“By whatever path you come to Me, by that path will I bless you.”

-Bhagavad Gita

(NIV: New International Version; ESV: English Standard Version)

 

 

NIV: Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! You have set your glory in the heavens.

ESV: O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!

 

It is most unnecessary for us to be telling the Almighty God who created the universe—and ourselves—how majestic and glorious we feel God is. Lavish praise quite misses the point for which we are here. Instead, God desires that we express such adoration by loving our fellow humans as unconditionally as God loves us—an instruction God repeatedly sends to us via near-death experiencers. To profess loving praise of God while feeling unloving animosity toward any other person is self-contradictory to our God-given mandate. God-like love does not come easy.

 

 

NIV: Through the praise of children and infants you have established a stronghold against your enemies, to silence the foe and the avenger.

ESV: Out of the mouth of babies and infants, you have established strength because of your foes, to still the enemy and the avenger.

 

“Foe or enemy” of God is a false concept. God made us all, we are all of God, God is in all of us.

 

 

NIV: When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is mankind that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them? You have made them a little lower than the angels and crowned them with glory and honor.

ESV: When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him? Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor.

 

Those who would belittle humankind, as if humans were lowly and unworthy, forget our inherent divinity: God knows that we are all of God, and God is in us. Our challenge is to live up to it.

 

 

NIV: You made them rulers over the works of your hands; you put everything under their feet: all flocks and herds, and the animals of the wild, the birds in the sky, and the fish in the sea, all that swim the paths of the seas.

ESV: You have given him dominion over the works of your hands; you have put all things under his feet, all sheep and oxen, and also the beasts of the field, the birds of the heavens, and the fish of the sea, whatever passes along the paths of the seas.

 

Oh how badly do so many misinterpret these words as a license to exploit. Our duty is to protect them and their habitats, to enable them to live, and thank them when we take their small lives for food. We are not to drive them to extinction, poison their habitats of land, sea and air, crowd them for brief lives into wretched warehouses for our meat counters. Dominion means responsible for.

 

NIV: Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! You have set your glory in the heavens.

ESV: O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!

 

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“By whatever path you come to Me, by that path will I bless you.”