We have an email here from a mom named Colleen, who is writing on behalf of her son. And for the sake of anonymity of him as a minor, I'm not going to use his name here. Colleen, his mother, writes him to ask this. "Dear Pastor John, I am hoping you can help us with regards to the topic of God being a megalomaniac, which is what our 15-year-old son currently believes.

We've talked about this, and he has said that you may be the only person who can change his thinking on this. Because of the Westminster Catechism's answer to the chief end of man, he now believes that God is somehow weak and has an enormous ego, that he created human beings so that they will worship him, that God is too needy.

My son wants to enjoy other things more than God, and thinks that programming people to find their greatest happiness in worshiping him is coercive, mean, manipulative, and wrong. Pastor John, what would you say to this mom and to her son?" I don't know Colleen's son's name, but for convenience sake, I'm going to call him Joe and speak directly to him.

According to his mom, Joe believes six things. What she doesn't say, and if I were having a conversation with Joe, the first thing I would ask is probably, "Now, what are you basing your view of God on? Are you making it up? Are you trusting some human teacher? Are you deducing it from nature and the logical use of nature?

Or are you basing it on God's Word in Scripture?" And how he answers that question would probably affect how I answer. But since I don't know, I'm just going to rest my case with God's Word, since I regard all those other sources as very unlikely sources of reliable information about infinite reality, especially my own head.

I think if we are going to know anything about God for sure, God has to tell us. There's no other way to know and show us, both from the Word and the Spirit's opening our hearts to see what's really there. So let me say a word about the six things that I see Joe apparently believes about God.

Number one, God is somehow weak. According to Scripture, "Great is our God and abundant in power," Joe. He is abundant in power. His understanding is beyond measure, Psalm 147.5. "The Almighty, we cannot find Him. He is great in power," Job 37.23. In fact, Job comes to the end of his book with this overriding conviction.

"I know that you, O God, can do all things, and no purpose of yours can be thwarted," Job 42.2. Isaiah 46, God himself puts it like this, "I am God, and there is no other. I am God, and there is none like me, declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times things not yet done, saying, 'My counsel shall stand, and I will accomplish all my purpose.'" So no, Joe, God is not weak.

He is infinitely powerful. He upholds the universe by the Word of His power. He holds you in being moment by moment. If He stopped thinking about you, you would vanish out of existence. Number two, Joe says God has an enormous ego. The problem with that statement is that the connotation of the word "ego" is that his head is swollen beyond what it should be, or he's too big for his britches, or he's posturing and posing to get people to think he's greater than he is, or that there's a void inside his big, boasting head that desperately needs filling from others who can give him what he lacks, and so he's always trying to make up for some deficiency from the contributions of others.

That's the way we talk about big ego. But all of those connotations are sinful. They're ugly. The Bible never portrays God in any of those sinful ways. None of those connotations about God's self-exaltation are in the Bible. None of them. None of those connotations is true of Him. The Lord is good and upright in all His ways, Psalm 25.8.

The Lord is good. His steadfast love endures forever in His faithfulness to all generations, Psalm 100, verse 5. Joe, you seem to have decided to use this derogatory language about God because of this next thing you believe, and this is true. So the third thing is God created humans so that they will worship Him.

That's true. That's absolutely true. "Bring my sons from afar, my daughters from the ends of the earth, everyone whom I called by my name, whom I created for my glory, whom I formed and made." And Jesus in John 4.23 says, "God is seeking worshippers in spirit and in truth." In Ephesians 1.5, "He predestined us for adoption for Himself as sons through Jesus Christ according to the purpose of His will." Why?

"To the praise of the glory of His grace." So, Joe, it sounds like you're asking, "If it is ugly and sinful for me to act like that, how can I admire a God who acts that way?" That's a very good question, and here's the reason that you dare not seek people's worship, and God should and must.

If I say to a crowd, "Puny, puny John Piper, sinful John Piper," if I say to a crowd, "I came tonight so that you would all see my beauty and find your greatest happiness in me," if I believed that and said that, I would not be loving, because, one, I'd be wrong.

