Worship in the Modern World

Worship in the Modern World

April 7th 2010 at 11:01am

Worship is a funny word isn’t it? It’s one of those words that Christians keep using while the rest of the world seems to have moved on – it’s become an exclusively religious word. But it’s not an exclusively religious activity. People are engaged in worship all around us all the time.

This morning the papers are full of praise (another word for worship that’s becoming exclusively religious) for Lionel Messi, apparently the greatest football player in the world right now, potentially the greatest ever.  On Monday night I was at St James Park as Newcastle United celebrated promotion to the Premier League and it was absolutely packed.  And the crowd were there to worship their team – we sung in their honour, we stood and chanted their greatness, we declared their glory.  It may not be a religious activity (perhaps it is) but it is certainly worship.

And it’s not just football, we put talented individuals on a pedestal in just about every area of human achievement.  Think about how we treat pop stars and even relatively obscure ‘celebrities’.

I watched ‘This is it’ the Michael Jackson film last week, and it was clear that Michael Jackson was a supremely talented individual.  And it was also clear that he lived in a very strange world, being revered (that is, worshipped) by everyone around him.

In what was intended as a private keepsake for his personal library, his dancers praised him in almost religous tones and wept at the thought of performing with him – this long before they had any inkling that he was going to die.  As he performed in rehersals his followers whooped and shouted – celebrating his greatness, praising him, worshipping him.

What’s going on here?  Somehow it’s not enough for us to acknowledge talent, to enjoy it.  For some reason we seem to feel the need to elevate it and those who have it as if they were somehow more worthy than the rest of us.  We treat them as gods who walk among us.  And then we wonder why so many let us down.  Could it be because we’ve misplaced our worship on people who really don’t deserve it?

If we treat people as gods, we shouldn’t be surprised if they begin to think of themselves as invincible, as somehow above the rules that the rest of us have to operate by.

But the more fundamental question is – ‘why are we so eager to worship?’, and ‘why do we waste our worship on that which is unworthy of it?’  The answer that the Bible gives, of course, is that we are made to know and honour God, we’re made for worship. But having turned away from the true and living God we make up little gods to take his place (check out Romans chapter one).  But these little gods can never  satisfy, never fulfill in the way that the real God can.

Wouldn’t we do better then to give up our small gods, and all the disappointments that come with worshipping people, and focus our attention on the one true God who is actually worthy of our praise, our worship?