Why We Must Think Rightly About God (3)

More from The Knowledge of the Holy, by A. W. Tozer

“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 and intelligent and vigorous search before it is unearthed and exposed for what it really is. Only after an ordeal of painful self-probing are we likely to discover what we actually believe about God.” (2) We can’t hold all of God in our heads; we aren’t big enough (but, I want to insist, what we can hold in our heads is still vitally important). Of what we do understand not all of it travels from our heads to our hearts. What does make it to our hearts has its hand on the rudder of our actions in day to day life. You can know a thing and not believe it, or not believe it with enough combustion that it begins to fire whatever engine of the heart needs to be fired. Tozer is saying that it is a necessary part of the Christian life to work backwards form Z to A and look closely at our visible lives and see what pieces of theology have been deeply embedded enough to matter and what pieces are still waiting on the far side of that threshold. Somewhere in there lies our “real idea of God” and as said before, it is important that our real idea of God correspond as closely as possible to the real God who is there. We are to be held responsible for those areas where it does not.

“Before the Christian church goes into eclipse anywhere there must first be a corrupting of her simple basic theology. She simple 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 than what he actually is; and that is heresy of the most insidious and deadly kind.” (p.4) It is a mistake to imagine that the landscape of Christian theology is a flat, uniform landscape with no variation or disagreement. There are streams and movements of thought like currents in a river all swirling around each other, each with their own unique emphases, priorities, and set of answers to the question “What is God like?” I am not saying they are all different, for all it’s diversity there is beautiful unity in the Christian church, but there are differences, and those differences matter. Which one is right? Without going into any specific debate I want to say that “right” exists. There is an understanding of God which fits reality like a key fits the lock it was made for, and in that understanding lies human flourishing. Tozer is saying that where our understanding of God is different from that unique shape which he actually is the hope of flourishing winks out like a candle. Here too, Tozer wants to hold the church accountable for what is happening beneath it’s umbrella, so to speak. Is it leading people toward the worship of God as he is? Is that truth bringing flourishing to every area of human life? Relationships? Work? Interior mental life? Is there forgiveness? Is there joy? Are the weak being cared for? Are the effects of the fall being fought back wherever they are found? All these will grow and trumpet the truthfulness of the gospel where the gospel is rightly understood and lived, and that is what the church must be.

A Poem A Wednesday (7)

Miracles
Walt Whitman

Why! who makes much of a miracle?
As to me, I know of nothing else but miracles,
Whether I walk the streets of Manhattan,
Or dart my sight over the roofs of houses toward the sky,
Or wade with naked feet along the beach, just in the edge of the
water,
Or stand under trees in the woods,
Or talk by day with any one I love--or sleep in the bed at night with
any one I love,
Or sit at table at dinner with my mother,
Or look at strangers opposite me riding in the car,
Or watch honey-bees busy around the hive, of a summer forenoon,
Or animals feeding in the fields,
Or birds--or the wonderfulness of insects in the air,
Or the wonderfulness of the sun-down--or of stars shining so quiet
and bright,
Or the exquisite, delicate, thin curve of the new moon in spring;
Or whether I go among those I like best, and that like me best--
mechanics, boatmen, farmers,
Or among the savans--or to the soiree--or to the opera,
Or stand a long while looking at the movements of machinery,
Or behold children at their sports,
Or the admirable sight of the perfect old man, or the perfect old
woman,
Or the sick in hospitals, or the dead carried to burial,
Or my own eyes and figure in the glass;
These, with the rest, one and all, are to me miracles,
The whole referring--yet each distinct, and in its place.

To me, every hour of the light and dark is a miracle,
Every cubic inch of space is a miracle,
Every square yard of the surface of the earth is spread with the
same,
Every foot of the interior swarms with the same;
Every spear of grass--the frames, limbs, organs, of men and women,
and all that concerns them,
All these to me are unspeakably perfect miracles.

To me the sea is a continual miracle;
The fishes that swim--the rocks--the motion of the waves--the ships,
with men in them,
What stranger miracles are there?

Why We Must Think Rightly About God (2)

More thoughts from A. W Tozer's book, The Knowledge of the Holy:

“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.” (2)