I am not where your greatest happiness can be found. I am emphatically not where your greatest happiness can be found. And number two, I would be unloving because I would be distracting you from the one whose beauty can make you supremely happy and satisfied, namely God and all that He is for us in Christ.

But if God were to come into the room tonight and say to the crowd, "I came tonight so that you would see and know my divine beauty and find your greatest happiness in me," He would not be unloving because, one, it is true. He is the only source of deep and longest happiness.

Psalm 1611, "In your presence is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore." And two, He would not be distracting us from what would make us deeply and permanently happy. He would be giving us the surest way to joy, namely offering us Himself. Now, Joe, add this.

This is crucial. Hear this. God did not just come into the room or the world and say, "Here I am for your enjoyment." He came to people who hated Him. He came to people who rejected Him, who belittled Him, who called Him an egomaniac. And He died for us.

He died for us. That is not weak. It's not needy. It's not what egomaniacs do. They don't die for their enemies out of love. Strength to suffer for His enemies and bring them to eternal happiness in worshiping Him, that's a beautiful, beautiful, beautiful strength. It is the most beautiful strength in the universe that was shown at Calvary for sinners like you, Joe, and me.

And the fourth thing you say is that He's too needy. No, He's not needy. He's not needy at all. That's not coming out of the Bible. It's not coming out of reason. It's coming out of unreason. Acts 17, 25, "God is not served by human hands as though He needed anything, because He Himself gives to all men life and breath and everything.

God does not need us. If He were hungry, He would not tell us." Psalm 50 says, "God is seeking our worship not because He needs it, not because it meets a need, but because it meets our need." We were made—we've got this big God-shaped vacuum in our hearts. We were made to enjoy God, know God, love God, serve God, worship God.

That is, to enjoy to the max and to overflow with admiration what is most admirable. And, Joe, I hope you take it right. God is stuck with being God. He didn't choose to be beautiful. He is. He is absolutely who He is. I am who I am. He said.

And the only question God has is not whether to be beautiful and all-satisfying. The question is whether He's going to share it and then die for it. And then, Joe, says it seems God's programming people to find their greatest happiness in worshiping Him is coercive, mean, manipulative, and wrong.

There are two problems with this, Joe. One is that God's way of bringing people to worship Him is not programming. It's not programmed, because that implies computerized robots with no moral will and no soul, which we have, and it's a mystery of great proportion. So, God is not manipulative, not manipulative.

He's not coercive. And the other problem is that it cannot be mean, it cannot be mean to bring a person to their greatest happiness. If it really is our greatest happiness, then you and I, Joe, would never want to leave it, not in a million years for anything. Which leaves us, Joe, with this question.

Is your indictment of God not based mainly on good evidence from His Word, but on the fact that you don't like it, and you want very much to be free to enjoy other things more than God? If that's true, I pray and I hope I ask you, reconsider. Every pleasure that isn't rooted in God will fail you.

Your heart was made to find greatest and longest happiness in God. If sin keeps you from supreme joy in God, sin needs to go, not God. 21 Absolutely critical and central to everything that we do. Thank you, Pastor John. I'm going to be meditating on that line for a long time.

God seeks our worship not because it meets His need, but because it meets our need. That is profound. Thank you, Pastor John. Thanks for the question, Colleen. I hope this episode serves your son in a profound way. Thank you for listening and making the podcast part of your day and commute.

It's an honor to tag along with you as part of your day. We are humbled to be brought into some of the deepest struggles that you face in your families. Three times a week, we publish and you can subscribe to our audio feeds, even search our past episodes in our archive and reach us by email with a question you may be facing in inside of your own home.

You can do all that through our online home at DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn. Well, when we return, I believe we're going to hear from a woman who finds herself jaded by the constant turnover in her local church and she's tired of making new friends as people come in and leave the church that she attends.

I may be wrong. It may be another topic, but I think that's coming up. If not, it's coming up in the near future. In any case, we will be back on Friday. I'm your host, Tony Reinke. Thanks for listening. DesiringGod.org Page 1 of 8 DesiringGod.org Page 1 of 8 DesiringGod.org