Why Your Thoughts about God Shape You More than You Think
A.W. Tozer said, “What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.” Not all beliefs are equally important, and not all ideas are equally consequential. What we think about God is as important and consequential as it gets.
Tozer’s books The Knowledge of the Holy and The Pursuit of God are in a line of essential reading about God. Others include J.I. Packer’s Knowing God, Chuck Colson’s Loving God and most recently, Thaddeus Williams’ book Revering God.
Williams, a professor at Biola University, wants believers to get God right. I asked him to describe why how we think about God is so very important.
I commence every class I teach with the same two words: “Greetings, theologians!” Though there are film, business, and science majors (and more) in the chairs, I greet all of them as theologians. It’s not a gimmick. I want every student to have a deep sense of something R.C. Sproul loved to say, “Everyone is a theologian.”
Of course, not everyone will sport a tweed coat with elbow patches or cite Augustine in Latin. But, however you earn a paycheck or whether you can say theanthropos ten times fast … if you seek to better understand your Maker, then you too are a theologian.
In fact, the issues we tend to think about as cultural or political issues—abortion, racism, religious freedom, transgender ideology, and so on—are, at the deepest level, theological issues. And whether we think true thoughts about God will have everything to do with whether we can see the issues of our day clearly or whether we’re blinded by the deceptions and propaganda of our age.
So, how are we doing theologically? Nearly a century ago, A.W. Pink lamented, “How different is the God of the Bible from the God of modern Christendom! . . . The God of many a present‐day pulpit is an object of pity rather than awe‐inspiring reverence.”
With serious theology absent from so many pulpits, it is little wonder there is much confusion in the pews. 65% of evangelicals believe “everyone is born innocent,” which, if true, means we don’t need Christ as a Savior but only as a life coach to move from good to great. 43% of evangelicals agree that “Jesus was a great teacher, but [h]e was not God.” But of course, if Jesus is not God, then He’s not infinite enough to pay sin’s infinite penalty, and we lose the best news in the universe. Two-thirds of parents of pre-teens in America identify as “Christian,” yet only 2% believe a basic biblical worldview, with only one-quarter believing in objective moral truth, or that life is sacred.
So, calling all Christians: it’s time to be good theologians—homemaker theologians, mechanic theologians, office job theologians. The Church is in dire need of your humble service.
What goes into this sacred task? Five centuries ago, Martin Luther listed requirements of a theologian. In one of his famous Table Talks, the stout German Reformer highlighted the following: God’s grace; anfechtung, (a German word for dread when we realize just how utterly helpless we are without that grace); personal experiences with God in his Word and in a local flesh-and-blood community of fellow believers; sharing gospel truths with others; consistent, deep study of Scripture; and a passion for truth in all areas of study because, after all, all truth is God’s truth.
Two hundred years ago, former slave and the first ordained black minister in American history, Lemuel Haynes added that a theologian should be marked also by the love for Jesus, vigilance against the deception of our own hearts, and courage to tell the truth, even if unpopular.
If we were to tie the insights from Luther and Haynes into a single word, it would be “reverence.” The Biblical word is yirah, which in Hebrew means to fear God, to be awestruck before Him, and its commanded over 300 times in the inspired text. Good theology (and therefore clear thinking about politics, culture, and everything else) begins with the pride-crushing recognition that God is God, and we are not…. Great news indeed since God is far better at being God than we are!
A.W. Tozer was right. What we think about when we think about God is the most important thing about us. So, let’s take good theology seriously, thinking true thoughts about our awesome God, biblical thoughts about our speaking God, reverent thoughts about our great God. Our pulpits, our pews, and our truth-impoverished culture need it!
Author and professor Thaddeus Williams is author of the new book Revering God, a contributing faculty member in the Colson Fellows program, and a featured speaker at this year’s Colson Center National Conference (May 30-June 1, 2025 in Louisville, KY). Revering God is now available.
Photo Courtesy: © Unsplash/elisa-ph
Published Date: January 24, 2025
John Stonestreet is President of the Colson Center for Christian Worldview, and radio host of BreakPoint, a daily national radio program providing thought-provoking commentaries on current events and life issues from a biblical worldview. John holds degrees from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School (IL) and Bryan College (TN), and is the co-author of Making Sense of Your World: A Biblical Worldview.
The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of CrosswalkHeadlines.
BreakPoint is a program of the Colson Center for Christian Worldview. BreakPoint commentaries offer incisive content people can't find anywhere else; content that cuts through the fog of relativism and the news cycle with truth and compassion. Founded by Chuck Colson (1931 – 2012) in 1991 as a daily radio broadcast, BreakPoint provides a Christian perspective on today's news and trends. Today, you can get it in written and a variety of audio formats: on the web, the radio, or your favorite podcast app on the go.
