Revelation: Who We Worship

WE BECOME LIKE THAT WHICH WE WORSHIP

Jack Hayford opens his book, Worship His Majesty, with these words: “In a tropical forest a tribal chieftain bows before a crude figure fashioned from sticks and stones bound together by jungle vines. Somewhere in Asia in a fantastically ornate temple a young man burns incense before a lavishly decorated Buddha. In the heartland of America, a small group of locals meet in an unobtrusive building in a small Nebraska town to sing and pray together. A man in the suburbs of Detroit spends the entire morning meticulously washing and waxing his foreign-made sports sedan, while his teenage daughter spends hours in a poster-plastered room listening to CDs by her favorite rock superstar. All of these people are worshiping. . . . whether or not we recognize the form it takes, every one of us worships something or someone. And you should understand that whom or what you worship exerts tremendous influence over what you are—and what you will become.”[i]

“Not to us, LORD, not to us but to your name be the glory, because of your love and faithfulness. Why do the nations say, "Where is their God?" Our God is in heaven; he does whatever pleases him. 4 But their idols are silver and gold, made by human hands. They have mouths, but cannot speak, eyes, but cannot see. They have ears, but cannot hear, noses, but cannot smell. They have hands, but cannot feel, feet, but cannot walk, nor can they utter a sound with their throats. Those who make them will be like them, and so will all who trust in them.” (Psalm 115:1-8, TNIV)

“Whatever you value most highly or place the greatest worth upon, that is what you worship” and you become like that which you worship.[ii] Why? Because “the act of worship means you are developing a set of values; you are determining what you desire most. Worship means you are choosing priorities; you are establishing what comes first in your life. Worship means you are determining what you are to become; you are choosing in whose image you want to be made.”[iii]

WORSHIP MUST BEGIN WITH GOD.

Worship means ascribing worth to something. “Whatever you value most highly or place the greatest worth upon, that is what you worship.”[iv] So shouldn’t we worship the God who is worthy of all our praise, Who is truly higher and more valuable than anything? After all, He is our Creator, Sustainer, Savior, Healer, Life, and Sovereign King over all! One of the medieval masters of theology, St. Anselm, says it would be a sin not to! “If man or angel always [gave] to God his due, he would never sin. . . . Therefore to sin is nothing else than not to render to God his due. . . . he demands from you all that you are and have and can become?”[v]

So how do we worship God? Whether we are praising God for His holiness, relying on His strength in serving Him, or repenting of sin because of His conviction, worship is always a response to Him. Author Patrick Kavanaugh writes in Worship: a Way of Life, that “Worshipping God . . . is what happens when we become God-conscious (whether this is initiated by God or by ourselves) and we make a right response.”[vi] The first necessary component of worship is God-consciousness, whether that God-consciousness is initiated in some way by the Spirit or by us when we make a willful effort to focus our thoughts on God. God-consciousness can come about in many ways, such as when we suddenly notice the beauty of God’s creation all around us, when, out of the blue, certain Scripture verses come to mind, when we sing a praise song, or in the midst of using our gifts to serve others. The bottom line is we need something to respond to—some sort of Revelation of Who God is and What He has done, what He is doing, and what has promised to do.

WHO IS GOD?

A.W. Tozer wrote that, “Worship rises and falls with our concept of God.”[vii] It is vitally important to be clear and balanced in our understanding of Who God is. God is not a God of love only. Exodus 34:7 says, He is “the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished; he punishes the children and their children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation.” The Apostle Paul boils this down to one statement in Romans 11:22: “Consider therefore the kindness and sternness of God.”

