four ways that you try to play God
Are you trying to play God in your life? If you’re used to giving the ‘right answer,’ you’ll probably say no. But playing God doesn’t mean you’re outwardly rebellious or immoral; it’s often much harder to see than that.
Playing God means slowly usurping his authority and role in your life, until you’re his de facto representative on earth. You begin to believe you have his characteristics, so you feel comfortable taking on his responsibilities. You slowly push God out, until you’ve taken his place, acting and ruling on his behalf.
Here’s the tricky part: you are often most in danger of playing God when you’re serving, obeying, and worshiping him. Why? Because the closer you get to God, the greater the temptation will be to think that you’ve been anointed his spokesperson.
While few people ever set out to play God, it happens so much, usually in one or more of these four ways:
1. you act like you’re completely independent.
Ever since the Garden of Eden, we’ve all wanted to be self-sufficient. For many people, dependency is a bad word, and we often equate maturity with independence. Our culture’s taught us the lie that complete independence is the greatest sign of strength, so you go through your life trying to keep it all together yourself, never showing any weakness or need for anyone else.
This creates a problem, though: God’s the only independent thing in the universe. The rest of us are created, made to be dependent first on him, and also on others. You were created to need God and other people, and when you act like you’re completely independent, never needing any help or emotional support from others, you’re trying to be like God.
What this looks like:
You love listening to other people’s problems and helping them, but rarely share your problems or ask for help.
You suppress or deny having needs, limits, or weaknesses to avoid the time and messiness that relationships require.
You work hard to give off the appearance that you’re completely put together and never experience temptation or struggles in life.
When other people share their struggles or make mistakes, you inwardly look down on them, wondering why they can’t be more like you: disciplined, self-controlled, and able to handle life by yourself.
When you’re overwhelmed, you try to solve the situation by working longer and harder, and rarely by asking for help.
What to do instead: grow in your dependence on God and others.
Continually remind yourself: you were created to be dependent on God and others, specifically the Body of Christ. You’ll never outgrow the need for friendship, encouragement, and emotional support. Trying to appear completely independent doesn’t change this, it just cuts you off from the life-giving resources of relationships, both with God and other people.
2. you act like you’re in control
In an uncertain world, you play God by trying to act like you’re in control of everything, both in your life and others. While you give intellectual assent to God’s control over all things, in reality, since he doesn’t seem to be working either fast enough or according to your plans, you take it upon yourself to make things happen.
When you’re playing God in this way, you think it’s your responsibility to both control every situation in your life, as well as fix anyone you come in contact with, under the guise of “serving God.” But you’re not all-powerful, and to act like you are is to try to take on God’s role in the world.
What this looks like:
You think it’s your responsibility to fix everything, whether it’s a person or situation, so you can ensure that there’s never any uncertainty in your life.
You try to control what other people think and do since you know what’s best for them.
You only participate or support something when you get to be in control of it.
You quickly grow frustrated when life doesn’t go according to your plan.
You grow deeply unsettled when your structure is threatened and any amount of “chaos” occurs.
When you feel like you’ve lost control, you use either aggressive techniques (arguing, bulldozing, scoffing, threatening) or passive techniques (complaining, withholding, nagging, freezing out) to try to regain a sense of control over others.
You don’t have time to pray about hard situations since that’ll take away time from you solving the problem.
What to do instead:
You have to trust that God’s in control and is working in all things. This doesn’t mean you become passive and indifferent to the challenges of life, but rather that you trust that God’s working in other people, too. When you believe this, you can stop trying to control everything, and instead focus on connecting with others and pointing them to Jesus. Remember, it’s God’s will, and not yours, that’s perfect.
3. you act like you’ve created the rules
When you try to play God this way, you think you’re all-knowing and always know what’s best. This causes you to drift away from God’s rules for life and institute your own. Soon, you’re making up rules that aren’t even in the Bible, or over or under-applying the ones that are there, while expecting everyone around you to obey you.
The problem with this approach is the same one from the Garden of Eden: “Did God really say?” You think you know better than God, so you create your own personal 10 Commandments, over-emphasizing the rules you find easy to obey, and under-emphasizing any rules you struggle with.
What this looks like:
You know God’s rules, but if they inconvenience you then you ignore them, yet you expect to flourish anyways.
You have a few faults, but overall think you’re pretty close to perfect since you excel in keeping the rules you think are important.
You are always on the lookout for people who are breaking rules, whether it’s at the office, church, or society in general.
No matter what sphere of life you’re in, you believe you’re the expert, and that people should follow what you say.
You disguise your rules as unspoken expectations. ”If they were actually a good friend, they would know not to…”
You’re grow obsessed with your pet rules, and take a small thing and make it the most important thing, both for you and others.
What to do instead:
Instead of thinking that you get to decide what the rules are for life, remember that God has already written the rules, and your job isn’t to change them or enforce them, but rather to follow them. Trusting God’s rules as best isn’t easy, but it’s a crucial part of thriving in life.
4. you act like you’re the judge
When you play God in this way, you place yourself above another person, evaluate them, and then condemn where they don’t measure up to your expectations. You’ve rewritten God’s rules to what suits you, and then decide who is good and who is bad, at least according to you. You no longer are equals to your peers, but rather their superior, put on earth to judge them and tell them when they’re wrong.
The problem with acting like you’re the judge is that you don’t have all of the information, and you are partial to yourself. While everyone thinks they’re unbiased, everybody is, and thus becomes an unjust judge in some way.
What this looks like:
You have strong feelings about who you think is good and who is bad, whether in the church or society.
You punish people, whether passively or actively, for ways you feel they’ve broken the rules.
People rarely open up and share with you because they’re afraid of what you’ll say.
Since you know best and are pretty close to perfect, you view yourself as God’s representative, in charge of letting people know what they’re doing wrong.
You never share your sins or faults, since that would cause you to lose the moral high ground you need to judge others.
You always know what’s best, and are quick to condemn other people, even if you never say it out loud.
what to do instead:
Remind yourself that God is the only completely just judge. While there will be times you need to confront someone who is breaking God’s rules, do it graciously, remembering that you fall short of God’s rules as well, but are forgiven through the grace of Christ.
conclusion:
I’ll admit, I see so many of these four ways of playing God in my life. Fighting these tendencies will be a lifelong battle for each of us, as we are renewed by the Holy Spirit and made to be more and more like Christ.
