This post has nothing to do shōjo manga, manga, comics, or even Japan (per se), but, hey, it’s my blog and I’ll do what I want with it. Sorry.
Lansdale United Methodist Church in Pennsylvania
I grew up, initially, in an “ordinarily” religious household, attending services weekly at the Lansdale Methodist Church in Pennsylvania. The head pastor at the time was the Reverend Dr. Burns Brodhead, an extremely intelligent, warm, and wryly funny man whom I have always held in the highest esteem, and who passed away last year at the age of 91, having lived a very full life. For reasons too messy to go into here, when I was about eleven years old, maybe twelve, my parents became “born again,” and switched to a “charismatic” church run by our neighbor in his basement. I do not believe he was an ordained minister.
Charismatic worshippers
His little church grew, and moved to increasingly large, yet always rented spaces. When I last attended, it was meeting in the gymnasium of a private religious school. At first I tried to go along with the changes, and prayed fervently to God. Yet the church, and particularly the “pastor,” made me extremely uncomfortable. I remember one time he had chosen a recent headline as the basis for a sermon. It seems there were patterns in the rings of Saturn that seemed anomalous. This self-ordained minister declared that God was intentionally defying his own laws of physics in order to show Man that Man could never understand His universe with Science alone. I remember looking around at the faces of the congregation and wondering if they could actually be taking such ravings seriously. Needless to say, the mystery of the rings was explained shortly afterwards as a result of previously undetected gravitational forces. And, needless to say, our pastor offered no correction nor admission of being wrong. At some point in my late teens, my parents switched churches again, this time to a much more mainstream, “normal” church, but by that time it was too late for me. I could not un-think all that I had thought in the interim. (I also learned that a few years after my parents left the charismatic church in question, the pastor was forced out by his own congregation. Presumably I was not the only one who thought the man was unhinged.)
Childhood fantasies
As a child, I was always fascinated by science. I was also fascinated by pseudo-science, and went through a phase of believing in Bigfoot, ancient alien visitors, you name it. At about the time I grew out of that phase, I also came to have serious doubts about Christianity and the existence of God. I remember vividly my much older brother challenging me with this paradoxical question: Can an omnipotent God create a stone that he himself cannot lift? This question set me on the path to atheism. (Ironically, that same brother turned back to Christianity many years later.) By the time I was thirteen, I could no longer take seriously the notion of a God who listens to everyone’s prayers and watches over their every thought and deed.
Buddhist Dharma Wheel
I began studying Buddhism, which struck me as far more logical and requiring far fewer leaps of faith. But I never became a Buddhist, because I saw no reason to accept the notion of reincarnation, and I saw no need to “formalize” my acceptance of certain Buddhist principles. I am, perhaps, a scientist by birth. I simply cannot accept an idea–certainly not an idea as radical as that of an invisible sky wizard obsessed with what every human being does with his or her genitals–without empirical evidence.
My favorite atheist slogan
Atheism is undergoing something of a surge in the U.S., to my surprise, but it’s not a surge with which I can be unconditionally thrilled. Every week brings some news of some little atheistic group somewhere doing their best to offend the religious and usually succeeding. Perhaps such people are recent “converts” to atheism, and still bear some profound grudge that makes them want to publicly give the finger to those who adhere to the faith that they themselves rejected. I have never had such an urge myself. Unfortunately, the actions of such people have inevitably resulted in a backlash, with similarly angry believers demonizing atheists and bemoaning a supposed war on religion.
Image from the web site of the Madison Baptist Church in Montreal
Which brings me to the point of this post. A lot of people I admire are devout Christians. They are intelligent, well-educated people. And I have to wonder how an intelligent, well-educated person accepts on faith (quite literally) many ideas that seem to me to defy reason. Of course, it’s not easy to put such questions directly to the believer. If I was one of these pugnacious atheists who delights in offending and embarrassing, I might, but I am not. While the believer may feel duty-bound to convert the unbeliever, for the sake of the unbeliever’s immortal soul, I see no reason why the unbeliever should similarly evangelize.
And if you don’t trust in God, then obviously you are not “we.”
You may believe that harm will come to me if I do not accept your beliefs, but I do not believe that harm will come to you or anyone else if you do not reject those beliefs. It is neither here nor there to me whether or not you believe in an invisible sky wizard.
And yet, my life is influenced, often in quantifiably negative ways, by the place of religion in the public life of the United States. As a child, I was dragged to church without regard for my own inclinations. I was forced five days a week to repeat a pledge of allegiance that was revised during the anti-Communist hysteria of the 1950s to include the phrase “under God.” I am forced to used currency that tells me “In God We Trust.” I am not represented in my government, because a majority of voters would prefer to vote for just about anyone other than an avowed atheist. I am forced to endure countless little humiliations, because atheists are seen as second-class citizens, and too few believers are willing to really stand up for freedom from religion.
And so I pose some serious questions to thinking, educated Christians. These questions are not intended to be snarky. They are not rhetorical questions. I am not interested in setting up straw men. I ask the questions in the sincere hope of receiving intelligent, reasoned responses, from Christians. I ask that Christians respond. Non-Christians may respond (respectfully) to the responses of Christians, but there’s really no point in me sitting here talking with non-Christians about questions I pose to Christians. Snarky, hostile comments, from either believers or unbelievers, will be deleted. There are plenty of places on the Internet for people to engage in flame wars about religion. Here, I will tolerate only reasoned, respectful discourse. Nonetheless, you should be prepared to defend your position. I will respond to your arguments with arguments of my own. Perhaps we won’t change each other’s minds (and, as I said, I’m not really interested in changing your mind), but perhaps one or both of us will move another reader in one direction or the other.
