On Wednesday evenings we’ve been looking at Psalm 8, and how God thinks of His creation.  In the books I’ve read recently that speak to our countries many social ills such as David Horowitz’s (not a Christian) Dark Agenda - The War to Destroy America.  He makes the claim that there has been a 60-year war against American’s Christian foundations which has triggered a political crisis.  The premise is that we have a social and personal crisis of identity.

We have lost our way both personally and as a nation.  When God is removed - we have an eclectic and distorted understanding of ourselves, and the result is that “everyone does what is right in their own eyes.”  There is indeed a movement to fundamentally transform America.  Attacks on religious freedom, identity politics, oppressors and the oppressed, race, gender, sexual orientation, education, wars.  In identity politics only collective rights matter - not individual rights.  And so it goes… back and forth depending on which party is in power.

God has an answer to our confusion and our lost-ness.  We don’t need government to do it - they can’t even figure out what a woman is.  Psalm 8 tells who we are.  It’s really not a sociological, psychological or political issue.  It’s a theological issue - it’s a problem of identity at the core of our being.  Self-image is what we call it today.  Psalm 8 tells us that the more you see and realize the glory and majesty of God, the more you see the glory and honor of your own self.  The glory of God and the honor and glory of the human individual are bound up together.  Listen:  “O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is Your Name in all the earth! … what is man that You are mindful of him?  You made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor.”  If God did not make the heavens (verse 3) and everything is an accident, then we can live any way we want.  I can choose my own identity.  I can be whatever… But I have no basis for saying I or anybody else is valuable and precious.

Scripture reveals our identity - our self-worth. In Genesis, it’s called the image of God.  There we find God loves us, God made us, and crowned with His own glory and honor.  Everybody needs to hear that you have value.  Psalm 8 says God is mindful of us.  We are so precious - so unusual - so special that we dominate the mind of God.  Talk about identity and value.  The only mind that matters is FILLED with you.  I am a child of God!  That infects all my thinking… Think about it!     Tom