“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.”
–A.W. Tozer, The Knowledge of the Holy (New York: HarperCollins, 1961), 1.
I love A.W. Tozer. How to Be Filled with the Holy Spirit is an excellent one of his.
I have been thinking about this quote the last few days. I totally buy it and think Tozer was amazing!
If the most important thing about us is our conception of God, I submit that the second most important thing about us is our conception of mankind. We tend to treat our neighbors in accordance with our view of who they are. Do we see them as evil? sinful? amazing? relational? lost? irredeemable? I think people are wonderful (created in the image of a beautiful God), horrible (capable of Hitler-esque atrocity), and relational (created to live with God and other people). People are of inestimable value, even the mean, hateful, and angry ones; and they are not our enemies, rather, they have been enslaved by a mutual enemy. They are prisoners in need of freedom, hostages in need of ransom.
The most important thing about us is our conception of God. The second most important thing about us is our conception of the people He made and loves.
This is honest and insightful. I often have trouble thinking of those who are involved in truly evil behaviors as being redeemable. However, when I think of them as little children who have been fooled and indoctrinated (and forced) into an evilness when they are too naive to know the difference, my heart begins to soften.
Reblogged this on Relational Apologetics .