God Tells the Man Who Cares: God Speaks to Those Who Take Time to Listen by A. W. Tozer

Author:A. W. Tozer [Tozer, A. W.]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
ISBN: 9781600660535
Publisher: Moody Publishers
Published: 2006-11-29T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 22

Religion Can Be a Front or a Fount

If we think of the Christian religion as faith in Christ, love toward God and loving service toward men we can readily see how it may be a fountain of sweet water springing up unto eternal life. And such it is surely meant to be.

On the other hand, if we think of religion as the outward profession of inward grace (and it must be that to some extent), then we can see how it may become a mere facade behind which there is no reality, a showcase containing everything in the store, the shelves inside being completely bare. The passerby never dreams how empty the interior is until he goes inside and takes a look around; then he will understand that the window display has been a front to hide the poverty of the owner.

If these remarks should seem unpleasantly realistic, remember that the burden of the Old Testament was the disparity between the external and the internal life of Israel, and much of the preaching of Christ was directed against the Jews for their failure to be inwardly what their outward profession proclaimed them to be. Paul, too, warned of those who had but a form of godliness without the corresponding substance, and the history of the church provides all the proof we need that the temptation to make a front of religion is very real and very strong. Our wisest course will be not timidly to skirt this subject, but to face up to it and deal with it courageously.

The tendency to make a mere front of religion is strongest among persons engaged in professional Christian service, such as pastors, evangelists, teachers, Sunday school workers and those who write, edit, publish and promote religion generally. The Christian worker must be always ready to lead in public prayer or to offer a “word of prayer” under all sorts of circumstances and in almost every imaginable situation. He must be ready with a spiritual epigram for all occasions and on a moment’s notice must be able to come up with wise and devotional counsel for anyone who might ask for it. The necessity to say the godly thing at all times often forces him to display an enthusiasm he does not feel and to settle for others questions about which he is not too sure himself. His profession compels him to seem spiritual whether he is or not. Human nature being what it is, the man of God may soon adopt an air of constant piety and try to appear what the public thinks he is. The fixed smile and hollow tones of the professional cleric are too well-known to require further mention.

All this show of godliness, by the squeeze of circumstances and through no fault of the man himself, may become a front behind which the man hides, a plaintive, secretly discouraged and lonely soul. Here is no hypocrisy, no intentional double living, no actual desire to deceive. The man has been mastered by the circumstances.

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