Who then is like me? Let him proclaim it. Let him declare and lay out before me what has happened since I established my ancient people, and what is yet to come—yes, let them foretell what will come. – Isaiah 44:7

Today's Scripture Reading (July 27, 2020): Isaiah 44

Some of the more humorous memes that have come out of the Trump era are ones like this one on fatherhood: "Nobody is better at Fatherhood than you. All the other dads are a total disaster. Everyone agrees. Believe me. You are a great Dad!" The meme is based on President Trump's over the top confidence in himself and his friends. In the mind of Donald Trump, there is no one quite like him or like the people that he gathers around him. Of course, when it comes to his friends, they seem to quickly fall out of favor, at which point they immediately make the trip from best to worst. Everyone agrees.

The humor, of course, is found in the over the top statement. I hope that every Dad feels like they are the best. I hope that we all feel like we are experts in several areas of our lives. But we also know that there are other good dads and that we can do all better. One of the dangers of believing that we have arrived is that we stop the struggle to improve. People may tell us that we are the greatest, but the people who actually believe it are often the dangerous ones. Believing that we are infallible leads us toward some horrible decisions.

Infallibility also leads us to believe that we are gods. It was one of the failures of the Roman Catholic Church in past centuries. The Popes thought that they were infallible, the very voice of God, which for some of them led them down a short journey toward the belief that they were God. Kings and Queens fell into the same dangerous pattern. They quickly went from being answerable to God alone, to believing that they were the gods that led the nations. And maybe, that is the reason why some of the best leaders were people of apparent faults. There was no doubt that they were not gods and no danger that they might be able to convince themselves that they were because their mistakes had betrayed them.

I hope that you know that you know that you are great, absolutely the best. The world needs you. But you are not God, and neither am I. There is only one who can make that claim, and all of the rest of us fall far short of that standard. Isaiah makes it clear. No one can claim that they are God. And it is only toward God that the Trump era statement actually makes sense. It is the confession of the believing church. "Nobody is better at being a God than you. All the other gods are a total disaster. Everyone agrees. Believe me. You are a great God!"

Tomorrow's Scripture Reading: Isaiah 45