What's Wrong with Praise and Worship?

I like many of the praise and worship songs. I also like hymns. I like some of the more classical pieces like Mozart and other formal works like the John Rutter I sang in college choirs. Then again, that is all beside the point.

With all the talk about praise and worship songs as a style of music, then as the centerpiece of what it means to gather as the church, that is where I start to feel a rub. What is wrong with praise and worship? It is not they style of music, not that it focuses on praise or worship. It is that is so often deflects and distracts us from what it means to be believers and followers of Christ Jesus.

There is nothing wrong with raising your hand in the air as you sing along with the band. There is nothing wrong with the theology presented in many of the songs. It's actually more a question of what is not there than what actually is.

More than anything, it is a question of depth. It is a question of breadth. It is a question of content and of purpose.

We gravitate to praise and worship often as not because its focus is self-centered. Sure, the songs talk about Jesus and how God is great and worthy of our praise. We sing about how our lives are being deposited before God. We sing about the wonders of the cross. We sing about heaven by and by. We sing about heaven coming down and experiencing God's presence. We just rarely if ever get around to actually being the hands and feet of Jesus.

Well, maybe we find encouragement to go on a mission trip to South America, Asia, Africa, or the Caribbean. I have yet to find praise and worship tackling the issues of justice, equality, racism, and the systemic forces in or society that keep others from experiencing the gospel call to bring the disenfranchised into our lives as friends and loved ones.

On the other hand, maybe there is something a little bit darker in our understanding and application of praise and worship. The very use of the phrase would limit the worship and praise of God to what happens within the concert hall. It focuses on how we feel or are manipulated to feel beneath the lights and our waving hands raised high.

We engage our emotional selves, but we often miss the fact that spirituality is not about emotional highs or how the songs make us feel. Faith is much more about how we live than an experience we might have in a concert hall.

Praise and worship is not really about the music we sing. It is about the song of our lives as we give substance to the teachings of Christ Jesus. Real praise is in Jesus' words the feeding of those who cannot work or otherwise sustain themselves. It is healing the sick and providing recovery for whatever hinders them from becoming contributing members of society. It is about caring for those cast in debtor's prison with no chance of escape. It is about bringing dignity back to those who cannot clothe themselves or regain standing in society. It is about granting access to all those things that make life and opportunity possible.

Jesus told us pretty clearly that we are charged with loving one another to the point that our enemies become our friends. Praise and worship songs do not translate into that kind of radical faith. On the other hand, it is that radical faith that embodies true praise and worship of the Jesus we call Lord.

—©Copyright 2017, Christopher B. Harbin
http://www.sermonsearch.com/contributors/104427/ 
My latest books can be found here on amazon

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