Empty Praise From Minds That Glaze

May the peoples praise you, God;

may all the peoples praise you!

Psalms 67:4

(God) destined us for adoption to himself through Jesus Christ,

in accord with the favor of his will, for the praise of the glory of

his grace . . .

Ephesians 1:5-6

The notion of praising God has sorta taken a weird turn with me lately. It's kinda started to rub me the wrong way. Let me explain.

As a Christian, of course I see the rightness and efficacy of praising God. He made us, he loves us utterly, his is to be our full devotion. You know the drill. But lately, when I'm called upon in scripture or at mass to praise God, I can't help but think of the overweening, overarching neediness of praise that Donald Trump has. It's so puerile and juvenile. In his world, everything is about him. And if you want to find favor with him, all it takes is bald-faced obsequiousness and deference shown to him, the Dear Leader. The man is sooo a wannabe dictator. His wet dream is to be the American version of Kim Jong Un, who demands and receives fearful, unmitigated praise from his people.

I'm convinced that God doesn't want praise in that sense. In fact, what good can it do him? Anything we say can add neither jot nor tittle to his greatness. In some sense, at least, how can he possibly care?

But here's the sense in which I believe he does: he doesn't need our praise but he knows that we need to praise him. Doing so helps us put and keep right our relationship to him. We need to always be mindful that he has to be primary in our lives. Chicago Bears running back Gale Sayers had it right in titling his autobiography, I Am Third. He ordered his life so that “God is first, others are second and I am third.”

Of course I praise God and will always continue to do so. But I don't want it to be a rote, blindly self-abasing response to his overwhelming love and power. My hope is that I can always bear in mind that he really has no need for it. But that I very much do.