Why We Must Think Rightly...
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Chapter
One: Why We Must Think Rightly About God
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| A. W. Tozer |
Lord God Almighty, not the
God of the philosophers and the wise but the God of the prophets and apostles;
and better than all, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, may I express
Thee unblamed? They that know Thee not may call upon Thee as other than Thou
art, and so worship not Thee but a creature of their own fancy; therefore
enlighten our minds that we may know Thee as Thou art, so that we may perfectly
love Thee and worthily praise Thee. In the name of Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most
important thing about us. The history of mankind will probably show that no
people has ever risen above its religion, and man’s spiritual history will
positively demonstrate that no religion has ever been greater than its idea of
God. Worship is pure or base as the worshiper entertains high or low thoughts
of God.
For this reason the gravest question before the Church is always
God Himself, and the most portentous fact about any man is not what he at a
given time may say or do, but what he in his deep heart conceives God to be
like. We tend by a secret law of the soul to move toward our mental image of
God. This is true not only of the individual Christian, but of the company of
Christians that composes the Church. Always the most revealing thing about the
Church is her idea of God, just as her most significant message is what she
says about Him or leaves unsaid, for her silence is often more eloquent than
her speech. She can never escape the self-disclosure of her witness concerning
God.
Knowledge of the Holy... Preface
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PREFACE
True
religion confronts earth with heaven and brings eternity to bear upon time. The
messenger of Christ, though he speaks from God, must also, as the Quakers used
to say, “speak to the condition” of his hearers; otherwise he will speak a
language known only to himself. His message must be not only timeless but
timely. He must speak to his own generation.
The
message of this book does not grow out of these times but it is appropriate to
them. It is called forth by a condition which has existed in the Church for
some years and is steadily growing worse. I refer to the loss of the concept of
majesty from the popular religious mind. The Church has surrendered her once
lofty concept of God and has substituted for it one so low, so ignoble, as to
be utterly unworthy of thinking, worshipping men. This she has done not
deliberately, but little by little and without her knowledge; and her very
unawareness only makes her situation all the more tragic.
The
low view of God entertained almost universally among Christians is the cause of
a hundred lesser evils everywhere among us. A whole new philosophy of the
Christian life has resulted from this one basic error in our religious
thinking.
The Root of the Righteous
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Chapter seven:
By A. W. Tozer
 |
| A. W. Tozer |
By A. W. Tozer
An odd little passage in the book of Ecclesiastes
speaks of “an old and foolish king, who will no more be admonished” (4:13).
It is not hard to understand why an old king,
especially if he were a foolish one, would feel that he was beyond admonition.
After he had for years given orders he might easily build a self-confident
psychology that simply could not entertain the notion that he should take
advice from others. His word had long been law, and to him right had become
synonymous with his will, and wrong had come to mean anything that ran contrary
to his wishes. Soon the idea that there was anyone wise enough or good enough
to reprove him would not so much as enter his mind. He had to be a foolish king
to let himself get caught in that kind of web, and an old king to give the web
time to get so strong that he could not break it and to give him time to get
used to it so that he was no longer aware of its existence.
Regardless of the moral process by which he arrived at
his hardened state, the bell had already tolled for him. In every particular he
was a lost man. His wizened old body still held together to provide a kind of
movable tomb to house a soul already dead. Hope had long ago departed. God had
left him to his fatal conceit. And soon he would die physically too, and he
would die as a fool dieth.
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