How Should Christians Think about Worship (and Politics)

The world is becoming increasingly proficient at telling stories that deny God. As such, we need thinking Christian to become as natural as breathing. Welcome to the Thinking Christian podcast. I'm Dr. James Spencer. Through calm, thoughtful, theological discussions, Thinking Christian highlights the ways God is working in the world and questions the underlying social, cultural, and political assumptions that hinder Christians from becoming more like Christ. Now, on to today's episode of Thinking Christian. Hey everybody, welcome to this episode of Thinking Christian. I'm going solo today. Since we just had a couple conversations earlier in the week with Ayunda Kamalo and Dan Bremness, I thought it'd be appropriate to talk a little bit about worship and what worship means for the Christian community, how it shapes and forms us. And this is a topic that I actually cover in part in my new book, Serpents and Doves. It's on Christians and politics, but the approach that I try to take to Christians and politics is really a theological one. It's deeply embedded in a theological understanding of reality. And so worship becomes central to what it means to actually participate politically and participate politically well as Christians. So the way I usually frame it is that worship is a response. It's a response to something that we perceive in the world. It's a response to reality. And describing it that way may seem to leave God out, and I suppose to some degree it does. But what I'm really trying to say is that when worship is response and it's response to reality, Christians believe that the triune God is the most or the infinitely more relevant than any other aspect of that reality. In other words, when we think about God being present, God being real, God being a person, an entity, a being who is intimately part of our lives, not some abstract idea, not some set of principles that we've put sort of a divine face on, but that God is an entity that interacts with us, actually is present with us. God becomes intrinsic then to our understanding of reality. And so as we worship as a response to God, we root that worship in a perception of reality in which the triune God is a non-negotiable part. He is, as I like to say, infinitely more relevant than any other actor or factor we will ever encounter. And so true worship really requires a right perception of and response to God. And I like the way, you know, when we think about worship, oftentimes we can define it in terms of Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit. And there's a way in which that's extremely appropriate for us to do as New Testament Christians. But as we're thinking about the Bible as a whole, there were large periods of time, mostly in the Old Testament, that the Holy Spirit was not indwelling individual believers in the same way that the Holy Spirit does after Christ's resurrection. And there were a lot of people who have faith and are part of the community of faith who didn't necessarily know who Christ was. They didn't have that revelation yet. Jesus hadn't become incarnate. Let me ask you a serious question. If something triggered a major market drop in the coming months, would your retirement be ready or exposed? With inflation, market volatility, and ongoing global uncertainty, more families are taking a closer look at whether their retirement plan is truly built to hold up. And many are finding that adding a layer of protection makes a lot of sense. Sanctuary Metals is a Christian-owned company that helps families strengthen their retirement savings with physical gold and silver through a gold IRA. During uncertain times, many people look to precious metals as a way to add stability when other assets may be under pressure. If you'd like to explore whether a gold IRA is a good fit for your situation, Sanctuary Metals makes it easy to get started. Text GUIDE to 94878 to receive your free retirement defense guide. Or call 888-958-6579 to speak with one of their knowledgeable team members. Again, text GUIDE to 94878 or call 888-958-6579. So they didn't know who Jesus was. So I really like the way that Daniel Block, he's an Old Testament scholar, he discusses this in one of his books, and he defines worship in For the Glory of God, Recovering a Biblical Theology of Worship, like this. He says that it involves reverential human acts of submission and homage before the divine sovereign in response to his gracious revelation of himself and in accord with his will. So there's a sense of it involves reverence. In other words, we're giving deference to God. We're recognizing that God is the most relevant actor or factor we could ever face, or we will ever encounter in any given situation. It involves then a submission to and a humbling before that God. Now, the humble submission is an important aspect of this because if we believe, if we're truly reverencing God, if we're actually seeing God as the most infinitely more relevant than any other actor or factor, the logical thing for us to do is to submit to God's authority. In other words, you're not going to walk into your garage and say to yourself, I need something to take on vacation. I have five kids and I'm going to take on vacation. I have the choice between a motorcycle with a sidecar and a seven passenger SUV. You're probably not going to pick the motorcycle with the sidecar. It's going to be fairly dangerous, even if you can get all five people into the motorcycle with the sidecar. It's going to be really uncomfortable. There's going to be no place to put your luggage. And so ultimately, we recognize that God is sort of like the SUV in this equation. God is going to be the right vehicle for us to take. He's going to be, his way is going to be the right direction to go regardless of what other factors we might want to consider. And so God is always that right way. He's always the most relevant actor or factor. Worship isn't just something though that we do. And, you know, Block doesn't quite get at this in his definition of worship, but I think this is appropriate and he does