Is God narcissistic? Does God need us?

 

Acts 17:24-25 tells us that God does not need us. He is self-sufficient. He is not needy and waiting for us to praise him to help his self-esteem. He is fine.

If this is true, why is God so adamant with the commands that he gives us in the fact we are to worship and in the manner he wants us to worship him?

What if God made us to be in proper relationship with him? What if instead of God needing us, we were made and designed to need him and God is directing us to love, worship and honor him in the right manner so that we can live our lives the way God intended?

What about God being jealous? The Bible says that our God is a jealous God (Ex 34:14;20:5), and since God cannot sin, this is not a wrong emotion. I just listened to a podcast of Think Biblically where they talked to Erik Thoennes about Godly Jealousy. That conversation was very helpful in forming some of these thoughts on jealousy.

There is a difference between being jealous “for someone” and being jealous “of someone else”. Godly jealousy is the former where God is jealous for us in that he wants that relationship with us to such an extent that He pursues us and show us his love for us. This is the pure form of jealousy that is referred to in the Bible. However, in our human nature, we often distort things to serve our own purposes and the same is true about jealousy. Often, we are jealous “of someone else”. This is when one is jealous of someone else that their significant other is paying more attention to then them. Often this is because we do not think we are good enough in and of ourselves for the attention/love of our significant other. So, we deflect our insecurities onto someone else and become bitter at them. While we cannot remove the fact that we have needs and in a relationship, those needs include a closeness and bond with our significant other, we also can see that a relationship would be in danger if something got in the way of that closeness and the jealousy “for” our significant other can be a good thing. Jealousy in this sense is the desire to return the relationship between the two to that closeness.

That is the way Godly jealousy shows itself. He is not mad at what pulls us away from him but he does see what is getting in the way of our relationship with him. And if the relationship with God was the reason humans were created, that roadblock is hindering us. In his love for us, he wants that to be removed so that we can return to Him, not for himself but for us. That is how we can flourish.

God’s commands for our praise and love is not because God is narcissistic and needy. It is because he knows what is best for us because he made us with the need to have a relationship with him. And a proper relationship with God has us honor, praise, and love him in this way.

I am also reading Dalla Willard’s book, The Spirit of the Disciplines where he lays out the biblical foundation for the spiritual disciplines and their practice in our lives. Early in the book, he explains that God made us unique and that what he has commanded us is for our benefit to fulfil the calling he gave to us, as humans in general and as individuals. Looking at the spiritual disciplines in this way helps us see that they are not ways God gets his needs met but they are the tools that God has provided for us to grow in our relationship with him and “live worthy of the calling” (Eph 4:1). God made us to have that desire and then provided the ways for that desire to be met (Psalm 37:4).