The Golden Rule
I will post my questions one at a time. Depending on the response I get, and how busy or inspired I am, I may post a new question once or day, once a week, or once a month. And feel free to pose questions to me. I ask only that you refrain from engaging in “fallacies of interrogation” (the famous example being, “Do you still beat your wife?”). And please try to avoid circular reasoning. Christians often point to scripture as “evidence,” but please do not forget that it only counts as evidence to those who accept scripture as “true.” And to say that the Bible is true because the Bible says it’s true…Well, that’s the very definition of circular reasoning, isn’t it? That is not to say that I don’t want you to refer to scripture. On the contrary, too many Christians make unsupported declarations about “God’s will” as if God sat down and told them his will in person. By all means, please reference scripture so that we know you are speaking for Christianity and not simply expressing your own personal philosophy. (Unless you are expressing your own personal philosophy, which is great; just let me know when that’s what you’re doing.) Let’s try to keep the conversation logical, civil, and pleasant, shall we?
Size of the observable universe
Let’s begin with certain facts that educated people should be able to accept without debate. (Feel free to add others, if you believe they are relevant and you can corroborate them with evidence.) Here are a few. The universe as we know it is between 13.713 and 13.831 billion years old. The universe extends no less than 46 billion light years in any direction from the Earth. (The seeming discrepancy between the age of the universe and the size of the observable universe is explained by the expansion of space.) Our Milky Way is roughly 100,000 light years in diameter, and there are believed to be no fewer than 100 billion galaxies in the observable universe. No one knows how many planets there are in the universe, but as of December 2012, Hubble alone has found “18,406 potential transiting planet signals” in our own galactic neighborhood alone, so it’s reasonable to assume that there are “lots and lots,” and that at least a few of those are not unlike our own Earth. The Earth is some 4.54 billion years old. Life, as we understand it, first appeared on Earth between 3.9 and 3.5 billion years ago. Life is apparently tenacious and resourceful, and capable of surviving in extreme conditions. Life on Earth changes through the process of evolution. Homo sapiens, the only surviving member of the genus homo, took on its current physical form some 200,000 years ago, and began to exhibit what is called “behavioral modernity” some 50,000 years ago.
Now, if you do not accept these facts as true, there is probably no way for us to have the kind of discussion I am hoping for, because you reject scientific consensus, and I have no interest in arguing with people who make up their own facts.
So finally I come to my first question. Always keeping in mind all of the shared facts listed above, please explain to me why God needs to be “worshipped,” and what exactly it means to “worship.”
NOTE: There was a problem with commenting, but it is now fixed. If you tried to comment earlier and failed, please try again!
Tags: atheism, christianity, debate, god, religion
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Comments are working again!
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I’m atheist so not gonna say much at this time. I just wanted to point out a couple typos–the age of the universe is missing the word “billion”, and life evolved billions of years ago, not millions.
Good luck!
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Hi Matt!
By way of full disclosure, I’m a Christian (a member of the Evangelical Covenant Church, if it helps) and a philosopher. My research is on aesthetic properties, so I’m not a proper expert on the things you’re asking about, but I teach on some of the topics I think you’re interested in, and I probably have a better-than-average understanding of the complexity. I have a high respect for empirical research, and I’m willing to grant your stipulations for the sake of conversation.
For the purposes of trying to answer your questions about worship, I’m going to stipulate (if I may) that God exists, and that more-or-less traditional Christianity, informed by the Bible, is more-or-less right about what God’s like.
If that’s the case, my understanding is that worship of God centers on giving credit where credit is due, acknowledging God’s nature as greater than ours. If this is so, humans should worship God because it is a matter of speaking truth, acknowledging truths that are very important- and reason demands that we seek truth and give our assent to it when we find it. This would all be quite consistent with Aristotle’s understanding of God, which was of a very impersonal being; as Christians understand God, however, he is a being whose nature is not only greater than ours, but is also a person. Furthermore, God is a person whose character we admire (wise, just, loving), and whose efforts on our behalf deserve our gratitude. This is also a kind of truth-speaking, or giving credit where credit is due. Finally, Christians worship God as a demonstration of belonging and identity (as family, and more). The feelings and attitudes that accompany worship range from awe, respect, gratitude, joy, and loyalty through pain and a desire for comfort, and anger and a desire for justice/understanding.
There’s nothing about all of the above that would require that worship happens in traditional church services, but in those cases, it is intentional, Christians are reminded of the truths that are at the core of worship, and it serves a further purpose to affirm each individual’s efforts to live in a manner befitting his/her beliefs as well as the communal effort to do so.
I don’t think any of the above is incompatible with a theistic evolutionary model; suppose we have a God who creates a world that unfolds into the ancient, vast universe you’ve described, in which creatures naturally develop into beings capable of self-awareness, understanding of the world around them, moral choice, and relationship with God- that sort of God seems to me to be no less worthy of worship than one who creates a finished product out of nothing in six days.
