The idea of God demanding to be worshiped is difficult to swallow. It makes God seem like an attention-seeker who relies on our praise to bolster his fragile ego. The idea that He would create the world or cause events to happen in order that he would be ‘glorified’ through them seems equally problematic. Even as a Christian, it’s taken me a while to understand how a God who asks us to be humble could ask us to place Him at the centre of our lives.
Some people answer this objection by referring to God’s role as the Creator of mankind. Just as the carpenter owns the table or chairs she creates, the act of creation gave God certain rights over us, including the right to be worshipped.
I can see the attraction of this argument. But it’s always seemed flawed to me. I am not a mahogany table. I see no reason why the carpenter who made me would be free to let me gather dust in the attic. Having a right to use an object as you please is very different to having unlimited rights over a person. We have word for the latter: slavery.
Even our parents, who literally created us, don’t have a right to use us as they please. I love my parents. But heaven forbid they ever have unlimited rights over me. They are flawed people. We all are.
Every one of us is flawed and so the thought of them having unlimited rights over us is terrifying. When we talk about a God that wants us to praise Him, he sounds like yet another flawed human being. And only the most flawed and selfish people every openly ask anyone else to worship them. He may be powerful, but that doesn’t make His claims over our lives any more valid. If His strength was the only reason He could command our obedience, God would just be another despot.
But God has a right to our praise not because of His strength, but because of His moral perfection. That’s why the act of worshipping God is fundamentally different to worshipping a person. Perhaps it is closer to worshipping a virtue. Most of us, I imagine, would consider the worship of an ideal to be more acceptable than the worship of a person. In fact, many of us already worship a virtue. “Love trumps Hate” seems to have been the standard response to so many of the horrible things that have happened recently. We put our faith in Love. We put our hope in Love. We think of it as the guiding principle of our lives. That sounds a lot like worship to me.
Don’t get me wrong, worshipping Love is not the same as worshipping God. I do not believe that God is a metaphor or an abstract ideal. (How could anyone worship a metaphor?) Though God is outside of this universe, I believe that He is as real as the world around us. (Yes, I know that Elon Musk, the Independent and Morpheus from the Matrix question whether the world is real, but let’s forget about them for a minute…)
But in God those virtues are embodied in a person. If God is, as the Bible claims, Love, then worshiping Him is fundamentally different to worshipping a person. To worship something else would be to worship something that wasn’t Love. If only God is perfect, then to worship something else would be to worship something morally imperfect. If only He is just, then to worship something else would be worship injustice. That is why, I think, God can only allow people to worship Him. I don’t see how God could be perfect if he were happy for us to worship something that was imperfect. And by God, I mean the Christian God of the Bible.
If God were content for us to worship anything, be it a totem pole or Allah, then he would again be saying it was ok to worship something that wasn’t the perfect embodiment of love, compassion, perfection and justice.
If God were not Love, I don’t believe He would have the right to demand that we worship Him. I’m not certain, but I don’t think the fact that He created us would alone be justification for worshipping Him.
I know this is far from a complete answer. Perhaps it even raises more questions than it answers. Where do the virtue of Love, Justice and Compassion come from in the first place? Are they set by God or are they independent of Him? Some, I know, will find it difficult to accept the claim that God is love itself. But I hope this at least explains why I’ve become more at ease with the idea that God has the right to demand that we worship him.
Nice
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