The Happy Thinker
GOD
As discussed in the introduction (home page), it is appropriate
that we begin the serious work of life with a consideration of your relation
to God. For this purpose, I will provide a continuing series of essays
that deal with this most important relationship. Later, it will be
possible for your to subscribe to this publication under the title of The
Good Word. I have been writing these for the past twenty years.
My thinking in these matters has been influenced by an eclectic band of
spiritual pioneers. I will borrow from Calvin some basic structure,
without endorsing "predestinarian" principles. Calvin's greatest
strength was an overwhelming sense of the power and majesty of God and
the smallness of man, by comparison.
C.S. Lewis commented that "The real test of being in the
presence of God is that you either forget about yourself altogether or
see yourself as a small, dirty object. It is better to forget about
yourself altogether." This is a profound and correct interpretation
of man's relation to God, as understood by the author of Job and every
right thinking person of creation since.
A great deal of effort of The Good Word is directing
to exalting the glory of God and bringing man to the reality of his dust.
Total depravity, a la Calvin, does not mean that each man is as
bad as he can be. But rather that all men contain the seeds of failure
and destruction.
The Happy Thinker