Vickie and I recently had breakfast with friends visiting our area from Richmond, VA. It was a delightful and refreshing time, especially since it had been about six years since we’d seen them. During the course of our time together the husband mentioned that a small group he is in is reading A. W. Tozer’s The Pursuit of God. Since that breakfast I’ve taken The Pursuit of God off my bookshelf and have been pondering it once again. I first encountered Tozer’s writings in 1966, and one of my treasured memories is working through The Pursuit of God with a friend about 35 years ago, which included a Friday night and a Saturday set aside to wrestle with the book.
I’m going to attempt to explore the book in a series of posts and I hope they will be beneficial to you. The Pursuit of God is readily available from booksellers, and it is also available for free online. It is a classic and has remained in print.
My edition is produced by Christian Publications, Camp Hill, PA. It is only 128 pages, with a preface and 10 chapters, so it is a short book, but it is a dense book. I hope you will consider reading the book as well as participating in this journey with me.
Tozer has been called a 20th century prophet. You can make your own judgment about that, I think there is some truth to the observation.
The Pursuit of God was first published in 1948, 3 years after the end of WWII. If you are young, 1948 may seem like a long time ago; if you are my age it is part of your continuum of experience, and if you are of a certain temperament, it is as if it were yesterday. Yet, I am struck by how far apart Tozer’s time is from ours, it is more than 77 years, it is more than chronological, it is the way we think, the things we think important, our sense of Christ and the Father and the Holy Spirit, our understanding of mission; it is as if we have traveled from one planet to another. Again, you must form your own judgment about this.
Reading Tozer may require patience, both in terms of content and in terms of writing style. Good content often requires patience because it challenges us. Every book that has been a lifelong friend to me challenges me when I open its pages. Is not the Bible our best examples of this?
Tozer’s writing style is closer to the 19th century than the 21st century. Consider that his first pastorate was in 1919. Frankly, we are adults and we ought to learn to read unfamiliar styles. Our propensity to want our spiritual food pureed has contributed to our collective spiritual infancy – we discard the treasures of the past for the entertainment of the present. Our sugar – coated diet has led to our teeth falling out and we can no longer chew the meat of the Word.
Just as the ONLY way to know the Bible is to actually read the Bible, the only way to learn to read different styles of English is to read different styles of English. One benefit of reading an unfamiliar style is that it s-l-o-w-s us down and requires us to think a bit more about what we read. I have more patience with the styles of Tozer or Andrew Murray than I do with many contemporary authors, for Murray and Tozer are challenging me, while many contemporary authors are seeking to either entertain me with religious cotton candy or are focused on man rather than the Christ of the Cross and the Cross of Christ.
Ponder the difference between what we are typically fed today with this quote from Bonhoeffer, "Like ravens we have gathered around the carcass of cheap grace. From it we have imbibed the poison which has killed the following of Jesus among us.”
We’ll begin with Tozer’s preface, but not with the beginning of the preface because that will require more comment than I want to write in this first post, which is itself a preface. Instead, let’s look at this statement:
“To great sections of the Church the art of worship has been lost entirely, and in its place has come that strange and foreign thing called the “program.” This word has been borrowed from the stage and applied with sad wisdom to the type of public service which now passes for worship among us.” (page 10).
Is it possible that we have expanded what Tozer term “program” into every area of church life? That is, what was once the main “program” is now complemented, or supported, by many programs.
Do we have the equivalent of Johnny Carson, Ed McMahon, and Doc Severinsen before us on Sunday mornings? (My apologies in using an older group to illustrate a point, I am out of the entertainment loop). Are our Sunday morning programs as tightly scripted, if not more so, as the Tonight Show?
Why do people “attend” a church? What part does the Sunday program play in this decision? What part do programs offered by the church contribute to this decision? How does this way of thinking compare with what the Bible teaches about the Church and our relationship to our brothers and sisters?
It is said that we don’t know what we don’t know. There are things we are simply unaware of, we just don’t know anything different from our own experience and knowledge. This is one reason why knowing the Bible is critical for the Christian, for one question that should always be before us is, “What is the Biblical standard? What is the Biblical norm?” If we do not have a sense of the Biblical norm, then we cannot judge our own norm, our own experience, our own goals and desires…as individuals or as a people.
Seventy-seven years ago A. W. Tozer wrote, in essence, that we were moving into the entertainment industry. Many of us cannot conceive of anything other than what we’ve experienced, and if we’ve been raised in a “Chirstian” entertainment culture we can’t imagine anything else. If we have been raised (chronologically or spiritually) in a church culture that caters to the wants and desires of people, rather than calling us to follow Jesus and be Jesus to others, laying down our lives for Him and for one another, then it is a challenge to conceive of any other way of life. (Mark 8:34 – 38; John 15:12 – 13; 1 John 3:16).
In the publisher’s introduction to the book, we are told that Tozer’s “great spiritual discovery [is] that to seek God does not narrow one’s life, but brings it, rather, to the level of highest possible fulfillment.”
Perhaps as we explore what Tozer has to say we’ll better understand what he means by “programs.” Perhaps then we’ll be better able to judge the truth of what he writes about our slide into entertainment.
Is God worth pursuing?
Is Christ Jesus worth knowing?
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