Who's More Famous Than God?

Tough Questions for Christians #24—God’s Glory Watch It Here

AZ quotes that all things are for God’s glory-- which is basic Westminster Catechism. And glory is about other people being impressed with us or with what we did. But why should God want us to be impressed with Him? Why does He need it?

Interesting question. Because, for the most part, this is all true. Glory has to do with other people’s opinion of us. God certainly desires to be glorified. And yet God created us all, so we wonder about why He would want glory from us.

The first thing God’s request for us to glorify Him is that we can realize that God is, in essence, social. Even as we are created with a desire to be respected, so does God. It is a basic trait of any intelligent social entity.

The other thing we need to realize is that God isn’t seeking glory only from humans, but all of the spirit world as well. The angels and powerful “gods” of the spirit world are not God’s peers—He has no peers—but they are closer to Him than we, and part of creation is for these angels to be impressed with God’s work.

And as far as receiving glory from creation, this isn’t unusual. I have a brain game that I play on my iPod pretty regularly. If I do well, it tells me so. But if I’m doing badly, it tells me that as well. No one pays attention to my playing of this game or even cares about it except myself. And, of course, the program in the iPod. So why do I work so hard at it? Because I want the glory that the human creation—the program—will give me. This seems strange, but don’t we all do this to a degree? Have you ever worked hard so some computer program would tell you that you did well?

Every intelligent social entity wants some praise or glory. And if we get it from our creations, that’s all for the good. Certainly God isn’t strange in that.