesting point. Jonah 2.8 says, those who cling to worthless idols turn away from God's love for them. And the bottom line is that idolatry is the fruit of not knowing how loved we are by God. First John 4.18 says, There is no fear in love, but perfect love drives out fear because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love. And I think about how many times we start trusting in things like our government. We want our government to act like pastors instead of knowing these people are actually not the final source. Of course, we want to have the best practices in government. But if government's evil, it doesn't change the nature of God and it doesn't change how loved and protected we are as Christians. And I just think it's really important for us to recognize that even if the world gets darker and darker, we're loved. We are God's beloved, and we don't have to control every narrative to walk in the power and strength of God and his provision and him leading us and guiding us and giving discernment and saying to us, there's a voice from behind us, this is the way walkie in it. And I think sometimes we diminish the love of God for our lives when we think that everything has to be the perfect environment and we have to protect all of those perfect environments instead of, no, actually, I could be in the I I know this. This is the testimony of my life as I've walked through the most horrific days and I've experienced the perfect love of God. And it hasn't been because of healthy parents or a healthy church or these things that sometimes we so often begin to put our trust in and begin to kind of place in the place of God's provision and love.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, it's, I mean, it's I my mind is just racing of different times that I have done that. I mean, I've I've been in a church where the church, in a sense, became an idol because it was like, you know, this we're doing we're seeing revival, we're seeing this, and it was like, and then it fell apart, and then, you know, oh, it's just a hot mess. And we've seen it in people put their trust in as an idol, their political party or even their political mandates become an idol. And it's like so many things could do that and replace what God wants to do. And of course, you know, going back to even Old Testament, they'd always talk about where God would be like, Why are you doing that? And it's like, oh, why do we do that?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, and I think sometimes that when we protect things that we think are godly and we really protect those with our lives, sometimes it takes away our ability to see God actually move in those things because we have this element of control with them. And God is sovereign. If there's anything that we could say in this podcast, it is that God is so sovereign and He knows what He's doing in our lives. And that doesn't mean that we just sit back and do nothing, but it means that we offer, we truly offer our lives and everything that our life touches as a living sacrifice. And, you know, I've seen where, you know, in all the years of music ministry I've been in, it's easy to begin to worship worship. Oh, easy to begin to worship a move of God. It's easy to trust and worship uh someone's voice when we start replacing that. We put start putting it in between using God, a worship leader, a certain style or movement that's happening. All of that can become high-functioning idolatry. And it sounds so spiritual, but it gets in the way of what God wants to do.
SPEAKER_00:So good, Rach.
SPEAKER_01:Okay, so we have a couple of things that we just want to talk about, a couple ways that we can, as believers and as followers of Jesus, how can we make sure that we are not living with idolatry in our life that's kind of camouflaging as spirituality? So I'm gonna start and then we'll just go back and forth and have that conversation. But the one thing that I wanted to say is I think one way to kill idolatry in our life is to constantly put ourselves in a position where we need God to move. Yeah. You know, we when we moved from North Carolina to Los Angeles, we did everything in our power to launch the church and it still wasn't even close to enough. Yeah. And we were in a position where we had to rely on the power of God. And I think it was the best thing we've ever done for ourselves personally, because what he showed us in that season and the way that he moved so miraculously changed my life forever.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, it's so true. Your spiritual life, right? When you need a miracle, you, your prayer life goes up, your word goes, you know what I mean? But when you don't need a miracle because you're trusting in the bank account, and you know, you've got extra. Well, that it does really change the dynamics of your relationship. Then you start kind of going back to high functioning, really bowing down to that. But man, I can't, you know, I know of times when it was the church and it was a lease payment or something like that. And we're like, I mean, you really start praying, God, do a miracle, you know, where I believe, you know, you're Jehovah Jirah. But when when it was covered, man, my prayer life wasn't necessarily like that. And so it's so good living a miracle. I'll never forget my dad went to Africa and was part of, I think it was like '84, Reinhard Bonkey did these crusades and had millions of people. And that, you know, that he came back and showed us the videos of healings and uh blind people being able to see people that were on stretchers, get up and walk. And I was just like, wow. And I, you know, my faith was built up. And then Reinhardt Bonkey was in Seattle, and I was like, oh my gosh, I can't wait to see what my dad saw in Africa. Went to the meeting, and there was only a couple hundred people there.
SPEAKER_01:So sad.
