What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.

A.W. Tozer (1897–1963), a pastor in the Christian and Missionary Alliance and a widely read devotional writer, used this line to open his book *The Knowledge of the Holy*. Written in mid‑20th‑century American evangelicalism, the book argues that many spiritual and moral failures in the church stem from an inadequate or distorted view of God. Tozer frames the work as a call to recover a biblically grounded, reverent “high” doctrine of God—God’s attributes, holiness, and majesty—contending that a community’s worship and conduct inevitably follow from what it believes God is like.

Tozer claims that a person’s “god”—the mental and spiritual conception they actually live by—functions as the deepest organizing center of character. If God is imagined as trivial, indulgent, distant, or manipulable, then worship becomes shallow and ethics become negotiable; if God is apprehended as holy, sovereign, and good, then humility, obedience, and awe follow. The quote also implies that theology is not merely academic: one’s inner picture of God shapes desires, fears, priorities, and identity. In short, the most consequential self-knowledge is inseparable from God-knowledge, because the latter governs what we take to be ultimately real and worthy.

“What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.”
“What we think about God is the most important thing about us.”
“What comes to mind when we think about God is the most important thing about us.”