NOT SO MUCH A POLEMIC BUT MORE THOUGHTS ON CHRISTIAN WORSHIP

Last week I wrote a rather long comment on a Facebook post of mine responding to an inquiry from a friend.  Often, comments such as these are fleeting for me.  However, one part of that comment stuck with me the rest of the week.  I will be honest here—I am not real comfortable with worship.  To clarify that, I am thinking in the context of incredibly well-produced-Cold-Playesque-concert worship music that typically begins many church services.  Much of this music fits in the context of penal substitutionary atonement; a dogma that no longer is part of my canon.  However, perhaps that is a topic for another post at some point—we will stick to worship here. The friend that I was responding to chose to walk away from the church years ago.  Here is part of what he shared:

In order to be honest with myself, I had to leave the church and abandon god at age 16. I can assure you at that age it was an extremely difficult thing to do. Everybody in my town was a believer, or so they said.

Sadly, I saw a lot of dishonesty and injustice back then and since then, perpetrated by people of faith, and also those of little or no faith to be sure.

One of the most difficult things I had to reconcile, was how to be a person with some decency, respect and compassion without a "rule" book.

I learned that I needed to examine my daily dealings with myself and those around me with critical thoughts and eyes.

I needed to understand what I would expect of others, but more to the point, what I needed to expect from myself.

Reality is at best elusive if it exists at all. Truth varies enormously from person to person, place to place and circumstance to circumstance.

Amidst that response I was also asked from a place of honest inquiry about my journey.  I let my response just stream and here I am a week later not being able to let go of what came out respecting worship.  Add to all of this, I just finished Richard Rohr’s The Naked Eye which really debunks many of the merits of dualism, which has both challenged and reaffirmed the path that I am on.  However, before continuing and in the spirit of Rohr’s book, coupled with the last sentence from my friend; what I share below should not be looked at through a dualistic lens.  That is, I am not making the claim that there is no value in worship—even if it is at church with a band that makes you feel like you are at a Cold Play concert.  Rather, this is my narrative respecting worship, contextualized in the church setting, and my hope is that it will open and challenge hearts and create dialogue.

Part of my response to my friend read something along these lines: Four rather short narratives on the life of Jewish Carpenter from 2000 years ago is a limited amount of data to go on. But I am completely taken with the life of Jesus. Sure, Ghandi and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. talked about enemy love, but Jesus was really the first to preach and live it.  This idea and practice is something that I want to emulate.  Jesus, however, never called his followers to worship him.  I am a bit appalled at the word "worship." It makes me wonder if perhaps if it is even blasphemous to worship Jesus.  Jesus was offered the world if he would worship Satan (Luke 4:7).  Interestingly, the ESV translation has Jesus’ response to Satan as “You shall worship the Lord your God, and him only shall you serve.”  This is a quote from Deuteronomy 6:13 which in the same ESV version of the Bible reads “It is the Lord your God you shall fear.  Him you shall serve and by his name you shall swear.”  Moreover, pagan culture is was full of worship, a practice that Aaron emulated in Exodus 32, which God said resulted in them corrupting themselves (v. 7).  I am unconvinced that I am called or commanded to worship at all.  With Jesus challenging us to make disciples (Matthew 28) and his bold and humble exclamation that his followers would do greater things than him (John 14) it would appear that Jesus was not and is not now interested in us worshipping him.  What if Jesus completely debunks the concept of worship?  What if I/we are called to follow…period?  I am not 100 percent sure what that looks like. My journey has become a perpetual deconstruction- reconstruction process. My hope is that each time I am able to deconstruct and reconstruct I am capable of loving deeper.  For me, most often, this deconstruction and reconstruction consists not in worshipping but feebly attempting to follow that carpenter from 2000 years ago.