We are not God and God is different than us (Isaiah 55:8). Isn’t that something to be thankful for? I guess that is hard to understand if we believe that we are all there is. It is hard to understand if we believe that God is just something cavepeople made up when they saw the shadows cast by the fire on the cave wall. Making God in our own image is an easy trap in which to fall. However, the God of the Bible tells us that though we are made in His image, we are far from the same. He can forgive more. He can love more. Only He can judge and God knows, He often judges on standards that I would not have thought of. He has access to a lot of information that we do not.

Seeing God as similar to us is very close to making ourselves gods. However, the God of the Bible tells us when we make ourselves gods, we are destined for failure. It is sin. That is what Adam’s sin was (Genesis 3:5). Yet it seems logical that if we made God then we should be able to be gods. Yet that is the farthest from the truth. Kim Jong Un wants to be worshipped as a God and look at his kingdom. I guess for many that works but not for the majority of the world. The emperor of Japan thought he was a god and he had to admit defeat. Rome’s Caligula and other Roman emperors thought they were gods yet they all died. History can go on and on regarding people who thought they were all there is but now, are nothing. There are even people living today who think they contain divinity. One of them was the guy who orchestrated the attack on Tokyo’s subway system. How many celebrities can you name that lived their life as their own god, had tons of money and then had their deaths from drugs spewed across the tabloids? Jim Morrison,  Michael Jackson, Anna Nicole Smith….?

We were not meant to contain divinity. Remember this, when Michael Jackson died, he (like everyone else who has and will die) crapped his pants. Though again, we were all made in the image of God, we are made to reflect the one true God’s divinity. As we study and learn God’s Word and how it applies to our life, we can reflect this divinity—but at no time does it actually come from us. To assume divinity is sin and to ask for disaster in our souls and in our lives.  The Bible says that Jesus who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped (Philippians 2:6).

How do we avoid the temptation of these expressions of hubris? There is no magic formula. I know the temptation to make God like me or to make myself my god is constantly something that I have to war against inside myself. Consistent prayer, consistent Bible study, spending time with other believers (church/temple) and just being willing to put God first and acknowledging that God is God and not us. As we do this we can take on the mind of God and see things from His perspective (1 Corinthians 2:16).

——-W.