God the egotist?

If you're a human being - and I trust that most readers are - you will have some pet hates. I'd wager that, like fingerprints, no two people share exactly the same spectrum of irritants, including the kind of person who makes us bristle. One blogger says her pet "people hate" is "fat people eating crisps (potato chips) and chocolate on the bus". Others cannot abide drivers who play brain-dead music at ear-splitting levels with the window wound down. My father-in-law was irritated by people who whistle inside. Of course, Christians seek to exercise the love that "covers all sins" (Prov. 10:12); sins are one thing, annoying habits are another.

I'm fairly easy-going, I think. But one kind of person drives me utterly nuts: the egotist. Now look, we are all naturally self-centered to some degree; Scripture tells us that "no one ever hated his own flesh" (Eph. 5:29). That's O.K., apparently. But self-serving egotism is a horse of a different color. Don't know about you, but I, for one, find it really hard to maintain my composure in the presence of braggarts whose favorite sentence-opener is, "When I. [did this or that]". Lord, save us from those who are so impressed by themselves, who reek of self-importance. Give me an unassuming peasant over a gifted, accomplished ego drunkard any day. Thankfully, not everybody suffers from naked egotism, not everybody considers himself God's greatest gift to mankind. Life would be pretty intolerable if we all did.

But what about God? Isn't He an egotist? After all, He declares,

I am the Lord, that is My name; and My glory I will not give to another, nor My praise to carved images (Is. 42:8).

In addition, He wants followers who will worship Him in spirit and truth, and He demands that they should "do all to the glory of God" (1 Cor. 10:31). It gets worse:

As I live, says the Lord, every knee shall bow to Me, and every tongue shall confess to God (Rom. 14:11).

If, like me, you find egotists so insufferable, how can you yearn to spend eternity in the company of One who will make every individual acknowledge His total superiority and openly confess that "the kingdom, the power, and the glory" belong forever to Him and to Him alone? When you consider such statements as, "Let all the angels of God worship Him" (Heb. 1:6), one cannot help but wonder if He made them

for the express purpose of stroking His ego. Perhaps that's His reason for making us, too.

Enough foolish talk! We can dismiss that reprehensible suggestion very easily. God, Scripture tell us, "is love" (1 John 4:16). Egotists adore themselves, not others. God is, in fact, "humble"; Jesus Christ had the fullness of God's mind (Col. 2:9) and He described Himself as "meek and lowly" (Matt. 11:29; see also 2 Corinthians 10:1). Exactly what the meekness of God means lies beyond our total comprehension. What we can say is simply this: God is infinitely powerful, good, and glorious, and He knows it, yet He remains humble. Our God truly is inscrutable.

God, it seems most logical, made angels and us because He is love, not because He craves adoring fans. He delights in giving life where there was none, in showering blessings and joy upon the recipients of His life-giving work of creation. Agreed? Yes, but why, then, does He command reverence, fear, worship, and adoration from His creatures? If He is not driven by super-egotism - which He would have every right to be - wouldn't an occasional tilt of the head in His direction and a thank you card or two suffice? Why must we love Jesus Christ more than our own lives?

Consider this possible germ of an explanation. The divine plan is to create a family - the kingdom of God of which Jesus spoke - in which total peace and harmony prevails eternally, in which not a single member will ever be led astray by vanity or egotism to seek preeminence. In that kingdom, not a single sin will be committed (2 Peter 3:13, Rev. 22:15). Stop and think; could any person who refuses to acknowledge the reality of the infinite superiority and preeminence of the everlasting God, the giver of life itself and of every good gift, be trusted to remain eternally. well. cooperative? To God do belong the "kingdom, and the power, and the glory forever and ever", just as they always have; that is the simple reality. For peace to prevail for eternity in the kingdom, every resurrected saint must be thoroughly sound-minded, completely committed to truth. Something is wrong with the thinking of anybody who does not do what is only right and proper - to stand in eternal awe of the Holy One of Jacob, the Father of Jesus Christ. Eternity is a long time; today's deviant thinker could become tomorrow's dissident. For the sake of our own eternal happiness God insists that we have a sound sense of proportion, that we cheerfully submit to the fundamental universal truth - our heavenly Father is worthy of worship.