However, this is not to say that mankind is worthless, God does want us after all. In relation to Romans 12:1-3 it is obvious that God wants, more than anything, all of our dirty, hard and stupid selves. I love The Message translation of this scripture where it talks of your working, walking-about, sleeping lives being what God wants. But it is important to look at how God wants that life; He does not want it glorified, He wants it sacrificed; laid out before Him to be burned, destroyed or used for His benefit and according to His whim; put it another way: Man only has greatness as he is willing to adhere to the greatness of God.
Tuesday, May 17, 2011
The Greatness of Man
In The Courage to Teach Palmer writes, "We cannot know the great things of the universe until we know ourselves to be great things." While I will not dispute that Palmer is indeed an intellectual human, I must humbly disagree with his sentiment. When looked at in the light of Scripture man must learn that he is not great before he can become anything. The many metaphors scripture holds for God's work with man, the artist and the clay, the blacksmith and the metal, the sheep and the shepherd all point to mankind being dirty, hard, stupid and in need of someone outside of us to give us any kind of worthwhile existence.
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Perfect rebuttal. I completely agree about putting others first and ourselves last. I can mention many examples of this in Scripture but you already did so beautifully. Although created in His image, we are of a sinful nature since the fall of man and only can strive to God's greatness though we know we will never achieve this. By earthly standards we might seem to have appeared successful or great, but by eternal standards we never measure up.
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