How Can God Be Totally Selfless, Yet Demand Our Worship?

What do you call a person who demands that all attention be centered on them?

A toddler?

A teenager?

God?

There’s a theological picture of God that frames Him as essentially the biggest egomaniac in the universe. And if you’ve ever wondered if that might actually be true, you’re not alone.

There are a lot of people who are under the impression—from what they’ve been taught and what they’ve picked up from Christianity and other religious persuasions—that God is the ultimate narcissist, that God is ultimately self-centered.

For example, the actor Brad Pitt, who was raised in a Midwestern evangelical Christian home, was once asked why he walked away from Christianity. His answer?

That picture of God—a being who demands praise and punishes anyone who won’t applaud—isn’t just a Hollywood caricature. It’s what many people have actually been taught

“I don’t understand this idea of a God who says, ‘You have to acknowledge Me. You have to say I’m the best—then I’ll give you eternal happiness.’ If you won’t tell God He’s the best and put Him at the center of everything… you don’t get in.”

And then he said something profoundly revealing:

“It seems to me to be about ego. I can’t see God operating from ego, so it made no sense to me.”

That picture of God—a being who demands praise and punishes anyone who won’t applaud—isn’t just a Hollywood caricature. It’s what many people have actually been taught in religious settings.

In fact, some Christian thinkers affirm this idea of God’s “holy self-centeredness”—arguing that God has the right to be self-centered because, well… He’s God. In that view, God’s ego is the only justified ego in the universe.

There are some texts that could be misinterpreted that way. Psalm 150:6 says, “Let everything that has breath praise the Lord.” If we believe Scripture is inspired by God, then isn’t God essentially saying, “Everything that has breath should praise Me”? If any human said that, we would call them a narcissist.

But what if that’s not the Bible’s picture of God at all?

Let’s flip the script.

What if the reason God calls us to worship Him isn’t because He needs it, but because we do? What if God isn’t speaking from a place of position and authority—throwing His weight around—but rather from a place of purpose and identity?

Psalm 63:3 says, “Because Your loving kindness is better than life, my lips shall praise You.”

This text isn’t just spiritual poetry. This is someone realizing how reality is wired. The text is not describing praise out of obligation. It’s not a spiritual performance for a demanding deity. It’s a human being realizing what they were made for, what they were designed for—the nature of things.

God doesn’t need my worship.

I need to worship Him.

God doesn’t need my praise.

I need to praise Him.

God’s love is better than life itself—more essential than oxygen, water, food, or shelter. More foundational than life itself.

C.S. Lewis put it this way in Mere Christianity:

“God made us: invented us as a man invents an engine. A car is made to run on petrol, and it would not run properly on anything else. God designed the human machine to run on Himself. He Himself is the fuel our spirits were designed to burn, or the food our spirits were designed to feed on. That is why it is just no good asking God to make us happy in our own way without bothering about religion. God cannot give us a happiness and peace apart from Himself, because it is not there. There is no such thing.”

This isn’t God throwing His weight around.

It’s not divine ego. It’s design.

When David says, “My soul shall be satisfied as with marrow and fatness, and my mouth shall praise You with joyful lips,” he’s not describing religious duty (Psalm 63:5).

He’s describing thriving.

God doesn’t need my worship.

I need to worship Him.

God doesn’t need my praise.

I need to praise Him.

Why?

Because the only viable existence is an existence centered outside of oneself. You and I were designed—mentally, emotionally, physically—for other-centeredness. And when we live for ourselves, we gradually move into dysfunction, then disaster, then death.

God is the antithesis of egoism. He has never experienced a nanosecond of self-centeredness. Every thought, every feeling, every action of God is centered on the well-being of others. How do we know this? He has shown us:

Jesus “made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant, and coming in the likeness of men. And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross” (Philippians 2:7–8).

God’s love is so absolutely other-centered that when I focus on Him, when I worship Him, I become like Him. I begin to love like God loves. Therefore, I become who I really can be when I give Him my full, undivided worship and adoration.

That’s why He alone is worthy of our worship—not because He needs it, but because we do.

Ty Gibson

Speaker/Director at Light Bearers

Ty is a speaker/director of Light Bearers. A passionate communicator with a message that opens minds and moves hearts, Ty teaches on a variety of topics, emphasizing God’s unfailing love as the central theme of the Bible. Ty and his wife Sue have three adult children and two grandsons.