I’m curious what others think about this thought I just had…
If someone claims to be good and wants you to be subservient to them and serve and pleasure them like an idol would, does that mean they consider you beneath/inferior? And if you are inferior to good then you are bad right?
So, if a religious figure for example wants you to serve and worship, doesn’t that mean they think you are inferior/bad and if so, why would good want bad/evil to be in their lives?
Doubt such a claim. The only one who had the right to claim it made a very indirect claim to divinity because it is in us to …neutralize… anything that claims to be what only one can. And to simultaneously want to be that one thing. But the only way to be in unity with that one thing is to treat self as other. That’s why the closer you get to that part of us, the harder the ego defense mechanisms have to work to deal with the dissonance when things are wonky.
Later you call it worship. I am reminded of how the master became servant (Matthew 20:25-28).
I’m also reminded of a really great quote. “God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him,” (John Piper). As well as something from somewhere that said “The purpose of life is to glorify God and enjoy him forever.” To glorify is to recognize (after encountering) the great-making properties in a being.
It’s interesting to me that when he took on flesh, it was initially as a vulnerable baby. It’s also interesting to me that his one act of leadership is to set the bar for servanthood. And he died a virgin. But I mean if the master craftsman of the senses is the source of all being, I would imagine that dabbling in the pleasures of the body while incarnate is a bit anticlimactic compared to the purity of his passion in omnipresence, and subsuming ours.
By comparison everything does appear “bad” but that was not the message he had to give. The message he had to give is that he loves us so much he would die for us, and we should treat all of each other as if we are him (not inferior) and do the same for each other that he did for us (love us despite our crap, good —Isaiah 64:6— or bad).
It’s kinda like he made this whole situation so that it was possible to say such a thing.
The privation of wholeness/capacity isn’t the most blaring, glaring, obvious thing that he observes. It doesn’t surprise him, and it doesn’t destroy the value that is there regardless. He sees a citizen in a kingdom of ends who are at different levels of awareness about the sort of end they are (and he is).