MANKIND’S BASIC NEED REMAINS EVER THE SAME

“By terrible things in righteousness wilt thou answer us, O God of our salvation…which stilleth the noise of the seas, the noise of their waves, and the tumult of the people.” (PSALM 65:5, 7)

Some earnest persons try to reason that since there is no stillness in this mechanized world, we must learn to get along without it.

 

This is the summation of their reasoning: we cannot hope to bring back the still waters and the quiet pastures where David once led his sheep. This rat race of civilization is too noisy for us to hear the still, small Voice, so we must learn to hear God speak in the earthquake and the storm. And if modern evangelism is geared to the tumult and the agitation of the times, why should anyone complain? Does it not represent an honest effort to be all things to all men that by any means some should be saved?

 

The answer is that the soul of man does not change fundamentally, no matter how external conditions may change!

 

The aborigine in his hut, the college professor in his study, the truck driver in the bedlam of city traffic have all the same basic need: to be rid of their sins, to obtain eternal life and to be brought into communion with God. Civilized noises and activities are surface phenomena, a temporary rash on the epidermis of the human race.

 

To attribute sound values to them and then to try to bring religion into harmony with them is to commit a moral blunder so huge as to stagger the imagination, and one for which we shall surely be paying long after this frenetic extravaganza we call civilization has ended in tragedy and everlasting grief!

 

  1. W. Tozer