What Makes You Think God Wants This?

The singing had already started inside, but a handful of people stayed out in the lobby with me, in no particular hurry to join it. I was teaching at a church in Florida this weekend, and I'd been greeting people as they arrived. These few weren't heading in. One of them mentioned they didn't think of worship as only the singing happening in the next room.

I couldn't tell if they felt a little guilty about it, or suspected I was standing there quietly judging them for skipping it. We Christians are good at making people feel that. So we stayed put and talked about what we actually mean when we use the word "worship."

Depending on how you're wired, the singing on a Sunday morning is either the main course you came for or the side salad on your plate. You know you're supposed to eat it. But you didn't exactly order it. 

I think we need to restore a holistic understanding of worship as more than just singing. Even singing to God. I don't think there's anything wrong with singing worship songs to God. In fact, there can be power in that experience. It can reorient our minds and our imaginations toward God. It can bond us in community as we participate together. But to conclude that God needs this from us is a leap we rarely consider.

Throughout much of the Hebrew Bible, people were convinced that God wanted their sacrifices. Eventually, God made it clear that wasn't the case. As Isaiah notes, "'What makes you think I want all your sacrifices?' says the Lord... 'I get no pleasure from the blood of bulls and lambs and goats'" (Isaiah 1:11). Um, didn't you? (See also Amos 5:21-24, Hosea 6:6, Micah 6:6-8, Jeremiah 6:20, Jeremiah 7:21-23, 1 Samuel 15:22, Proverbs 21:3, Psalm 40:6, Psalm 51:16-17, Psalm 50:8-13).

Might something similar be happening with singing?

We tend to assume that prayer is what changes us and that singing is what we give to God. Both of those carry some truth. But I think we have the emphasis the wrong way around. Prayer is how we partner with God in co-creating the future. Singing is how we get reoriented, together, toward an awareness of God.

Prayer is something we offer to God, an invitation for God's noncoercive activity into our world. Singing is also offered to God. God can receive a song the way God received Israel's psalms. But the reliable work of the song happens in us. It points our attention, bonds us to the people beside us, and puts language in our mouths we might not have reached on our own. God receives the song. We are the ones it changes.

Jesus never commanded singing to himself, and Scripture never presents singing as something God needs or as a substitute for following God's way. Notice how Luke describes the elements that the early church did when they gathered together: "All the believers devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching, and to fellowship, and to sharing in meals (including the Lord’s Supper), and to prayer" (Acts 2:42 NLT). Singing didn't make the list.

A few verses later, we do learn that they were worshipping at the Temple regularly, but the essence of this section is far more about lifestyle than a worship set list. They did these things "all the while praising God and enjoying the goodwill of all the people" (Acts 2:47 NLT).

We do have examples of Jesus and His disciples singing a hymn after the Last Supper in Matthew 26:30 and Mark 14:26. Some traditions suggest this was the Hallel (Psalms 113–118), which would have been sung at Passover. In the context of this happening on their way to the Mount of Olives and considering all they will soon watch unfold with Jesus' crucifixion, I suspect the singing was for their benefit.

Perhaps the strongest examples against what I'm suggesting here can be found in Revelation chapters 4 and 5. These offer a beautiful picture of worship to the slain lamb. Yet, I'd offer that this context seems to be at the redemption of all things when Jesus is fully acknowledged, rather than a daily or weekly requirement. It might be more accurate to think of it as the obvious response creation will have upon seeing the fullness of a Jesus-looking God revealed in eternity. 

I believe Jesus is far more interested in us following His way of life than in us singing about Him. So why do most Christians think that singing worship songs is worship? And more importantly, that this is something we do for God? 

I suspect the most likely reason is that we can control it. We can control the songs we sing, the way we sing them, and, as those of us who worked in the creative arts at a megachurch know, we can control what you feel through sensory elements like sound and light. The typical weekend attender might be surprised to learn how much time, effort, and conversation go into choosing the precise bass levels, lighting colors, and video elements that shape the experience you then attribute to the Holy Spirit.

If, after we control all of these elements and can assure ourselves that this was all for God and that God was immensely pleased, our work here is done. Yet, as Walter Brueggemann notes, "The freedom of God is always in considerable tension with the accessibility of God." We want God to be accessible to us on demand, although we rarely consider how that would also rob God's own freedom in the process.

Furthermore, I've discovered a danger lurking here. The more we sing about Jesus, the less we feel the need to act like Jesus ourselves. We can become so obsessed with the work He did that it diminishes our awareness of the need to do likewise in our world today. It makes me feel much better to think Jesus is the solution to the world apart from me than to think that Jesus is the solution to the world through me.

Worship at its best focuses our attention on God AND invites us to "go and do the same" (Luke 10:37 NLT).

So if the weekend singing in church has never been your jam, no need to feel guilty about it. You're welcome to talk to me in the lobby.

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Photo by Terren Hurst on Unsplash