Who's at the center?

In Israel’s Story, God is preeminent. Observance of the Torah is to be done before God. God-centered obedience glorifies God by making God preeminent.

But humans want to usurp the place of God, making themselves the center of the Story. This happens at two levels in our passage: on the one hand, humans have a proclivity to usurp the place of God by sitting in judgment on one another, which is why humans seek the approval of others; on the other hand, we seek the approval of others instead of the pleasure of God in our behaviors because, as it often turns out, they will give us what we want (whereas God gives us what is good and right) .— Sermon on the Mount, page 152