Man Created with Urge to Worship

BETWEEN man and the lower animals a great gulf exists. There is no reliable material even to begin to construct an evolutionary bridge to span the tremendous gap. The Bible in its account of creation indicates man’s position was to be outstanding, recording these words by man’s Maker, Jehovah God: “Let us make man in our image, according to our likeness, and let them have in subjection the fish of the sea and the flying creatures of the heavens and the domestic animals and all the earth and every creeping animal that is creeping upon the earth.”—Gen. 1:26, NW.

Jehovah gave man responsibility. It could be measured up to only by a creature of intelligence, by one possessing wisdom to do the task, justice to do it in fairness, love to do it unselfishly and for the good of his charges, and power to carry out the assignment. These are attributes belonging to Jehovah God, not to any previous earthly creatures he had made, and that is why the record shows man as being made in God’s image. Man, unlike the other earthly creatures, had ability to reason, determine right and wrong, manifest conscience, show love, and exercise intelligent dominion over the other earthly creations, and thereby he was able to reflect Jehovah’s attributes and represent Him on earth. Appreciating these blessings and having the quality of loving gratitude, man would intelligently worship his Creator. He was created with the desire to do so. He would have an urge to express his love toward his Creator. This need to worship is also felt by man alone of all earthly creation, supplying still another factor to the gap between man and any other animal.

Men use this faculty to this day. Many use it wrongly, but it is used. They may feel too sophisticated to worship God. They may even feel that to acknowledge a belief in God is beneath their intellect. Yet they have this urge within them, and if it is not satisfied in the right way it is exercised in a wrong way. They worship something. Many times these persons worship themselves, their own will, their own brain, their science or art, their music or literature, or even their philosophy of atheism becomes their religion. None of these things are satisfactory substitutes for God and they represent a deterioration rather than an advancement. Some scientists and doctors are beginning to see the folly of the modern’s studious banishment of God.

In the Woman’s Home Companion magazine for April, 1954, there was an article entitled “We Are Born to Believe.” It was written by Dr. Kline of the University of Vienna and about Dr. Viktor Frankl of that university’s teaching staff and also president of the Austrian Society of Medical Psychotherapy. The article’s subtitle said: “We all feel an urge for God as powerful as our instincts for sex and hunger, says a daring new school of psychiatric thought.” Extracts from the article follow.

“In the view of this school, modern suppression of our need for religion creates much of the frustration and tension in this atom-endangered world. It kills our chance of leading happy, purposeful lives.

“Today when most men and women have conquered their bashfulness about sexual emotions, they are increasingly troubled by their suppression of religious feelings. They are replacing sex-shyness with God-shyness.

“If men and women will recognize their need for a belief in God and in a meaning to life beyond their personal pleasures, this new school says, they can find peace of mind and happiness. . . .

“Dr. Frankl’s belief is simple: Men and women are driven not only by sex and ambition but also by an overriding need for God. They must overcome the modern-day notion that religion and God are not real needs and that it is unsophisticated to search for a spiritual side to life.

“Religion, like lovemaking, Dr. Frankl says, is an intimate thing. We can hide our innermost feelings about God from other people but if we conceal them from our own conscious minds we arouse conflicts in ourselves more deadly than those of the spinster of 50 years ago who denied to herself that she found men attractive.

“‘To deny the spiritual side of one’s nature does it great violence,’ says Dr. Frankl. ‘I have known many cases where patients who were willing to expose every detail of their sexual histories without shame became tongue-tied when I inquired about their spiritual lives.’ . . .

“He estimates that three quarters of the people of Europe suffer from this repression in some form. He calls the repression of the spiritual ‘the real pathology of our age.’ . . .

“‘Ours is an age of intellectual confusion, with a topsy-turvy sense of values. Materialism rides high; indifferentism is in the saddle. But our time is also a period of deep tragedy and acute political crisis. To take the shocks of wars and threats of war with no religious beliefs to support us is a task too great for men,’ asserts Dr. Frankl.

“‘In easy comfortable centuries people may imagine that they can endure life without a higher meaning; in our age it is impossible. Man must have a moral task. He must see his own life as meaningful.

“‘The atheist philosophy of recent decades has discouraged our generation by telling us that we are the more or less helpless victims of our feelings, our impulses and our sex drives on the one hand and on the other, the mere product of heredity and environment. Human dignity has been destroyed.

“‘Man is freer than he thinks. So long as we do not underrate our human capacities nor cripple them by low limited ideals, we shall find it possible to be serene in whatever circumstances life places us. Men of today are generally quite aware of the fact that they have instincts and unconscious sex drives; but many moderns have forgotten that they are also spiritual beings.’ . . .

“Speaking of the concepts of his school, Dr. Frankl says, ‘We recognize that man is often more religious than he thinks. More men have laid down their lives for spiritual ideals than for sexual love: how, then, can psychiatrists, in logic, place all their stress on sexual motivations and ignore other interests which are proven to be quite as strong?’”

Animals can live without worshiping Jehovah, for they are made without that urge. They can do without it and not be frustrated. But since men are created to worship their Maker, disastrous frustrations result when they ignore the urge. They frustratingly degrade themselves to become “like unreasoning animals born naturally to be caught and destroyed.” Rejecting the spiritual, viewing themselves as only biological animals, they eventually partake of the destiny of animals.—2 Pet. 2:12, NW.