It is so important to have a clear revelation of God because it is God to whom we respond. But even though He reveals Himself to us through Scripture and by His Spirit, we could never fully understand Him. That’s why it is helpful to use symbols in worship—to express things about God, Who is beyond all comprehension, in ways we can understand. We use metaphors like Father, King, or All-Consuming Fire, all which say something about His nature and relationship to us. Of course, symbols like the cross and communion also speak volumes of God’s justice and mercy. Just remember, “a symbol is not an end in itself. It [represents something beyond itself]. A symbol in Christian worship signifies supernatural reality.”[viii] In fact the ultimate symbol in worship is God Himself who took on a human nature and became a living symbol of Who God is—Jesus Christ is the exact representation of the Father. One of the early Church fathers, St. Athanasius, says it this way: “The Savior of us all, the Word of God, in His great love took to Himself a body and moved as Man among men, meeting their senses, so to speak, half way. He became Himself an object for the senses, so that those who were seeking God in sensible things might [grasp] the Father through the works which He, the Word of God, did in the body.”[ix]

WHAT HAS GOD DONE?

We could say so much about what God has done throughout history. Many of us could share what He’s doing in our lives today. But since it is the Easter season, I want to get specific and focus on what God has done through the incarnation of Christ.

Remember that St. Anselm’s defines sin as “nothing else than not to render to God his due . . . He demands from you all that you are and have and can become?”[x] The Bible says, “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” Anselm asks, “How then do [I] pay God for [my] transgression? If in justice I owe God myself and all my powers, even when I do not sin, I have nothing left to render to him for my sin. What will become of [me] then? How will [I] be saved?”[xi] If we owe God everything, and yet fail to give it to Him, how can we ever make it up? Even if we stop sinning and start giving everything to Him again, how can we ever give more than all we have? Or using the illustration of the traffic light, if you run through a red light and get a ticket, you cannot make up for it by promising to stop at every green light from now on because that is already required of you. When the requirement is perfection you can never make up for falling short. The problem is that the penalty for falling short is death—spiritual and physical. Only someone who has never fallen short of perfection could save us.

So the Logos became Immanuel.

He laid aside His rights as God and lived by the limitations of His human nature. Through the Spirit, Jesus lived a perfectly righteous, sinless life. Because He didn’t have to pay His own sin debt He could cover ours. And because He is the infinite God He traded His life not just for one man but for whosoever believes in Him. The Apostle Paul says in Romans 3:25, “God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement, through the shedding of his blood—to be received by faith.” God forgave our debt by taking it on Himself and paying it with His own blood.

Not only did He die for us; he also lived for us. When we put our faith in Him, He both cleanses us of our sin and clothes us with His righteousness. As Paul says in Galatians 2:20, “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”

Not only did Christ redeem our souls but also our bodies. Romans 6:5 says, “if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly also be united with him in a resurrection like his.” Athanasius explains that, “the supreme object of His coming was to bring about the resurrection of the body. This was to be the monument to His victory over death, the assurance to all that He had Himself conquered corruption and that their own bodies also would eventually be incorrupt; and it was in token of that and as a pledge of the future resurrection that He kept His body incorrupt.”[xii]

Coming back to the idea of using symbols to understand God and what He has done, the 16th Century reformer, Martin Luther, has some amazing things to say about Christ as our husband. “Faith unites the soul to Christ, as the wife to the husband . . . if a true marriage . . . is accomplished between them . . . then it follows that all they have becomes theirs in common, as well good things as evil things; so that whatsoever Christ possesses, that the believing soul may take to itself and boast of as its own, and whatever belongs to the [human] soul, that Christ claims as His. If we compare these possessions, we shall see how inestimable is the gain. Christ is full of grace, life, and salvation; the soul is full of sin, death, and condemnation. Let faith step in, and then sin, death, and hell will belong to Christ, and grace, life, and salvation to the soul. For, if He is a Husband, He must needs take to Himself that which is His wife's, and at the same time, impart to His wife that which is His.”[xiii]

“Thus the believing soul, by the pledge of its faith in Christ, becomes free from all sin, fearless of death, safe from hell, and endowed with the eternal righteousness, life, and salvation of its Husband Christ. Thus He presents to Himself a glorious bride, without spot or wrinkle, cleansing her with the washing of water by the word; that is, by faith in the word of life, righteousness, and salvation.”[xiv]