SPEAKER_00:And it was really like really disappointing. And then there really wasn't that many miracles, and I'll never forget, because my dad told me this is we were coming back home, and I was like, Dad, I saw the videos of you guys with Reinhardt and all the miracles. And then in Seattle, there was barely any people, and there wasn't. And he's and I go, why was that? And he goes, health care. And I was like, What? And he goes, health care. And I and I was like, I, you know, I was probably 14 at the time. I was like, I don't understand what you're saying, dad. And he's like, well, in America, we have health care. And so if you're sick, you can go to a doctor and they'll give you a medicine or they'll prescribe something or whatever. Well, in Africa, they don't have doctors, they don't have the health care, it's not available. So when they get sick, they have to go to God believing for a miracle. And so they were more desperate. And so it goes back to kind of what you were saying is put yourself in a place of needing a miracle. You seek God. You're not a high functioning, well, I can go to Walgreens.
SPEAKER_01:And because we live in a world where it everything is so accessible, we have to put ourselves in a position to need God. And I love the Beatitudes, how it says, blessed are the poor in spirit, because they will see God. And poor in spirit means that we're needy. We have something that we are in need. We don't have all that we need, and we're placing ourselves in a position. And so I guess my question to you as a follower of Jesus is when's the last time that you put yourself in a position to it was God or bust, you know. I think as believers and as people, maybe if you have people that are in your world that are watching your life as a believer, people need to see you step out in faith in one area or another and put yourself in a vulnerable place where if God doesn't come through, then I'm gonna fall flat on my face because God loves it when we need him. And I love it, says that blessed are the needy, the poor in spirit, because they will see God. When we are in need of him and we cry out to God, he will come through. We'll see God. And if you're feeling like your faith and your walk with Jesus is a little stagnant, get yourself in a place, put, get, put something on your schedule where you're gonna go out, set out to do something that you cannot do without the help of God, and it will sharpen your faith. And I guarantee you this you'll see God. Also, putting your kids in a position to see God, you know, don't provide everything for your kids. We just surprised Silas with a car that's half done because now Silas can believe God and start saving some money and finishing that work. And and like, you know, we want our children to be blessed, but there's times when it's not our job to do things for our kids because we want them to see God. We want them to learn how to not be high-functioning idolaters either. Okay, okay. Second thing is this put yourself in a position where you have to listen and learn from someone else. I think that a lot of our world's problems could go away if we went and heard somebody else's perspective, especially as Christians. We're so afraid of people that believe differently than us that we consider them our enemy. And Jesus never did that. Jesus was always sitting with people who believed opposite of him and having these conversations that he wasn't insecure to have. And I sometimes I feel like Christians are afraid that they're gonna get the, like they're gonna get the disease if they talk to a sinner. And it's like, no, they have, we need to walk with people who are walking through grief and who don't know Jesus yet. We need to hear what their story is, where they come from, and why they believe what they believe instead of force feeding them our idolatry, telling them they have to believe like us because America's a Christian nation. And I think that's really calloused. And I don't think it's the heart of God to be so afraid of other people's stories and voices that we have no compassion. God is so much bigger than that, and you're not gonna be infected by someone who believes differently than you. We might even see a little bit of God in their story and be able to have compassion for the lost.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. And I mean, I think that having a conversation where you're under your breath going, Holy Spirit, give me wisdom. Holy Spirit, give me wisdom. You don't do that when you're just hanging out with people you already know. You know what I mean? You're all dressed the same, you all have khakis, you all have a braided belt, you all have, you know, whatever matching polo shirts.
SPEAKER_01:Say the same Christian lingo.
SPEAKER_00:Say the same lingo, but when you put yourself in a position where you really need God's wisdom and the Holy Spirit's prompting, then you know, help me with this, help me with the the, you know, Holy Spirit, help me say this right now. I'm more dependent, and now I'm not high-functioning idolatry, leaning on my own understanding, leaning on my own background, my own history. I need God's wisdom in this moment. How do I represent you, Jesus, in this situation? How do I do it in a way that the fruit of your spirit is uh overflowing in my life? And like you said, not contaminated by that, but like this is what you've called me to do, Jesus. Go out into the world. Now help me be salty because I need your flavor right now. So good. I love that point, Rachel.
