Steve Taylor is one of my favorite Christian musicians. He did a song called "Cash Cow". The Cash Cow goes from the golden calf in the Sinai desert to the prosperity gospel today. He doesn't stop there. In the last verse he says, "I too was hypnotized by those big cow eyes the last time I uttered those three little words, 'I deserve better.'"
"I deserve better." It's a lie, you know. It's a product of our imagination, a result of our inflated view of our own importance. It's the natural end point of a thinking process that starts with "I will be like the Most High." We can conclude nothing different when we begin our reasoning with the unstated but common belief that the world revolves around me.
This mistaken position that is so common to most human beings leads to so many faulty conclusions. If we understood what we actually deserved, the question of "Why does God allow suffering?" would be instantaneously replaced with, "How can a just God allow the universe to continue another microsecond?" If we really grasped what we deserved, then arrogance would vanish and courtesy would be commonplace, a natural response from one lowly creature to another. If we could really get our minds around what we actually deserve, we would be on our faces thanking God for another single breath, another beat of the heart, another moment with a loved one. We wouldn't be sacrificing our precious life moments on getting ahead at work or trying to lord it over my wife or getting my husband to do what I want or complaining about that neighbor's barking dog. We wouldn't be assigning blame or taking credit. We would find, instead, a reordered set of priorities.
Maybe we need to pause at times in life and really consider, "What do I actually deserve?" If the wages of sin is death, if "the day that you eat it you shall die", if it is true that sin is an affront to the glory of God, perhaps we don't "deserve better". We don't deserve grace and mercy and love from God. We deserve the daily, unmitigated, ongoing wrath of God. The moment we forget that is the moment we drift into the morass of confusion in so many areas. Perhaps we should call to mind more often what we actually deserve. It would make us better, more grateful, more congenial people.
4 comments:
So true! When I consider what I deserve (eternity in hell) and what God has instead given me (eternal life), I am humbled and amazed. You are right, Stan. When we get our minds on the truth, our attitude - and therefore, our behavior - changes for the better. King Solomon was also right: the fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom. ~ 10km
Hey! Long time no "see". Hope you are well.
And I wish -- oh, I pray -- that more people would begin to get that "the fear of the LORD" is NOT merely "reverential awe". It would add to their wisdom.
Amen! I'm fine, thank you, just finished a round of chemotherapy for cancer which is now gone. Glory to God for His grace to go through. 10km
Praise God. Glad you're better. Yours is a good voice for people to hear on this topic. (Oh, and the one from today, which gives "the other side of 'deserve'".
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