Right Ideas of God Essential
By B.
THE idea of God is an old idea. It was born with the race. It still persists in all minds, no matter whether enlightened or degraded. The cultured Greeks and Romans, the barbaric races of Asia, the savages of the American wilderness, the cannibals of the Pacific Islands, the black races of darkest Africa, or the civilized nations of our day,—with all these the idea of God has been universal. The records of history or of archeology do not reveal a people or a nation where the idea of God has not prevailed. The question is not that men deny God or the idea of God, but rather in what form their idea takes shape. Men may believe in a god and still be degraded by their belief. The first commandment declares: “Thou shalt have no other gods before Me.” To have a wrong idea of God is to have in the mind a false god; for whatever any being is to us he is to us through our ideas of him. This fact is especially true of any one whom we have never seen. Let us state the matter in another way: My idea of God is mentally my god. If my idea of God is wrong, then mine is a false god, and I transgress the commandment which forbids all other than the true God. And I am not only a transgressor of the law but I become an idolater; for men always worship or serve their god, and to worship or serve a false god is idolatry. But this is not the end of it. The consensus of human experience is that a man becomes like his god. The world was created and then set to be dominated by a man in the image of his Creator. And the idea that man is to be in the image of his god is so strong a law that a man who interchanges a false for the true God must do so in the face of the principle which will make him like that which he thus substitutes. A man who holds the idea of a cruel god, inevitably will be cruel. He who believes in a god of force, will not be governed by the principle of love. He who denies the personality of God, will ere long find that he is losing out of his own life the great truth of his own personal responsibility. Any attempt at degrading the idea of God, really degrades oneself. To seek to belittle our conception of Him, is really to belittle ourselves. The moment one sets limits to God, one has set limits to oneself and the retrograde process begins. It is therefore of infinite importance for us to have right ideas of God. Nothing is of more importance. To know Him aright is life here and hereafter. To know some false god is not to know Him, and that means degradation and death. But some may think since God is so great that some incorrect notions of Him are unavoidable. God, it is true, is infinitely great and, of course, can not be fully known or understood9by finite man. But while God can not be known absolutely, our knowledge of Him may be correct so far as it goes. And so, tho our knowledge may not be complete, it may be cleansed of all that is wrong or false. God says we must have no other gods before Him. And what He declares we must do we know we can do. It is possible to have no other gods before Him. It is possible to know Him and Him only. Then following the great law that a man is to be like his god, we shall be like Him and shall see Him as He is. No longer then shall we see through a glass darkly but face to face. And that will be full knowledge. Now we know as children. Then we shall know as adults. And in that complete knowledge, with the apostle Paul, we shall put away childish things. Remember, however, that childish things need not necessarily be false, tho they are almost inevitably partial. And the partial things in that day are to be merged into the grandly complete. Let us have, then, no wrong ideas of God. Let us have, as He says, no other gods before Him. Let us keep out the error now that we may know the full truth then.