The Self-Centered God

We hate arrogance. It's so unbecoming. We don't like the bragging guy who thinks he's God's gift to women and we don't like the supermodel who knows she's all that and we don't like the sports star that disdains others. We don't like it one bit. Self-centered people are just annoying to us ... even though we are all, at heart, self-centered. That accusation is a stinging one because we know it's wrong to be self-centered and we know we all suffer from it.

The question, however, takes a turn when we ask it about God. Is God self-centered? C.S. Lewis wrote that one of the things that bothered him early in his Christian experience was God's constant demand for praise. What was He, some sort of megalomaniac? Well, no, actually. A megalomaniac is someone who suffers from a psychotic condition characterized by delusional fantasies of wealth, power, or omnipotence. And God has no such delusion ... because it's genuine. God, according the Bible, is primarily concerned with His own glory. He wants it to be recognized, displayed, respected, honored. "His own glory" is a reference to the totality of His character ... you know, being glorious and all. God is, then, at His core, self-centered. We are commanded to be God-centered ("Love the Lord your God with all your heart ..."). We are told "No other gods before Me". When we place anything at all in that central place besides God, we have a term for it: Idolatry. Therefore, if God actually is the reason for everything that is, if He is indeed the center of the universe, if He is actually the singularly most important Being, then to fail to be self-centered would be stupid, incorrect, and even sinful. He would be an idolater.

This, of course, will rub most of us the wrong way. Why? What is it that we don't like about people who are self-centered, who monopolize the conversation with themselves? Well, we have a term for that. It is called "self-aggrandizing". Self-aggrandizing is to make self appear greater. We should have warnings on our bathroom mirrors: "Objects in this mirror will likely appear much more important than they really are." We all tend to this self-aggrandizing. We suffer from smallness and want to make ourselves appear bigger. We compensate for our known shortcomings by focusing on our apparent strengths. Like magicians, we use these things to distract from the less-than-stellar stuff we're doing behind the scenes. Voila! We're people worthy of respect! And, frankly, we're not buying it from others or from ourselves.

God doesn't suffer from this problem. He cannot make Himself appear greater than He is because He is already great. Nothing comes close. He doesn't suffer from deficiencies He has to cover because He has none. He has no blemishes to hide, no errors to cover, no weaknesses to disguise. He does not make Himself appear greater; He can only try to share some of His greatness with us.

Is God self-centered? You'd better believe it. He is indeed the central issue, the point of all things, the reason for all existence. He deserves to be self-centered and must be if He is to be true. He demands praise because He deserves praise and it is to our benefit to praise Him. If we get a glimpse of God's glory -- a glimpse of who He really is -- we would agree wholeheartedly that He must be the center of all. How could He be otherwise?