Scripture reading: Isaiah 44:9–20

I’m My Own Grandpa!

For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools. (Romans 1:21–22)

Old-timers among us may remember a silly country song first performed in 1948 entitled I’m My Own Grandpa. The song tells the story of a man who, through an unlikely (but legal) combination of marriages, becomes stepfather to his stepmother—which made him (if you drop the “step”) his own grandfather. The lyrics are complicated, but the chorus sums up the incongruity of it all by twanging:

I’m my own grandpa! I’m my own grandpa! It sounds funny, I know, but it really is so!
Oh, I’m my own grandpa!

I have to admit, I love this kind of humor. It makes me laugh. But let me share something that is even more ridiculous. I’m talking about the man who worships himself and achieves the incomprehensible distinction of becoming his own god. Frankly, the grandpa song makes more sense. Let me offer my own rendition of what this song might say:

Many, many years ago when I was twenty-three I sought the meaning of existence and true deity
My search led me places that I never thought I’d go,
But listen now to what I’ve found; I want the world to know.

I’m my deity! For I created me!
It sounds funny, even odd, that I can be my god, Oh, I’m the god of me!

Scholars and philosophers may doubt my sanity How I can be created by the god I know as me
But logic never stopped me when I worshipped god before Cause I am lifting praise to me, the one that I adore.

Lest you think my levity out of place, I learned it from the prophet Isaiah! Listen to the biting satire as he pokes fun at the sheer irrationality of the idolatry in his day:

Pretty stupid, wouldn’t you say? Don’t they have eyes in their heads? Are their brains working at all? Doesn’t it occur to them to say, “Half of this tree I used for firewood: I baked bread, roasted meat, and enjoyed a good meal. And now I’ve used the rest to make an abominable no-god. Here I am pray- ing to a stick of wood!” This lover of emptiness, of nothing, is so out of touch with reality, so far gone, that he can’t even look at what he’s doing, can’t even look at the no-god stick of wood in his hand and say, “This is crazy.” (Isaiah 44:18–20 The Message)

If preaching the truth won’t waken those who are spiritually dead, perhaps poking fun at them will!

The disposition of sin is not immorality and wrong-doing, but the disposition of self-realization—I am my own god. This
disposition may work out in decorous morality or in indecorous immorality, but it has the one basis, my claim to my right to myself. —Oswald Chambers

point to ponder • When you worship yourself you not only blaspheme God but you show the world how irrational and foolish you really are.

prayer focus • Any who worship gods who cannot save.