deal with it in other aspects of his book. But the worship also acts back on us as worshipers. Both true and false worship really does shape who we are as worshipers. False worship is going to train us to respond to something that is false and fictional. It's going to train us to give deference to or to reverence something that isn't actually the most relevant thing in the room. You know, so as we think back on sort of some of the idolatry that would have been practiced in ancient times that Israel would have encountered, for instance, you have, I think of the encounter of Elijah with the priests of Baal. And what actually happens there is that the priests of Baal are saying, no, Baal is just as powerful as your God, Elijah. And so Elijah challenges them to this sort of God duel almost. And they try to get their gods to light this, you know, wood on fire. And afterwards, Elijah comes up and wets down the wood and creates a whole trench. And, you know, he really plays it up. And then God calls down fire and it consumes all of it. And so what we're really seeing there is that these Baal worshipers, their framing of reality, their understanding of how to interact in the world precludes them from really trusting the Lord because they're worshiping Baal and because they believe so vehemently that Baal is the true God, they are now shaped and formed in the way that they call upon Baal. And so you have this whole scene where they're crying out, they're cutting themselves, they're doing all these different things in order to try to get Baal to do what they want him to do. That's a very shaped and formed understanding of how the world works. It isn't just that they're worshiping false gods. That's certainly, you know, the root of what they're doing. But we need to notice the way that it forms and shapes their practices. And those practices are deeply rooted in their understanding of how the world works. In the case of idol worship, it's often sort of the case that those worshiping idols simply don't know how the world works. And so they're trying to do all these different things that they're hoping God's will respond to. And when they do, that's great. When they don't, that's bad. So they try something else, but it's ultimately all rooted in this ambiguity or lack of clarity around what the idols might want. And so we don't need to have sort of, you know, false idols that we sit around, you know. They don't have to be things that are made necessarily of wood or, you know, and gold. And they don't have to be a physical object. Idols can also be ideas. Worshiping idols, it just doesn't require that we bow down to a physical image. They can also be concepts. We can elevate ideas or ideals to this ultimate level so that they become equal to

are greater than God, they ultimately become idols, and as idols, they then obstruct our view of God. And so as they obstruct our view of God, they then change the way that we respond to God. They change the way that we see reality. They obscure our vision. And while we may identify some ideologies, let's say, as particularly problematic, you know, lately, we've been dealing with, you know, the whole woke revolution or transgender ideologies or what have you. I would just submit that all ideologies are problematic. Almost anything that ends with an ism is a problem because most of the time, ideologies, the way I think of them, they claim to be more complete and to give a more complete picture of reality than they actually do. And so as we subscribe to these realities, what we're really doing is we're accepting a partial picture of the world as if it's a full picture. And so as we think about worship, as we think about how this forms and shapes us, it's extremely important for us to understand that we are worshiping the true God and to have our worship informed by the truth of God's word. I would also just argue that as we approach the other aspects of our lives that we don't often think of in terms of worship, which really, if we read Romans 12, Paul talks about the sort of living sacrifice that we are to be. We're supposed to offer our bodies up as living sacrifices to suggest that our entire lives are to be dedicated to worship. Worship is what we are always going to be doing, even when we no longer have to do missions because, you know, there's a new heavens and a new earth. Even when we don't have to do, you know, we don't even we don't have to care for those in poverty or care for those who are sick because in the new creation and the new earth, those things are all going to go away. Worship is still what we're going to be doing. We're going to be reflecting the glory of God no matter where we exist in this timeline that God is putting together. And so as we think about something like politics and how it's really nested in worship or encompassed, immersed within worship, I think what we need to realize is that we worship in spirit and truth and we worship by means of Christ. And so our worshipful acts reflect our conviction that God is infinitely more worthy of our attention, our energy, our obedience than any other person, institution, idea, ambition, interest, you name it. And so if you think for a moment about the privilege and responsibility that we have to share Christ with the world, to demonstrate a life of worship, true worship, worship of the triune God, in the eyes of a world that does not know him, it's a heavy responsibility and it is a great privilege. And so that proclamation really comes forth as we own our identity as a political body. And so the way I think about that is the proclamation of Jesus as Lord. That is not just a theological claim. It's not an opinion, for instance. We don't say, well, I think Jesus is Lord, but you might think something different. It's an actual claim. It's what we might say in theological circles, an ontological claim. Jesus just is that. And so because it's a theological claim, it's also a political claim. Lordship, or the position of Lord, Jesus having authority over all things in heaven and earth, is in itself a political claim. And so as we worship, what we're really saying to