Last night, after my wife and I put our son to bed, we
decided to watch Marvel’s The Avengers. It
had been a while for both of us, and we love superheroes. In the movie, Thor’s brother Loki is on a
mission to conquer Earth. With every character he encounters, he feels the need
to monologue about his reasons for embarking on this quest. He conveys the idea that freedom is life’s
great lie. Freedom sets the people of Earth on a flurry, “a mad scramble for
power.” In one particular scene, he is terrorizing a group of people in an art
gallery somewhere in Germany. He challenges the people he has just forced to
kneel before him with the idea that being ruled is much simpler, much easier.
He says, “You were made to be ruled. In the end, you will always kneel.”
As I watched this scene, it struck me, Loki isn’t completely
wrong about that. Humans were made to be ruled, and we do always kneel to
something. Sometimes we just don’t realize it. We are always worshipping,
always submitting ourselves to be formed by something or someone. In the Garden
of Eden, the first humans chose the serpents version of freedom over God’s. God
gave Adam and Eve immense amounts of freedom and the ability to be shaped and
loved by the creator of the world, but in the end, humans chose to do things
their own way, apart from God’s guidance. They chose to be formed by the lies
of the serpent, the distortion of their desires. The rest of human history has
been story after story of men and women trying to achieve power and pleasure
apart from the will of God.
Sometimes I try to make my faith about what I can
intellectualize. Many of us probably have heard the philosophy of Rene
Descartes, “I think therefore I am.” But
I find in my life, I am not shaped by what I can intellectualize. I am shaped
by what I worship. We all are. A little boy who idolizes Captain America may
not be able to intellectualize his relationship to this fictional hero, but he
emulates him, he dresses like him, he fights the battles he fights. The boy
worships Captain America. He tries to be like him.
Who are we trying to emulate? Who or what is shaping us? Who
or what are we kneeling to? Who do we worship?
Worship has to be about more than just the conditioning of
our minds. It has to also be about the shaping of our hearts. What do we find
ourselves craving? What do we desire? Is it money? Is it power? Achievement?
Pleasure?
Or is it God?
The serpent’s version of “freedom” can be a very
powerful illusion. Sometimes we have to recondition our hearts to desire the
right things, and the only way we do that is through worship. We have to kneel
to God. Sometimes our flesh will war against us, but that is that battle we
must wage.
We can trust that the God we kneel
to is perfect in all of his ways—not corrupt or power hungry. Only in the worship of him can we truly be
satisfied. When we submit our lives to be ruled by Him, when we choose to
acknowledge Him as Lord, there is a true freedom that follows. God’s promises are
good. We were already made like God. We have simply forgotten who we are.
But
if we choose every day, in every aspect of our lives, to turn and kneel to God,
we will be remade in His likeness again. Whether or not we kneel is not up to
us, we just need to choose to whom we will kneel.
Thanks for reading,
Lane
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