Glory, Not Self-Improvement

I've said elsewhere that we are a people starved for the glory of God.
Nothing else will do.

Glory is what we are after. Whatever else glory is, it is not just more of what we already have or the perfection of what we already have. Do we suppose that the Christian lfie is simply our human, biological, intellectual, moral life developed and raised a few degrees above the common stock? Do we think that faith in Jesus is a kind of mechanism, like a car jack, that we use to lever ourselves up to a higher plane where we have access to God?

Jesus' imagery, to be followed soon by his sacrifice, is totally counter to our culture of more, more. Could Jesus have made it any clearer? We don't become more, we become less. Instead of grasping more tightly to whatever we value, we let it all go: "He who loses his life will save it." "Blessed are the poor in spirit" is another way that Jesus said it.

Here's the thing: we must let Jesus define the glory for us or we will miss it entirely.

-- Eugene Peterson, Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places, p.102

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