Everything is Backwards

Tozer laments how God is not treated with transcendence and awe but rather a familiarity that one uses when speaking with their best friend. The notion of a transcendent God is what leads to the fear of God. Even the idea of the “fear” of God is neutered now and taken to mean simply “reverence” rather than “fear.” But I was reading just this morning in Hebrews 10:31 that “It is a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.” Consider that! The writer of Hebrews recognizes the transcendence of God to the degree that, even though Christians have been purified, it is still a dreadful proposition to cross him. Or as C.S. Lewis would write, “He is not a tame lion.”

Perhaps this is why the Psalms repeatedly appeal to the created order, the observation of the universe to grapple with the majesty of God. Psalm 19:1 says, “the heavens declare the glory of God, the sky above proclaims his handiwork.” And in Revelation the poetry and language is even more grandiose in describing God’s throne and his attendants. Of course, as Tozer himself says, we need to acknowledge that the Holy Spirit is allowing descriptions of God that are anthropomorphic, meaning that God is lowering himself to be spoken of in such terms as having a “throne” and being attended to by angels.

The Bible also describes God in this way in Acts 17:25: “The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything. And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, that they should seek God, in the hope that they might feel their way toward him and find him. Yet he is actually not far from each one of us, for ‘In him we live and move and have our being’.” This is anthropomorphic language that God allows to be employed to describe Him while the reality of His nature is even far above such mean descriptors.

Or again in Psalm 8, “

When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars, which you have set in place,
what is man that you are mindful of him,
and the son of man that you care for him?”

We treat God like a gumball machine and have little regard for who he truly is: frightful, awesome, transcendent, majestic, severe, and yet humble, kind, patient, merciful. The English language cannot contain him and our trifling words can never approach him. Tozer is right in his description of most Christian preaching: “how strange to him and how empty would sound the flat, stale, and profitless words heard in the average pulpit from week to week.”

He is right to conclude that transcendent is the proper light in which to present God, and the proper response is self-evident: fall prostrate before him in worship. However, there is a great deal of clamoring in modern churches for preaching that is more “practical.” Were the transcendence of God put on display, no such desire for application would be needed; the application would follow as a natural consequence of the vision of almighty God.

After a couple of previous attempts at blogging on Xanga and livejournal, I’m going to give it a go again with “Blogger”. I’ll begin by posting thoughts on A.W. Tozer’s Knowledge of the Holy.

Understanding (the truest form) comes from faith, it is born in faith. You have sufficient knowledge to believe, because you know all about Christ and who God is. That is why I desire to see you put your “stakes in the ground,” because those stakes are “faiths” as it were. and from those faiths come the progressive journey towards that faith which saves, faith in Jesus Christ. Tozer continues, “The unbelieving mind would not be convinced by any proof, and the worshiping heart needs none.” Amen. Proverbs 1:7 says “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge”. Elsewhere, the Bible repeats this theme.

On page 60, the last full paragraph, he speaks of God’s ability in his wisdom to devise perfect ends and to achieve those ends by the most perfect means. It (thus, He) sees the end from the beginning…. I agree wholeheartedly, but this creates a problem: if God is infinitely wise, and in his wisdom he knows how to devise perfect ends and to be achieved through perfect means, then the enduring pain we see in this world must be included in those means. I read an article over breakfast this morning about a former North Korean prisoner who escaped prison and became a beggar in China, found way to Hong Kong, and then to Seoul, South Korea where he became a playwright. He is now premiering his play in the USA. His story is like this: he was arrested for listening to a forbidden radio broadcast. When you’re imprisoned in North Korea, everyone you love is affected. His siblings were forced to divorce their spouses and banished to other regions. He was tortured with bamboo shoots under his fingernails and washed in salt water. His father was executed and his mother was driven insane by all this.

As unthinkable as these terrors are, we cannot bring ourselves to see God as less wise, rather more. Because, as stated before, I begin with belief and work it outwards to life, which is the truest understanding. I look at this man’s terrible situation, and am awed by a God who, in His wisdom, has a purpose and this person’s life, somehow, is the perfect means to accomplish God’s perfect ends. We cannot allow ourselves the luxury of beginning with situations and working them outward and saying, “God, if you are wise, how could you let this happen?” Rather, we respond worshipfully: “God, only your infinite wisdom could explain this.” We often want to apply human wisdom to these situations and try to devise an explanation, but this is folly. To think that God-let-his-life-be-ruined-so-someone-
could-read-about-it-in-a-magazine- and-get-saved is a silly way of thinking and is often how we try to take the divine mind and put him on our own terms.

I can’t find it right now, but Tozer mentions somewhere that all of the reality that we can see or know exists in the undeniable reality of the Fall. Even this, the fall, was itself part of the means to some higher end, which exists in the divine mind. But that, too, must guide any discussion of wisdom and pain. What is this higher purpose? This higher end to which the Fall is but a means? We aren’t told specifically, and such a thought is too lofty and too wonderful for us to understand, but the Bible does hint at such notions: it is to display the fullest range of his beauty and glory to, first of all, Himself, and second of all, to the created world.