Man-Centered Theology

      3/10/14       Dave (video)          about 25

A quick conversation with a young man named Dave on his way to catch a train showed the logical result of a man-centered theology.  Dave believes that we create our own reality for eternity based on our beliefs. If one believes in reincarnation, he will be reincarnated. If he believes in nothing, there will be nothing.  If heaven or hell, he will choose his own path.  Based on this logic, since Dave would like to go to heaven (who wouldn’t?) he will go to heaven.  If he believes himself to be a good person, who can argue?  No one, not even God, because according to Dave, God doesn’t have the right as a “loving God” to punish sin.  Dave had no idea that his is a man-centered theology, replacing God with man as the final authority and judge in matters of eternity.  I had much to say to him, but knew he was in a hurry to catch his train, so I had to settle with a reminder of the Bible’s teaching on final judgment.  I believe this man-centered theology, with its logical outcomes of replacing God’s authority with man’s, begins very subtly, when we start to think that man’s happiness and fulfillment – and glory- is God’s ultimate purpose.  Throughout scripture, it is God’s glory, not man’s, that is given as our reason for existence and unless we get that straight, we are on the same dangerous path that Dave is on. 

“Ascribe to the Lord, you heavenly beings,

    ascribe to the Lord glory and strength.

Ascribe to the Lord the glory due his name;

    worship the Lord in the splendor of his holiness.”  Psalm 29