Worship?

[Demas]

I've been reading some Islamic forums. It's fascinating - almost a similar language but different. Watching Muslims and Christians on those forums failing to communicate. Its a very good exercise in bringing to your attention the turns of phrase which we use in talking about religion which we maybe don't define, or really think about.

One of these for me seems to be 'worship'. The more everyone heatedly argued about worship, and whether Catholics worshiped Mary and the saints and whether Christians in general worshiped Jesus, whether the trinity was blasphemous and whether we should only worship Allah etc, the more I realised I didn't really know what the word meant.

It's like when you repeat a word over and over and it loses all meaning. Worship. Worship. Worship. Worship.

What is worship? Should we worship God? What does that mean?

[Bonzo]

I think a lot of Christians seem to worship the Bible.

I too find the word to be imprecise, but I find myself needing it to have that flexibility.

These days I tend to say that my God is Love - meaning that Love is my God - the thing I find to be of most worth.  Worship wouldn't tend to be a word I'd use, of my own volition, to say that, but sometimes, when reading, say Hymn words or something, I find myself wondering whether I can use, with any conviction, the W word in the sentence that someone else has written. At such times I need a very flexible meaning of the word 'worship' to help me think of it in terms of 'giving due importance' to Love.

[Demas]

I wonder whether it is also the case that when a word ends up being only used about God that it becomes meaningless. Like 'Lord' in most translations of the bible. When we used to have feudal lords it meant something to say that Jesus is Lord.

[hatless]

I wonder whether it is also the case that when a word ends up being only used about God that it becomes meaningless. Like 'Lord' in most translations of the bible. When we used to have feudal lords it meant something to say that Jesus is Lord.

Yes, this sounds right, to me. I don't worship anything else or anyone else, so what does it mean to worship God? Mostly I value the Sunday activities for the remembering they allow. I remember God, who is difficult to think of at other times, who doesn't naturally come to mind in an ordinary day. I make some connections, I find myself, I gain a bit of perspective, I hope to see something, feel the force of it. Worship?

At a meeting last night, two people starting a prayer project spoke about their roots in charismatic churches and their discovery of justice and environmental issues. They are trying to be true to both, want an outward facing spirituality that still includes worship, because that's really important to them. And that sounds great, and I'm with them on the environmental and justice stuff, but I feel no need for 'worship'. To be honest, I probably disapprove of what they'd call worship.

I could dodge the question and say worship isn't an activity in itself, it's a way of doing anything. You can walk to the train worshipfully. But that's a bit of a cheat, I think.

Do supporters of a football club worship their team? Is worship mainly about affirming belonging and importance? I have no problem with that, although I don't want to belong to a God club. More is usually claimed for worship, though.

Perhaps worship is always and only about God. Perhaps it is about naming as God that which we worship - deeply believe in. In which case it comes back to the remembering business, for me. And a 'lateral' element, of doing it with others with their own takes on God, and their own traditions of music and word.

Hmm. Interesting. Can you recommend a Christian Islam forum?

[OR]

WORSHIP (n) O.E. worðscip, wurðscip (Anglian), weorðscipe (W.Saxon) "condition of being worthy, honor, renown," from weorð "worthy" (see WORTH) + -scipe (see -SHIP). Sense of "reverence paid to a supernatural or divine being" is first recorded c.1300. The original sense is preserved in the title worshipful (c.1300). The verb is recorded from c.1200.

[hatless]

So has it always been a religious word? What about the worshipful mayor?

[Nadine]

I remember reading once - years ago, so I can't source it or be precise or argue for it - that one of the bible words we translate as 'worship' has the meaning of 'moving towards in order to embrace/kiss'. Can't remember if it was Hebrew or Greek, but I remember liking it.

I like the 'with my body I thee worship' in the old marriage vows as well.



cross posted

[OR]

His Worship the Mayor is a left over of the old use, meaning 'worthy'. The word has changed from an adjective, or a noun, to a verb. A process still beloved of Americans.
If I worship the ground a person walks on, which is worshiped, the ground or the person? IMHO as with many words in this area it either has a specialised use claimed by an interest group, or it can have any meaning you like, except it's common usage meaning.

[Demas]

I think we should bring back the letter "ð" into more common use! 

We don't tend to call God 'worthy'. Or adorable. Maybe we should call God adorable? But then people would get concerned about giving adoration to things other than God, and would ban us from calling kittens adorable as an intolerable blasphemy out of a fear that we would start thinking that God has fur and large cute ears.

Hatless: I don't know about recommend, but I was reading http://www.islamicboard.com/comparative-religion/ which is the comparative part of a large Islamic board.

Oh and here is one interesting thread: http://www.islamicboard.com/discover-islam/134295959-islam-does-god-love-everybody.html

[seeka]

yes most or all the trad worship words like lord and  king don t do it for me not being a medieval surf; and father suffers from a certain limitation too - why not mother or parent ? Family terminolgy suffers from the ambivalence to put it mildly of families also heterosexual.

Words like light depth and so on work better for me but not as regular ejaculations spoken or interior.

I prefer the Quaker lack of direct verbal address of gramatical prayer to Someone the practice of mindfulness and 'worship' with no pre-defined / predefianble 'object'.

Funnily enough Quakers continue to use C17th term 'Meeting for Worship' -- but not 'worship' as commonly used / understood at all.

I think of worship as worthship - awareness of, exploratrion of,

seeking of


worth,

value ----- by extension meaning, value purpose significance and open to leadings which are not exclusively intellectual mental cognitive

opening to a shared silent inward process

- that kinda thing

[OR]

I had an ask around about what people mean by worship, and mostly they thought that it had a similar meaning to 'idolising'. I suppose this has connotations of mindless ritual and grovelling prayer to someone, or something, which is not a true Divine.

This could be the case for 'Mary' worship, I suppose. However I feel that the  word has far deeper meanings for you all than I have thought of, so I will leave you to it.

[Demas]

Just out of interest, I know Jesus says to love God. Do any of the NT writers explicitly have him saying to worship God?

[hatless]

In John (ch. 4 I think) Jesus discusses things with a woman from Samaria, and he says that one day people will worship God neither on Zion nor Gerizim, but in spirit and in truth. But that's descriptive rather than prescriptive. It only implies approval of worship. He could simply have been entering the woman's frame of reference.

[The Toad]

I can't claim that 'worship' is a word that ever gets mentioned in this pond.  The last time I went to church, about twenty years ago, the service addressed God in those 'Lord' and 'King' and 'Master' terms to which Seeka and Hatless so rightly object: the 'God' who was being spoken to wasn't my 'God'.  So much of Christianity (and, I suppose, of Islam, though my knowledge of that religion is minimal) seems to consist of grovelling, as OR's correspondents pointed out.  We tend to be encouraged to belittle ourselves before 'Him', presumably in order to make 'Him' seem even better by comparison, or to win his favours; which is hardly a healthy, or an honest, thing to do.  I suppose with 'God' (if there is one) being unimaginably different from us, any encounter with 'Him' is going to evoke a sense of awe, but Jesus's approach to 'Him' seems to encourage more in the way of closeness, intimacy, and so on, than all this formality.  There's a quotation from somebody that I can't quite recall, but it goes along the lines of, "How should I, a gnat that dances in the rays of your sunlight, dare to be reverent?".  That speaks to me, as do Nadine's words about 'moving closer to embrace / kiss' and 'I worship thee with my body'.  If God is love and if we are meant to love him, 'worship' (as usually defined) seems to be a not-very-helpful response on our part.