Is God an Egomaniac? Part 4

Here’s one more illustration of those who sincerely cannot get beyond God’s self-exaltation in Scripture. Brad Pitt did an interview for Parade in 2007 in which he explained why his boyhood faith did not work for him anymore. He was raised a conservative Southern Baptist. But it stopped working:

“Religion works. I know there’s comfort there, a crash pad. It’s something to explain the world and tell you there is something bigger than you, and it is going to be all right in the end. It works because it’s comforting. I grew up believing in it, and it worked for me in whatever my little personal high school crisis was, but it didn’t last for me. I didn’t understand this idea of a God who says, “You have to acknowledge me. You have to say that I’m the best, and then I’ll give you eternal happiness. If you won’t, then you don’t get it!” It seemed to be about ego. I can’t see God operating from ego, so it made no sense to me.  So there’s the heart of the matter. There is no doubt that this is exactly what God, and the Son of God, Jesus, say repeatedly in the Christian Scriptures: “You have to acknowledge me. You have to believe that I’m the best, and then I’ll give you eternal happiness.”

Everyone who acknowledges me before men, I also will acknowledge before my Father who is in heaven, but whoever denies me before men, I also will deny before my Father who is in heaven. (Matthew 10:32–33)

So is Jesus and the Father egomaniacs?

Let’s look into this matter a little more closely.

The answer can be given in a syllogism.   Remember how this works?  

Premise #1: All men are mortal.

Premise #2:  Plato was a man.

Conclusion: Therefore, Plato was mortal.

Two premises, which if they are true, lead to a true conclusion.

I will try to use at first logic to make my point and then conclude with the authority of Scriptures.

Premise #1: Authentic love desires, works, cares, and is willing to suffer to give to others the fullest and long lasting happiness.

Premise #2: Being eternally raptured with Jesus as the decisive and complete revelation of God is to know the fullest and long lasting happiness in the universe.

Conclusion: Therefore, when Jesus tells us that we must love Him — treasure Him, be satisfied in Him — above all others, He is showing and demonstrating to us authentic love.

Here is the bottom line: God is the one being in the universe for whom self-exaltation is not the act of a needy ego, but an act of infinite giving (unselfish love). The reason God seeks our supreme praise, or that Jesus seeks our supreme love, is not because He’s needy and won’t be fully God until He gets it, but because we are needy and won’t be fully happy until we give it.

This is not arrogance. This is grace.

This is not egomania. This is love.

And the very heart of the Christian gospel is that this is what Christ died to achieve — our full and everlasting enjoyment of the greatness of God.  He is desiring and working and willing to suffer in order to enthrall us with the fullest and longest happiness, namely, Himself.

Christ suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God. (1 Peter 3:18).   And once He brings us to God, what are we hoping to find?

In your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore. (Psalm 16:11)

End of Part 4 - Conclusion