It is hard for a fish to know that it is wet. Wet is all there is for a fish. A fish doesn't even think of it. So it's hard for a modern person —a person living in the last two hundred years—to know that he is arrogant toward God. Arrogance toward God is all there is in the modern world. It's the ocean we swim in—the air we breathe. It's woven into the fabric of our minds. We don't even know it's there. We can't see it, because we look through it to see everything else. Here's the way C. S. Lewis put it:
The ancient man approached God . . . as the accused person approaches his judge. For the modern man the roles are reversed. He is the judge: God is in the dock. He is quite a kindly judge: if God should have a reasonable defence for being the god who permits war, poverty and disease, he is ready to listen to it. The trial may even end in God's acquittal. But the important thing is that man is on the Bench and God in the Dock.
That's virtually what it means to be modern: the imperceptible feeling - the assumption we don't even know we have—that it is fitting for us to question and even judge God. It is good for us to be tested in the crucible of God's sovereignty, so that we may say with Job: "I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you; therefore I despise myself, and repent in dust and ashes"
Do you despise yourself; or do you secretly think that you are a pretty neat person and God should feel honored that you have found Him worthy of your love and devotion?
The ancient man approached God . . . as the accused person approaches his judge. For the modern man the roles are reversed. He is the judge: God is in the dock. He is quite a kindly judge: if God should have a reasonable defence for being the god who permits war, poverty and disease, he is ready to listen to it. The trial may even end in God's acquittal. But the important thing is that man is on the Bench and God in the Dock.
That's virtually what it means to be modern: the imperceptible feeling - the assumption we don't even know we have—that it is fitting for us to question and even judge God. It is good for us to be tested in the crucible of God's sovereignty, so that we may say with Job: "I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you; therefore I despise myself, and repent in dust and ashes"
Do you despise yourself; or do you secretly think that you are a pretty neat person and God should feel honored that you have found Him worthy of your love and devotion?
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