“When Rachel saw that she was not bearing Jacob any children, she became jealous of her sister. So she said to Jacob, ‘Give me children, or I’ll die!’ Jacob became angry with her and said, ‘Am I in the place of God, who has kept you from having children?’” (Genesis 30:1-2)
Essentially, Jacob came to a place in his life where he recognized his limitations. Despite human desire and will, some things are just out of our hands.
When Daedalus created wings of feathers and wax for his son Icarus, he gave them with a warning. Daedalus cautioned of complacency and pride. Icarus should fly neither too high nor too low. Flying too close to the sea would weigh the wings down with dampness; flying too close to the sun would cause the wax to melt.
Pride was Icarus’ downfall. As he soared through the heavens, the young man’s wings melted, and Icarus drowned in the Mediterranean Sea. The word the Greeks used to describe Icarus’ pride is hubris. Hubris is a foolish pride or a dangerous overconfidence that offends the gods.
The Greeks didn’t invent hubris; they merely just created the word. Satan fell from heaven because of pride. And he used pride to tempt Adam and Eve. They believed the devil’s lie: “You’ll be like God.”
Pride continues to plague humanity. We redefine marriage, we redefine gender, we redefine life. We mandate this, and we mandate that. We shut down churches and limit speech. We create weapons that could destroy the planet many times over. “We’ll be like God,” we think.
But we aren’t…We’re not anywhere close! It is time for us – individually and then as a nation – to recognize that there is a God, and it ain’t us. We need to step back and ask, “Am I in the place of God?”
That’s the big question this week. Join us Sunday as we discuss life’s big questions.
