"Things" and God

Before the Lord God made man upon the earth He first prepared for him by creating a world of useful and pleasant things for his sustenance and delight ... They were made for man's uses, but they were meant always to be external to the man and subservient to him. In the deep heart of the man was a shrine where none but God was worthy to come. Within him was God; without, a thousand gifts which God had showered upon him.

But sin has introduced complication and has made those very gifts of God a potential source of ruin to the soul.

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 here in the moral dusk stubborn and aggressive usurpers fight among themselves for first place on the throne.

This is no 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.  It covets "things" with a deep and fierce passion.  The pronouns "my" and "mine" look innocent enough in print, but their constant and universal use is significant ... They are verbal symptoms of our deep disease.  The roots of our hearts have grown down into things, and we dare not pull up one rootlet lest we die.  Things have become necessary to us, a development never originally intended.  God's gifts now take the place of God, and the whole course of nature is upset by the monstrous substitution.

~ A. W. Tozer (The Pursuit of God)