A reader has this comment and question:
God looks down upon self worship . . . He looks down upon things being idolized . . . He looks down upon being conceited or putting ones self above others. So, why does he ask us to worship him? Does it not go against every set of values he has us hold? Him setting himself over the world for the sole purpose of us worshipping him.
One of the first things I did when our oldest child was born was to write my parents a letter. In that letter, I told them how much I appreciated all they had done for me. I had barely traveled any distance down the parenting road, but I could already see that there was going to be so much more involved in it than I had ever imagined. I had grown up in a time when it was fashionable to disrespect authority of any kind and parents usually took the biggest hit. Regrettably, I had been a participant by disrespecting my parents and rebelling against them on many occasions.
Our parents had taught us to respect all adults and that started in our home with them. Did they do this because they were narcissistic? Of course not. They did it for our good, not theirs. They knew that we would never reach maturity if we didn’t respect the two people who had the responsibility of raising us. While all analogies are imperfect, I think the central thrust of this one is accurate. God desires our worship because He is our Creator and we are the created. Therefore, it is natural for us to worship Him and it is unnatural if we don’t. We are the ones who suffer when we don’t recognize Him as God. God doesn’t need us to worship Him, we are the ones who need to worship Him.
Take a look at our culture and the direction it is moving in as more and more people (sadly) fail to acknowledge God. I do recognize, of course, that there are wonderful people who live good, moral lives and don’t worship God but I think the case can be made that they do so despite the fact that they don’t worship God, not because they don’t. Morality has to ultimately be rooted in something transcendent/bigger than ourselves or it’s just political correctness. Read Romans 1:18ff and see what happened when people decided to jettison God.
We need God!
A Taste of Grace with Bruce Green 