Worshiping in Truth

Don: The concept of worshiping “in truth” depends on what we mean by “truth.” If my truth is derived from and upheld by my data, my facts, my knowledge and is different from your truth, then clearly worshiping in truth—even within a single religion or church—presents a source of potential conflict. But if by “truth” we mean the capital-T Truth associated with the divine and spiritual rather than with worldly data and knowledge, and manifested in the way, the life, the mission, and the message of Jesus, then there would be no conflict, at least not within the Christian church.

The Greek word for truth as used in the passages that follow below is alétheia (ἀλήθεια), which Strong’s interlinear Greek concordance defines as “truth, but not merely truth as spoken; truth of idea, reality, sincerity, truth in the moral sphere, divine truth revealed to man, straightforwardness.”

The first passge shows a link between truth and the life of Jesus:

And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth. …  For the Law was given through Moses; grace and truth were realized through Jesus Christ. (John 1:14, 17)

The next links truth to liberation:

…and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.” (John 8:32)

This links spirit and truth:

But when He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all the truth; for He will not speak on His own initiative, but whatever He hears, He will speak; and He will disclose to you what is to come.  (John 16:13)

In the next passage, in praying to God, Jesus linked truth to how we live in the world, to how we deport ourselves in this life, rather than to facts and data:

“But now I come to You; and these things I speak in the world so that they may have My joy made full in themselves. I have given them Your word; and the world has hated them, because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. I do not ask You to take them out of the world, but to keep them from the evil one. They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. Sanctify them in the truth; Your word is truth. As You sent Me into the world, I also have sent them into the world. For their sakes I sanctify Myself, that they themselves also may be sanctified in truth.

“I do not ask on behalf of these alone, but for those also who believe in Me through their word; that they may all be one; even as You, Father, are in Me and I in You, that they also may be in Us, so that the world may believe that You sent Me.” (John 17:13-21)

This was further emphasized by Paul:

…but to those who are selfishly ambitious and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, wrath and indignation. (Romans 2:8)

In the famous love passage, Paul linked truth to love:

Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant, does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. (1 Corinthians 13:4-7)

Despite all of this, there is still much in our own way of worship that links truth with fact. In a poll of church leaders in the U.S., 42 percent named worship-related issues as the greatest source of conflict within their church. The issues were all matters of fact—how, where, when, etc., to worship. But it has to be said also that even scripture has linked worship, in fastidious detail, to worldly matters of fact. In the time of the great prophets, worship occurred mainly within the family and tribe, in a relatively individualistic way. When moved to worship, people would build an altar, offer a sacrifice and give thanks to God. This way of worship—and indeed the old liturgy and the view of God as the God of Creation was lost when the Israelites were enslaved for some 400 years by Egypt. During that time, pagan practices crept in and diluted the old form of worship.

Metaphorically, the road out of slavery in Egypt to freedom in the Promised Land was the road for the return of mankind to the garden of Eden through the providence of God. The road—the way—is God’s way. He was the guide—a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. He provided mana (a metaphor for his grace) to sustain them on the journey. It seems unthinkable, and is certainly remarkable, that the way back to Eden is underwritten entirely and exclusively by God.

Worship occupied a central place in the journey back to the Promised Land. Its basis in worldly fact was evident, starting with God’s assertion that he needed a place to stay:

Let them construct a sanctuary for Me, that I may dwell among them. (Exodus 25:8)

That God’s presence could be seen daily in the pillars of cloud and fire, and that his grace could be experienced daily in the form of mana, did not negate the need of a place of worship for a people whose faith was fragile, who had lost their way, and who needed to re-establish their relationship with God. And they needed not just a place to worship, but also a form of worship so strictly regulated and a liturgy so precise that nothing was left to chance. It seems that:

1. When faith is immature, fact-based worship is valuable. Mystery-based worship won’t help such people.
2. Liturgy and elaborate forms of worship—the sacrificial offerings, incense, candles, showbread, scapegoats, and so on described in early scripture—are important in pointing to key aspects of the relationship between God and Man. They are rich in value in pointing people of immature faith in the direction of God. The risk God takes in endorsing such worship is that its forms and symbols themselves become the object of worship, at his expense. And this, of course, does happen. It explains God’s frustration, as vented in the passages from Amos and Isaiah we discussed last week, at the perversion of fasting and other worldly forms of worship at the expense of divine worship in the form of love and care for one’s neighbor in need. It also explains why the main mission of Jesus was to undo this misunderstanding and misapplication of worship and replace it with worship in spirit and truth.

Paul addressed this issue, and contrasted fact- vs. spirit-based worship, when he told the crowd gathered on Mars Hill:

“Men of Athens, I observe that you are very religious in all respects. For while I was passing through and examining the objects of your worship, I also found an altar with this inscription, ‘TO AN UNKNOWN GOD.’ Therefore what you worship in ignorance, this I proclaim to you. The God who made the world and all things in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands;”

[contrast that with the Old Testament command to “… construct a sanctuary for Me, that I may dwell among them”]

“nor is He served by human hands, as though He needed anything, since He Himself gives to all people life and breath and all things; and He made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined their appointed times and the boundaries of their habitation, that they would seek God, if perhaps they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us; for in Him we live and move and exist, as even some of your own poets have said, ‘For we also are His children.’ Being then the children of God, we ought not to think that the Divine Nature is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and thought of man. Therefore having overlooked the times of ignorance, God is now declaring to men that all people everywhere should repent, because He has fixed a day in which He will judge the world in righteousness through a Man whom He has appointed, having furnished proof to all men by raising Him from the dead.” (Acts 17:22-31)

The contrast between the worship requirements of the God of the Old Testament and those of Jesus reflects the contrast between the God of the answer and the God of the question. The God of the former is the God of people in stage 2 faith.*  But a God of spirit and truth is a promise that we don’t have to worship on a fact basis, although there may be times on our spiritual journey when it helps to.

