This post begins a series of (what I hope to be several) posts about the ways we often envision or characterize God in our minds, and how they frequently differ from how He describes Himself. It’s been awhile since I’ve done a series like this, and I’m obviously not blogging as often as I have in the past, so please be patient. (I even reserve the right to deter from this thread if I feel inclined to blog about something else along the way.)
As a point of introduction and a disclaimer, let me say for the record that I am of the belief that none of us humans has a crystal-clear picture of God. (1 Cor 13:12–Now we see through a glass darkly…) I think everyone’s mental image of God, including mine, is distorted in some way. So please don’t think by writing these posts I’m assuming that the way I see God is the way everyone should see Him. I’m just musing on a topic, in the hope that I (and all who read this) might grow a little closer to understanding God as He reveals Himself, not as we assume Him to be.
I’m an observer of human behavior–and one thing I’ve noticed in hanging around Christians of many different stripes is that we all tend to frame God according to our own viewpoint. It’s not unlike the story of the blind men describing an elephant; one feels the trunk, one feels the body, one feels a foot, and all draw different conclusions about what the elephant is like. So because God is infinite, and we are finite, we have this tendency to draw conclusions about God based on our limited perspectives, and the image is distorted. Interestingly enough, while there are many variations of what we think He’s like, within the church there are a number of viewpoints that I think are more common among us. In fact, part of why people start new churches is that we like to gather around others who see God the same way we do.
I think part of this trend is unavoidable, because it’s natural for us to try and understand God, even if we don’t get it right. The problem happens when we conclude that our picture of God is the “right” one, and everyone else’s is “wrong.” I’m not suggesting a you’re-okay-I’m-okay, universalist mentality here; I’m just saying it’s much healthier for us to admit that we all have it wrong about God at some level. So in this series of posts, I’d like to bring up some of the more common distortions of God’s image, the ways we see Him and describe Him that might be a bit different from how He describes Himself.
Ready? Here we go…
PART 1: GOD THE EGO-MANIAC
As a worship leader over the years, I’ve often repeated the mantra that mankind was created for worship–that it is part of how God made us. Man has invented many religions and many deities because it is in our nature to worship someone or something. Of course, we’ve gone off course by not worshiping the One True God, but still–it’s how we are made.
I still think there’s truth in this belief, but I think the way we’ve framed it over the years has contributed to a distorted image of God, and the first one on my list to discuss: God the Ego-maniac.
When all we talk about is how we are born for worship, that God earnestly desires our worship, etc., etc., it becomes uncomfortably easy to start picturing God as this deity sitting on a throne in heaven, just drinking in people’s worship 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and getting angry and offended at those people who don’t join in with the adoring throng.
Over time, I’ve come to recognize that this isn’t just a distortion of God’s image–it’s a distortion of ours, as well. When we say we are created to worship, it almost sounds like God made this race of people to fill some codependent type of need in Himself–like He just wanted to make a bunch of creatures to tell Him all the time how incredibly awesome He is. If it were anyone but God we were talking about, we’d think this is incredibly egomaniacal. That’s why I call this distortion “God the Ego-Maniac.”
Now, for a bit of perspective…what is worship, actually? At its core, worship simply means “to adore.” To love. We use the term “worship” specifically, instead of “love” or “adore,” when the person being loved is God rather than man.
The Bible says God is love. When God shows His love to us, we just call it love. When we show love to one another, we also call it love. When we show love to God, we call it worship. But in my view, it’s all pretty much the same thing. In its simplest description, to worship God is simply to love Him.
So…God is love, and He loves it when people love Him back. Does that make Him an egomaniac? If it does, then we are all egomaniacs–for we are all the same way. Don’t we all want to be loved?
So when we say we are created for worship, in a manner of speaking, we’re simply saying that we are created for love.
To illustrate what I mean, look at the natural relationship between a parent and a child. Have you ever noticed that it is within the nature of a young child to love his/her father or mother? That parent could be mean, abusive, neglectful and who knows what else; but that child instinctively loves the parent anyhow. They might outgrow it, or eventually have their hearts hardened, but the default position for children is to love mommy and daddy. I think it’s the same way with us and God. It is within our created nature (not necessarily our fallen nature) to love our heavenly Father, the same way a child by nature will love his/her parents. It doesn’t always work out; we get mad at God, become convinced of wrong things about Him, talk ourselves out of believing in Him, or even find some other deity to worship because we lack understanding. It doesn’t change the fact that our default nature is to love God, and that’s why we instinctively look for someone or something to worship.
