The Tyranny of Praise

We are social creatures, and the opinions of others mold us. We derive our self-definition or self-regard by how others regard us. If others treat us like garbage, we will begin to feel and smell like garbage. If they treat us with dignity, we will begin to feel that we have some worth.

However, this is also an inescapable tyranny. Jesus said,

·       "I do not accept praise from men… How can you [Pharisees] believe if you accept praise from one another, yet make no effort to obtain the praise that comes from the only God?” (John 5:41-44)

We will never be free from the need for feedback, praise, or self-definition. Instead, it is a question of, “From where do I derive this necessary commodity.” We tend to derive it from friends, family, and even from foes – especially our boss, who exercises a tyrannical power over us.

How do we free ourselves from these opinions? By becoming more concerned about God’s opinion – where we find great comfort and confidence - than man’s! Here is what He says:

·       “I took you from the ends of the earth, from its farthest corners I called you. I said, 'You are my servant'; I have chosen you and have not rejected you. So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand. All who rage against you will surely be ashamed and disgraced; those who oppose you will be as nothing and perish.” (Isaiah 41:9-11)

The Rejection of God: a Portrait of Pride

What is pride? Although the Bible doesn’t give us a dictionary definition, it does give us illuminating portraits of the proud.

According to the Book of Isaiah, the proud will be “humbled” (Isa. 5:15; 2:11-12) and the Lord alone will be exalted (Isa. 2:17). Pride is a form of self-exaltation and a corresponding rejection of God’s rightful place. Consequently, in their prideful self-exaltation, Israel rejected the One who should have been exalted (Isa. 1:2-3) but continued to offer Him mere lip-service (Isa. 1:10-15) for appearance sake.

In order to achieve self-exaltation - self-righteousness - we have to deny the ugly truth about ourselves and harden our conscience against our self-evident moral failures and God’s righteous claims over our lives (Isa. 5:12). And with this hardening of conscience comes an increasingly immoral life, as Isaiah illustrates:

•   Woe to those who draw sin along with cords of deceit, and wickedness as with cart ropes… Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter. Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes and clever in their own sight. Woe to those who are heroes at drinking wine and champions at mixing drinks, who acquit the guilty for a bribe, but deny justice to the innocent. Therefore, as tongues of fire lick up straw and as dry grass sinks down in the flames, so their roots will decay    and their flowers blow away like dust; for they have rejected the law of the Lord Almighty and spurned the word of the Holy One of Israel. (Isa. 5:18-24)

When we harden our hearts against the light within (Rom. 2:14-15), we achieve our goal and become “wise in [our] own eyes and clever in [our] own sight.” However, in order to sustain this “achievement,” we have to reject the convicting light (John 3:19-20). Consequently, we “have rejected the law of the Lord Almighty and spurned the word of the Holy One of Israel” along with anything or anyone who calls attention to our sin.

Sin is a “gateway drug.” As marijuana opens the door to stronger drugs, a little unrepented sin will open the door to yet more.

We also lose sensitivity to sin – our moral compass (Rom. 1:18-32). Eventually, we begin to “call evil good and good evil” and even revel in our sin and hypocrisy. We scorn the intolerance of others, refusing to see our own intolerance. However, after a while, we will even come to boast in this hypocrisy.

Isaiah described what Israel had become as a result of their pride, sin, and consequent rejection of their God:

• Woe to the sinful nation, a people whose guilt is great, a brood of evildoers, children given to corruption! They have forsaken the Lord; they have spurned the Holy One of Israel and turned their backs on him. Why should you be beaten anymore? Why do you persist in rebellion? Your whole head is injured, your whole heart afflicted. From the sole of your foot to the top of your head there is no soundness—only wounds and welts and open sores, not cleansed or bandaged or soothed with olive oil. (Isa. 1:4-6)

