The Modern Mind Assaults God
The Modern Mind Assaults God
Forty-five years ago, J. I. Packer wrote Knowing God (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1973) because he was convinced that the church at that time was weak due primarily to its ignorance of God. He argued that two “unhappy trends” were working together to produce this ignorance. The first trend is what he called “conformity to the modern spirit.” The modern spirit, as Packer describes it, is the practice of thinking great thoughts about humanity and small thoughts about God. The second unhappy trend is what Packer labels “confusion produced by modern skepticism.” He is referring here to how ever since the Enlightenment people have been increasingly accustomed to trust science and distrust God. In this way of thinking, if science says it, we assume it must be true, but if God says it, we doubt that he really did. This way of thinking pushes God away from central importance and way down the list of things that matter most. Twelve years earlier A. W. Tozer had lamented in The Knowledge of the Holy (San Francisco: Harper Collins, 1961) that “The Church has surrendered her once lofty concept of God and has substituted for it one so low, so ignoble, as to be utterly unworthy of thinking, worshiping men.”
One wonders how these two Christian thinkers would describe the situation today, for it appears the concerns they had are every bit as present now as they were then, if not even more. In a world where smartphones are in almost everyone’s hands, giving them access to an endless supply of information and entertainment, God can seem terribly boring and irrelevant by comparison.
As Christians we realize we are trying to swim upstream. The pressures to conform to the modern spirit that elevates human beings and diminishes God, as well as the confusion produced by modern skepticism that doubts anything God says while at the same time believing science holds all the answers to everything, combine to push Christians into the closet. The world doesn’t really mind if we go to church on Sunday; it just doesn’t want us bringing what we learn to work or school with us the rest of the week. Yet this is utterly incompatible with the divine mandate to go into all the world to make disciples and to teach them to obey all that Christ has commanded (Matthew 28:19-20). The more we come to see who God really is, according to Scripture, the more we know we cannot keep silent about him.
Packer is right, those who know God have great energy for God, have great thoughts of God, show great boldness for God, and have great contentment in God. Are those characteristics true of you? Do you have great energy for God? Do you have great thoughts of God? Do you show great boldness for God? Do you have great contentment in God? If not, then I dare say it is because you are too conformed to the modern spirit and you are confused by the modern skepticism that are so prevalent today just as they were when Tozer and Packer wrote their books.
To help combat the spirit of the age, I would encourage you to read Packer or Tozer. I also want to invite you to Sunday evenings beginning next week as I begin a new series in which I will explore many of the various attributes of God.
Christians can no longer afford to be controlled by the modern mindset that assaults God. We must come again to have great energy for him, great thoughts of him, great boldness for him, and great contentment in him. These traits have always been descriptive of those who know God as they ought. May God enable them to be true of us.