O, 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 correspond 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. ”Thou thoughtest,” 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
