Misrepresenting Our Father by C. M. S.

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Tacoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · May 27, 1915

Misrepresenting Our Father

By C. M. S.

The writer of the Proverbs declares that “a man that hath friends must show himself friendly.” Prov. 18:24. It is equally true that a person who would be loved must show himself lovable. Love begets love, but selfishness repels. The heart instinctively turns away from one who shows that his motives are selfish motives.

We see nothing in the attributes of Satan that we can love, for the reason that we see in him and in his purpose the embodiment of selfishness. He designed to elevate himself to a place where he would be above everything and every being in the universe. “I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north: I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the Most High.” Isa. 14:13, 14. There is the supreme personification of selfishness. Is it a divine attribute? It is the attribute of one who would dethrone divinity and overthrow the government of the whole universe to satisfy personal ambition. It is not an attribute of God, but the chief distinguishing attribute of the sworn enemy of God.

Satan, expelled from heaven, brought that wicked attribute, selfishness, with him to this world, and contaminated the inhabitants of Eden with it. He said: “Ye shall not surely die [for disobeying God]: for God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as God, knowing good and evil.” Gen. 3:4, 5. Exalted through disobedience and self-seeking, that is the doctrine of Lucifer. But it is the very antithesis of godlikeness. It is unthinkable that the great actuating attribute of Lucifer, the enemy of God, should be identical with the dominating attribute of the Most High.

And yet the editor of a journal which speaks for one of the greatest component parts of Christendom, in an editorial sermon based upon one of the proverbs (“Jehovah hath made everything for his own purpose.” Prov. 16:4, margin), teaches as a fundamental principle of his church the following:—

God is the most selfish being that the mind of man can, contemplate, and he is selfish because he has nobody to share with; he is alone. And he would not be God if he was not absolutely selfish. He has nobody to share anything with, he has not a partner in any sense; he is alone, and he is everything. Therefore, everything comes from him and everything must return to him. So the highest attribute of God is his absolute selfishness. . . . There is only one God; everything comes from that one God, and everything revolves around that one center of the one God. Talk about divine selfishness; it means simply truth.—Western Watchman (Catholic), May 13, 1915.

Can that be true, and God be the God he represents himself to be? Powerful, compelling love and supreme selfishness cannot actuate the same being at the same time. And yet what God is today he was through all past time and will be through all time to come. He is “the same yesterday, and today, and forever.” He says of himself, “I am the Lord, I change not; therefore ye sons of Jacob are not consumed.” Mal. 3:6. If God is supremely selfish, he cannot be a God of love. Yet the Word declares of him:—

“He that loveth not knoweth not God;

for God is love.” “God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him.” 1 John 4:8, 16.

Nowhere in the Bible do we read that God is selfishness. Nowhere in the Bible do we find a record of any of the acts of God which indicates that selfishness is one of his attributes. But we do read that “God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” John 3:16. In other words, he so greatly loved those who were in rebellion against him that he deprived himself of his own Son, permitted him to be offered a living sacrifice, that those who were turning their feet in the ways of death might find again the path to everlasting life. That does not look like the act of a selfish being, the act of one who was seeking only his own aggrandizement. The Lord himself speaks of himself in these words:—

“Yea, I have loved thee with an everlasting love; therefore with loving-kindness have I drawn thee.” Jer. 31:3.

“And Jehovah, the God of their fathers, sent to them by his messengers, rising up early and sending, because he had compassion on his people, and on his dwelling place.” 2 Chron. 36:15.

These are not the manifestations of selfishness. They are demonstrations of God’s undying love for his people, even while denying him by a course of conduct that did despite to the principles of his kingdom. We get a little glimpse of God’s unselfishness and of his deep interest in the happiness of his children from such scriptures as the following:—

“Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him.” 1 Cor. 2:9.

Surely, he who would teach that God is the embodiment of selfishness has need that one teach him what are the first principles of the gospel and what are the fundamental principles of God’s government.

The editor of the Western Watchman bases his astonishing charges against our loving Father in heaven upon another unwarranted assertion: “He has nobody to share with; he is alone. . . . He has not a partner in any sense.” It is true there can be but one God the Father; but he is not alone; and he does have a partner. We read of this partnership and this companionship in the first chapter of Hebrews:—

“God, who at sundry times and in diverse manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son, whom he hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the worlds; who being the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person, and upholding all things by the word of his power, when he had by himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high.” Heb. 1:1-3.