From what you’ve said about your childhood experience, I can only guess that the “worship” you were exposed to suffered from two things: first, a discontinuity with the larger faith community’s understanding of Christianity (as would any researcher whose work ignored scientific consensus), and second, an emphasis on experience and (possibly) an attendant dismissal of the value of careful thought.
I have several questions I’d love to ask you about your approach to this conversation, but I’ve already said a lot, so I’ll save them for now.
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artemisinin, thanks for the corrections!
Liz, thank you for the excellent and thoughtful response. Before posting my question, I actually did an Internet search for answers to this question, and yours is the most articulate expression of the most convincing arguments I found our there. Other response were less satisfying, to wit, you have no right to ask the question, since God is all-powerful and if He demands to be worshipped then you worship Him without question. I found an instance where one young Christian accused another young Christian of blasphemy for asking this question, and another told the same person that doubts come from Satan.
I would like to give your comments the careful response they deserve, so I’d like to think on it for a few days, if you don’t mind. In the meantime, I’ll jot down some things that come to mind. You present worship as something we should do, yet a great many verses in the Bible make clear that it is something we must do, and that we must do it thus and so, or else. If we stipulate the existence of a single creator God, I am not convinced that He/She/It is necessarily deserving of worship, for the very simple reason that there is no observable benefit to doing so. Natural disasters (and if we consider God to be perfect, all-powerful, and omniscient, then even horrors committed by people can be seen as “natural disasters” which God not only foresaw but planned) do not spare the devout Christian and strike only non-Christians. A “good” person is as likely to experience the most heart-breaking misfortune as is the the most cold-blooded of killers. But perhaps I am drifting into other Big Questions here.
But I think the question of “Why does God deserve to be worshipped?” is a fair one. Is it all about the afterlife? If we get it “right,” regardless of whatever misery we experienced in life, are we issued our harp and escorted through the Pearly Gates? And if we get it “wrong,” no matter how good we had it in life, are we handed our accordion and kicked down to the depths of Hell? (Apologies to accordionists. Blame Gary Larson.)
I hope others will respond to my questions. You’ve set the bar high, Liz, which is what I was hoping for. And feel free to ask me anything!
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I think we could safely add the following to your list of More Big Questions in order to stay on topic:
1. Does the good/evil we see in the world make it more or less rational to worship God?
2. Does true faith operate in conjunction with reason or in spite of it? (this has a bearing on how to evaluate the answers you found when you googled your initial question.)I can think of two things that might aid the progress of this conversation.
1. It would be nice to have some of your examples on the table of Bible verses that indicate we must worship God; I’m likewise asking some theologian friends if they can help me round up some examples indicating whether worship is an obligation, opportunity, etc.
2. It would be nice to disentangle some of the questions you’ve raised. I’ve taken a stab at what worship means, and indicated that I think it is the reasonable thing to do given a certain set of beliefs (and I assume that we ought to do what is reasonable). But we have additional questions as to whether God needs to be worshiped, deserves worship, requires/demands worship, or stands to benefit from worship… along with the underlying question about how we stand to benefit from worshiping. -
Hi Matt!
I am a Christian and a physicist (I teach at a liberal arts college in Pennsylvania). I generally concur with Liz’s post above, except that I fully embrace the general picture of the universe and its history that you have outlined (modulo the small corrections pointed out by artemisinin). In particular, the big bang theory (the standard model) provides an enormously successful picture of (most of) the evolution of the universe. The fact that we can now simulate the formation of stars and galaxies from diffuse clouds of gas using the laws of physics is nothing short of astonishing. The fact that as we push back in time toward the “beginning” the laws of physics become simpler and more unified is utterly amazing. That life can arise out of chemistry is mind boggling.
For me scientific explanations (not lack of explanations) lead to meaningful worship experiences. I want to see to physical connections between things and the mechanisms behind them. I cringed when I read your story about Saturn’s rings. Now I realize that not everyone shares my view, and that some people revel in the unexplained (and even rub your nose in it). However, that kind of thinking is not indicative of nor even exclusive to Christianity.
But as Liz points out, nature is only one occasion for worship and not really the most important one. Worship is relational. Maybe it’s like this: if you’re a king’s subject, you should honor him since he’s your king. But if you’ve never met him and all you know of him are his taxes, you may not want to honor him, nor see the point. But if you’ve met him, if you’ve sat at his table and ate, you become grateful and want to honor him, even while paying your taxes (well, maybe). Worship becomes a natural response to a Christian’s understanding of God and of himself in relation to God; it’s an expression of right relationship.
I think that your comment of worship not having observable benefits is only half right. It is true that worship is not a magic talisman for warding off evils: Jesus said that in this world we would have trouble, and Job praised the God who both gives and takes away. Worship is not about circumstances, but it can help us to accept and transcend our circumstances and remain content. That is certainly a tangible benefit.
I’m hesitant to take up the should/must issue because I think it would be unwise to engage in this kind of delicate nuance without consulting the original languages. But given that worship is good and right, then whether we should or must do it is bound together with whether we should or must do what is good or right in general.
One point of tension here that does deserve comment (and was implicit in some of the discussion you found online) is this: if we insist one ‘must’ worship does that leave no room for doubts and other negative thoughts or feelings? This cannot be the proper understanding of must for many of the Psalms openly express doubts an even anger (e.g. Psalm 88).
