Why Worship?

This post first appeared here:

The command to “love the LORD your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength” (Deut 6:5; Matt 22:37) is central to Christianity. But why? Is this merely a relic of an outdated worldview, a holdout from days when men would grovel at the feet of kings? Is not worship inherently demeaning, even dehumanizing? Worse, is not a command to worship inherently contradictory, an admission that God is not worthy enough to elicit spontaneous praise? Many think so, and view the Christian God as an egotistical dictator who demands worship on pain of (eternal) death. Even if such a God existed, it is sometimes suggested, worship would forever be a compromise, a betrayal of human dignity in the face of divine terror. Better to die a man (or woman), than to live a slave.

Yet who among us hasn’t stood in awe of a waterfall or a sunset? Who hasn't cheered enthusiastically at a football game or concert? Is such a reaction “dehumanizing”? Hardly, more like an essential part of what it means to be human. How much more, then, ought we to praise the one who created every waterfall, sunset, mountain and valley, the one who dreamed up every star, planet, nebula and galaxy, the one who gave life to every flower, bird, tree and whale, the one who gives strength and skill to every athlete, musician, writer and mother?

If God truly is the source of all these good things, then what other reaction could possibly be appropriate but awe, wonder, praise and worship? Just as our rapture when listening to beautiful music means acknowledging something good beyond ourselves, worshipping God (the highest good) turns us away from ourselves to something better. As N.T. Wright notes, however, this does not reduce our humanity, but expands it:

You become like what you worship. When you gaze in awe, admiration, and wonder at something or someone, you begin to take on something of the character of the object of your worship. Those who worship money become, eventually, human calculating machines. Those who worship sex become obsessed with their own attractiveness or prowess. Those who worship power become more and more ruthless.

So what happens when you worship the creator God whose plan to rescue the world and put it to rights has been accomplished by the lamb who was slain? The answer comes in the second golden rule: because you were made in God’s image, worship makes you more truly human. When you gaze in love and gratitude at the God in whose image you were made, you do indeed grow. You discover more of what it means to be fully alive.

So why is it that not all who worship God become better people? Perhaps the answer lies in their vision of God. If you believe God is a cosmic dictator, and worship such a God, you will become more intolerant and harsh yourself. If, on the other hand, you believe God rules through self-sacrifice (cf. Rev. 5:6-14), and worship that God, you will be led to serve others in love.

But, it will still be objected, if God is so great, why should he need to command worship? Doesn’t the very fact that he does so (or rather, that people command worship for him) prove that he doesn’t really deserve it? Not at all. For if God truly is who Christians believe he is, then seeing him in his full glory would without a doubt bring us spontaneously to our knees (either in joy or despair). But we do not see the full glory of God in our everyday lives. At best, we get glimpses of it in the glories of creation and in the story of redemption, but we easily miss these things as we shuffle through life. Perhaps we need to be commanded to worship, because we need to be reminded of something bigger and grander than ourselves, and we too easily forget; I too easily forget.

"Practical" Christianity

I hope you all enjoyed your weekend. I'm probably up to my sleep-deprived eyes in poopy diapers, but hey, I wouldn't have it any other way! The following was first posted here.

A common reason people reject or abandon Christianity is a feeling that it simply isn’t practical. For many in the average church, there is no obvious connection between what is preached on Sunday morning, and what they actually do the rest of the week. Talk of grace and eternal salvation, however uplifting, is often perceived as irrelevant to everyday life.

The problem is that we have shied away from the one aspect of Christianity that really is applicable – its moral teaching. Actually, that isn’t quite correct. The church hasn’t abandoned its moral teaching, but too often it has distorted it. Publicly, at least here in America, we have focused ever more attention on berating the surrounding culture for its sexual practices and selfishness, while paying ever less attention to the state of our own lives. Thus, the non-Christian world sees in Christian morality only a collection of harsh and unnecessary rules, because that is how many of our loudest advocates announce it.

Privately, countless churches do a wonderful job of living out the love of Christ, but as a whole, the Church in America has done a poor job of expressing its moral viewpoint to the outside world. How rarely do non-Christians hear that the heart of the gospel is actually a call to die to yourself, that you might live? How often do we show this by our actions?

