Seven Things I Learned About Being a “Little Lower Than God”

Psalm 8 — “O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! You have set your glory above the heavens.  Out of the mouth of babies and infants, you have established strength because of your foes, to still the enemy and the avenger. 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.  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.  O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!”

1. God is indeed sovereign.  Our reformed friends love to hear a Wesleyan say this, and indeed we agree.  This is what the text pronounces clearly about God.  There is nothing in heaven or on the earth that can compete with the majesty of God.  God is the Holy One over all things visible and invisible.  
2. We are powerless to achieve any dominion over creation with our own resources.  David clearly expresses, that in the light of creation he is but a mere blip on a radar.  David has nothing to offer, and nothing to attain it with.  This provokes his exasperating questions, “what is man that you are mindful of him?” 
3. The cry of every man’s heart is to be known by God.  Many will reject this, but that does not make this principle untrue.  David’s reaction to his reflection, which seemed to diminish him in the face of God’s majesty, is “who am I to God?  Does God care for me?”  Somewhere in every person, this cry goes out.  This is because of my next point…
4. We were created in the image of God, to know God and to be known by Him.  This is the point of real existence.  David is overwhelmed with the idea that God would have made him just a little lower than that angels.  The vastness of the universe was quite small in the light of this colossal truth.  There is an intimacy in this expression.  God cares for you, he thinks of you.  You are a unique part of God’s creation.  
5. We are to be responsible caretakers of all God has entrusted to us.  This is the reality of the entire message of the Bible.  From Eden, Adam was to care for the garden and the animals.  God has given us all the works of his hands, but we can abuse them and waste them.  Wastefulness strikes against the very chords of what how God created humans to act.  We are created to be responsible for what God has given us. 
6. God is the source of all things, there is no reality without Him.  The verbs used of God in this Psalm are active and aggressive.  He causes things to come into being, man to come into power, enemies to be disposed of.  Man must never mistake God’s multiple blessings with his good works.  This in no way negates that we do not cooperate and participate in the working of God, but it does suggest that at the end of the day It will always be us thanking God, not God thanking us. 
   
7. We are invited to participate in what God is doing in the world, and cooperate with God’s ordering of the world.  God does not need us to have dominion over the world.  We are not the only option, we do not have God over a barrel.  God has willing, graciously, and lovingly allowed us to participate with him.  In other words, while God is sovereign, he is as sovereign as he wants to be.  He can do what he wants to do, but what he does will always by holy.  God does not have to hold dominion over all the world as some sort of power-play against humanity.  He does not have to make all the choice and do all things, subjecting man to a pawn like life.  No, God offers himself and his works to us.  God offers his life to us and allows us to participate in his self giving ordering of society, so that we might know the fullness of the blessings of his love.  Loving like God loves, have dominion like God has dominion, etc… is not merely the right thing to do, it is the human thing to do.  This is what it means to be a little lower than God.  To do anything contrary would be to deny the basis of what it means to be a person.