PS: I’m new to your blog, and I look forward to reading your regular posts about manga (being a fan myself)!
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Dan, thanks for the great comments. Wow! This is surpassing my wildest expectations! Too bad I’m too busy to respond right away. I hope other non-Christians will offer responses to Liz and Dan’s very intelligent comments.
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Look at you guys posting all un-aliased… I might have to invite another friend who’s ex-Christian but enjoys polite conversation if this thread doesn’t start regressing to the mean for internet discussions of religion. Though I don’t foresee that happening!
Based upon Liz’s comments above I can see worship being reasonable, but not worshipping only possibly as a fault of manners. Dan’s spin on it makes God’s jealousy more understandable–if you’re in a relationship with someone and they dump you, you tend to get mad. But again this is more a problem of bad manners on the part of the lackadaisical worshippers. I think the Bible depicts not worshipping (or worshipping the wrong entity) as a sin worse than just bad manners.
I’m typing from work and my break is now over, so I can’t go verse hunting until later.
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Thinking about artemisinin’s comments on bad manners: I tend to think that holding contradictory beliefs, or acting contrary to one’s knowledge, is not just unreasonable, it’s wrong. It demonstrates a lack of integrity in one’s person and thought, and makes one susceptible to all sorts of errors and resulting pain. The ancient Greek philosophers saw a very strong connection between truth and goodness (and likewise error and evil).
Working from the traditional Christian understanding of God, I am stipulating that God possesses a mind superior to mine and information that far surpasses mine, that he determined the laws of nature, and that reality is dependent on him for its beginning and continued existence. It seems to me that if all this is true, and I pretend it isn’t and that I owe him no respect (let alone gratitude), it’s not just bad manners on my part; it’s genuinely unethical. It would be like going to my aunt’s house and not just putting my feet on the sofa when I know she doesn’t like it, but taking the sofa out to the curb, using her credit card to order a new one, and pretending she wasn’t there protesting. Or, to make a connection with one of Matt’s frustrations, it would be like pretending there’s no scientific consensus and making up my own “facts” about the age of the universe.
So from my perspective, I ought to worship because it’s the reasonable, right, healthy, integrity-maintaining thing to do. From God’s perspective, I ought to worship because if I don’t, as an all-knowing, all-wise being he is entirely justified in both calling out my actions as erroneous (flouting truth, in fact) and in taking personal offense (because who could care more about truth than God?).
Should I worship? Yes, reason compels me to. Must I? Well, I personally believe I have genuine free will and am not being forced to do so. As a bonus, the rest of my nature (emotional, psychological, relational, etc.) finds its match (and more) in identifying with a God who is also more than a mind, my present life is richer (in non-material ways), and I get all kinds of tech support (increasing wisdom, connections with the Christian community, character growth and ability make the right choices). I think the resources for dealing with brokenness in my present life would make worship reasonable even if I weren’t offered a remedy for death.
I think all this is consistent, by the way, with Romans 12:1, where the Apostle Paul’s makes an appeal to worship (present oneself as a living sacrifice) as a reasonable service. The Greek word translated “reasonable” there can mean logical, or it can indicate a service/worship coming from the mind/soul/spirit (contrasted with a physical sacrifice). I see the two possible meanings as complementary.
That does return attention to the question of what worship is. Killing animals ceremonially? Singing and listening to a sermon on Sunday mornings? Giving rational assent to a creed or other collection of “things Christians believe”? Speaking in tongues? Doing justice, loving mercy, walking humbly with one’s God? Loving God and neighbor? Letting God transform one’s mind to increase true beliefs, decrease false ones, and living accordingly?
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Ow, that’s pretty harsh to humans! It’s hard not to hold contradictory beliefs. I’m constantly thinking that I both am going to choir practice Saturday morning and also going to go grocery shopping at the same time, and only realizing about 9:00 AM that I can only do one at a time. You only have to look at those logic puzzles where you have to ferry six people across the river in a little boat, but certain combinations of people cannot ride at the same time, to know that we’re not always that good at realizing when we come to a self-contradictory conclusion. I think a certain amount of confusion is all right in many cases, as a result of trying to make our brains do stuff they aren’t best suited for. Some level of double-think (my simultaneous choir practice and grocery shopping trips) are a result of sloppiness, which is undesirable but I wouldn’t exactly call a sin. I do agree that if a person believes God exists and believes he or she should worship but does not anyway than that is wrong for themselves to do in the absence of extenuating circumstances (like, say, if a suicide bomber believes the right thing to do is to blow up a cafe but sees a kid that reminds him of his niece and leaves instead, he betrayed his convictions but ended up doing the right thing!) But what if someone does not believe that God exists?
In passing, I don’t think that we have free will at all. I think if we knew everything about a certain person’s brain and the inputs going into it, we would be able to predict exactly what they would do. It’s not so much that we are being forced, but channeling into one possible option.
