Have we slipped into the habit of insisting that God do what we ask or want or need him to do, treating him as an idol designed for our satisfaction? Does God serve us or do we serve God? Do we require a God that we can fully understand and control or are we willing to be obedient to what we do not understand and could never control? Is God a mystery of goodness who we embrace and trust, or is God a formula for getting the most out of life on our terms?
Have we thought all along that God is there to serve us? Do we want God in our own image or do we want God who is beyond us and over us, who we trust will do for us what only God can do in the way that only God can do it...”
-Eugene Peterson, excerpt taken from The Jesus Way
This morning my alarm went off at 6:30am. My mind began to pick up where it left off: our God gave Himself a name. That name is Jesus. Dovetailing from that idea, I began to think of the second and third commandments given to Moses.
“You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below.” (Deuteronomy 5: 7-8 TNIV)
Similar to the feeling of finding and inserting another piece to a difficult puzzle, the fog cleared just enough for me to muddle a few pre-coffee words to my wife.
“He knows us so well. He really, really knows us beyond our own knowledge of ourselves.”
Moments later, I wrote these words in my journal:
In the beginning, man created other gods.
Other gods didn’t just show up.
Other gods weren’t present at the inception of the world.
Other gods were created by man.
When Adam turned his back on God, he chose something else over a relationship with his Creator. He chose something else. He gave something else a name and he avoided, rather decided against, relationship.
How often do I choose something else?
How often do I avoid, decide against, relationship?
It’s much easier to choose something else…to, create other gods…
These gods serve us.
These gods meet our wants.
These gods LOVE us.
Why? Because we give them power.
We’re the creator. We’re in control.
In His transparency, God, our Father, recognized the weakness in our curiosity and He shows us mercy. He has always known, since His encounter with Adam, that our desire to be god would continue to reproduce at the same rate as our desire to physically procreate. We want to adjoin ourselves to something, even at the expense of our detriment.
Was Jesus, in any way, thinking of not only His disciples, but, Adam when He said “there is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”? Was God, through Jesus, not only instructing the disciples but also forgiving Adam for the rejection in the garden?
Was He, Jesus, reconciling ALL things to Himself, including Adam?
In the garden again, His eyes do search to and fro.
Are we avoiding, purposefully ignoring, His glance?
Are we, like Adam, hiding behind something else?
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