Emotional Worship

How does God’s plan for creation figure into how the people of God should worship?  Answering this question would allow us to consider how communal worship grows out of the very foundation of reality.  

Worship was not birthed in a vacuum, indeed the theology and praxis of worship come to us in the context of history and revelation.  In the beginning God created and ordered all things.  In the garden, the order of God was rejected by Adam and Eve, God’s place in their lives was usurped by their own selfish rule.  The Redeeming work of God, through Israel and ultimately through the faithful Israelite, Jesus (N. T. Wright, Justification) has drawn all humanity back into God’s Holy Presence.  There we are to live and commune with Him, and with each other.  The plan of God has been restored through Jesus Christ.  One cannon understand worship apart from this meta-narrative.  

Worship cannot be merely relegated to an abstract form or function of the Christian life.  To be sure, the essence of worship is not an informational matter, where we inform God of His greatness, glory, holiness, supremacy, etc… God does not need our opinion on the matter of His greatness and our finitude.  God is neither ignorant, nor an egomaniac.  If ever a being existed that was complete and absolutely confident and secure in his identity it is God. Worship is not informational in that we should inform ourselves and others of our lack, limitedness, and great need.  It does not please God that we should beat upon ourselves with our own finitude.  Rather, it seems that such practices are only for our own gratification.  Odd and yet not surprising that what we paint as worship to God, should turn out being another way that we would worship and accommodate ourselves.  

A cautionary note is needed at this point.  I noted that worship is not merely information, however, this does not suggest that worship does not offer some much needed information.  Indeed, worship does cause humanity to realize and appreciate his finitude and great need of God.  This is an important aspect of worship.  However, this information in isolated from the redeeming and restorative implications of the meta-narrative, is at best wide of the mark of worship.

In a similar fashion, worship is not merely an emotional experience.  God is the creator of all things, including emotions.  However, emotional feeling and expression in isolation from the meta-narrative is misguided.  Human emotion always comes within a historical context.  If a person’s emotional feelings and expressions are not in some fashion related to the greater story of God’s restoration of all things (Including that person), then it is couched in an alternate historical reality.  

The Meta-narrative of God’s work through Jesus for the salvation of the world, is the historical reality out of which all people live.  An individual person is not forced to embrace this understanding of reality, however, their embrace or rejection does not cause this meta-narrative reality to be any more true or false.  The creator and definer of all reality has revealed the world to be this way, and acted in the world in this fashion; the validity of the meta-narrative and God’s plan which precedes it is not up for debate.