the world is, remember that you're only the world. Remember that you sit underneath this authority as well. And so as we worship, we engage in not only a proclamation, an affirmation of God, a reverencing of God, but we also remind the world that the world is under God as well. It's an implicit critique and a way of training ourselves to sit under Christ's authority, even if that means going against the authorities that God has put in place that are not recognizing God as the ultimate source of their authority. And so ultimately, worship is just extremely important in the life of Christians. And once we start to learn to live in the larger context of worship, once we realize that our lives are really nested in worship, I think we'll be more capable of discerning when to act and when to refrain from acting. You know, we're going to be more in tune with the way that our activities in the world glorify God. We're going to be more in tune with how to be God's image and to reflect God in whatever situation we're in. Because ultimately, I think that sometimes we're a little too quick to pick up the political weapons that the world gives us. The way I like to think about it, or I've been thinking about it lately, is, you know, when you play Monopoly, my kids and I like to play board games an awful lot. So when you play Monopoly, it doesn't really matter whether you're the car or you're the thimble. You're still playing Monopoly. It's the same game. The gameplay is not affected whether I end up being the purse, the thimble, the car, the little dog. None of that matters. And so we are supposed to be playing a different game. And so even if we end up playing Monopoly, it's not that we just play Monopoly. Let me ask you a serious question. If something triggered a major market drop in the coming months, would your retirement be ready or exposed? With inflation, market volatility, and ongoing global uncertainty, more families are taking a closer look at whether their retirement plan is truly built to hold up. And many are finding that adding a layer of protection makes a lot of sense. Sanctuary Metals is a Christian-owned company that helps families strengthen their retirement savings with physical gold and silver through a gold IRA. During uncertain times, many people look to precious metals as a way to add stability when other assets may be under pressure. If you'd like to explore whether a gold IRA is a good fit for your situation, Sanctuary Metals makes it easy to get started. Text GUIDE to 94878 to receive your free retirement defense guide or call 888-958-6579 to speak with one of their knowledgeable team members. Again, text GUIDE to 94878 or call 888-958-6579. We are a group of people who do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. That's Ephesians 6.12. And so if we're supposed to be fighting against something other than flesh and blood, we are ultimately going to find that there are times when in order to fight and struggle, we have to lean back into our worship, which may ultimately mean that we put aside the political weapons of the day and we refrain from using them so that God can work through us. And ultimately, I think that as we really consider what the implications of this could be, our goal is not to be political animals that are formed by and dependent on the state, but to be disciples trained in the politics of the gospel. And often the politics of the gospel entail simple worship where we are, as Dan Block talks about, reverencing God in submission and homage and really recognizing that he is infinitely more relevant than any other actor or factor we may face. So as we move into tomorrow's episode of Thinking Christian, I just wanted to kind of close out this little section on worship. We had, like I said, Ayunda Kamalo. If you haven't listened to those interviews or the one with Dan Bremnis, I just encourage you to go back and take a listen to those. But these guys are involved in worship. They're involved in what we traditionally think of as worship. But the reality is we're all involved in worship. Worship is all encompassing. And so these guys happen to be involved in the music industry and are really leading people into a form of worship that we've adopted. But every day, every moment, every aspect of our lives is an opportunity to live as living sacrifices to the Lord Jesus Christ. So I wanted to close it up there. And then tomorrow, I just encourage you to come back and come back and listen to the interview with Brant Hansen. Brant Hansen is a radio host. He's a podcast host. He's nationally syndicated.

He's written a couple of books. It was a fantastic interview. Dan and I found some common ground. We're both from the Midwest and he actually lived in a town that I am familiar with. It's right around where I live now, probably about an hour or so away. And so it was a really fun interview. He's a great guy. He's involved in some really fantastic medical missions that I think you'll want to be aware of. And ultimately, I would also just encourage you, if you're interested in the concept of how Christians should and could do politics in a broken world, go check out my book on Amazon.com. It's called Serpents and Doves, Christians, Politics, and the Art of Bearing Witness. Hey, thanks everybody for being on this episode of Thinking Christian. We will catch you tomorrow. I just want to take a second to thank the team at Life Audio for their partnership with us on the Thinking Christian podcast. If you go to lifeaudio.com, you'll find dozens of other faith-centered podcasts in their network. They've got shows about prayer, Bible study, parenting, and more. Hello, hello, Quinice Petway here, co-host of the Your Daily Bible Verse podcast. Are you someone who loves to take a deep dive into God's word one verse at a time to explore his will for your life and desire to draw closer to him? If that sounds like you, I'd love to invite you to head over to lifeaudio.com and search Your Daily Bible Verse to tune in and subscribe for daily inspiration, life application, and spiritual transformation through the in-depth exploration of God's word.