I am not God.
I am a sinner. I choose, repeatedly, to sin against the wishes and directions of our father, God. I do this because in my heart I want to be God.
I am also, though, a created child of God. And unfathomably, despite my sinning, God loves me. He loves me so much that he will – he did – offer to redeem me from the exile and death that I chose by claiming godliness. He made the path for redemption that I couldn’t make on my own.
But if we want redemption, we have to confront a paradox:
- On the one hand, this redemption is offered “for free” by God. It costs me absolutely nothing in the sense of having to “work for”, or “earn” it.
- In another respect, though, it will cost me my very life – at least, the life I have come to think of as mine. I must give up believing I am God, claiming to be God, wanting to be God.
Superficially, we may think it’s no big deal to give up “wanting to be God”. In fact, this is extraordinarily difficult for me. Even though I don’t necessarily think of it as a quest for God-liness, I have invested so much into trying to be in charge – to define and control my life. And today, perhaps more than ever, this is what culture around us insists that we can and should do. So abandoning this quest for control, and giving up so much of what I have invested my life into, feels a lot like giving up my life.
I can, of course, opt out of this difficult path. But then I discover this irony: if I cling to that life with me “in control”, with me “as God” – ultimately I am guaranteed to lose it. Since that life is premised on the delusion that I am God, it can never become reality.
I’m going to suggest that you too likely are a sinner. You too likely want to be God.
God loves you every bit as much as he loves me. He provides us with the same offer of redemption, on the same terms. He loves us whether we accept or reject his offer, but he can only free us from our exile, pain, and death if we give up the delusion that we are, or can be, or should be, God.
Delusion invariably is built on falsehoods. We need to reject the lies and identify truth. Repeatedly focus on truth, and delusion loses its grip.
- Truth: God alone is God.
- Truth: God loves you. God loves me.
- Truth: God offers us redemption from the chaos and pain that flow from our delusion of Godliness.
- Truth: To accept God’s offer, we must relinquish our false claim to the throne and recognize God as God.
And God reminds us that, since you and I are alike in the most important of ways (his love, our sin, his offer of redemption), we are siblings. And we are to love one another.
What say you, sibling?