The trouble is that we too often accept the assumption that the value of a thing lies in its utility. Dying to yourself is not practical; it doesn’t pay the bills or get you ahead on the ladder of success. Quite the contrary, it might even mean paying other people's bills and letting them go ahead. In the long run, this results in community, love, and mutual encouragement, but in the short run, it is hard, so we avoid it. Instead of dying to ourselves, we rest content in our cheap grace or pile harsh condemnation on those around us. In all that, we forget that Christian morality is intended to be a lively and liberating way of life, the outlines of what it means to be truly human. As N.T. Wright puts it in Simply Christian (by the way, Matt, I’ve changed my view of this book; the second half is excellent):

Only when we have set all that out quite clearly can we ever speak of “rules.” There are rules, of course. The New Testament has plenty of them. Always give alms in secret. Never sue a fellow Christian. Never take private vengeance. Be kind. Always show hospitality. Give away money cheerfully. Don’t be anxious. Don’t judge another Christian over a matter of conscience. Always forgive. And so on. And the worrying thing about that randomly selected list is that most Christians ignore most of them most of the time. It isn’t so much that we lack clear rules; we lack, I fear, the teaching that will draw attention to what is in fact there in our primary documents, not least in the teaching of Jesus himself.

The rules are to be understood, not as arbitrary laws thought up by a distant God to stop us from having fun (or to set us some ethical hoops to jump through as a kind of moral examination), but as the signposts to a way of life in which heaven and earth overlap, in which God’s future breaks into the present, in which we discover what genuine humanness looks and feels like in practice. (pg. 224-25)

If we want to change our culture, we must start by changing ourselves.

Quote - N.T. Wright on The Messiness of History

N.T. Wright, in The New Testament and the People of God:

History is not about tidiness, but, most often, about the odd, the unrepeatable and the unlikely. (pg. 107)

N.T. Wright on Heaven

TIME Magazine has a brief but good interview with N.T. Wright on the subject of heaven (HT: Between Two Worlds). The interview is informal, but Wright does a good job correcting some common misconceptions about the biblical understanding of the afterlife. In short, the common belief that we will spend eternity in some disembodied heaven derives more from Greek Platonism than the Bible, which actually anticipates the restoration of this earth. Our hope is not to escape from the physical to the heavenly, but to see the renewal of the physical as it is finally and fully united with the heavenly. Paul describes it like this in Romans 8:19-23:

For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.

Why Worship?

The command to “love the LORD your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength” (Deut 6:5; Matt 22:37) is central to Christianity. But why? Is this merely a relic of an outdated worldview, a holdout from days when men would grovel at the feet of kings? Is not worship inherently demeaning, even dehumanizing? Worse, is not a command to worship inherently contradictory, an admission that God is not worthy enough to elicit spontaneous praise? Many think so, and view the Christian God as an egotistical dictator who demands worship on pain of (eternal) death. Even if such a God existed, it is sometimes suggested, worship would forever be a compromise, a betrayal of human dignity in the face of divine terror. Better to die a man (or woman), than live a slave.

Yet who among us hasn’t stood in awe of a waterfall or a sunset? Who hasn't cheered enthusiastically at a football game or concert? Is such a reaction “dehumanizing”? Hardly, more like an essential part of what it means to be human. How much more, then, ought we to praise the one who created every waterfall, sunset, mountain and valley, the one who dreamed up every star, planet, nebula and galaxy, the one who gave life to every flower, bird, tree and whale, the one who gives strength and skill to every athlete, musician, writer and mother?

If God truly is the source of all these good things, then what other reaction could possibly be appropriate but awe, wonder, praise and worship? Just as our rapture when listening to beautiful music means acknowledging something good beyond ourselves, worshipping God (the highest good) turns us away from ourselves to something better. As N.T. Wright notes, however, this does not reduce our humanity, but expands it:

You become like what you worship. When you gaze in awe, admiration, and wonder at something or someone, you begin to take on something of the character of the object of your worship. Those who worship money become, eventually, human calculating machines. Those who worship sex become obsessed with their own attractiveness or prowess. Those who worship power become more and more ruthless.

So what happens when you worship the creator God whose plan to rescue the world and put it to rights has been accomplished by the lamb who was slain? The answer comes in the second golden rule: because you were made in God’s image, worship makes you more truly human. When you gaze in love and gratitude at the God in whose image you were made, you do indeed grow. You discover more of what it means to be fully alive.

So why is it that not all who worship God become better people? Perhaps the answer lies in their vision of God. If you believe God is a cosmic dictator, and worship such a God, you will become more intolerant and harsh yourself. If, on the other hand, you believe God rules through self-sacrifice (cf. Rev. 5:6-14), and worship that God, you will be led to serve others in love.

But, it will still be objected, if God is so great, why should he need to command worship? Doesn’t the very fact that he does so (or rather, that people command worship for him) prove that he doesn’t really deserve it? Not at all. For if God truly is who Christians believe he is, then seeing him in his full glory would without a doubt bring us spontaneously to our knees. But we do not see the full glory of God in our everyday lives. At best, we get glimpses of it in the glories of creation and in the story of redemption, but we easily miss these things as we shuffle through life. Perhaps we need to be commanded to worship, because we need to be reminded of something bigger and grander than ourselves, and we too easily forget.