A few thoughts to share before I try to get some homework done.
Does God get insulted by sentimentality in worship?
I was talking to a friend yesterday about worship - he knows someone who thinks that it's wrong to get too emotional when worshipping God because it's giving God something that should be reserved for people. This isn't exactly what he said, but it's the same general idea. He was saying that worship songs that repeat the same lines over and over and are overly sentimental are wrong, because it evokes a feeling "like what we would feel toward our girlfriend." To this person, worship seemed to be little more than reciting lines of theology, with a melody to the words.
I don't see how this type of worship could be more honoring to God than the type that is more overtly emotional. What should we be doing when we are singing to, about, or for Him? Does God delight more in our knowledge of Him or in our love for Him? Well.. there is a familiar passage about this. I find it quite appropriate.
It is this: "If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing."
It sure seems to me that we could recite the most clear and precise theology of anyone, and it could be that we are nothing more than a bothersome noise to the ears of God. Pretty crazy right? But note that I said could be, not always is that the case. But then, what exactly is love? If it doesn't matter (in one sense) what we know, say, or understand, then how do we love God?
While love is probably infinitely complicated, I think it can be divided into two elements, emotion and commitment.
I was thinking about this today and it struck me that our relationship to God is more like a human relationship that I had perhaps previously thought.
So take these two elements - emotion, and devotion. One is purely an experience, a feeling, a fleeting interaction of our soul with our body that creates, well, feelings. When worshipping, this can become overwhelmingly strong and can cause some very intense reactions and feelings - hence why people cry, dance, kneel, etc. during worship. I have heard the word "ecstasy" used when describing an emotional interaction with God. It really can be powerful. But should we suppress it? Is there a moment when this gets out of hand or becomes sinful? Yes. People can seek this emotional high to the neglect of God Himself. Emotions do some crazy stuff in our bodies - they can literally make us feel high as if we were taking drugs. So it's not too much of a stretch to say that people can "worship" for the sole purpose of selfishly taking what makes them feel good. We seek the emotion without any sort of commitment. How insulting. It's a perversion of worship, really. It's like having sex before marriage - all we want is the physical and emotional satisfaction, but the committed relationship that is the only proper context for that satisfaction isn't there. It is a very incomplete picture indeed.
The other element of worship is chiefly intellectual. It is asserting our relationship with God, reminding ourselves of who He is, and yes, understanding theologically accurate lines of a song. This kind of devotion by itself is a cold, unappreciative commitment to follow someone or something. It is like walking up to your earthly father, and saying monotone, "I know you are a good dad, and you have sacrificed a lot for me when you were raising me. You have always fed me and been there for me. so thank you," and then leaving. This alone does have some worth, but it is really lacking, is it not? If this happened between me and my child I would probably be really confused and weirded out. How much more appropriate and complete would it be to say this to our dad with emotion, and to follow through by giving your dad a big smile and a hug? Right?
BUT.
It wouldn't make sense for us to go running to our father sobbing, overcome with love for him, to throw our arms around him and weep on his shoulder and say how much we love him, and then turn around and immediately disobey him right in front of his face, would it? This emotional interaction is completely empty if we don't prove it with our lifestyle. He will soon begin to realize that we don't really love him if all we do is cause him tons of grief, never listening to the guidelines that he lovingly gives us for our protection. Emotional love alone is not love. It acts and looks like love for a time, but in the end it is just a huge facade and an insult. How painful would it be for a father to see his child do this? Extremely. It doesn't make any sense at all, and it is like toying with your father's heart, raising it up and giving it great joy and hope, and then right at the peak of the ecstatic experience, throwing it in the garbage. We are saying "All I wanted from you is to give me the experience of loving me. I got my emotional fix from you and I'm going to ignore you now." How destructive. If we said this to our spouse, they would be devastated. This is absolutely not how love works. And we should certainly be very wary of this when we worship!! There are people who do this all the time. I am so strongly convicted that our emotional experiences with God should drive us to be more committed to Him, to act differently and to prove that we do actually love Him like the emotions themselves say we do. This is the only way to worship that makes any sense.
This is not to say, however, that hymns or the more formal and staunch forms of worship are always like this. The difference between singing Hillsong or How Great Thou Art is not even close to enough to say that either one is always wrong - it's just that if taken to the extreme, these two styles of worship can lead to these two different ways of sucking the life out of how we worship God. We don't have to always be super emotional when we worship - in fact, we can't. At least I can't. If my heart just isn't in tune with what is going on, the emotional part of worship will be very much diminished, but this of course does not make worship futile or worthless. But if we never have some measure of an emotional response when worshipping God, I would argue that something is wrong. Can you be married to someone and never want to hug them, never experience any good emotions about them at all? Probably not unless there is something wrong.
So, commitment by itself is lacking.
And emotion by itself is worthless and chaotic.
So, there needs to be a balance of both.
Commitment is the necessary context of emotion.
We validate our emotions by our commitment.
Commitment is the voice box that gives us the ability to sing, the floor that gives our feet something to dance on.
How could it be wrong to give heartfelt thanks and to just feel strongly toward your Father? I don't think there is any level of sentimentality that is wrong to give to God. Why would there be? There is no type of love that we should withhold from Him, even the most sappy and sentimental and ecstatic. But we absolutely musn't leave it at that. If we actually do love Him, we will be committed to Him, even in the times when all we feel toward Him is hate. There are certainly times when we are all angry with our earthly fathers, but this does not excuse our rebellion against them.
These things can't exist apart from each other, or our worship would be either utterly heartless and cold or completely chaotic and without foundation. But how very sweet it is when our emotions line up with our commitment - when the fleeting is right in tune with the concrete - when what we feel like doing is the same as what we should do. When what God wants from us is exactly what we want to give to Him. Seriously even thinking about that just made my heart jump a bit. It is such a beautiful picture. Seriously, what a crazy thing that is. What amazing moments those are. I think that everything I just said applies to any relationship, to differing extents.
One last thing - the amount of words in a song has nothing to do with how worshipful or appropriate the song is. There is something good about repeating the words "Your grace is enough," or "lover of my soul, I want to live for You," or "I will exalt You, You are my God." I am convinced that we
will never (before heaven) have a perfect understanding of any attribute of God, or of any part of Scripture for that matter. As David said, "How precious to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them! If I would count them, they are more than the sand."
And as Job said, "Surely I spoke of things I did not understand, things too wonderful for me to know.
And as God Himself said, "As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts."
So what is wrong about focusing on one idea, dwelling on it for a long time and repeating it? Nothing. I usually prefer this way actually. Breadth isn't worth much without some level of depth. The truth that God's grace is enough to cover all of our sins is not something that can be grasped by a fleeting thought. It deserves time in our minds.
"These people come near to me with their mouth and honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me."
Please, let this not be any of us. Seek closeness with God both in action and in your heart - because apart from one another, they are meaningless - of no real substance.
