Moving beyond Worship Wars

From Lee C. Camp, Mere Discipleship

What does it mean, concretely, to worship in a way that makes a difference for a rebellious world at war with itself? The experience of many of us indicates that it might be a bit naive to believe that we will have much to offer to the world when our own worship assemblies and church communities have themselves become a battleground. ... It is quite easy to sermonize about "love" and "forgiveness" in the abstract. But such love is difficult to practice, because my self-centeredness runs very deep. How often have I preached that we should forgive those who do not merit forgiveness — the murderer, the warmonger, or the terrorist who has decimated or oppressed some third party unknown to me — and yet am offended and resentful when someone doesn't like me or my preaching?! Third-party "forgiveness" is cheap, requiring nothing of me. When the rubber meets the road, when I or we must forgive an offense done to ourselves, our profession of faith gets tested. Self-pity, self-absorption, and self-defense work in concert to undercut my feeble efforts to love those who have acted spitefully towards me. ...

Pride pushes me to react, to strike out, to respond to harshness with counter-harshness. Self-centeredness convinces me that my task is o have all people think well of me. Fear propels me to act and speak defensively. And yet again, true worship is the heart of the matter, for worship can occur only when the heart of the worshipper practices humility. Too often, we construe humility as self-effacement, self-humiliation, or maybe even self-degradation. But such practices know nothing of humility, for each of these practices continues gazing at the navel of self. Humility, instead, casts its vision upon the God who loves us in our rebellion, the God who loves us even in those places deep in the receses of our soul that we dare not admit. This God seeks to draw us out of our shame and heal our afflictions of soul, constantly willing to forgive, yet seventy times seven. Even more, humility reminds me that the world is not about me, but about God's purposes, God's kingdom. Rightful worship calls us to surrender our will. ... True faith means we obey Christ, turning from our will, embracing his.

In worship, we gather to bring our failings, shortcomings, and rebellion. If we wrongly envision church as a place where we are supposed to "do church right", then we are unable to come as a people confessing that we, left to our own devices, do little right; our ecclesiology, instead, must always bear witness to Jesus' declaration that the kingdom of God belongs to those who are poor in spirit, who are deeply aware of their insufficiency, their powerlessness, their inability to make any claim upon God, their inability to stake any claim based upon their own rightness.