My God Has But One Heart

Since we were very busy this past week with the kids' dance exams, we didn't have time to pull together a recorded song. Instead, we're sharing some sheet music with you. (We hope to have a recorded podcast later in the week.)

The ideas in this song were inspired by an A.W. Tozer book, The Attributes of God. Tozer writes:

We educated Americans can create gods just the same as the heathen can. You can make a god out of silver or wood or stone - or you can make it out of your own imagination. And the god that's being worshiped in many places is simply a god of imagination.

....God is not only good; God is severe. Romans 11:22 tells us about the severity of God: "Behold therefore the goodness and severity of God." ... He has said, "I'll allow you, within a little framework, to be your own boss and to choose to go to heaven or to hell."

Those words can sound so harsh, misguided and irrelevant! But perhaps there's more to the idea than the first impression.

We've all encountered stories of human atrocity that offend our limited sense of justice so deeply that we wish death (or even eternal torment) on the offender. Crimes against children come to mind - and atrocities of war, and deliberate, willful abuses of great amounts of power.

And yet to depose one fallible person in favour of another, however much the new authority is set on righting wrongs, only seems to create another cycle of failure and injustice.

One could argue that humanity is not inherently capable of perfect goodness. But if every act of good is also an act of evil, either by omission or commission, where does that leave us?

We see the same pattern playing out on a smaller scale in our own daily lives. What does this mean for each of us as individuals?

Tozer also writes:

Justice is not something that God has. Justice is something that God is.... Nothing ever requires God to do anything. If you have a god who is required to do anything, then you have a weak god who has to bow his neck to some yoke and yield himself to pressure from the outside. Then justice is bigger than God. But that is to think wrongly.

External justice stands there as a law and says, "That man shall die," but mercy says, "Please, please spare him!"

But to think thus of God is to think wrongly of God. Everything that God is and does harmonizes with everything else that God is and does....

....God's justice and God's mercy do not quarrel with each other.

There is a deeper morality than human morality, one which recognizes a personal inability to be fully moral - not just that this is a fact of being human, but that it goes against God's character to be that way, and that God is in no way required to sympathize with us in the face of our failure.

Yet He does. He chooses to. And He chooses His own way of doing it, not subject to our demands, desires or flawed attempts to re-imagine His nature.

Hebrews 4:14-16
Since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession.

For we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but One who has been tempted in all things as we are, yet without sin.

Let us therefore draw near with confidence to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and may find grace to help in time of need.

God is free to create His own solution to the problems of the universe and to work it out in His own way. Nothing external to Him requires Him to act in a certain way - certainly not the preconceptions of we who are so out of tune with His character. God is God, infinite.

This, however, is only the first part of the story. For the rest, we'll leave you with the song.

Click here to get the PDF sheet music for My God Has But One Heart.

Labels: Music, Podcasts

posted by Zookeeper Cat @ 11:52 PM