So no, God is not an ego-maniac. He is not a narcissist. He is not insecure. I believe a much better way to describe Him is that He is a loving Father whose heart melts when His children tell Him how much they love Him. I believe He created us in order to be the objects of His own affection, with a natural instinct to love Him back (as reflected in how children naturally love their parents). He calls us to worship Him, not because He needs it, but because He is inviting us into a mutually loving relationship, one that He Himself has initiated.
After all–He loved us first.
Wayward Son
Musician. Composer. Recovering perfectionist. Minister-in-transition. Lover of puns. Hijacker of rock song references. Questioner of the status quo.
I'm not really a rebel. Just a sincere Christ-follower with a thirst for significance that gets me into trouble. My quest has taken me over the fence of institutional Christianity. Here are some of my random thoughts along the way. Read along, join in the conversation. Just be nice.
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I know the relationship between man and God is always compared to the parental one, but I’ve always seen it differently. (Dunno, it might have something to do with my own relationships with my parents . . . )
A child will, one day, grow up into an adult and may even become a “better” or “greater” person than his parent, especially if the parent is doing his job right. That’s not gonna happen with your heavenly Father.
After my son grew up and moved out, we adopted a dog a while back, and, during the course of adopting him, the dog has grown to love me – to adore me. One might even say he worships me. Even at rest, he follows me with his eyes, except when he’s sleeping comfortably and trustfully at my feet.
I’ve had to train him, to correct him, and he’s been disobedient and gotten angry (he even bit me once), yet I still love and care for him, and he still adores me. And he will do anything in his power to make me happy. No matter what he does, though, how “good” a dog he is, he’ll never be human – he’ll never be able to raise himself to my level. And he’s okay with that – so am I.
NOT that I’m likening myself to God or anything (except in the “in His image” sense), but it seems to me that, in the case of the dog, we had an awful lot of love and nurturing that we wanted to share, so we brought the dog into our home for THAT reason – not as an ego thing, but because we wanted to love him and for him to love us.
I don’t mean to trivialize the relationship between us and God – am I making any sense?
Kris, thanks for your thoughts here–and sorry it took so long to moderate your comment.
You’ve used a different analogy to describe what I’m saying, but I think it’s basically on the same track. I’ve never heard anyone actually say it like this, but for a long time I’ve held a belief that our human relationships are reflections of the various aspects of the primary relationship between God and man. When God uses the analogy of “father” to describe Himself to us, I believe he is the original and perfect Father, using an admittedly imperfect analogy (human fathers) to try to paint a picture for us of what He is like–but in reality, when He calls Himself a Father, He also *defines* what a perfect father should be. He was Father before any humans were fathers, if that makes sense; He is not copying us, but we should be trying to copy Him.
BTW, God also describes Himself in terms of other relationships, too–brother, bridegroom, husband, master, and even mother. I think these are all different aspects of how He relates to us.
You know, in a way, I think it’s a lot like that line toward the end of CS Lewis’s The Last Battle – what you see depends a lot on where you’re standing and what sort of person you are.
And maybe I’m going off-base here – but while you’re looking at the model of the perfect parent and saying we should be trying to copy Him (which, yeah, of course), I can’t help looking at it from the other side – this adoration and trust that I see – and thinking that I should be trying to model *that* toward God.
Also, it seems that, in trying to define himself in terms of *human* relationships, it’s almost like God is, I don’t know, dumbing it down for us? He’s using examples of relationships we do understand in a “it’s kinda like this” sort of way. And no single human-ified (I made that word up) simile is going to completely cover it – but rather it’s like cracking the blinds open and letting in just a bit of light. (Sort of.)
You make me think a lot more than I’m used to!
I think you’re definitely right that our perceptions of God are distorted. I personally teach that we were not created “by God” for a specific purpose, but “because of” God. This removes the various ideas of us having to do this or that – made to worship him, etc. and makes envisioning God (in my opinion) a lot simpler. It removes any debate about what God said to do, which continues to rage among churches and faiths, so we can get down to figuring out individual spirituality.