Could we as a Christian society possibly have misunderstood the word worship?
In the old testament, worship was a type of sacrafice. Whereas praise was the actual act of singing and dancing to Jehova. The New testament rarely used the word worship because it actually meant to sacrafice something to God. However, because Christ was the ultimate sacrifice there is no longer a need for worship in its literal meaning.
Today worship has become a sort of concert. And at the end of the worship session we talk about how "good" it was. We use words and ask questions that we would use after watching a movie. "Worship was terrible today," or "It was really moving." There is no longer real worship, or praise for that matter, which comes from the heart. It has become a way of entertainment.
What is even more frustraiting is that worship songs have become so redundant and reptitive that the lyrics are borderline meaningless. There are no longer words which are filled with as much emotion and theology as there are in the old hymns. "Amazing grace how sweet the sound, that it would save a wretch like me." The song "Come Thou Font" is another perfect example of what is so prevelant in the Christian walk. "Prone to wander Lord I feel it, prone to leave the God I love!" To often Christian lyrics try to give solutions to problems that they refuse to face.
This I believe is an excellent example of the uninteligent Christianity that we face today. Theology no longer matters. Knowing what you believe is no longer a priority. Thereby giving people the liberty to justify what the Bible calls sin. Music has such a profound affect on people that is often underestimated. Worship more so because it is supposed to lead people into the throne room of God.
Now this is not to say that all worship is bad. There are some great worship tunes that I enjoy singing and playing too. It just happens to be that the vast majority of worship songs seem so watered down.
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"He who is our very life came down and took our death upon himself. He slew our death by his abundant life and summoned us in a voice of thunder to return to him in his hidden place, that place from which he set out to come to us when first he entered the Virgin's womb." ~St. Augustine
1 comment:
AMEN! Worship doesn't have any direct connotation to music, and "Worship" as we now consider it has (for the most part) NO direct connotation to God. It is all about ME, how God makes ME feel or some proclamation of MY service or else how much it makes ME want to serve Him. It makes one wonder, in sending His Son to save us, is God the Father more concerned with MY service, or with Christ's? Maybe we should be praising Christ's work, not ours (unless we want to have a "self esteem service" on Wednesday nights so we all walk away "feeling rejuvenated" in OUR endeavors). Like you said, theology is considered to hold little importance these days, and then we sit around trying to figure out how to make our church more enthusiastic; about WHAT??? You have to have a foundation, you have to have theology, and you have to have the Gospel - the reason for any kind of gratitude. Yes, you have definitely opened up a NECESSARY can of worms.
“You can make your life look good, and you can do what Jesus would, but you’d be surprised what you can do with a hard heart”. – Derek Webb (Ballad in Deep Red)
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