Wednesday, April 16, 2008

Do Christian Fundamentalists Truly Love God?

A provocative accusation by A.W. Tozer

Neither the word adoration nor any of its forms is found in our familiar King James Bible, but the idea is there in full bloom. The great Bible saints were, above all, enraptured lovers of God. The psalms celebrate the love which David (and a few others) felt for the person of God. As suggested above, Paul admitted that the love of God was in his breast a kind of madness: “For whether we be beside ourselves, it is of God: or whether we be sober, it is for your cause. For the love of Christ constraineth us” (2 Cor. 5:13-14). In Weymouth’s translation the passage reads, “For the love of Christ overmasters us.” The idea appears to be that Paul’s love for Christ carried him beyond himself and made him do extravagant things which to a mind untouched with the delights of such love might seem quite irrational. Perhaps the most serious charge that can be brought against modern Christians is that we are not sufficiently in love with Christ. The Christ of Fundamentalism is strong but hardly beautiful. It is rarely that we find anyone aglow with personal love for Christ. I trust it is not uncharitable to say that in my opinion a great deal of praise in conservative circles is perfunctory and forced, where it is not downright insincere.

I never thought of this in exactly this way - but I wonder if it is why I gravitated towards Chi Alpha in college as a new believer - they were a group that was completely in love with Christ, and we did many things that non-believers may well of thought of us out of our mind for. Far more than the other groups on campus (CC, Navs, etc) (which are all fine groups, fyi)

No comments: