The Ort Family

Our fatal error is believing that wanting to be happy means wanting to be made much of.  It feels so good to be affirmed.  But the good feeling is finally rooted in the worth of self, not the worth of God.  This path to happiness is an illusion.  And there are clues.  There are clues in every human heart even before conversion to Christ.  One of those clues is that no one goes to the Grand Canyon or to the Alps to increase his self-esteem. 

That is not what happens in front of massive deeps and majestic heights.  But we do go there, and we go for joy.  How can that be, if being made much of is the center of our health and happiness?  The answer is that it is not the center.  In wonderful moments of illumination there is a witness in our hearts: soul-health and great happiness come not from beholding a great self but a great splendor. -John Piper

Does Being Loved Mean Being Made Much Of?

For many people, this is not obviously an act of love.  They do not feel loved when they are told that God created them for his glory.  They feel used.  This is understandable given the way love has been almost completely distorted in our world.  For most people, to be loved is to be made much of.  Almost everything in our Western culture serves this distortion of love.  We are taught in a thousand ways that love means increasing someone’s self-esteem.  Love is helping someone feel good about themselves.  Love is giving someone a mirror and helping him like what he sees. 

This is not what the Bible means by the love of God.  Love is doing what is best for someone.  But making self the object of our highest affections is not best for us.  It is, in fact, a lethal distraction.  We were made to see and savor God—and savoring him, to be supremely satisfied, and thus spread in all the world the worth of his presence. 

Not to show people the all-satisfying God is not to love them.  To make them feel good about themselves when they were made to feel good about seeing God is like taking someone to the Alps and locking them in a room full of mirrors.  – John Piper

The pictures were taken during our visit to Switzerland in 2005.

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 28th, 2008 at 8:46 am and is filed under Quotes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.