It is impossible from such scriptures as this to draw the conclusion that God sits in austere and lonely isolation upon the throne of the universe, demanding love, but manifesting only selfishness. One sits beside him whom he took into his counsel before the world was made. God said to his Son at that time, “Let us make man in our image.” They were then in the same image; and this agrees with the words just quoted from Hebrews: “Who being the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person,” etc.

The apostle John, writing with the pen of inspiration concerning this same Son and companion of the Most High, says:—

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not anything made that was made. . . . He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not. He came unto his own, and his own received him not.” John 1:1-11.

That is Jesus Christ, our Saviour, one who “was in the beginning with God,” who was the active agent of God the Father in the creation of the worlds. The declaration that God is companionless is thus just as untrue as the charge that he is the embodiment of selfishness. The incongruity and inconsistency of such charges ought to be apparent to any one; and yet the editor, failing to appreciate the logic of his own position, makes this declaration:—

God has made us, made us here and now; he has given us a task; and that task is, we must love! That is the first duty of man, to love. . . . Our first duty is to know God, and, knowing him, to love him.

It is little wonder that he calls it a “task” to love God, when he has painted God as the embodiment of selfishness. He asks us, then, to manifest an attribute more exalted and far more praiseworthy than the chief attribute of God; for he asks man to love a selfish God and expect only a manifestation of selfishness on the part of God to repay man’s love. Surely, it would be a task to love God if he were such a one as Editor Phelan pictures him.

And in spite of all this, the aforementioned editor denounces human beings for manifesting in their own lives what he says God manifests in his life. He says:—

I have known selfish people, but the most selfish people I have ever known have been Catholics. And among selfish Catholics the most selfish I have ever known have sometimes been pious Catholics. Selfishness in the church of God, selfishness among Catholics, selfishness in religion, selfishness in the sanctuaries, selfishness among those who are nearest to God,—O, it is something painful to contemplate! But there are selfish monks, selfish nuns, selfish priests, selfish bishops, and selfish popes, none but God knows how many. . . . To enter heaven we must be unselfish, absolutely unselfish.

What the editor declares to be the condition in his church is but the logical consequence of the teaching that God is the embodiment of selfishness. If that were true, then it must follow that they who were nearest to him were most selfish. And why should the priest-editor complain of the people’s selfishness when that is an attribute of divinity? According to the logic of his argument, when he condemns selfishness in his people, he is denouncing a divine attribute.

But all this is an utter perversion of the truth, a wicked misrepresentation of the character of God. It is the same charge that Lucifer brought against the Almighty when he entered upon a propaganda of misrepresentation and calumny among the angels in heaven. It is implied in Satan’s blandishments to Eve in Eden. God was there accused of selfishly withholding from man what man was entitled to receive.

Let us think for a moment what such a charge would involve if it were true. If God were supremely selfish, our Saviour must be the same; for he is the express image of the Father’s person. We are told that, if faithful, “we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is,” and also that we ought “so to walk, even as he walked.” In that case, when the redeemed enter heaven the dominating, all-pervading influence and characteristic of that place would be selfishness. But surely we have seen enough of that and the consequences of it in this world. Selfishness has been the dominating note in all earthly affairs. It has seared and blighted every land and wounded every heart. It has paved life’s path with sorrows and watered it with tears. And is the God of selfishness to be the God of heaven? It will never be. “Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy-laden, and I will give you rest,” is not the language of selfishness. Neither does this scripture speak in that language: “The Spirit and the bride say, Come. And let him that heareth say, Come. And let him that is athirst come. And whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely.” God is an exemplification of love, benevolence, and unbounded generosity. He filled heaven with sadness that he might give man the best that he could give, and bring back man’s bartered soul from the slave pen of Satan. God having done all this for man, how must heaven look upon such an accusation against God as that to which we have referred? It is a fearful thing thus to misrepresent our loving

Father and charge him, as Lucifer charged him, with being the embodiment of selfishness. But we know him as the God of love, and long for the day when we shall see his face with no dimming cloud between.

C. M. S.