Luther also points to a couple of implications given the fact that Christ is both King and Priest. As King, “all things, even those of earth and hell, are subject to Him—for otherwise how could He defend and save us from them?”[xv] As Priest, “He intercedes for us with God in heaven . . . He also teaches us inwardly in the spirit.”[xvi] “As Christ by His birthright has obtained these two dignities, so He imparts and communicates them to every believer in Him, under that law of matrimony of which we have spoken above, by which all that is the husband's is also the wife's. Hence all we who believe on Christ are kings and priests in Christ”[xvii]

“First, as regards kingship, every Christian is by faith so exalted above all things that, in spiritual power, he is completely lord of all things, so that nothing whatever can do him any hurt . . . [Nevertheless], in the experience of life we see that we are subjected to all things, and suffer many things, even death. . . . [so we need to remember that] this is a spiritual power, which rules in the midst of enemies, and is powerful in the midst of distresses. And this is nothing else than that strength is made perfect in my weakness, and that I can turn all things to the profit of my salvation . . . This is a lofty and eminent dignity, a true and almighty dominion, a spiritual empire, in which there is nothing so good, nothing so bad, as not to work together for my good, if only I believe [in Christ].”[xviii]

“Nor are we only kings . . . but also priests forever, a dignity far higher than kingship, because by that priesthood we are worthy to appear before God, to pray for others, and to teach one another mutually the things which are of God. For these are the duties of priests, and they cannot possibly be permitted to any unbeliever. Christ has obtained for us this favour, if we believe in Him: that just as we are His brethren and co-heirs and fellow-kings with Him, so we should be also fellow-priests with Him, and venture with confidence, through the spirit of faith, to come into the presence of God, and cry, "Abba, Father!"[xix]

That’s the bottom line: through Christ we can come into the presence of God and have fellowship with our Father because the He has cleansed us of the sin that keeps us from Him. There is only one proper response to so great a holiness and love: and that is to give ourselves back to Him in worship. And as we do we will become like Him Who we worship. Amen!

_____

[i] Jack Hayford, Worship His Majesty, 5-6.
[ii] Jack Hayford, Worship His Majesty, 6.
[iii] Jack Hayford, Worship His Majesty, 7-8.
[iv] Jack Hayford, Worship His Majesty, 6.
[v] St. Anselm, Cur Deus Homo?
[vi] Patrick Kavanaugh, Worship: A Way of Life, 2001.
[vii] as cited in Morgenthaler, Worship Evangelism, 1999.
[viii] Robert Webber.
[ix] Athanasius, On the Incarnation.
[x] St. Anselm, Cur Deus Homo?
[xi] St. Anselm, Cur Deus Homo?
[xii] Athanasius, On the Incarnation.
[xiii] Martin Luther, On Christian Liberty.
[xiv] Martin Luther, On Christian Liberty.
[xv] Martin Luther, On Christian Liberty.
[xvi] Martin Luther, On Christian Liberty.
[xvii] Martin Luther, On Christian Liberty.
[xviii] Martin Luther, On Christian Liberty.
[xix] Martin Luther, On Christian Liberty.

Bow Down to the Science Gods

I don't really have time to write. But it needs to be said, so I'll make it brief.

Did you catch this week's episode of House, M.D.? There was a pregnant woman having deadly complications that would have easily been solved by aborting the pregnancy. House referred to the "fetus" as a parasite getting in the way of his real patient--the mother, who was a real person. Cuddy, a woman, referred to the "baby" as a patient too that should be saved by any means if at all possible. She took charge of the case and, thus, went about trying to save the lives of both the mother and child. House, at every step, recommended removing the fetus. They end up opening up the womb to do surgery on the 21-month-old baby, which will in turn heal the mother. It turns out this procedure was successful and both lives were saved.

