Why We Must Think Rightly...
Labels:
Important messages
Chapter
One: Why We Must Think Rightly About God
 |
| 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.
Were we able to extract from any man a complete answer to the
question, “What comes into your mind when you think about God?” we might
predict with certainty the spiritual future of that man. Were we able to know
exactly what our most influential religious leaders think of God today, we
might be able with some precision to foretell where the Church will stand
tomorrow.
Without doubt, the mightiest thought the mind can entertain is
the thought of God, and the weightiest word in any language is its word for
God. Thought and speech are God’s gifts to creatures made in His image; these
are intimately associated with Him and impossible apart from Him. It is highly
significant that the first word was the Word: “And the Word was with God, and
the Word was God.” We may speak because God spoke. In Him word and idea are
indivisible.
That our idea of God
corresponds as nearly as possible to the true being of God is of immense
importance to us. Compared with our actual thoughts about Him, our creedal
statements are of little consequence. Our real idea of God may lie buried under
the rubbish of conventional religious notions and may require an intelligent
and vigorous search before it is finally unearthed and exposed for what it is.
Only after an ordeal of painful self-probing are we likely to discover what we
actually believe about God.
A right conception of God is basic not only to systematic
theology but to practical Christian living as well. It is to worship what the
foundation is to the temple; where it is inadequate or out of plumb the whole
structure must sooner or later collapse. I believe there is scarcely an error
in doctrine or a failure in applying Christian ethics that cannot be traced
finally to imperfect and ignoble thoughts about God.
It is my opinion that the Christian conception of God current in
these middle years of the twentieth century is so decadent as to be utterly
beneath the dignity of the Most High God and actually to constitute for
professed believers something amounting to a moral calamity.
All the problems of heaven and earth, though they were to
confront us together and at once, would be nothing compared with the
overwhelming problem of God: That He is; what He is like; and what we as moral
beings must do about Him.
The man who comes to a right belief about God is relieved of ten
thousand temporal problems, for he sees at once that these have to do with
matters which at the most cannot concern him for very long; but even if the
multiple burdens of time may be lifted from him, the one mighty single burden
of eternity begins to press down upon him with a weight more crushing than all
the woes of the world piled one upon another. That mighty burden is his
obligation to God. It includes an instant and lifelong duty to love God with
every power of mind and soul, to obey Him perfectly, and to worship Him
acceptably. And when the man’s laboring conscience tells him that he has done
none of these things, but has from childhood been guilty of foul revolt against
the Majesty in the heavens, the inner pressure of self-accusation may become
too heavy to bear.
The gospel can lift this destroying burden from the mind, give
beauty for ashes, and the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness. But
unless the weight of the burden is felt the gospel can mean nothing to the man;
and until he sees a vision of God high and lifted up, there will be no woe and
no burden. Low views of God destroy the gospel for all who hold them.
Among the sins to which the human heart is prone, hardly any
other is more hateful to God than idolatry, for idolatry is at bottom a libel
on His character. The idolatrous heart assumes that God is other than He is -
in itself a monstrous sin - and substitutes for the true God one made after its
own likeness. Always this God will conform to the image of the one who created
it and will be base or pure, cruel or kind, according to the moral state of the
mind from which it emerges.
A god begotten in the
shadows of a fallen heart will quite naturally be no true likeness of the true
God. ”Thouthoughtest,” said the Lord to the wicked man in the psalm, “that I
was altogether such as one as thyself.” Surely this must be a serious affront
to the Most High God before whom cherubim and seraphim continually do cry,
“Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of Sabaoth.”
Let us beware lest we in
our pride accept the erroneous notion that idolatry consists only in kneeling
before visible objects of adoration, and that civilized peoples are therefore
free from it. The essence of idolatry is the entertainment of thoughts about
God that are unworthy of Him. It begins in the mind and may be present where no
overt act of worship has taken place.”
When they knew God,” wrote Paul, “they glorified him not as God,
neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish
heart was darkened.” Then followed the worship of idols fashioned after the
likeness of men and birds and beasts and creeping things. But this series of
degrading acts began in the mind. Wrong ideas about God are not only the
fountain from which the polluted waters of idolatry flow; they are themselves
idolatrous. The idolater simply imagines things about God and acts as if they were
true.
Perverted notions about God soon rot the religion in which they
appear. The long career of Israel demonstrates this clearly enough, and the
history of the Church confirms it. So necessary to the Church is a lofty
concept of God that when that concept in any measure declines, the Church with
her worship and her moral standards declines along with it. The first step down
for any church is taken when it surrenders its high opinion of God.
Before the Christian Church goes into eclipse anywhere there
must first be a corrupting of her simple basic theology. She simply gets a
wrong answer to the question, “What is God like?” and goes on from there.
Though she may continue to cling to a sound nominal creed, her practical
working creed has become false. The masses of her adherents come to believe
that God is different from what He actually is; and that is heresy of the most
insidious and deadly kind.
The heaviest obligation lying upon the Christian Church today is
to purify and elevate her concept of God until it is once more worthy of Him -
and of her. In all her prayers and labors this should have first place. We do
the greatest service to the next generation of Christians by passing on to them
undimmed and undiminished that noble concept of God which we received from our
Hebrew and Christian fathers of generations past. This will prove of greater
value to them than anything that art or science can devise.
O,
God of Bethel, by whose hand
Thy
people still are fed;
Who
through this weary pilgrimage
Hast
all our fathers led!
Our
vows, our prayers we now present
Before
Thy throne of grace:
God
of our fathers! be the God
Of
their succeeding race.
Philip Doddridge
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
Recommended Books
Post a Comment