We wrote last time about the hubris of folks who look around everyday and see incompetence and sloppiness and still think there is a capability to do stuff that only God can do. Luther talked about that kind of thinking as a refusal to let God be God. Some talk about a “deflection of God’s praise”, or not given God the honor due His name. In modern times we have rejected God as creator or make fun of that belief. The latest rant is that if you have a problem with the way someone “see’s” themselves then you need to go to your so called creator because He made them that way. It is an interesting comment and shows the dearth of theological contemplation, or maybe theological contemplation devoid of the “theos”.
Anyway the point is that when we refuse to let God be God or deflect God’s glory we might want to go on a suicide watch. There are so many examples in the scriptures that it seems to be a general definition of sin. Sin is usurping God’s glory. I read recently about the party that took place down below the mountain where Moses was getting the 10 Commandments and I remembered the way Cecil B. DeMille shows it in the movie “The Ten Commandments” as a kind of orgiastic party. The people made the golden calf and then they had a wild party. Moses of course destroys them, or at least God does through Moses. But a sermon on this situation was preached by Stephen in Acts 7 and he basically says their sin was that they were “perfectly happy with what their hands had made”. He doesn’t talk at all about some “sex, drugs and rock and roll” craziness, but about a very simple state of mind. They didn’t “give God the glory”.
You can pretty much go on suicide watch in the scriptures when that happens. Herod, Judas, Ananias and Sapphira, and there are others. They have basically killed themselves because they have denied the connection they had to Life.