SPEAKER_01:Christians just sometimes we're just too short-sighted and we let fear rule where we really do think that the enemy's gonna win. And maybe we would never say that, but we sure act like it by the things that we do. And, you know, I heard this little old man say something that was so powerful. He said, you know, if I had a friend who came over to my house for dinner for the first time and they were completely blind and they walked into my living room and they ran into my end table and kind of knocked it out of place. I wouldn't say to them, hey, watch out. Why are you running into that table? I would have compassion because they didn't see the table. And I think sometimes we have to have compassion on people that are blind. People that are asleep in their spirit, they do not know Jesus. They have not been awakened to the love of God. We don't need to be yelling at them for bumping into tables. They're blind. And we need to, we need to help the blind see. And we do that through compassion. And that is not being a wimpy, cowardly Christian. That's actually being someone who carries the faith that God is about to move and that person's supposed to be in the kingdom.
SPEAKER_00:I love that, Rachel. That's okay.
SPEAKER_01:There's another one. Enough of my little soapbox on that, but uh, the last one. And how do we make sure that we don't start living lives that are high functioning Christian idolatry? And I think that this is such a good one is worshiping God with our resources. I think sometimes we're really good at singing songs. I worship you, I trust you, but do we do it when the rubber hits the road? Are we coming into covenant and tithing our 10%, knowing that when we tithe 10%, that is worshiping God and it's saying, Lord, I trust you as sovereign, that even if the world's finances crash, that you'll take care of me because I'm in covenant with you? Or what about our resources where we can give and volunteer and help people that can't help themselves? And that's worshiping God and it's laying our lives down as a offering before the Lord and saying, God, whatever it is that you've given me as a resource, and all of us have different resources and different ways that we can worship Him. But when we do something that is out of our generous heart, whether it is our worship or it's giving to others or it's trusting God with our finances, whatever it might be, but when we worship God with all of our resources, it really dethrones the self-the idolatry of all of these things that we do to get God's affection and love. No, no, no, no. What we do is we say, God, we know you love us and we trust you. And so we're gonna worship you with our resources. That kills idolatry.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. And I was just, while you were saying that, like, yeah, totally. And it's like if money is the thing that is your idol, then you kill that with generosity and saying, God, it's yours. I'm giving you a tenth, right? It kills the idol of capitalism, of money, of uh trusting insisting. Yeah, and then the same thing is if it's time with you know, my family, and I'm doing that. No, no, no, no, I'm gonna serve in God's house. What you're saying is, no, no, no, no, his house before my house. And so all these different things you could almost look at what is the idol, and then what is my response to, in a sense, not let that be the idol. It really does come with some kind of generosity or some kind of serving or some kind of putting another person in front of you. And it's so good because there's sometimes it could just be the I the idol that I can sometimes do is the idol of productivity, high functioning idol of productivity. That I am completing my list, but my offering would be being interruptible for somebody. My offering would be taking a call or, you know, doing, you know, not just on the checklist, but doing that. So I love that, Rach.
SPEAKER_01:And allowing God to interrupt us, you know, like as pastors, Israel and I have had to rip up the schedule and go, okay, God, we trust you to build your church. We don't trust systems. And systems aren't the enemy, but they can become an idol. And so we just have to always just be aware, what are we trusting in more than we're trusting in God? And the fact that he loves us and he's for us and he'll lead us and he'll show us his way when we just make that space for him to be God.
SPEAKER_00:I love that.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Well, let me just pray with everybody real quick. And let's just, I think these things are some good things to like you and I talked about it on a walk, and we've just been kind of chewing on it. We pray that you listen to this and just kind of chew on it and just again ask the Holy Spirit, what are those things that I have maybe allowed to be idols? What am I putting my trust in? And so, Father God, we just come before you today. We thank you for the examples of the Old Testament of all the idols that we can sometimes, I know I can just read past it and go, oh, that was then or that was their issue. But really, after talking about it today, God, we're so easy to become high-functioning Christians with idols in our lives. And so we repent, number one. We're so sorry that we look to something other than you. And now, Holy Spirit, we pray that you would empower us to, like Gideon did, pull down those idols, tear them down, and really put everything, all of our attention, all of our worship, all of our adoration to you. And so, Holy Spirit, empower us for that. And let us not be high functioning. Let us not uh, in a sense, get away with it or think that we're getting away with it. Let us really listen to the conviction of the Holy Spirit and really put you first. In Jesus' mighty name we pray. Amen. Well, we love you guys. We're thankful that you joined us on another episode of Campbell's soup and so many things. What do we want them to do?
SPEAKER_01:You can share it with your friends, you can subscribe, you can also email us and let us know what you would like to be talking about because we love to add more stuff to our soup all the time.
SPEAKER_00:More soup. We need more ingredients in our soup. So we will see you guys on
