Why God Asks for Adoration

God wills to be adored, he asks for it, and the first commandment reserves this worship to him. But an objection arises. If God demands that one adore him, that one sing his glory and prostrate oneself, is it not out of a need for recognition, like a man greedy for praise and jealous of his honour? A God who would require adoration would seem small, dependent on his creatures for his greatness, and religion would resemble the flattery of a touchy sovereign. This objection rests, however, on a confusion, and examining it leads to the answer: God asks for adoration for man, and not for himself.

The objection

In a man, to require that one praise him is a defect: it is the sign of a pride that needs the gaze of others to feel great. The one who ceaselessly demands homage shows himself dependent on those who render it. Transposed to God, this would give a being who would have created the world to draw praises from it, and who would take offence at being refused them. Such a god would be less great than he claims, since he would have need of us. It is on this image that many reject religion. Now the objection supposes one thing it does not examine: that God draws a gain from our adoration.

God gains nothing by being adored

A need, always, is the sign of a lack: one has need of what one does not yet have. To demand honours, in man, fills a real lack, the lack of assurance, of recognition, of greatness felt. But this reasoning holds only for a being that lacks something. Now the very word God designates the sovereign being, source of all, who holds his existence from no one. Such a being lacks nothing: he possesses in himself all greatness and all perfection. To lend him a need for recognition is to lend him a lack, and therefore to speak of something other than God, of a being made to the measure of man.

Scripture affirms it plainly. God declares that, even a need, he would have no one to submit it to, since all is already his: “If I were hungry, I would not tell you, for the world is mine, and all that it contains.” Psalms 50:12. Saint Paul announces it to the Athenians, who thought to honour the gods by serving them: “He is not served by human hands, as if he had need of anything, he who gives to all life, breath and all things.” Acts 17:25. And the book of Job asks what man could possibly bring to God: “If you are just, what do you give him? What does he receive from your hand?” Job 35:7. Man gives God nothing that God does not already have. Our homage adds nothing to what he is, as admiration adds nothing to the light of the sun.

If God gains nothing

Since God draws no profit from our adoration, the order to adore him cannot come from an interest he would have. The defect for which he was reproached, to demand honours out of need, can belong only to a being that lacks, and God lacks nothing. It remains then to understand why he asks for it. If it is not for himself, it is that adoration profits another, and the only other at stake is the one to whom the order is addressed: man. God acts here like a father who requires of his child what will make him grow, without gaining anything for himself. He says it himself of his commandments, given for the good of man and not for his own: “I, the Lord, your God, teach you for your good, I lead you in the way where you must walk.” Isaiah 48:17. And elsewhere he prescribes his laws “that you may be happy” Deuteronomy 10:13.

Adoration is the good of man

To adore does good to man, and reason can see it in three points, which start from what anyone can observe.

First, to adore places man in the truth of his condition. That man did not make himself is a fact: he began to exist without having willed it, he maintains himself without being able to, he will die without consenting to it. His life is given to him, at each instant, by something other than himself. To adore is to recognize this real dependence, and to attribute it to its source, which is God. To refuse to adore, on the contrary, is to behave as if one were to oneself one’s own origin, which is false. Adoration therefore attunes man to reality, and there is no lasting peace in the denial of what one is.

Next, to adore frees man from masters smaller than himself. One observes it without even starting from faith: every man organizes his life around something he treats as an absolute, to which he sacrifices the rest, money, power, pleasure, success, the image one gives. And one is modelled on what one serves: he who makes money his centre hardens, he who lives for the gaze of others dissolves in their judgment. These masters enslave by shaping man to their measure, which is narrow. To adore God detaches man from these absolutes too short; and because God does not make use of man but gives himself to him, to attach oneself to him makes one freer, where the idols make one captive.

Finally, to adore opens man to what can fill him. It is a common experience that nothing finite satisfies forever: the desired good, once obtained, soon ceases to suffice, and the heart already seeks beyond; no possession durably extinguishes human disquiet. This restless movement, which nothing in the world halts, shows at least that man aims higher than all he can hold in his hands. Adoration turns this desire toward God, that is, toward the only term that is not one more finite good. It becomes then the door through which God can give himself. It is in this sense that God, in forming a people for himself, destines it to praise as to its good: “The people I have formed for myself will publish my praise.” Isaiah 43:21.

To adore is already to be filled

The glory God seeks is not a tribute he would receive from us to make himself greater, but the radiance of man who lives at last by God. God is glorified, not because our praise increases him, but because the man who adores enters into communion with him, and that this communion is itself the good God willed to give him. The glory of God and the happiness of man coincide: in adoring, man renders to God what is due to him and receives at the same time what he lacked.

For true adoration leads to loving God, and this love is the very joy of man. The first commandment, which orders to adore God, orders also to love him with all one’s being: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your mind.” Matthew 22:37. To adore is to turn with all one’s heart toward him who is all. The soul that does so discovers that it has found its rest and its treasure, and that nothing more is lacking to it. It is the cry of the psalm, where man filled by God desires nothing else: “Whom else have I in heaven but you? With you, I desire nothing on earth.” Psalms 73:25. This is why God asks for adoration: that man, in giving himself to him, may find at last the one for whom he is made.