Again Tozer draws a strong connection between doctrine and life. Across the landscape of Christianity today there is continental drift between life and doctrine with an ocean growing in between. The “life” side is highlighted, the “doctrine” side is painted as irrelevant. The result is a whole collection of things that the Bible has to say fall under the blacklisted heading of “theology and doctrine,” and the Christian is called elsewhere (toward good things and things found in the Bible, to be sure, but toward a vision of Christianity that is absent of things which smack of esoteric, heady knowledge, which theologians debate over but which seemingly have little implication for day to day life). “Systematics” is a dirty word. Tozer is drawing a bigger circle around the word theology than simply what is in the category of “systematics.” A “right conception of God,” he says, is the ground we stand on. It is silly to remove things which actually are pillars in that right conception of God and expect remain standing. It is not healthy, in the long run, to draw a distinction between life and doctrine. This is true even if the alternate picture of the Christian life is simply holding to “basic Christianity” or “just loving Jesus”. “Loving Jesus” is a wonderful thing, but it must be understood that loving Jesus is like standing on a point. From that point there are 360 degrees worth of directions to move and how a person moves from that point is solely and only determined by his or her conception of God, his or her theology. There is no standing still – even inaction is an action dictated by a conception of God. We must move and must make choices driven by doctrine - I want to make this point carefully. We are already committed! The real question is not one of standing still and just loving Jesus, the real question is when you move from the spot, is the direction you move in determined by as full a picture of God as the Bible contains? If all things that fall under the heading of systematics/theology/doctrine are jettisoned in the mind of the believer, the answer to that question is probably no.

Why We Must Think Rightly About God (1)

This morning I was re-reading a wonderful chapter from A. W. Tozer’s book, Knowledge of the Holy, and wanted to post some quotes from the chapter as well as thoughts about them.

“What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us… That our idea of God correspond as nearly as possible to the true being of God is of immense importance to us.” (p. 1,2)
Tozer makes a connection that is rapidly dissolving in the minds of some Church people today; the connection between theology and life. This connection is a sword with two edges, cutting in the direction of two errors we make in our thinking about theology. On the one hand is the danger of thinking that head knowledge is the whole of the Christian life, without that knowledge ever really “becoming true” of us. Tozer undercuts that mistake by insisting that the nature of our picture of God is such that it has a direct and immediate call on our actions/values/thoughts in our actual day-to-day lives. If the connection isn’t flowing that direction it is possible that you haven’t actually begun to worship the real God; it is the most important thing because an encounter with the real God does not leave us the same as it found us. Tozer speaks to the opposite error as well. If you listen, you'll hear both errors in the air today, but this one seems to gaining popularity. It is the idea that theology is esoteric. We must preserve the idea that theology means not less than simply “what we think about God”. The Christian life is like finding pieces of the picture of God and putting them in their right places, like a mosaic. Tozer is saying that this mosaic – what it holds and what it does not hold – is life and death. Everything flows out of that mosaic (and not just in some “spiritual” realm of life, but in all of life). If those are the stakes, then every piece matters. There is a not a category for “accessories” when it comes to theology. Everything matters.

“We tend by a secret law of the heart 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 things 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 that her speech. She can never escape the self-disclosure of her witness concerning God.” (p. 1) Christians, as a body of the Church and as individuals, are continually bearing witness, both intentionally and accidentally. It cannot be stopped. This is a very comforting thing and a very challenging thing. It is comforting because it seems, at least for me, to take weight off of the enormity of the calling before the Church, as it shifts the focus from “go and DO” to simply go and BE”. If the Church is there is cannot hide its witness; it just needs to be what God made it to be, to love God, worship him with its life, to enjoy him, to love and care for what he has made. This being speaks with a loud voice, often louder than any words. But if Tozer eases the burden in one place he underscores its weight in another. He says the Church is responsible not only for what it is, but what it is not. The task before the Church is to love what God loves as a reflection of his character, and what the Church fails to be, it proclaims that God also is not. That’s a sobering reality, and what human community is equal to the task of embodying an infinite, holy God? But that is the calling nonetheless, and that is the lens we should examine ourselves with.

A Poem A Wednesday (6)

Langston Hughes
Harlem

What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
Like a raisin in the sun?

Or fester like a sore -
and then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over -
Like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags
Like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?

Free Audio: The Pilgrim's Progress

ChristianAudio.com puts a free book on tape up on their website every month, which is great for two reasons: 1. It is FREE. 2. It's a book. Sign me up.

This months book is John Bunyan's classic, The Pilgrim's Progress.

Audio from Dwell Conference in NYC

The Acts 29 website has posted the audio from the recent NYC Dwell Conference.

Hear from:

Tim Keller: Dwelling in the Gospel, Persuasion
Darrin Patrick: Dwelling with Non-Christians
Mark Driscoll: Dwelling Through the Text, Dwelling in the Text
C. J. Mahaney: Dwelling in the Cross
Ed Stetzer: Dwelling in the Kingdom
Eric Mason: Dwelling Incarnationally

A Poem A Wednesday (5)

if there are any heavens my mother

e. e. cummings

if there are any heavens my mother will(all by herself)have

one. It will not be a pansy heaven nor

a fragile heaven of lilies-of-the-valley but

it will be a heaven of blackred roses



my father will be(deep like a rose

tall like a rose)


standing near my


(swaying over her


silent)

with eyes which are really petals and see


nothing with the face of a poet really which

is a flower and not a face with

hands

which whisper

This is my beloved my


(suddenly in sunlight


he will bow,


& the whole garden will bow)