Joseph wrote this guest post about the American worship experience in the local church. He plays the guitar, sings, leads worship, and is a Christian committed to serving Jesus. Hear what he has to say about the way we worship God.Over the last few weeks I have witnessed several symptoms in my local church, and in the American church that seem to indicate an unhealthy relationship with Jesus. I will illustrate it this way. The other night I watched the popular movie: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. During this film the main character Benjamin has an affair with another man’s wife for an extended period of time. The relationship is characterized by infatuation, sex, and excitement. The rules are that he must never look at her after sunrise, and they can never tell the other “I love you”.
Their affair ends one day when Benjamin finds a note that reads, “It was nice to have met you”. She had effectively compartmentalized him into certain parts of her life, allowing him only far enough into her life to feel pleasure, and emotional connection for a time. If they had met later on down life’s road perhaps she would have looked at him and said “I never knew you.” This is the kind of relationship that I fear some modern Christians have with the Lord Jesus
Recently at a ‘night of worship and prayer’ I looked around at the three hundred or so college age students gathered for this ‘event’. There was excitement in the air as the band got plugged in and set up on stage. With a charismatic four count from the lead guitarist, the band came in all at once and the crowd went wild. There were hands raised, voices lifted, and even some spontaneous exclamations of praise you Jesus’ from those most moved.
I also visited a web site not long ago devoted to a Christian conference that tours the United States. Clicking around the web site I came upon an overview page displaying a brief description of each feature of the conference. This is what I found under the heading “Serious Worship”: “Creating an atmosphere of life-altering, face to face time with God”.
There is a tendency, which this web site exposes, and which can be seen in the night of worship and prayer, to depend on music to bring one close to God. The dangerous bit of this web page’s description of “serious worship” is not the desire to have time face to face with God, and not the desire to see lives altered by it. The part that causes concern is that it all depends on creating the right kind of atmosphere to make life altering, face to face time with God possible.
The concern is not the raising of hands, or the spontaneous exclamations of praise; the concern is that these moments of passion are limited to times when the worship music is exceptionally good.
When people compartmentalize their relationship with God, they are having something not very different from an affair. We are, after all, in a relationship with God, so why mightn’t some of the worst cases between man and God resemble some of the worst cases between man and woman? The similarity I am drawing between an affair, and a certain kind of relationship with God is this: when an individual has an extra-marital relationship, that person finds some, but not all, of the qualities in the adulterous relationship that might be expected in a marriage.
In a marriage you might expect commitment, faithfulness, trust, love, deep-rooted confidence in the others character, sex, excitement, and we could go on and on. In an affair one would find sex, infatuation, and perhaps excitement as well. In the same way (or at least in a very similar way) some Christians seem to have only an emotional relationship with God, based on how they feel about God in general, and largely dependant on the worship band on Sunday mornings.
Faith that is dependent on what we call worship music is a faith that becomes compartmentalized, manifesting one kind of person during a worship set, and a completely different person the rest of the time. In some sense (if you will allow me) these people metaphorically have “sex” with God during “worship” but have no relationship with Him independent of their encounter with Him during these sort of situations. There is not commitment, faithfulness, trust, love, and deep-rooted confidence in His character. There is only excitement and an emotional experience conceivably similar to having sex outside of marriage.
My greatest concern regarding this sort of relationship with Jesus is that these people, though perhaps sincere, have allowed God into only certain compartments of their life, allowing Him to be only prominent in their lives, but not preeminent.
Conceivably these people will meet the Lord at the end of life’s road and he will say to them “I never knew you”. This metaphor, like all metaphors, breaks down. Although for the most part it has achieved it’s purpose in illustrating the danger of a compartmentalized relationship with Jesus, I want to make it very clear that though people may treat their relationship with Jesus as they might an affair, Jesus will never be involved in any kind of adulterous relationship.
Let this metaphor serve only as an example of how some Christians treat their relationship with God. In other words, though you may compartmentalize your relationship with Him, He will never compartmentalize His relationship with you.
Worship has never been about us. It has never been about how we feel. The goal has never been to cry or dance or encounter God. It has always been about coming to God in humility; thanking and praising Him for who He is and what He has done. The goal is offering something rather than demanding something. Worship has always been about allowing God to knock down the walls of the compartments that we have constructed, in order to make Him preeminent rather than just prominent in our lives. Somewhere along the way folks lost sight of that, and constructed the idea of a “worship experience.”
It is wonderful to encounter God, and have our lives changed while singing of His goodness, but that was never the goal and when it became the goal we started breeding a kind of Christian who is dependent on something other than God to sustain their relationship with Him.
My desire is that Christ would be preeminent in my life and in your life. This was not written to bash the church, it was written to perhaps illuminate a possibly devastating tendency, and point to Christ as the only solver of that problem. When Christ becomes preeminent, our worship will be a posture of the heart, not dependant on a moving arrangement of Amazing Grace or on any music. Our worship of God will be independent of anything except God Himself.
I pray that our relationship with God would be characterized by all of the features that characterize a healthy marriage. That we would develop commitment to Him as we recognize His commitment to us. As we discover His faithfulness to us daily and in the Scriptures that we would remain faithful to Him, and that out of that might grow trust, love, and deep-rooted confidence in His character. We are the Bride of Christ.
Image by: susieq3c