When men matter more than God (criticism)
Review of Edward T. Welch's book
To be completely honest with you, I don't know where to start to do this literary review since my brain is overflowing with things to say! My book is underlined everywhere and I held myself back in many places.
I already knew that I was right in reading a book written by someone from CCEF since their books are still based on the scriptures and Christian news. But in this one, " When men are more important than God " by Edward T. Welch, I was truly captivated from start to finish.
To continue in my frankness, I must confess that before I started reading I did not believe that I was the type of person who suffered from this sin. But, the further I read in my reading, the more I was confronted by the Holy Spirit with the insidious idol in my heart. Edward T. Welch has written a book based on the scriptures, so it cannot help but get to the heart of man's problem with many of his fears.
This book is separated into two parts:
1- The why and how of our fear of others
2- Overcome our fear of others
I really appreciated the way Welch from the start made it clear that the thing or the person we fear we need will control us! Yet as he says, we call ourselves worshipers of God.
"What do fear of shame and fear of rejection have in common? According to a biblical picture, both tell us that people are our favorite idols. We exalt them, giving them a power greater than that of God. They become the object of our worship as if they had the power of the gaze of God to expose us (the fear resulting from shame) or to "fill" us with esteem with love, admiration, recognition, respect and other psychic desires (fear of rejection).
When we think of idols, we usually think of Baal to begin with and other material creations of man. Then we may consider the money. We rarely think of our spouse, our children or a student friend. But human beings are our idols of choice… ”( T. Welch, Edward, When men are more important than God , Éditions Impact, Trois-Rivières, 2011, p. 52 .)
I'll give you a summary of what he explains very well in the book.
- We end up submitting to the idol we worship.
- We are his slave.
- He is our master!
- Our whole world revolves around our idol: our thoughts, our feelings, our way of life and our behavior.
In Part 2 Welch discusses a lot, among other things, the fear of the Lord aspect. I enjoyed several parts of this book so much that I once again have to choose what to share with you.
The author takes the time to make it clear to us what the fear of the Lord is. This fear is sometimes misunderstood even among Christians. The fear we have reveals to us that we have a knowledge of our sinful nature. Thus revealing to us the righteousness of God in the face of our sin. There is also what we call awe reverent . The one who makes us discover the forgiveness, the mercy and the love of our God. All because of God's perfect plan through the work of Jesus Christ who humbled himself on the cross for his redeemed. If we know the fear of our God, this will bring us closer to him rather than running away from him and thus it will develop in us more a reverential fear .
One essential thing that I have retained in reading this book is the importance of knowing really our God For God to be more important in our life than men, we must know him. We must place our expectations in Christ and let him fill us with his daily presence. We must aspire to reflect Christ more than anything in our life.
This book gives you some tools to know what to do if you are suffering from what I have discussed above. There are questions to answer at the end of each chapter. I'm sure this is a book that I will reread many times in my life since I believe it is not something that can be categorized once and for all! The human being is an idol maker.
Finally, I would say whether or not we suffer from this problem in our life, this book is worth reading because it is of great spiritual and intellectual richness.
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