Worshiping People

The more I hear about the lives of famous people, the more compassion I have for them. I'm still pretty young, but from what I've seen and experienced so far, success is tougher to handle than failure. Failing leaves us pretty aware of our desperation and need. Success fills us with delusions of grandeur and generally sets us up for a fall.

Steve McNair was a farm kid from Mount Olive, Mississippi who seemed like a pretty nice guy. The man who grew up in a town which boasted a population of 893 in the 2000 Census, grew up to be worshiped because he could perform on the football field. There were more people in the Southern end zone at Adelphia than in his hometown. We wore his jerseys and as a society turned our heads when he drove drunk. We cheered what he loved and ignored what we didn't.

I met him once at a Nashville Kats game. He was polite and friendly. But as with all famous people, he was a character. Not in the way he acted, but in the way people acted when they met him. The smiles. The compliments. The nervousness. People approached him with the realization they were speaking to somebody special. Even my invitation to the box where he was sitting exemplified how elevated he was in the public. The announcement that he was in a box and some of us would get to meet him made the ten to twenty people surrounding me smile and pay attention. Many of them probably hadn't even noticed I was there until they heard I was about to meet someone famous. That kind of attention and praise is deadly.

We weren't made to be worshiped. We were made to worship. We have been created and given this amazing gift of life to bear the image of the Triune God. Before this world was even formed God existed in an eternal relationship within himself. The Father, Son, and Spirit experienced perfect peace within their relationship. God is love because he has always been loving. Creation is an overflow of that love. Because he is perfectly good, he shared his love and community with creation. Humans were given the prized gift of bearing God's image. All of creation shouts his glory. We were specifically chosen to carry his image.

We've never basked in that freedom. Instead, we try to find ways to elevate ourselves to his throne and seek the glory that belongs to him alone. It kills us. Thankfully, most of us never reach that level of being worshiped. The more attention and praise lavished on us, the more unaware of reality we become.

Pride doesn't go before the fall because God is waiting for us to become proud so he can knock us down. It leads to our falls because it goes against the created order of God's world. When we are puffed up, we are ungrateful and unable to worship. A good friend of mine told me this week that the gospel frees us to be the paintbrush instead of the painter. God is the creator and sustainer of this beautiful world. He has given us the wonderful calling of carrying his image and showing his glory. There is a completely unique freedom in deflecting the praise and worship of men and boasting only in his goodness.