High View of God Essential!

A. W. Tozer (1898-1963) is well worth reading, perhaps we should say, even obligatory reading. At least two of his approximately 50 books should make every Christian's "Top Ten" list, viz., The Pursuit of God, and The Knowledge of the Holy. I have found myself as a minister turning to Knowledge of the Holy over and over. Here are a few quotable paragraphs from the first chapter, Why We Must Think Rightly About God: 

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. . . . 

A High View of God is the Sine Qua Non of True Christianity.

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.

A Poignant Warning Issued 50 Years Ago!

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.

The Inevitable Consequence of a Low View of God--

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.

A Clarion Call to the Church

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.

Can you understand why I think Tozer's words are vital for today? He sounded out then what he saw as a calamity, but which time has revealed to have become utterly catastrophic.