The Challenge of God’s God-centredness
Over the past few decades, the questions people bring to faith have shifted. Once, concerns focused on the historicity of Jesus, on whether the events of the Bible could be trusted.
Today, they’re more personal: people question God’s character, His motives, even His apparent ‘ego.’ Why does He seem jealous? Why demand our love above all else? Why act in ways that feel harsh or insensitive?
These are more emotional than intellectual challenges—not because the latter no longer matters, but because in a world quick to take offence, people bristle quickly at God’s apparent self-centredness—or, more rightly, His God-centredness. Many prefer the notion of a God who feels safe, predictable, even manageable.
God’s God-centredness is frequently the unspoken tension on both sides of a faith conversation. It provokes the questioner’s unease, but it can also expose the responder’s own struggle with a God who refuses to orbit human comfort or approval.
Looking in the Mirror
Before we consider how this shapes our engagement with others, we first need to face it ourselves. How do we respond to God’s God-centredness? Do we bristle at His demands, shrink from His glory, or delight in it? Wrestling with these questions personally is the first step toward understanding and sharing our faith with integrity.
Scripture confronts this head-on:
For you shall worship no other god, for Yahweh, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God.”
(Exodus 34:14)
God calls us to love Him alone, even when His ways feel uncomfortable or His demands feel “self-centred.” He insists on being the centre rather than adjusting Himself to our expectations.
Experiencing His God-centredness helps us see what true faith really looks like. We may wish for a God who is man-centred and bends to our comfort, but the depth of our response is revealed when we meet Him as He truly is.
C.S. Lewis struggled with this himself. Reading the Psalms, he was offended by God’s demands for praise, thinking they made Him seem vain—“like a vain woman who wants compliments.” He stumbled over God’s self-exalting commands and Jesus’ call to love Him above all others.
Lewis’s perspective shifted when he recognised the deeper truth: “I think we delight to praise what we enjoy because the praise not merely expresses but completes the enjoyment; it is its appointed consummation” (Reflections on the Psalms, 93–95). Lewis came to see that God’s command to praise Him wasn’t vanity or self-promotion, but an invitation to participate fully in what is supremely good—the natural overflow of recognising excellence.
Our discomfort with God’s God-centredness says more about us than Him. True worship isn’t about a comfortable God; it’s about the true God, who is glorious and awesome—and a heart willing to meet Him where He really is.
Lewis captures this truth imaginatively in the Chronicles of Narnia series. In The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, the second book chronologically, Susan is horrified to learn that Aslan is a lion, asking, “I’d thought he was a man. Is he—quite safe?”
Mr. Beaver leans forward, his eyes wide with urgency: “Safe? Who said anything about safe?”
Then, with perfect clarity, he delivers the verdict: “‘Course he isn’t safe. But he is good. He’s the King, I tell you.”
Sharing Our Faith
Resolving God’s God-centredness for ourselves need not make us insensitive to those who don’t follow Jesus. On the contrary, it helps us enter their world with honesty and empathy. When we’ve wrestled with the same instincts, we can say, sincerely and without judgement, “I understand that instinct; I’ve felt it too.” Words like ‘jealousy’ can feel jarring when applied to God. His God-centredness naturally chafes against the self-focused world we live in.
It’s normal for us to bristle at aspects of God that challenge our comfort or expectations. Yet, recognising that His demands are expressions of His sheer goodness, rather than selfishness, allows us to settle the tension within our own hearts. The same God who sometimes feels unsettling is also fully trustworthy and wholly worthy of our love.
At the same time, coming to terms with God’s God-centredness equips us to respond with confidence. We can show understanding and compassion without embarrassment, without apologising for God, and without putting human preferences above His character.
We don’t have to water down His character to make Him palatable. Instead, we can guide others into the same discovery we’ve experienced: that a God who is fully Himself, fully sovereign, and fully glorious is ultimately good, and wholly worthy of our love.
