The Foolishness of Worship in a Post-Christian Culture
In one episode of the NBC classic Parks & Rec, a local cult group comes to reserve a park when they have calculated it’s time for the world to end—for a dragon to come burn the earth. But they’re called “The Reasonableists.” Why? Because that helps them get a reservation. They seem so reasonable!
I often think of this fictional group when I’m at church. I help lead a wonderful, spiritually alert church in a highly secular university town. It makes sense that we’d be a reasonable church.
The environment around us is secular, meaning it’s not anti-religious, it’s just a-religious. Many of my peers have not grown up in the church, and they don’t have a “God-sized hole” that we can just come along and fill. In fact, they don’t have any sense that they’re missing anything at all.
In a predominantly secular culture, people find ways of constructing meaning and finding satisfaction to provide what they’re looking for in life—all apart from God and religion. As philosopher James KA Smith has written, secularism is the pursuit of “significance without transcendence.”
The Reasonableists: Secularism at Church
While many more competent scholars and leaders are answering the question, How do we reach this secular culture?, my question is often, How has this secular culture reached us?
Based on my years of leadership in evangelical churches, I’m afraid we often believe like secularists—worse yet, we worship like secularists. (This is most especially true in my Reformed, majority-white context, and we have much to learn from majority non-white churches here!)
Secularism sees a one-dimensional world and demands that everything you do be able to be defined, defended, and analyzed. It makes me think: Bible study is reasonable. Small group discussion is reasonable. Standing in worship is reasonable. But singing loudly and moving your body? Highly unreasonable!
And yet, worship is what we were created to do. It’s in our God-given DNA. It’s why we want to identify with something or someone who can give us value and satisfaction. It’s why we praise great accomplishments and cheer at sports events. It’s why we sing at pop concerts and dance at weddings. We are born worshippers.
I’ve been thinking recently of a well-known scene in the life of King David—a moment that I think is especially helpful for us in a post-Christian culture.
Worship Is a Matter of Life and Death
Shortly after David became king, he sought to renew Israel’s worship and called for the ark of the covenant to be brought to Jerusalem. He gathered 30,000 young men and went down to Baalah to bring up the ark.
The brothers Uzzah and Ahio, priests in that area, plan the transport—a cart is chosen to move the ark along the three-mile journey to the Holy City. David and his companions go along with it, worshipping and celebrating with every known instrument.
The ark, we remember, was a divine physical representation of the presence of God. God was especially manifest in his presence with the ark of the covenant, and in the hundreds of years between Moses and David, it had been carefully protected and maintained. God had previously given very particular rules about how the ark could be moved, carried by a cart or only on poles and never touched by human hands.
Not long into the journey, the oxen pulling the cart stumbled, and Uzzah reached out his hand to steady the ark. As it is written: The Lord’s anger burned against Uzzah because of his irreverent act; therefore God struck him down, and he died there beside the ark of God” (1 Samuel 6:7). David is overwhelmed with grief and puts the move on hold till he can get his wits about him.
It’s a troubling account. Why would God strike down someone who means well, is trying to do his best to serve God? But remember: the holiness of God’s character is expressed in this ark, and Israel has been treating God with little reverence in worship and obedience.
The late Eugene Peterson notes that Uzzah’s main job in life was to protect the ark, and he knew the rules better than anyone. In fact, he may have easily over-identified with his role and been filled with pride, believing that it was his job to keep God safe and to keep Israel in line. It was likely his idea to use a cart (a Philistine invention) to move the ark quickly. He was (in this view) a proud, secular-minded, efficient man. He thought he was in charge of God.
Soon after, David again calls the people together, and they begin to bring up the ark of the Lord again—this time with an even bigger marching band.
They are now fully aware that they’re in the presence of God, and complete worship and obedience is imperative. The story tells us: “When those who were carrying the ark of the Lord had taken six steps, he sacrificed a bull and a fattened calf” (1 Samuel 6:13).
Doesn’t that seem crazy? A little math suggests that the Israelites stopped to conduct more than one thousand worship services along the way. It would have taken months to get back to Jerusalem. Worshipping all day, every day, six steps at a time.
