The Recovery of Worship

There is a danger in being a Bible college student, or in being in ministry. It's talked about quite a bit at Ozark. This danger is that, in one's studies, he may spend extensive time pouring over Scripture, exegeting passages, parsing Greek verbs, memorizing verses, and reviewing ecclesiastical history, but he never applies what he learns to his life. People talk about the danger of the Bible becoming a mere textbook and not the very Word of God that is intended to mold a Christian's ethics. When this happens, we become nothing but hypocrites, preaching that others emulate Christ but failing to do so ourselves.

There is another danger that is not mentioned as much. It is similar to the one I've already described, but is distinct, I think. This danger is that, once again, a Bible student or minister can spend a lot of time in academic pursuits but loses his passion for worship. A person's faith can become wrapped up in books and commentaries and lectures and sermons, but it's not found in reflection and singing and drumming and dancing. As a result, we measure our relationships with Christ by our knowledge and not by our adoration. We begin to see worship as spirituality for the masses. It's for the "average churchgoer" who comes to get their weekly Jesus-fix. We, on the other hand, are much to sophisticated for such base religion, right?

If that's how we think, we need a major overhaul in our attitude. We're in a bad spot when we start to believe that our faith is about only about having the right doctrinal system or knowing the answer to every Bible trivia question, and not at all about standing in awe of the God who's the point of it all. There's an old worship song that says, "I could sing of your love forever," and I remember times in high school when that's exactly how I felt. I think that a lot of people that grew up in church youth groups can think of times of worship when they felt like they could have stood and sung songs of praise for hours.

Nowadays, I don't feel like that too much. When I'm at chapel services at school and we sing songs before the sermon, my mind wanders and I begin to think about how much longer before I can sit down, or about how my legs are tired, or about what homework I need to do that day, or about what I should blog about next. But I reckon these mental meanderings are alright, because hey, worship isn't that important compared to all my other pursuits. And what happens is that my adolescent passion is replaced by rigid formalism. Songs have been replaced with lectures; drumsticks have been replaced with concordances.

But even the greatest theologian needs worship.

The book of Revelation is chock full of songs. On just about every page, someone breaks out in a musical number. Elders lay down their crowns, creatures shout about the holiness of God, and saints sing about how Christ has conquered. Many scholarly articles have been written about the meaning of these hymns in Revelation--about how they provide commentary for the visions that John sees. The hymns are seen as serving the same function as the chorus in Greek drama. All of this might be true, but I think that at the same time, there is so much worship in Revelation because God's majestic nature is seen clearly, and the angels have no choice but to bow down and pour out their hearts in praise. And if angels are so immersed in worship, we should probably be careful of thinking it's below us.