It outrages God when we humans refuse to give Him the glory that He rightly deserves and God deserves the glory for everything. So when we start taking the bows and applauding each other for things which only God can do, His fierce jealousy explodes, and rightly so. When God talks about being jealous for our worship, He’s not talking about needing us to prop up His low self-esteem. He’s talking about how outraged He feels when creatures who depend on Him for every breath actually have the audacity to credit some other being, object, or delusion for playing the role of God in their lives. The Holy Spirit drops some fascinating new insight in your brain and instead of praising Him, you go gushing over your pastor. You actually give some idiot human the glory for supplying you with the wisdom of God and you refuse to recognize that God Himself has just communicated directly to you. And then you actually complain that God never talks to you. You go to sleep in your warm bed every night, you have food on your table which you never even say thank you for, but when your new car gets in a wreck, you complain that God doesn’t provide for you. You gush over some worship pastor and thank him for bringing you “into the throne room of God” every week with his great music while you act like the Holy Spirit’s constant Presence with you and perpetual care of you is non-existent. You pray to saints who were totally fabricated by the Church and you have more faith in their protection of you than you do in the Gods who are guiding your every step and constantly shielding you from harm. You barely say two words to God in a day, but you pour out your heart to your stupid dog every night and thank her for being such a good “kid.” You want Brother Braggart to lay his hands on you Sunday morning because you think his emotional prayer for you is more valuable than the love of a God who died on a cross for your sake. These are the kinds of things that ignite the jealous fury of our Gods: when we refuse to give Them the glory, honor, credit, praise, and love that They rightfully deserve.

Divine jealousy is a response to being cheated, insulted, ignored and minimized by creatures who depend on their Creators for absolutely everything. We have nothing that our Gods haven’t given us. We can do nothing apart from Them. We are ignorant, incapable lumps and if we were to praise our Gods all day every day with every breath that we have, we would be giving Them only the very least that They deserve. So do They get mad when we stand right in front of Them acting like They are irrelevant? Oh, yes.