Call it a “confirmation bias” or simply “self-justification” – in either case, we compulsively rationalize our sin and rebellion to a pathological extent. We reject the light and then can no longer see ourselves and the great price we have paid for our sin. The Sister Wives show demonstrates how compelling the “confirmation bias” can be:

• While Kody and his ‘wives’ strive to put a positive spin on their polygamous lifestyle – their catchphrase is: “Love should be multiplied, not divided” – cracks sometimes appear in the shiny façade, revealing simmering resentment, jealousy and hurt feelings just below the surface.  Forced to compete for Kody’s time, money, and affection, the four women – Meri, Janelle, Christine and Robyn – have fought bitterly with him and each other over housing arrangements, pregnancies, child rearing, leisure time and just about everything else. 

Often, “being right” trumps being truthful! Are the women merely lying or have they truly deceived themselves? Either way, it seems that they have rejected the light in favor of a debilitating darkness. Nevertheless, there remains hope. God extended this hope to Israel:

•  “Come now, let us settle the matter,” says the Lord. “Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool. If you are willing and obedient, you will eat the good things of the land; but if you resist and rebel, you will be devoured by the sword.” For the mouth of the Lord has spoken. (Isa. 1:18-20)

Our Lord excludes no one. He doesn’t say, “I will not forgive you if your sins are really bad.” Instead, this hope is for all, but it requires our response – “If you are willing and obedient.” Elsewhere, Isaiah proclaims:

• Seek the Lord while he may be found; call on him while he is near. Let the wicked forsake their ways and the unrighteous their thoughts. Let them turn to the Lord, and he will have mercy on them, and to our God, for he will freely pardon. (Isa 55:6-7)

Salvation is free, but we must turn to the Lord in order to receive it. However, turning to the Lord also entails an intention to turn away from our prior focus – our commitment to pride, self-righteousness, and sin. The two – from the old and to the new - are as inseparable as heads and tails.

How can we turn to God if we have been blinded by sin? Despite the hardness of our hearts, there are still times when we might detect His loving, yet indicting “voice” (Psalm 95, John 16).

What does His mercy entail? God declares:

• “Zion will be redeemed with justice and her repentant ones with righteousness.” (Isa. 1:27; NASB)

God will pay an unspecified price to redeem the “repentant ones” to Himself. However, He does mention the mysterious price of “righteousness!”

Clearly, this isn’t the righteousness of the sinner. He has no righteousness to speak of! Therefore, it must be God who will pay the redemption price with His own righteousness. But how? He will judge and condemn Himself as payment for our sins:

• But He was pierced through for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities; the chastening for our well-being fell upon Him, and by His scourging we are healed. All of us like sheep have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; but the Lord has caused the iniquity of us all to fall on Him. (Isa. 53:4-5; NASB)

While our iniquity would “fall on Him,” His righteousness will fall on us – the repentant:

• I will rejoice greatly in the Lord, my soul will exult in my God; for He has clothed me with garments of salvation, He has wrapped me with a robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom decks himself with a garland, and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels. (Isa. 61:10; NASB)

Covered with His righteousness, we will share in His glory – a glory free from the demands of pride and self-righteousness. As we begin to understand the price He has paid for us and the righteousness with which He has adorned us, our self-centered, loveless pride will be converted into relational, loving, and Other-centered rejoicing. Let Him be praised forever!

Isn’t it Oppressive, Restrictive and Degrading to Praise and to Serve God: A Letter to an Atheist

I too appreciate your thoughtful responses and will try to respond as best I can. You wrote:

• He also gets to define what is perfection, and any attempt by us to reconsider or redefine this definition using the intellect he gave us, will be swiftly punished in the hereafter, and at least a few times did so directly to his created subjects while they were alive. In other words, he prefers obedient slaves over critical thinkers.

