My Dear Maya, you told me tonight that someone jokingly said that God is selfish because he wants people to bow down and kneel before him and give him homage. There are many gods who are self centered and want this homage from us for their own glory. There are people from many religions and many of them Christians who worship these selfish gods, and they think by bowing down to them and confessing their misery while professing these gods greatness, that they will get special favors from these gods. These gods indeed benefit tremendously from such worship because they are in need of it; it makes them feel worth, and valuable. They are self centered gods and only care about themselves. They are always in need of worshipers to give them glory and pleasure. Jesus met one of these gods who offered him the world if he paid him homage.
When people actually kneel and bow, it is easy to describe what they are doing, because we physically see them. There are on the other hand, so many people who bow and kneel while standing up. Let me explain. If someone is in love with money, and he does everything in his power to get money, then this person is bowing and worshiping this god named money. Sometimes, people bow to power while standing up, sometimes they bow to pleasure, to self, to intellect, to things, to people, and sometimes to the devil. There are plenty of gods thirsty for someone to pay homage to them.
The true God created us free in His own image. He did not create us to bow down to anything or anyone. He gave us free will to choose or refuse even Himself. He is by His own nature self sufficient and in need of nothing to add glory or pleasure to His being. This true God is love. He made us His children. He came down from His own heaven to be with us, to walk with us, to love us, to serve us, to wash our feet, to be hurt by us, to be rejected, made fun of, scourged and crucified for us. He then turned and asked us to do the same for others and that is to love them even if our love to them send us to our grave. The true God is in love with us and wants us to share His joy as His children.
Everyhing in life has its nature. A bird cannot tell the air I don't need you, I will fly without you. The bird has wings but flap as he may, he cannot fly without the air that surrounds it. A fish cannot tell the water I don't need you, I can swim without you. A baby cannot tell his mom I don't need you I can live without you, just give me birth and let me be. We are each dependent on each other and we are by nature dependent on a loving God who gives us the air to fly and the water to swim. What air is to the bird and water is to the fish, is love to us human. We are dependent on each other and this dependency is not a sign of weakness but rather a sign of love, since we share it with joy when others depend on us.
We sometimes fall short of our love to each other and to ourselves. We fall short of love to the one who made us. We think of ourselves greater than anything although we cannot breath without the little air that is given to us. It is then that we bow to our Maker, not so that He will gain anything from us, since we cannot add to who He is, but rather so that by bowing we acknowledge that we freely failed to love and we need His air and His water to lift us up. It is precisely then that He hugs us soul and body and gives us what every good dad and every good mom give their kids, and that is themselves. By showing humility we die to self and in doing so we truly live.
Remember what he said, when he bowed down to wash our feet and the feet of those who betrayed him: " Do you realize what I have done for you? You call me 'teacher' and 'master' and rightly so, for indeed I am. If I, therefore, the master and teacher, have washed your feet, you ought to wash one another's feet. I have given you a model to follow, so that as I have done for you, you should do." [John 13:12-15].
Dear Maya, to truly understand the nature of our God, we must never forget His words in [Mark 10:45]: " The Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many" Let us then be humble so that we may know God as love.
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