by A. W. Tozer
If we could bring together in one huge directory a list of all the organizations, great and small, that exist throughout the earth for the promotion of special interests we would be astounded at the number of them.
Almost everything that human beings do or can do has its organization, association, society or guild to focus attention upon it and promote its ends. Some of these are good, some are bad, most of them are just neutral; but each one, however boring or comical it may appear to those who are not interested, has its starry-eyed devotees who live for it alone and who derive their keenest pleasure from their preoccupation with it.
In the midst of all this there is one group of persons whose absorbing interest is, or should be, God. That group is the Church.
The Church is born out of the gospel and that gospel has to do with God and man's relation to God. Christianity engages to bring God into human life, to make men right with God, to give them a heart knowledge of God, to teach them to love and obey God and ultimately to restore in them the lost image of God in full and everlasting perfection.
Our Lord, in defining eternal life, summed up the supreme goal of human existence: "That they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent." And Paul revealed the one overpowering interest of his life when he wrote "That I may know him."
The business of the Church is God. She is purest when most engaged with God and she is astray just so far as she follows other interests, no matter how "religious" or humanitarian they may be.
There are a thousand useful, even noble, pursuits in which the Church may engage and which may bring her the plaudits of the world but which are nevertheless unworthy of her utter devotion. Such are social activities for their own sake, philosophical pursuits divorced from Him in whom all wisdom and knowledge is hidden away, art, music, education, travel, to name a mere few. As these things come to the Christian in his pursuit of God they may have a proper and useful place in his life; but when they are chosen as ends to be followed they are and can only be cheap substitutes for the glory that excelleth.
For choosing God as our one all-absorbing interest we Christians are sometimes scorned or written off as hopelessly narrow-minded. But must we apologize? Must we apologize that we have chosen Christ as our career? That we deliberately will to walk with those who walk with God? That we have chosen eternity over time and heaven over earth? Must we apologize that we have chosen to seek good and not evil all the days of our lives? That we have chosen so to live that we dare to die?
In so choosing whom have we injured? Whose son or daughter is the worse for knowing us? Whose house have we robbed or whose money have we stolen? Whom have we led into crime? Who is a worse husband or father or citizen for following our Savior? If we have wronged anyone it is in spite of our Christian faith, not because of it. No man, no home, no nation is the worse for the presence of a real Christian.
Gerhard Tersteegen, the saintly silk weaver, said it for us in a delightful little bit of verse:
Child of the Eternal Father,
Bride of the Eternal Son,
Dwelling place of God the Spirit,
Thus with Christ made ever one;
Dowered with joy beyond the angels,
Nearest to His throne,
They the ministers attending His beloved one:
Granted all my heart's desire,
All things made my own;
Feared by all the powers of evil,
Fearing God alone;
Walking with the Lord in glory
Through the courts divine,
Queen within the royal palace,
Christ forever mine:
Say, poor worldling, can it be
That my heart should envy thee?( Article taken from The Set of the Sail, Chapter 22 )
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