I too would object to a god who “prefers obedient slaves over critical thinkers.” Nevertheless, we do maximize our welfare when we conform to certain principles. I don’t defy gravity by jumping from a building; nor do I violate sound principles of health by an over-consumption of junk food, at least, I try not to. Likewise, I rationally know that my welfare is best served when I adhere to God. And this I do gladly because I know that He loves me with a love that transcends all understanding (Eph. 3:17-19) and has even died for me.

When I had a higher estimation of myself and my own wisdom, I might have resented the fact that God “defines what is perfection.” However, I now recognize that it gives me great freedom to live within His boundaries, like the paraplegic who is now “confined” in the seat of his state-of-the-art wheelchair, and great joy to serve this Source of all truth and love.

It is like a goldfish within his tank. Perhaps he can jump out into the “freedom” of the surrounding world. However, he maximizes his freedom and welfare by remaining within the confines of the tank.

You are right about punishment in the “hereafter,” but the punishment has actually begun here! When you rebel against God, you also rebel against yourself - the laws and truths He’s already written into you. When you go against His moral truths, you wound your conscience and condemn yourself to always having to prove your moral rectitude against an accusing conscience.

Ironically, it is we who make ourselves slaves to our psychological needs for self- and social-affirmation. We become workaholics and form co-dependent relationships.

For instance, when you hurt others, you hurt yourself. When you use a woman to satisfy yourself at her expense, you feel guilty and are forced to justify your actions and morality. We place ourselves on a never-ending treadmill of trying to convince ourselves that we are good and worthy people.

When you judge God and others, you also judge yourself. This is because we all fall far short of our own (God-given) standards and make ourselves into self-condemned hypocrites when we judge without truth and mercy.

Also, when we bring our various indictments against God, we are unable to do this in any coherent and objective sense. We can only objectively judge if we have an absolute standard by which to judge. However, such a standard is only possible if it is transcendent, universal, unchanging, and just – the standard that can only come from God.

While this heavenly Father is so dear and beloved by us, you, from your adversarial perspective, understandably experience God as “an absolute tyrant”:

• The problem we[atheists] have with the idea of god, is that he is an absolute tyrant…yet he demands to be worshiped eternally; who thinks that because he can create a universe, he is justified in creating any amount of unnecessary misery he wants as examples;

Bob Dylan once sung a sung, “You Got to Serve Someone.” I think that there’s a lot of truth in this. Either we serve the oppressive and changing opinions of humanity and society or we serve the opinions of a loving and omnipotent God who promises that He will never stop loving us. We are social creatures and cannot – mercifully so – detach ourselves from social opinion, like the psychopath. We are not “islands unto ourselves.” We need to define ourselves – and everyone has a self-definition – from within a social context.

Consequently, we are not entirely free. (It’s funny that many atheists will exalt freedom while they deny freewill!) We are largely driven by psychological needs. If we fail to see this, we will be utterly controlled by these needs.

We need rules and restrictions. Even playing a game of chess requires rules. Without rules and restrictions, we can only have chaos. Yes, submitting to God is a matter of submitting to such restrictions, as Jesus pointed out:

• "Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light." (Matthew 11:28-30)

Coming to Jesus does require taking upon ourselves a yoke. However, this yoke is “easy” and “light” compared to the yoke of a life apart from Him.

Understandably, you balk at the idea of praising God eternally. However, praise is not so much for God – He doesn’t need my praise – but for me! Meditation never worked for me. I had been an incurable depressive and meditating upon my thoughts and feelings was the quintessence of depression. It is therefore such a privilege to take my eyes off my sorry self and place them joyously upon Him and praise Him for all He is and, selfishly, what He means to me. He has freed me from myself!

You also balk at the idea of not being able to criticize God. You might be surprised to find that many of His people in the Bible have criticized Him. Although I don’t criticize Him, I do bring to Him the things that trouble and perplex me. I am honest with Him and tell Him how I feel. The Psalms are filled with these anguished outpourings. However, I do this as a little child before a beloved, wise and trusted parent. How else to approach the God of Creation and Salvation!