Why wouldn't we?
Last night, I sat and overlooked the Chesapeake and its primal beauty and thought of a comment I once heard:
"I feel bad for atheists because when they look at an inspiring sunset, they have nobody to thank."
Felt so good to be able to brag about God to God.
The scene took me down a trail of vivid memories. I thought of all the places I've experienced the abundance of His creation, and an overwhelming desire to worship. Because let's be honest, worship to God with God could be easily understood as odd. It can be a seemingly strange practice, right?
It's moments like these that I cherish, that boldly remind me that I don't have to worship the One True God. I get to. I get to reposition my heart. I get to reconnect with the One who's formed me and knows me. I get to remind myself that EVERY good and perfect gift comes from above.
We were wired to worship. One way or another, we all do. The question then isn't why do we worship God? It's why wouldn't we? Why settle for anything less?
My friend wrote an email that was sent immediately following my time with the sun falling off the horizon. Thought it was so appropriate and in tune with what I was sensing on a more cosmic and biblical level:
"God’s covenant with Noah struck me as so incredibly profound. On more than one occasion, God tells Noah that this covenant would be with him and “all life on earth.” Brother, this means that if we are inheritors of the first and founding biblical covenant with God, we are covenanted with all of life. To covenant ourselves with this God is to unreservedly covenant ourselves with all of life, to bind ourselves to life, to sacredly devote our lives to “all life on earth.” I can say that I honestly believe that anything less than this is un-Christian or even anti-Christian.
Related to this, I’ve been meditating on the seemingly boring closing chapters of Exodus, where Moses is dictating all of the minute instructions about the construction of the Tabernacle. What is so radical about these chapters and their theology is that Moses is clearly modeling the building of the Tabernacle off of the creation of the world in Genesis 1. The underlying and larger point of the text seems to be that the earliest worship of Israel was a world-building worship. It was not just typical ancient Near Eastern exaltation of a divinity; it was a radical theological claim: Israel’s worship was to be patterned after and straining toward the re-building of the world, the healing of the world. In this way, it was to be a continuation of God’s covenant with Noah, now in a very precise ritual setting but with the exact spirit. And, brothers, this is where my own theology and spirituality is so resolutely landing: anything purportedly Christian that cannot answer to this larger “covenant with all of life on earth” and Jesus’ coming down “for the life of the world” is simply not Christian. It may be spiritual, religious, a spinoff of Christianity. But it is not Christian. Any criticism of the world that is not more foundationally for the world is not Christian. Any rejection of the ways of the world that is not simultaneously a subversive embodiment of a more original and authentic way of being worldly and in the world is not Christian.
Certainly, millions of Christians all over the world disagree with me, but at some point one must distill and sum up what one takes to be most fundamentally Christian, and this is it for me: “for the life of the world” in physical embodiment, gender, language, history, geography, culture, self-transcendence, finitude in all its forms. I’ve never felt more comfortable to cast my dye here."
"I feel bad for atheists because when they look at an inspiring sunset, they have nobody to thank."
Felt so good to be able to brag about God to God.
The scene took me down a trail of vivid memories. I thought of all the places I've experienced the abundance of His creation, and an overwhelming desire to worship. Because let's be honest, worship to God with God could be easily understood as odd. It can be a seemingly strange practice, right?
It's moments like these that I cherish, that boldly remind me that I don't have to worship the One True God. I get to. I get to reposition my heart. I get to reconnect with the One who's formed me and knows me. I get to remind myself that EVERY good and perfect gift comes from above.
We were wired to worship. One way or another, we all do. The question then isn't why do we worship God? It's why wouldn't we? Why settle for anything less?
My friend wrote an email that was sent immediately following my time with the sun falling off the horizon. Thought it was so appropriate and in tune with what I was sensing on a more cosmic and biblical level:
"God’s covenant with Noah struck me as so incredibly profound. On more than one occasion, God tells Noah that this covenant would be with him and “all life on earth.” Brother, this means that if we are inheritors of the first and founding biblical covenant with God, we are covenanted with all of life. To covenant ourselves with this God is to unreservedly covenant ourselves with all of life, to bind ourselves to life, to sacredly devote our lives to “all life on earth.” I can say that I honestly believe that anything less than this is un-Christian or even anti-Christian.
Related to this, I’ve been meditating on the seemingly boring closing chapters of Exodus, where Moses is dictating all of the minute instructions about the construction of the Tabernacle. What is so radical about these chapters and their theology is that Moses is clearly modeling the building of the Tabernacle off of the creation of the world in Genesis 1. The underlying and larger point of the text seems to be that the earliest worship of Israel was a world-building worship. It was not just typical ancient Near Eastern exaltation of a divinity; it was a radical theological claim: Israel’s worship was to be patterned after and straining toward the re-building of the world, the healing of the world. In this way, it was to be a continuation of God’s covenant with Noah, now in a very precise ritual setting but with the exact spirit. And, brothers, this is where my own theology and spirituality is so resolutely landing: anything purportedly Christian that cannot answer to this larger “covenant with all of life on earth” and Jesus’ coming down “for the life of the world” is simply not Christian. It may be spiritual, religious, a spinoff of Christianity. But it is not Christian. Any criticism of the world that is not more foundationally for the world is not Christian. Any rejection of the ways of the world that is not simultaneously a subversive embodiment of a more original and authentic way of being worldly and in the world is not Christian.
Certainly, millions of Christians all over the world disagree with me, but at some point one must distill and sum up what one takes to be most fundamentally Christian, and this is it for me: “for the life of the world” in physical embodiment, gender, language, history, geography, culture, self-transcendence, finitude in all its forms. I’ve never felt more comfortable to cast my dye here."
posted by dcschmiddy at 7:16 PM
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