Thought of the Day 01.12.09

Imagine if all of humanity believed that the most important thing in the world was the elevation you lived at, so that those who lived on mountains were considered noble and those who lived in the desert or in valleys were considered wretched. But then imagine that God’s standard of judgment was actually based on how close you lived to the equator.

Obviously the problem would be that there is just no fit between what people are seeking (and sacrificing for) and what He desires for them. As a result, there would be people in the plains of Brazil thinking very little of themselves but being quite pleasing to God and there would be people in the Northern Rockies quite proud of themselves but very offensive to God.

See, one of the key themes of the Bible is that the things we strive for and measure ourselves by just simply aren’t on God’s yardstick. And in the end, many people will be stunned to find out that the way we think about deriving your identity from race or hair color is essentially the way God thinks about deriving identity from wealth, popularity, beauty, or intelligence.