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Thanks for the pressure on that point. To come clean, that’s probably more the Aristotelian in me than the Christian. Aristotle’s ethics break down into two main sets of virtues, particular ethical virtues where you have to find a happy medium, like courage and temperance (and appropriate ambition, and wittiness… he’s got a pretty interesting set!) and intellectual virtues. The latter set include theoretical wisdom, scientific understanding, intuitive understanding, practical wisdom, and craft expertise. I see some strong connections between Aristotle’s discussion of practical wisdom, which is what allows people to discern the happy medium and right action, and the sort of practical wisdom promoted in the biblical book of Proverbs. But you may have just got an odd Christian out for my inclination to see things in an Aristotelian light (well, maybe an odd Protestant- Catholics influenced by Thomas Aquinas might have the same inclinations, since Aquinas was very Aristotelian). I don’t mean to focus on reason to the exclusion of the rest of human nature, either, really (I’m just a bit prone to it as a philosopher).
Regardless, I think the intellectual virtues- doing good science, being logical, etc.- are a matter of good and bad, things we should aspire to. But I’d like to think I’m pretty charitable when it comes to intellectual inconsistencies, and I suspect God is, too. People who are young, facing unfamiliar situations, etc. simply do lack wisdom, we’re subject to all kinds of societal/subconscious pressures, we don’t understand our own minds, we have to focus on practicalities, we have limits to our abstract reasoning… there are tons of reasons why it’s unrealistic to expect people to be completely consistent. I’m sure I hold a whole bunch of inconsistent beliefs myself, and don’t act consistently on what I do believe. But I still think it’s important to try for intellectual integrity. Incidentally, I haven’t figured out how much conceptual overlap I think there is between a “sin” and something that is “wrong.” I know most Christians would assume they mean the same thing, but I don’t want to assume that too quickly. It’s “wrong” to drive on left side of the road in America, but I’d hesitate to say it’s a “sin.” If someone doesn’t believe that God exists, then I think he/she would lose intellectual integrity by pretending otherwise, although I can see plenty of reasons why a person might think it’s worth the pretense (societal pressure, not hurting Grandma’s feelings, etc.). Additionally, I could see where someone was inclined towards theism or atheism, but uncertain, and there might be a whole range of reasonable actions that would follow, in terms of trying to work out the practical implications as a way of testing those beliefs.
I don’t actually know whether my brain’s wiring and inputs determine my beliefs and actions or if I have genuine options. But I think I ought to act as if I have free will and assume responsibility for what I believe and do, regardless… which amounts to just about the same thing.
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I apologize for throwing my question out there and then dropping off the face of the earth for a week or so. I was swamped, traveling to Tokyo for a friend’s wedding (same sex!), building a pair of lightsabers for a Japanese performer on a tight deadline, and translating Wandering Son, Volume 5. I’ve finally found a few minutes of free-ish time.
Again, really great comments, and really thought-provoking. But it may be almost too easy for very bright and knowledgeable people to more or less delineate their own personal philosophy in a compellingly logical and, dare I say, scientific way. This post is very specifically about Christianity, and so the big question that underlies every smaller question must be, “Why Christianity? Why not something else?” So we need to stay rooted in the accepted writings that comprise the Christian Bible and the two millennia of broadly accepted exegesis that supplements it.
Just the subject of worship alone looks like a swamp. I strongly suggest checking out The Net Bible, which is an amazing resource and probably the most accurate translation of the Bible into English that has ever been made. If you type “worship” into the search window at the top right, you’ll see at the top of the right-hand window a message reading, “There is a dictionary entry for: worship.” Click on that, and it will appear in the left-hand window. You’ll see complete entries from the International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, Nave’s Topical Bible Concordance, Easton’s Bible Dictionary, as well as Webster’s and Oxford. It’s pretty overwhelming!
The first explicit reference to worship I can find is in the story of Cain and Abel. (Genesis 4:1-5) “Abel took care of the flocks, while Cain cultivated the ground. At the designated time Cain brought some of the fruit of the ground for an offering to the Lord. But Abel brought some of the firstborn of his flock – even the fattest of them. And the Lord was pleased with Abel and his offering, but with Cain and his offering he was not pleased.” And we all know what happened after that. Then after God “regretted” creating not just man but all living things (Gen. 6:7, “I will wipe humankind, whom I have created, from the face of the earth – everything from humankind to animals, including creatures that move on the ground and birds of the air, for I regret that I have made them.”) and killed everything that was not on Noah’s boat:
Noah built an altar to the Lord. He then took some of every kind of clean animal and clean bird and offered burnt offerings on the altar. And the Lord smelled the soothing aroma and said to himself, “I will never again curse the ground because of humankind, even though the inclination of their minds is evil from childhood on. I will never again destroy everything that lives, as I have just done. While the earth continues to exist, planting time and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, and day and night will not cease.”
Now, these passages alone raise a slew of questions, but they would seem to be pretty clear on the point of worship not only being required, but being required in certain (seemingly arbitrary) ways.
Here’s a list from Nave’s of verses in which worship is enjoined in some way. They range from commands to exhortations, and the content of the worship ranges from the vague (“appear before God”) to the highly specific. (To my mind, absurdly specific.)
