The God of I

“I love ______, and God is love so this can’t be wrong.”

“I need ______ in my life to be happy, and God wants us to be happy.”

“I want to be true to who God made me to be.”

“I was born this way, who are you to say that God made a mistake?”

“I feel like God wants me to do this.”

“I know in my heart this is God’s plan for my life.”

“I made the right decision, and only God can judge me.”

“I have prayed it through, and this is the right thing for me.”

“I believe that this is what God wants for me. Why else would I feel this way?”

And so goes the theology of our day. I want, I need, I think, I feel - all of these phrases, an introduction to the carefully crafted theology of “I”. Oh sure, we toss God’s name in there so it sounds as if we might actually be speaking of him, but let’s be real shall we?

Look, I am not throwing stones here. I have said these things myself, and did so quite convincingly. I was in love. I could not be happy without this person in my life, and surely a God of love would understand if I bent, or broke, the rules so that I could have love in my life.

After all, those rules were written so long ago and to different culture. The people back then weren’t as enlightened as we are now. They didn’t understand the things we now know are true about relationships and human sexuality. If they knew what we know now, God certainly would have written something different, something more lenient, and more loving than the self-denial that being true to his word would require of me.

And I could believe everything I told myself, as long as I never stopped to think about what I was really saying because if I did, I undermined every reason to believe in God in the first place. The truth is I was telling myself that I was smarter than God, I was wiser than him, and I was more loving than he ever professed to be. My thoughts were higher and more rational than any thought he had deigned to share with humanity, and his words were cruel when compared to grace I offered myself. I had the power to stop my pain, and I could heal my heart more effectively than he ever would, all I had to do was have enough faith.

But that faith was never in him, it was strictly in myself.

I had become my own god. I had elevated my will above his, and I had called him a liar with my thoughts and deeds. Not that I would voice such a thing, for who could condone such arrogance, such hubris? Not I or any other rational human being, but when I dressed it up as a service – a debt I owed to my heart, to my sense of self, then I could celebrate my accomplishments and bask in the approval of my peers.

Sin never creeps into our lives because we label it a sin. It comes wrapped in all things beautiful and delicious. It appeals to our pride, our vanity, but even more it appeals to the needs of our hearts and seems soothing against ragged places of loneliness and pain. For a moment there is the sweet seduction of knowing what it is to have our appetites satisfied, but it is only for a moment. Then we are confronted with how powerless we, or anyone else, really are to satisfy the demands of our hearts. Pride would seek to lash us onward, to try again, to love someone new, and to immerse ourselves in pools of self-help and self-healing, when the truth is we need to acknowledge that nothing we create of ourselves will ever be any lasting value.

Facing the truth is violent and painful task. It is bloody act to cut out the part of your heart that would betray you for a seconds worth of peace and self-aggrandizement. Pride writhes with wretched anguish when displaced by humility, and mercy stings when you realize how undeserving you are of such a gift. Nor does the love you worshipped above the God of love die swift and painless death, instead lingers in the recesses of you heart waiting for a moment of weakness to rise up displace this new God you have enthroned upon what was once its domain.

No one said it would be easy or without cost to worship this God of the Bible and the God of truth. Even he said there pain, but he promised it would be worth it and either he is a God of his word worthy of our worship or he isn’t. There is no in between and there is no compromise or justification in him. He will not share our hearts with another god, not even the god of I or the god of love for ourselves. For the love he offers is greater than any we can conjure of own will. The question is who do we really worship more, the true God of Love or the love we have that it only sustained by I?