Thinking Creature-Thoughts

Frederic Edwin Church, Cotopaxi (1862)

Creature-thoughts and creature-words, says A.W. Tozer, are what we adapt to think of God. They are humanly wrought, and thus limited, but Tozer offers that “it is probably impossible to think without words, but if we permit ourselves to think with the wrong words, we shall soon be entertaining erroneous thoughts.”

I will admit to not always thinking rightly of God. In my attempt, I want to make God into something digestible. Something for me to wield, as in a smartphone app, able to conjure when I need. Thus Tozer’s words ring true - “Left to ourselves we tend immediately to reduce God to manageable terms…We want a God we can in some measure control.”

I confess that my creature-thoughts are just that, but believe also “that God can be known by the soul in tender personal experience while remaining infinitely aloof from the curious eyes of reason.” I think of Hagar in the wilderness and how she declared God to be “a God of seeing” (Genesis 16:13). That God on high would respond to the creature-words of Hagar sparks delight in us as evidence that though we think in only creaturely ways, our God is yet wonderfully known.