David: The worship practiced by the Jehovah’s Witnesses, who make a big deal of being “in the truth”, is as choreographed as it gets. There appears to me, on my occasional visits, to be no conflict whatsoever among worshipers about any aspect of their intensely programmed worship—and probably that is precisely because it is so intensely programmed, leaving no room for doubt or discussion.

Donald: With personal and family worship, the place of worship is a given; but for community or corporate worship, place needs to be specified. We’ve attended service at Willow Creek, which can seat 8,000 worshipers, but its pastor emphasizes to people who visit there that healthy local churches are the hope of the world. But what makes a church—a place—worship-worthy? Before its relocation, Oakwood SDA church worshiped in a gymnasium. Why was a relatively grand structure built to replace that? Was it necessary to the form of worship? Was it for inspiration? The Mormons build grand structures. Is it to make a statement about the status of their religion or about the way they worship?

Don: The Kingdom Halls of the Jehovah’s Witnesses are uniformly plain and small.

Donald: Sabbath school classes are small-group subsets of the SDA congregation that tend to coalesce around shared beliefs and spiritual goals. They are more interpersonal, less corporate.

Jay: I talked recently with a group of mixed-faith women. One was a young Italian mother, who of course had a Catholic upbringing. She said she was finding herself—and her two children—unfulfilled by worship in her church. It emerged that what she meant was that she was unfulfilled socially. Her spiritual needs were met through her own personal relationship with God, but she needed church to give her the opportunity to meet with people of common faith (belief, not denomination) to develop and strengthen interpersonal relationships and help one another and others. I would describe her, and her stage of faith, in generational terms, as a millennial. Older people will look to church for a closer relationship with God, but she wants a closer relationship with other people. It made me wonder whether the search for a timeless, universal principle of worship is futile at the community level; whether it is strictly a personal communion as existed in the garden of Eden.

David: Place might be a universal principle. The question asked of Jesus by the woman at the well was a question of place—of where to worship. His response was that we should worship “in”… a preposition which, in this context, we would expect to be followed by a physical place. Instead he threw the curve ball of a spiritual place. So place is key, and it should be a spiritual place; but that is not to say that it cannot also be a physical place. If the grandeur of a cathedral helps some of us to worship in spirit and truth, then let’s build some cathedrals!

Donald: Time is also a potential universal principle. Worship is most sincere at the times when we need God most and cry out to him, and place has nothing to do with it.

Anonymous: I’m still curious that God told the Israelites to build a place—the sanctuary—which they were to visit in order to offer sacrifices and confess their sins, no matter how far they might live from it, and to do so at a specific time of the year. I wonder if the sanctuary was just a metaphor for God himself. There seem to be only two elements of worship that matter at all: God, and the sinner—the worshiper.

Robin: God seems to want a personal relationship with each of us; however, he seems to have prescribed social interaction also. Perhaps the detailed instructions concerning the sanctuary play a necessary role, given that we all have different personalities and strengths to contribute and different weaknesses that leave us in need of advice, encouragement, and even correction at times. God knows that we need social interaction. It might even be dangerous to put less importance on what is more difficult for us, depending on our personalities. God seems to want to be involved in all aspects of our lives, from worship to work.

Don: You are saying that interpersonal relationships are as important as our individual relationship with God?

Robin: Our future depends on our personal relationship with God, but that is influenced by our interpersonal relationships. The intimacy of small groups, versus the anonymity of large corporate gatherings, helps our interpersonal relationships more. We cannot serve God without serving others, and we cannot serve others without interacting with them.

Don: Jesus made the interpersonal relationship an absolute priority when he said to quit formal worship of God immediately if you discover a conflict with your brother.

Jay: A major theme of the ministry of Christ was to change the focus of spiritual relationship more toward Man than toward God. Jesus came to tell us that we had perverted worship by over-emphasizing the relationship with God at the expense of the relationship with our fellow human being. He said this most clearly in the Judgment passage.

David: That calls into question the worship practiced by ascetics—the Buddhist monks who retire to Himalayan mountain caves, the anchorites, Simon Stylites, and so on. These are people whose form of worship is to shun others in order to develop their relationship with God. Is that invalid worship?

Don: Worship does seem to include service to Mankind.

Donald: It has been suggested that we should call ourselves Seven Day Adventists rather than Seventh Day Adventists, to emphasize that worship is not a once-a-week event. I wonder if there is a difference in that regard between people born into a faith and those who join later in life. The idea of Jay’s Italian friend “shopping around” for the right place of worship for her is an interesting one.

David: Perhaps the world would be a more peaceful place, and perhaps humanity’s relationship with God would be stronger, if religions and denominations were presented as items on the shelves of a spiritual supermarket, with which we are free to stuff our spiritual shopping carts according to our personal need at any given time and/or place.

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*The four stages of faith have been discussed often in our meetings. See here for a description of the stages.