What happens when I become the highest authority in my own life? A reflection on self-worship, culture, and surrendering to God.

There is a phrase we hear constantly now: Be true to yourself.

On the surface, that can sound harmless. There is value in knowing who you are, admitting what you fear, and refusing to live entirely for the approval of other people. The problem begins when understanding ourselves becomes obeying ourselves.

What I feel becomes what is true. What I desire becomes what is good. What makes me happy becomes what is right. Anything that restrains me becomes oppression, and anyone who questions me becomes an enemy.

The self is no longer something to understand.

It becomes something to obey.

Christianity cannot make peace with that.

Human beings have enormous value because we were made in the image of God. But an image is not the original. We bear His image. We do not occupy His throne.

WE HAVE BEEN HERE BEFORE

The temptation in Eden was more than eating forbidden fruit.

The serpent told Eve:

“Ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.”
— Genesis 3:5

That temptation has never really gone away.

The language changes. The arguments become more sophisticated. The culture changes around us. But beneath human rebellion there is still the same declaration:

I will decide.

I will decide what is good. I will decide what is evil. I will decide which parts of God's authority apply to me and which ones I can ignore.

That is why the closing words of Judges remain uncomfortable:

“Every man did that which was right in his own eyes.”
— Judges 21:25

It does not say everyone deliberately chose what they knew was evil. They did what was right in their own eyes.

That is more dangerous because most people do not wake up hoping to become wicked. We justify ourselves. We explain ourselves. We build arguments around things we already want. Given enough time, almost anything can be made to sound reasonable.

Sin rarely walks through the front door and introduces itself honestly.

It usually arrives with an explanation.

THIS IS NOT ONLY ABOUT “THE CULTURE”

Christians need to be careful here because it is easy to read something like this and immediately think about somebody else.

We can point toward sexual ethics, gender, abortion, marriage, secularism, entertainment, politics, or whatever issue currently makes us angry and say, “There. That is what happens when people reject God.”

Sometimes that criticism is deserved.

But self-worship is not a secular problem. It is a human problem.

Christians are perfectly capable of sitting on the throne while carrying a Bible.

We do it when Scripture is authoritative until it confronts something we love. We do it when our political party becomes incapable of wrongdoing because admitting its failures might help the other side. We do it when we demand sexual purity from other people while quietly feeding our own pornography habit. We do it when we preach about biblical marriage and then treat our husband or wife with contempt.

We do it when we crown ourselves with titles God never gave us, calling ourselves kings and queens while forgetting that every crown belongs beneath Christ.

We do it when what we wear to worship matters more than whether we actually came to worship. When appearance becomes holiness, presentation becomes devotion, and being seen as righteous matters more than becoming righteous, something has gone badly wrong.

We do it when we say we hate the sin but clearly enjoy hating the person.

We do it when outrage becomes content. When another human being's failure becomes our clickbait. When somebody else's sin becomes entertainment because public condemnation makes us feel cleaner by comparison.

We do it when cruelty gets renamed “boldness” simply because there was some truth buried underneath it.

We do it when we talk about protecting the unborn and then speak about immigrants, prisoners, addicts, the poor, Muslims, or people who disagree with us as though their humanity somehow carries less weight.

And we do it when pride learns enough Christian vocabulary to call itself conviction.

That is still self-worship.

It simply learned how to dress for church.

TRUTH CANNOT DEPEND ON ME

If truth exists independently of me, then I can be wrong.

That is where this gets uncomfortable.

If God exists independently of my conception of Him, then He is under no obligation to become the God I would prefer. If Scripture speaks with authority, Christianity cannot simply be edited until Christ agrees with me.

We often want a God who comforts but does not command. A Jesus who loves but never judges. Grace without repentance. Heaven without holiness. Spirituality without surrender.

We want God, but we want veto power.

That is not surrender.

A god who agrees with everything I already believe is not much of a god. He may simply be me with better lighting.

JESUS DID NOT TELL US TO LIVE OUR TRUTH

Jesus said something far more difficult:

“If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me.”
— Luke 9:23

Deny yourself.

That sounds almost offensive in a culture built around self-expression.

Christians have abused language like this. People have used religion to keep victims trapped in abusive relationships, silence legitimate suffering, demand unhealthy submission, and convince wounded people that boundaries are selfish. That is not what Christ is commanding.

Self-denial is not self-hatred.

It is refusing to worship ourselves.

There are desires inside me that should not be followed. There are thoughts inside me that are wrong. There are impulses that feel natural and still need to be resisted. There are things I may deeply want that God may still forbid.

Christianity does not tell me my feelings are meaningless.

It tells me they are not sovereign.

THE CREATOR HAS THE RIGHT TO DEFINE THE CREATION

If God created me, then I do not begin with myself.

My body is not meaningless material onto which I impose whatever meaning I choose. My sexuality is not detached from moral responsibility. My relationships are not governed entirely by whether they make me happy. My money is not completely mine. My enemies do not lose their dignity because I despise what they believe.

And my religious convictions do not give me permission to become arrogant.

That means Christianity will sometimes tell the surrounding culture no.

It will also sometimes tell Christians no.

We are usually much more comfortable with the first one.

We like truth when it confronts someone else's sin. The harder question is whether I still call it truth when it confronts mine.

LOVE DOES NOT REQUIRE AGREEMENT

One reason Christians sometimes retreat from difficult moral questions is that we do not want to be cruel.

Good. We should fear cruelty.

There is something deeply wrong when Christians appear excited about condemning people. If exposing somebody's sin brings me pleasure, I need to examine what is happening in my own heart before I congratulate myself for defending truth.

But compassion and agreement are not the same thing.

If I believe someone is wrong, I do not have to hate him. If I love someone, I do not have to affirm everything he believes about himself.

If someone is Muslim, I can treat him with dignity, defend him against hatred, welcome him as my neighbor, and still say plainly that Christianity and Islam make contradictory claims about Jesus Christ. Jesus cannot simultaneously be the crucified and risen Son of God and merely a prophet who was not crucified. Those claims cannot both describe reality.

Disagreement does not require hatred.

The same principle applies to immigration. Christians can disagree about border enforcement, asylum, citizenship, deportation, and what responsible immigration policy should look like. A nation has legitimate questions to answer about its borders. But whatever answer we reach politically, the immigrant does not stop bearing the image of God.

Illegal does not mean inhuman.

Neither does Muslim.

Neither does addict, prisoner, Democrat, Republican, atheist, gay, poor, wealthy, foreigner, or enemy.

And if someone rejects Christian teaching about sex or marriage, disagreement does not give me permission to treat that person as filthy.

Truth without love becomes a weapon. Love without truth eventually becomes dishonest.

Christianity gives us permission for neither.

THE HARDEST PERSON TO REMOVE FROM THE THRONE

It would be convenient if the great spiritual struggle of our time were simply Christianity against secular culture.

Then we would always know who the problem was.

Scripture does not give us that luxury.

The problem reaches inside us.

Paul describes humanity as exchanging the truth of God for a lie and worshipping the creature rather than the Creator.

That creature can be money. Sex. Political power. A nation. A church. An ideology. A relationship. A reputation.

And yes, the person staring back at me in the mirror.

I am capable of turning even my faith into something that serves me.

That is why repentance cannot simply mean identifying everything wrong with society. Repentance begins much closer to home.

Where have I made myself sovereign?

Where have I decided God's command is unreasonable because obedience would cost me something?

Where have I renamed my pride?

Where have I excused my hatred?

Where have I demanded grace for myself and judgment for everyone else?

Where have I confused what I desperately want with what God has actually said?

Those questions make me more uncomfortable than complaining about the culture.

They should.