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 Is this merely a relic of an outdated worldview, a holdout from days when men would grovel at the feet of kings?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.

WWFBSTW Meme

Hurray for gaudy acronyms! WWFBSTW, according to Drew Tatusko, means “What Would Five Biblical Studies Types Write?” And he tagged me (Thanks Drew!):

This meme is very simple. You choose five Biblical studies types and invent a post that they might have written over the last couple of months. Those parodied are entitled, yea, obligated to tag five other bibliobloggers in similar fashion. Don’t forget to link to this original post.

Here goes:

James McGrath: “How Dr. Who LOST His Intelligent Design When He Tried to Learn Mandaic”
Ben Myers: “St. Paul’s Taste in Theology Does Not Include Pornographic Worship”
Scot McKnight: “According to the Gospel of Ruth, James Dobson Does Not Speak For Conservatives”
Chris Heard: “How to Maintain an Audience Without Posting Anything”
Michael Halcomb: “Why Steve Carell Should Not Produce a Comic Version of Genesis 2”

My apologies if you’ve already been tagged. Actually, you have my apologies for tagging you at all! ;)

Easter Sunday

It was dark and stormy here this Easter. The wind woke us early, and we drove to church through a hard rain. My daughter’s first Easter egg hunt had to be conducted inside; we even had some violent hail in the afternoon. It’s ironic too, since Friday and Saturday were clear and warm. Proof that the world has not yet reached its goal, I guess; creation still groaning in expectation.

On such a gloomy day, one might wonder what difference Easter makes. Did anything really happen that morning two thousand years ago? Is the world really any different? Yesterday I mentioned the differences between the biblical resurrection accounts; each tells the story slightly differently, and they cannot be fully harmonized. Many think this proves it’s all fiction, perhaps of symbolic value, but nothing historical. After all, the Bible does contain a great deal of myth and symbolism, and such elements can be found here as well, particularly in Luke’s account of the road to Emmaus.

Here we find two disciples, leaving Jerusalem in the wake of the crucifixion, who find themselves walking with Jesus. But they don’t know it’s Jesus until “he took bread, gave thanks, broke it and began to give it to them” (Luke 24:30), about as clear an allusion to the Eucharist as you could find. The point, it seems, is that despite Jesus’ apparent absence, he is nevertheless alive with us when we join together in communion. Given this, it almost seems inappropriate to ask did this happen? The more pertinent question is: does this happen? Do we continue to meet Jesus in the breaking of bread? At the least, this is certainly a story that has been framed for its symbolic rather than historical value, and it is hard to rule out the possibility that something similar informs all of these accounts.

Honesty demands that we not ignore these things, and pays us back by revealing deeper significance to these stories. But it is possible to take such skepticism too far. It is true that these accounts have been shaped and reworked for reasons other than objective historical interest, but there remains a core here that cannot be dismissed as myth: that the tomb was empty, and that Jesus’ disciples were convinced that he had been raised. These are distinct, but closely related. We will take them in reverse.

Whatever tensions we find between the Easter accounts, it can hardly be denied that the earliest disciples experienced Jesus as alive again in some profound way. This is necessary to explain the origin of the Church at all. The first century was full of Jewish figures claiming to be the Messiah. Like Jesus, each built up a large following but then met a violent death. In every other case, such a death proved that the figure was not the Messiah. Indeed, this seems to have been the disciples’ reaction to Jesus’ death. Leaving Jerusalem dejectedly, the two disciples in Luke 24 tell the figure they don’t yet recognize that “we had hoped he was the one who was going to redeem Israel” (24:21), the implication clearly being that his death had convinced them otherwise. Yet something changed them, dramatically. However scattered and legendary the accounts of Jesus’ appearances, we know they experienced something deeply profound and unexpected, and the simplest explanation is the one they themselves gave: that they had unexpectedly seen Jesus.

But what were these appearances? James has been arguing that they were essentially spiritual, intangible, such that it doesn't much matter whether Jesus’ body remained in the tomb or not. There is a certain strength to this view; it fits well with Luke 24, for one thing. Clearly, whatever kind of life Jesus was raised to, it was no mere resuscitation of his old physical body. He was said to pass through walls, to suddenly appear and vanish, to be sometimes unrecognizable, or appear with bright light and sound. All of this points to something very different than normal earthly life, something much more.

