3 If anyone thinks he is something when he is nothing, he deceives himself.
It is pretty sad when we deceive ourselves. Think about that for a moment. One part of you is working against another part of you. How does someone cut off one part of themselves so that one part does not know what the other part is doing? But that is exactly what we are doing when we don’t have an eternal perspective of our lives. We have to view ourselves from God’s perspective or we are deceived. His perspective is what counts ultimately. We all miss God’s perspective at times, some of us most of the time. His perspective includes our great value as individuals made in His image, fashioned after His likeness. But some today want to elevate themselves above the position of created being. Some want to eliminate God out of the picture, making humankind the center of all things, or even worse, at the bottom of the evolutionary chain, since we are so destructive to other creatures. But we are placed in a special position by God, a position of responsibility and privilege. We are responsible to God for our stewardship of this part of creation. We have a role to play in caring for our part of this world. But in our caring we must remember the end of the story. The end of the story has God remaking this world to remove the ravages of sin. God cares about this planet, but His ultimate care is about us. The Gospel is about redeeming us primarily and the rest of creation secondarily. Humans are the ones who brought sin into this world, so we are the ones God works with in removing sin. His substitutionary death on the cross, His death in our place, paid for our sin and made it possible for us to be in right relationship with God and each other. But the rest of creation has to wait until the end of time for God to erase the effects of sin. God will remake creation and remove the ravages of sin. We are not to be the business of creating heaven on earth. This earth will be messed up until God fixes it. That is part of knowing our place in creation, part of not deceiving ourselves.
The Arnold Journey 