Gen. 35:1; Ex. 23:17 [Ex. 34:23.] Ex. 23:18; Deut. 12:5-7, 11, 12; Deut. 16:6-8; Deut. 31:11-13; Deut. 33:19; 2 Kin. 17:36; Psa. 45:11; Psa. 76:11; Psa. 96:8, 9; Psa. 97:7; Psa. 99:5; Joel 1:14, 15; Joel 2:15-17; Nah. 1:15; Hag. 1:8; Zech. 14:16-18; Matt. 8:4 Mark 1:44; Luke 5:14. Heb. 10:25; Rev. 14:7; Rev. 19:10
One that strikes me is one (Matt. 8:4) in which Jesus himself tells a leper whom he has just “cleansed” to, “go, show yourself to a priest, and bring the offering that Moses commanded, as a testimony to them.” Now the “offering that Moses commanded” seems to be a reference to Leviticus 14:1-32:
The Lord spoke to Moses: “This is the law of the diseased person on the day of his purification, when he is brought to the priest. The priest is to go outside the camp and examine the infection. If the infection of the diseased person has been healed, then the priest will command that two live clean birds, a piece of cedar wood, a scrap of crimson fabric, and some twigs of hyssop be taken up for the one being cleansed. The priest will then command that one bird be slaughtered into a clay vessel over fresh water. Then he is to take the live bird along with the piece of cedar wood, the scrap of crimson fabric, and the twigs of hyssop, and he is to dip them and the live bird in the blood of the bird slaughtered over the fresh water, and sprinkle it seven times on the one being cleansed from the disease, pronounce him clean, and send the live bird away over the open countryside.
“The one being cleansed must then wash his clothes, shave off all his hair, and bathe in water, and so be clean. Then afterward he may enter the camp, but he must live outside his tent seven days. When the seventh day comes he must shave all his hair – his head, his beard, his eyebrows, all his hair – and he must wash his clothes, bathe his body in water, and so be clean.
“On the eighth day he must take two flawless male lambs, one flawless yearling female lamb, three-tenths of an ephah of choice wheat flour as a grain offering mixed with olive oil, and one log of olive oil, and the priest who pronounces him clean will have the man who is being cleansed stand along with these offerings before the Lord at the entrance of the Meeting Tent.
“The priest is to take one male lamb and present it for a guilt offering along with the log of olive oil and present them as a wave offering before the Lord. He must then slaughter the male lamb in the place where the sin offering and the burnt offering are slaughtered, in the sanctuary, because, like the sin offering, the guilt offering belongs to the priest; it is most holy. Then the priest is to take some of the blood of the guilt offering and put it on the right earlobe of the one being cleansed, on the thumb of his right hand, and on the big toe of his right foot. The priest will then take some of the log of olive oil and pour it into his own left hand. Then the priest is to dip his right forefinger into the olive oil that is in his left hand, and sprinkle some of the olive oil with his finger seven times before the Lord. The priest will then put some of the rest of the olive oil that is in his hand on the right earlobe of the one being cleansed, on the thumb of his right hand, and on the big toe of his right foot, on the blood of the guilt offering, and the remainder of the olive oil that is in his hand the priest is to put on the head of the one being cleansed. So the priest is to make atonement for him before the Lord.
“The priest must then perform the sin offering and make atonement for the one being cleansed from his impurity. After that he is to slaughter the burnt offering, and the priest is to offer the burnt offering and the grain offering on the altar. So the priest is to make atonement for him and he will be clean.
“If the person is poor and does not have sufficient means, he must take one male lamb as a guilt offering for a wave offering to make atonement for himself, one-tenth of an ephah of choice wheat flour mixed with olive oil for a grain offering, a log of olive oil, and two turtledoves or two young pigeons, which are within his means. One will be a sin offering and the other a burnt offering.
“On the eighth day he must bring them for his purification to the priest at the entrance of the Meeting Tent before the Lord, and the priest is to take the male lamb of the guilt offering and the log of olive oil and wave them as a wave offering before the Lord. Then he is to slaughter the male lamb of the guilt offering, and the priest is to take some of the blood of the guilt offering and put it on the right earlobe of the one being cleansed, on the thumb of his right hand, and on the big toe of his right foot. The priest will then pour some of the olive oil into his own left hand, and sprinkle some of the olive oil that is in his left hand with his right forefinger seven times before the Lord. Then the priest is to put some of the olive oil that is in his hand on the right earlobe of the one being cleansed, on the thumb of his right hand, and on the big toe of his right foot, on the place of the blood of the guilt offering, and the remainder of the olive oil that is in the hand of the priest he is to put on the head of the one being cleansed to make atonement for him before the Lord.
“He will then make one of the turtledoves or young pigeons, which are within his means, a sin offering and the other a burnt offering along with the grain offering. So the priest is to make atonement for the one being cleansed before the Lord. This is the law of the one in whom there is a diseased infection, who does not have sufficient means for his purification.”
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Can you see why someone who is not a worshipper of the God of Abraham, someone who relies on reason and the evidence of science and nature to draw conclusions, might read this and think, “WTF?”I include the entire passage because I find that most Christians do not actually read the entire Bible, or they skim, and they, regardless of their ideological orientation, pick and choose which verses they will take seriously and which they will ignore or gloss over.
The common response to pointing out this sort of passage is to say, “Well, that’s the Old Testament. Christ’s sacrifice changed everything.”
This brings me back to Liz’ Aristotelian view of God, as Actuality, the Prime Mover, the “unchanged changer.” God is perfection; therefore, God cannot change. Yet even within the pages of the Bible, God seems to change a great deal. In the Noah story, God admits not only to changing his mind, but, apparently, to making mistakes.
