They Did Not Honor Him as God

“They did not honor Him as God.”

I awoke with this thought throbbing in my mind.

I had been thinking about my mission in life the day before. Romans chapter one includes this statement. Although honoring God is one of my explicit aims as a Christian, I intuitively know that this statement “they did not honor God” applies to me. I don’t even need to gaze long and hard at the details of my thoughts, actions and motives to recognize the truth of it. Even a short gaze shows that I don’t do it fully, deeply, consistently – I don’t know which adverb is best here but I know that one or more of these adverbs does apply. Most of the time I follow my own will and stew in my own thoughts and pursuits.

What’s wrong with that? one may ask.

It seems reasonable to suppose that God has a vision for His human creatures, a reason for creating them and giving them the gifts of intellect and feeling and also will. Surely honoring God as God involves some conversation, some connection with Him about what He envisions for my life.

Jesus lived out God’s vision for His life on earth. There’s a model to follow. But, I can’t simply do as Jesus did. Impossible. I’m not a man, I don’t live in Palestine and time has moved on from Jesus’ era (and more reasons). Even if I had been a Palestinian man in Jesus’ era, I would have had to live my life in my own body with my own soul, not anyone else’s, including His. In the very brief tales called gospels, we meet many people and though they are sketched in few words, we can distinguish them. We know that Peter is different from Thomas is different from James is different from Zacchaeus is different from the unnamed man we know as the Gadarene demoniac. They each, even knowing Jesus in the flesh, could not simply act like Jesus or pretend to be Jesus. They each had to live their own lives in their own bodies, in their own communities, with their own minds and hearts honoring God.

And so do I so many years later. What does it mean for me, this particular 21st century woman living in the USA, to honor God? Well, that is truly the question. To be continued.