Our woes began when God was forced out of his central shrine, and 'things' were allowed to enter. Within the human heart, 'things' have taken over. Men have now by nature no peace within their hearts, for God is crowned there no longer, but there in the moral dusk stubborn and aggressive usurpers fight among themselves for first place on the throne.This is not a mere metaphor but an accurate analysis of our real spiritual trouble. There is within the human heart a tough, fibrous root of fallen life whose nature is to possess- always to possess... God's gifts now take the place of God, and the whole course of nature is upset by the monstrous substitution. (Pursuit of God 22)
Tozer goes on to say that this nature to possess things ends up taking over us. We can't help but want something to fill that central position. And sometimes we get something there, for awhile. For me it's music. I want so bad to be able to serve God by using music as a means to reach people because it has reached me. But as the artist in C.S. Lewis' The Great Divorce, sometimes I fall in love with the means by which I tell the truth instead of the Truth Himself. There are the 'things' in life that will fight violently to be on our central throne. Are you willing to fight back?
Sometimes how much you love something is show in how much you'll fight for it. How much are you willing to fight to have God in your central throne, your central point of focus? How much do you love God? I mean really love God? Sometimes I don't want to fight for Him to be at the center. That's when the 'things' warring to take the central throne rip my life apart.
Ironically when I was reading Tozer I was wearing my Project 86 shirt that came out with their new album Picket Fence Cartel. It's a picture of what seems like a nice family sharing in an embrace with the perfect 50s theme- white picket fence and all. But a closer examination to the picture and the faces are replaced with something more grim. Instead of happy, smiling faces of the father coming home from work, the mother coming from the kitchen to greet him, and the son clinging to his dad's arm are skulls. And you realize the white picket fence is made of bullets.
The whole idea of the album is that things aren't what they seem. And that the things that we desire most- fame and power, among others- are what we devote our time and passion to acquiring. And that this pursuit for these things end up owning us instead of us finally acquiring those things. Even if we were to "acquire" these things we are obsessed with owning them and it slowly turns us inside out. Think Lord of the Rings. Frodo/Bilbo/Smeagol and the ring. Same idea pretty much.
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