I thought the episode was good, thought-provoking and entertaining. What I was curious about after were viewer reactions. So I went to the website. I found a poll asking "Who did you think was eventually going to be right about saving Emma (the mother)?" As of right now, sixty-two percent said House. On the message boards the first night, people were talking about how touched they were and how, even though everything turned out okay, Cuddy should not have let her emotions get in the way of her objective judgment as a doctor.

I'm beside myself here! WHY IS TRYING TO SAVE THE LIFE OF A MOTHER AND CHILD LABELED AS EMOTIONAL, OUTSIDE THE CATEGORY OF RATIONAL AND OBJECTIVE? It is because many people see this as a choice between science/medicine and emotion/opinion. I see it as a question of ethics/morality. Without going into details now, Morality is as objective as Beauty, Logic and bare facts. For example, the human body is a beautiful work of art; 2+2=4; I just ate a banana. All of these statements are objectively true.

The statement that "a fetus is a person" is in the realm of objective ontology (either he is or it isn't; just because scientific inquiry cannot shed light on the matter does not mean we cannot know). If the fetus is a full human person, and if a doctor's duty is to save people's lives, then the fetus should be treated equally; this is an objective question of morality and ethics. I'm not ignoring the fact that people differ in their assessment of the nature of a human fetus. Nevertheless, it is an ontological and ethical question for which a reasonable case can be made on either side of the argument. Whether Cuddy treated the baby is not a question of emotion but of ethics. Her actions simple must follow from her understanding of the facts: that the baby is a person. If the baby is a person, it is only right to treat him and morally detestable not to. (Emotion may accompany reason, but is not the bassis of the course of action; compassion, btw, is also ethical and reasonable).

Now, House was also acting on his understanding of the facts: that the fetus is not a person until it is born. Was he being emotional? Maybe, but I think not. What this shows is a disagreement about a factual question.

What is implied in the viewers' responses is really a preference for "science" as a source of knowledge over other ways of knowing. They assume all scientists and doctors agree that we are not people until our birthday. Of course, this is not the expertise of science, but of philosophy and religion. Science can only descriptively tell you about the physical development of a human being, not about its personhood (note: fetus is a term denoting a stage of physical development, like embryo, toddler, or teenager). Calling Cuddy emotional is unwittingly admitting to a simplistic and unheathly disrespect (or, charitably, ignorance) for philosophy, morality and religion and a dangerous worship of science.

My next, related question is, "WHY IS IT OKAY FOR THE HISTORY CHANNEL TO AIR SHOWS BASED PURELY ON SPECULATION AS LONG AS THE TOPIC IS CHRISTIANITY OR RELIGION?" I don't watch the history channel a lot. But earlier there was a show about Rome filled with reliable facts and reasonable explanations of certain episodes in history. You can tell the writers of the show knew their stuff and tried to be as accurate as possible, while maintaining a certain entertainment value. But all night they have been airing fanciful tale after fanciful tale about the suppression of information in Christianity. They say things like, "after much heated debate many documents did not make the final cut of the New Testament" (which is patently false). They interview "experts" who are only really experts in being creative with historical facts. They blatantly compete to be the first, best, most inventive re-teller of religious history. They look for a twist. Why is rampant speculation allowed on the History Channel? What if all they ever aired was their best attempt at presenting the facts? I think such a show would look so much like the truth and power of the gospel that they would fear they've produced "religious," even evangelistic, programming, or at least a show that portrays Christianity in a positive light. I don't know if anyone is ready to do such a thing. I mean, can you imagine if history showed Christianity were actually true?

Again, the "sciences" of historiograhy, archeology, anthropology and the like are seen as authorities, and anything outside of science fanciful. So when religion turns out to be cold hard fact, people with such a bias are forced to either seriously consider the implications or recast reality as mythically and fancifully as possible. Since, in their minds science and religion are somehow analogous to fact and fiction, they stunt their imagination by never allowing the two to meet, even by testimony of the facts. Talk about "in the box" thinking!