Liz, I find your argument that God should be worshipped because, as the creator of all things, he deserves it, unconvincing. You compare not worshipping God to abusing your aunt’s furniture (Great analogy, BTW), but the thing is I can see my aunt. My aunt has changed my diapers. She’s cooked meals for me. And she has spanked me for putting my feet on her sofa.
You speak as if the existence of the Creator God (and specifically, the God of Abraham) is self-evident. Yet I don’t suppose I need to point out to you that there is not a shred of scientific evidence for the existence of such a god. I might also point out that double-blind studies on the efficacy of intercessory prayer have never once shown the slightest effect, which brings me back to the question of why it should matter a whit whether or not I worship God, even if He does exist.
Your assertion that it is wrong to hold contradictory beliefs is interesting, considering that the Bible itself seems rife with internal contradictions. Are your own beliefs contradiction-free?
I find Dan’s assertion much more convincing: “Worship is not about circumstances, but it can help us to accept and transcend our circumstances and remain content. That is certainly a tangible benefit.” In short, if it works for you (and causes no harm to others), then that’s all the justification required. And in fact, first-person studies of meditative prayer show that prayer does have measurable effects on the person doing the praying. (Ditto for meditation, BTW.)
This brings me around to my next question, which I’ll save for a separate blog post, but first I’d like to hear any follow-ups on the subject of worship.
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A bit late to the party, but I would like to add one note as a longtine student of religion. The majority of respinses while well reasoned and polite certainly, lack a certain historical perspective that is quite common in American conversations concerning Christianity.
Primarily all conversation is rooted in 19th century or later Protestant theology and hermeneutics. Take for instance the almost juridical approach to worship which, while certainly historic and certainly dating quite far back in xian theology, is only one small part of what worship was thought to consist of in the broader stream of catholic xianity. Note that I use the term ‘catholic’ in its historic sense of ‘katholikos’ or that which is generally or universally and historically held. (Disclosure: I was raised Protestant, spent 15 years as a fundie, and am not a convert to any of those churches historically considered Catholic. I just continue to have a fascination with religious history in the West.)
I raise this for two reasons. First, catholic traditions, while certainly sharing many of the same concepts in xianity do have a tendency to include other responses and answers to these questions. Second, I think its important to understand that there are older and broader discussions within xianity that do not devolve down to the base Protestant American question of, what do you say the Bible is?
That question, arguably, is *the* American xian question to which all other questions must bow. This is decidedly *not* the historic position of catholic or world xianity. I cannot emphasize too much the need to break loose from a solely American viewpoint. It willdo wonders for your attempts to come to grips with what xianity, where it came from, and how it has gotten to the place it is. To be clear Anerican Protestantism is profoundly important, but only in the past two centuries. As the United States has been the economic colonial power par exellence American xianity often following in its wake has shaped world xianity in ways that will continue to be felt for centuries.
And yet, this does not make American Protestantism the defacto bearer of historic xian understanding. Although it is often mistaken for such.
I point all this out simply for you to have an understanding that an open mind concerning xianity is going to require a willingness to be attentive to nuance, dissenting voices, and an historical tradition with attested literature dating back at least 1800 years. -
Please forgive my spelling and grammatical errors, I have not yet mastered the art of mobile keyboards.
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aspektx: Thank you for your input (and fo typing it all out on your mobile!). You have pointed out that we are focusing on American questions (which I think is certainly true) But you didn’t tell us what other questions we might look at.
The only non-American case I can speak about with any confidence is the Japanese case, which is extremely idiosyncratic. Despite a century and a half of evangelizing by foreign missionaries, Christians have never accounted for even so much as 1% of the Japanese population, although the number may have been higher in the 16th century, before the Shogun Hideyoshi (who learned that Portuguese merchants were selling Japanese into slavery) cracked down on Portuguese missionaries and Christianity was banned.
There are basically two flavors of Christianity in Japan: the Catholic holdovers from the 16th century, concentrated in Nagasaki, where Catholics account for 4% of the population; and those (mostly Protestant) who converted after the ban was finally lifted in 1873. The former are remarkable for having preserved their faith for two and a half centuries in secret. The latter have a strongly progressive bent, and have been involved in various human rights movements in Japan. They bear little resemblance to American conservative evangelicals.
Japanese Christians might find this discussion interesting, but it would be gibberish to the vast majority of Japanese. They get confused when I tell them that it took a lot of courage for me to “come out” as an atheist to my family. The notion that one’s cosmology could be a source of family strife is utterly alien here in Japan.
I suspect that for Japanese Catholics whose ancestors passed on the faith in utter secrecy for 250 years, at the risk of torture and execution, their faith is a more a matter of tradition and pride than of hermeneutics.
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I’ve been wanting to return to this, but have been busy with life, the universe, and everything… or grading midterm papers, anyway.
I get the weirdness of the OT sacrificial system/purification rights. I think contemporary Christian rituals could seem just as weird (communion, ash Wednesday, baptism, crossing oneself), but are quite meaningful on closer inspection- as are many symbolic ritual gestures from other cultures. We lose the meaning of words and gestures over time; I imagine Jewish scholars could tell us more about the rituals. I love the fact that Jesus sends the healed leper to the priests to go through the motions to show the community he has been healed.
