D. A. Carson —
With everybody wanting to be at the center of the universe, there can only be strife. I know full well that nobody goes around chanting, “I’m at the center of the universe.” Yet if I were to hold up your high school or college graduation class photo and say, “Here’s your graduation class photo,” whose face do you look for first? Or suppose you have a really good knock-down, drag-out argument (a one-in-ten-years type). You go away from it seething. You remember all the things you could have said, all the things you should have said and would have said if only you had thought of them fast enough. Then you deploy all of these things as you replay the whole thing in your mind. Who wins?
In my time I have lost many arguments; I have never lost a rerun.
These sorts of reflections are the small indexes of how we want to prevail, how we want to control, how we want to be at the center. Even God—if he, she, or it exists—jolly well better serve me or I’ll find another one, thank you. In other words, here is the beginning of all idolatry. [The God Who Is There]
HT: The Cross Quoter.
Words of Grace 