But that is only half the story, for the disciples did not merely claim that they had suddenly realized that Jesus was alive despite being dead. They insisted that he had been raised. Not all Jews believed in resurrection, but those who did agreed about two things: that it was in some sense physical, and that it wouldn’t happen until the age to come. That Jesus’ disciples claimed this about him, even though the eschatological age clearly had not come as they expected, points to something more: They didn’t just claim that Jesus’ soul had survived death, but that somehow, on that Sunday morning, all of history had changed, the new age had dawned, Jesus had been vindicated.

To make sense of such a claim we must turn elsewhere. For the Gospels do not just speak of Jesus’ appearances, but also of an empty tomb. That it was empty that first Sunday is nearly certain, for its discovery by women simply wasn’t the sort of thing the church would have invented. Women weren’t considered reliable witnesses in Jewish society, as the disciples’ own reactions to their report indicates. Further, the surprise and ensuing conviction of Jesus’ followers counts against any claim that they themselves had stolen the body. Granted, by itself the empty tomb proves little, to them or to us, but combined with Jesus’ appearances it was transformational. It took this ragged group of deserters and turned them into the seed of a church that stormed the world with the message that Jesus is Lord.

Were they right? History cannot answer that conclusively, though these facts are telling. For me, however, the proof lies not so much in that ancient tomb, but in the present day – in our church full of people who, despite awaking to gloom and the rain, could not be kept from gathering in love for one another and worship of the one who has changed our lives. Is the world any different because of Easter? It still rains, but I know that we are different because of it.

C.S. Lewis on Worship

The always brilliant C.S. Lewis includes some further thoughts on worship in The Problem of Pain:

The problem of reconciling human suffering with the existence of a God who loves, is only insoluble so long as we attach a trivial meaning to the word 'love', and look on things as if man were the centre of them. Man is not the centre. God does not exist for the sake of man. Man does not exist for his own sake. 'Thou has created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created.' We were made not primarily that we may love God (though we were made for that too) but that God may love us, that we may become objects in which the Divine love may rest 'well pleased'. To ask that God's love should be content with us as we are is to ask that God should cease to be God: because He is what He is, His love must, in the nature of things, be impeded and repelled by certain stains in our present character, and because he already loves us He must labour to make us lovable....

Clashes of interest, and therefore opportunities either of selfishness or unselfishness, occur only between beings inhabiting a common world: God can no more be in competition with a creature than Shakespeare can be in competition with Viola. When God becomes a Man and lives as a creature among His own creatures in Palestine, then indeed His life is one of supreme self-sacrifice and leads to Calvary.... [W]hen God empties Himself of His glory and submits to those conditions under which alone egoism and altruism have a clear meaning, He is seen to be wholly altruistic. But God in His transcendence--God as the unconditioned ground of all conditions--cannot easily be thought of in the same way. We call human love selfish when it satisfies its own needs at the expense of the object's needs... [but] God has no needs.... God is goodness. He can give good, but he cannot need or get it. In that sense all His love is, as it were bottomlessly selfless by very definition; it has everything to give and nothing to receive....

Those divine demands which sound to our natural ears most like those of a despot and least like those of a lover, in fact marshal us where we should want to go if we knew what we wanted. He demands our worship, our obedience, our prostration. Do we suppose that they can do Him any good, or fear, like the chorus in Milton, that human irreverence can bring about 'His glory's diminution'? A man can no more diminish God's glory by refusing to worship Him than a lunatic can put out the sun by scribbling the word 'darkness' on the walls of his cell. But God wills our good, and our good is to love Him (with that responsive love proper to creatures) and to love Him we must know Him: and if we know Him, we shall in fact fall on our faces.... Yet the call is not only to prostration and awe; it is to a reflection of the Divine life, a creaturely participation in the Divine attributes which is far beyond our present desires. We are bidden to 'put on Christ', to become like God. That is, whether we like it or not, God intends to give us what we need, not what we think we want. Once more, we are embarrassed by the intolerable compliment, by too much love, not too little. [pgs. 40-43, 46-47]

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.