I don’t think Aristotle’s whole concept of God can be reconciled with Christianity- the issue of change is, as you say, problematic (the incarnation alone is a major sticking point).
As I said in response to Artemisinin- I’m sure I hold some contradictory beliefs, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t worth trying not to. I also occasionally walk away with people’s pens, but I still think stealing is wrong. Kant’s another major philosopher who emphasizes the significance of logical thinking in moral decision-making and evaluating one’s beliefs.
It’s not that I think the existence of God is self-evident, quite (there’s a reason philosophers and theologians have written so much about what’s called the hiddenness of God). But there are a number of arguments that have been made in the study of what’s called natural theology, which try to make the case that God is the best explanation of the universe as we see it.
If the Christian God exists, he is supernatural, and empirical research will not be sufficient to gain knowledge of him. Generally speaking, in the Bible we see God frowning on attempts to test him, although sometimes he allows them (Gideon’s fleece, Thomas putting his hands in the risen Christ’s wounds). And in Malachi 3:10 God invites his people to test him by giving a tenth of their income, in response to which he will meet their needs. I’ve read about the studies on the efficacy of prayer, and I’m not surprised by the results, especially since I don’t believe God is like a vending machine where you put your prayer in and get the answer out just like clockwork. Unlike a purely mechanistic cause, God’s response to prayer has more to do with his own values and plans, which I believe is why Christians are encouraged to work to get their requests to line up with what they understand of God’s will. (An analogy: my 3-year-old daughter can call out to me from the other room all she likes, but that doesn’t guarantee she’s going to get the response she wants, even if she does it quite systematically and concludes I’m not listening. Sometimes what she wants depends on other things that aren’t ready, sometimes she needs to learn patience or politeness, and sometimes it just isn’t going to happen.)
About the original question of why people should worship God: I came across a passage in N. T. Wright’s book “Surprised by Hope” yesterday that I wanted to share, from pages 184-185: “…the question of our own destiny, in terms of the alternatives of joy or woe, is probably the wrong way of looking at the whole question… The choice before humans [should] be framed differently: are you going to worship the creator God and discover thereby what it means to become fully and gloriously human, reflecting his powerful, healing, transformative love into the world? Or are you going to worship the world as it is, boosting your corruptible humanness by gaining power or pleasure from forces within the world but merely contributing thereby to your own dehuminization and the further corruption of the world itself?”
This fits with what Dan was saying, but is rather more comprehensive in scope. I’ve been fascinated by N. T. Wright’s way of describing God’s activity in the world, his relationship with the spatio-temporal universe (he rejects the spirit/matter dichotomy that a lot of Christians have adopted from Plato), and the significance of Easter. I just found the book the above quote came from, and highly recommend it.
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So that’s where my pens have been going.
I must say I find the quote from N.T. Wright a bit disturbing. It sounds as if he is saying there are only two choices: worship the God of Abraham as defined by a subset of Christians, or worship an evil world and become corrupt and debased. I, for one, do not worship anything. And rather than looking forward to an eternal afterlife, I choose to do what I can do make the world I live in just a little bit better. And I’m not sure I see the benefit of the former choice, since it seems so abstract, and I can’t see how it serves to make the world a better place. Is the world really as awful as the Abrahamic religions seem to agree it is? And if it is, why did a perfect and infallible God–who knew precisely how everything would play out, from which quark bumps into which, and where and when, to the birth and life-course of a Hitler or a Pol Pot–make such a sh*tty world? If there is an Original Sin, was it not committed by the creator who created Adam and Eve just so?
As for prayer, your analogy is apt to a point, but if there was any power in prayer at all, it should have some measurable effect, shouldn’t it? Yes, probably a majority of prayers range from silly to downright wrong, but every day there are good people praying selflessly for world peace, for a lessening of suffering, for the healing of a sweet child. Sometimes your daughter ask for things that are both reasonable and good, things you might not have thought to provide if she hadn’t spoken, and her words have some effect on you. My own son, who is now twenty (twenty-one this week) asked for an electric bass when he was twelve. His mother and I had our doubts, but bought him one for Christmas. Today he is playing a double-bass, studying jazz at Berklee College of Music. He’s there because we trusted him.
And he’s alive at least partly because his mother and I watched over him and kept him from running out into traffic. If we are really all God’s children, he is the most grossly negligent parent in all the multiverse, because every single day he allows countless hundreds or thousands of innocent children to suffer and die in cruel ways. Do we resort to that handiest of clichés–God moves in mysterious ways–to simply wave that all away?
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Hmmmm.. tasty.. I was raised cath, and the questions got to me too after a while, so while I have no answers (save for the fallibility of human enterprise) let me throw a “little parable”, “a thot experiment” into the pot: http://www.asimovs.com/_issue_0210/potter.shtml
(The Potter of Bones by Eleanor Arnason).And while I am at it, the manga “Lucu Lucu” is good at poking fun at a few classic western theological sore points.
All the “worship” I have left in me is trying to think, and it is mostly reserved for these trivial subjects.
Oh well…
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My bad, did not realise new version of “bones” cuts off.. try the wayback machine: http://web.archive.org/web/20080623191628/http://www.asimovs.com/_issue_0401/bones.shtml
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