The ‘Foolishness’ of David’s Worship
This is foolishness, in a worldly sense. Not efficient. Not a great use of time. Thousands of animals had to die.
But for David, no amount of time is too long, and no number of sacrifices is too high. It’s not so much about “getting it right” as much as it was about “honoring God with all our might.”
King David knew this: Worship is foolishness to the world and delightful to God.
What good is singing and dancing and making sacrifices? On a human level, it doesn’t do anything! If God isn’t real, it’s a supreme waste of time and energy, and it’s a joke to everyone else around. (And did I mention all the animals?)
Worship, then, is a compelling test: How we worship reveals what we think and believe and feel about God.
The narrative ends as David and the people reach the Holy City. David is down to his linen ephod, and his wife, Michal, sees him from her high palatial window. It says, “she despised him in her heart.”
Now, David was not being immodest; he was simply being un-kingly. “He should be somber and solemn,” Michal probably thought. “He should be wearing fancy, formal clothes and giving orders.” It reminds me of how Israel wanted a king—one like the other nations had—in the first place. But God didn’t give them the king they deserved; he gave them a man after his own heart.
After a generous celebration at the sanctuary, including over-the-top gifts for every household in all Israel, David returned home. Immediately, Michal criticized him for his foolishness. David’s response is the climax of the story:
“I will celebrate before the Lord. I will become even more undignified than this, and I will be humiliated in my own eyes. But by these [others] you spoke of, I will be held in honor” (verses 21-22).
This is the heart of worship—an inner experience of God leading to an outer expression of praise.
Worship’s Outward Expression
Worship is, as John Piper once wrote, “an inner, authentic, godward experience of the heart.” But this inner experience also has an outward element. He continues:
“The inner essence of worship is to know God truly and then respond from the heart to that knowledge by valuing God, treasuring God, prizing God, enjoying God, being satisfied with God above all earthly things. And then that deep, restful, joyful satisfaction in God overflows in demonstrable acts of praise from the lips and demonstrable acts of love in serving others for the sake of Christ.”
I think these two expressions of worship form a helpful distinction: Worship is loving and treasuring of God above all things. And then that inner adoring of God above all else takes an outward expression—praising God with all our strength and bodily energy. That’s why singing is such a tangible expression of our worship of God.
If our singing is indifferent, apathetic, and carefully measured, what does that say of our inner experience of God?
Of course, I am all for thoughtful, orderly, explainable worship. I believe in songs that have real depth to them, whether they’re old hymns or contemporary songs. We don’t have to create an atmosphere of high-energy loudness to get people hyped up. But we can and should lead one another in biblically rich, passionate, self-forgetful, top-of-the-lungs singing.
Our goal as believers—especially in secular, post-Christian communities—is not to “out-intellectualize” others. It could more rightly be to go on being our foolish selves and introduce others to transcendence for the first time. Perhaps what would draw a non-church-attending person into worship in the first place is a search for what can’t be found in the world—a sense of the transcendence.
An Exercise in Self-forgetfulness
Eugene Peterson writes, “Worship is the strategy by which we interrupt our preoccupation with ourselves and attend to the presence of God.” You may need to read that again. (I’ll wait.) Isn’t that beautiful?
We are whole human beings, embodied souls, and we always engage our bodies when we are worshipping—again, think of sports, concerts, and wedding receptions. Children don’t have to learn to express their heart’s happiness through movement. They have to learn restraint. They have to learn reasonableness. And thus, we often have to un-learn it as well.
As St. Irenaeus famously wrote, “The glory of God is a human being fully alive.” We don’t have to be careful and cautious with God—like Uzzah. We should not remain far off with arms folded while others worship—like Michal.
But like David, may we be women and men who are fully alive to God. Maybe we will be undignified, unreasonable, and foolish in the eyes of the world. Yet may our worship be delightful in the eyes of our God.
Jeremy Linneman is lead pastor of Trinity Community Church, a church he planted in Columbia, Missouri. Prior to planting Trinity, he was a staff pastor of Sojourn Community Church in Louisville, Kentucky, for seven years. He is author of Life-Giving Groups: “How-To” Grow Healthy, Multiplying Community Groups. Jeremy and his wife, Jessie, have three sons and spend most of their free time outdoors.
