All of Life Is Worship
The Daily Rhythm of Theology
This article first appeared as a post for Theology (re)Considered and is available here.
Introduction
This article began several years ago. It had an early form in the musing of college kids who didn’t know any better, and while that form suffered the delay of distance, there is a friend who is closer than a brother (Pr. 18:24). True, good, beautiful friendship can surpass distance and time, and such friendship has kept the conversation alive for Dylan and me. We are those college kids who didn’t know any better, and I tend to think the latter of that statement still rings true. When we first met in college, we hated each other. But that was the meeting of fools, and Jesus, the carpenter he is, knows how a little sanding can make a thing smooth (cf. Pr. 27:17). After we decided we didn’t really hate each other, we started discussing, among other things, how important worship is for daily food, and our discussion has led us here. I’m sure it will lead us farther, and I hold these ideas loosely, but they are here to be read, considered, chewed up and spit out, digested, or twisted. Whatever they are, they are here.
Worship Daily
The first step on our journey toward seeing worship as a daily need is to realize that worship is more than a Sunday affair. We might boil down our term to its irreducible minimum and find that worship is a response of reverence or acknowledgement of a deity or someone/something of great importance. So there we find several elements of worship: 1) someone to do the worshipping, 2) someone/thing to be worshipped, and 3) a way of response. These three categories have been studied in depth and have the heady names to prove it: respectively, they are 1) anthropology, the study of humankind; 2) theology, the study of God; and 3) orthodoxy and orthopraxy (the tenets and expressions of faith properly held and practiced). All three components (anthropology, theology, and orthodoxy/orthopraxy) are essential to our right understanding of worship, but theology stands out among them because the thing being worshipped is, by definition, the focus of that worship.
Theology is Worship
I asked my wife recently what she thought of when I said “theology.” I wanted to get her opinion because 1) she’s remarkable at seeing things from a perspective I often miss, and 2) she keeps me grounded, constantly reminding me that I can get carried away when I’m passionate. Her reply: “Hard.” I expected something a little more academic or church-y, but I received a reply that sticks. It tastes like a popcorn kernel stuck just below the gum line of a molar: I want to unpack it, but the more I try, the more my mind grows raw and sore. Because theology is a festering wound.
But theology is also a healing balm. Theology is more than hard; it’s worth every moment poured into its study, worth every penny spent on its gain, worth every heartache of sacrifice on the long path toward deeper understanding of who God is, how he relates to us, and how we know ourselves in his light. As Adam Ford, the comedic mastermind behind The Babylon Bee, once wrote, “Everything is theological.” Theology is the lens by which we shape the world around us, and it is a lens we are constantly honing.
When my wife thinks of theology, she’s thinking of the theology most of us consider when approaching the subject. She’s thinking of rich old men in tweed sitting in lecture halls and pouring over original texts. Perhaps she’s thinking of a pastor sitting in a quiet study or an idle-hum coffeeshop somewhere, preparing notes for a Sunday message. But I doubt she’s thinking of a child, wandering about an Ozarks farm, singing melodies about the wondrous world around him, desperately seeking a place in that world. His wandering takes him to the throne room of God, the trees guiding him to the footsteps of Jesus who, with outstretched arms, admonishes the child not to seek a place in the world, for his place is already made in the arms of his Savior. But that is not what we think when we consider theology.
Too often we fail to see theology for the daily practice it really is. Sure, theologians the world over are preparing their battle-axes, standing at the ready to practice the more archaic means of church discipline that we’d probably prefer remain relegated to the Middle Ages. Academic theology is, after all, a discipline of the mind — a pursuit of which only a few have dared to embark. Yet their whole aim ought to be the accessibility of the One whom they study. So academics, would you join me in celebrating your lofty goals of making theology accessible to the masses — of making Theos himself readily accessible? Because that’s what we require if we are to walk in light of the daily rhythm of theology.
What I mean is that theology proper — the study of the deep things of God, such as the very real tension between Divine sovereignty and human responsibility, or the existence of evil in a world created by Benevolence — theology proper is a daunting subject rife with opportunities to err, to wander into heresy, where you might find yourself seated at the burning stake with other famous and infamous scholars of yesteryear who were deemed, rightly or otherwise, as enemies of the state or of the church, in an age when people cared to the point of death what you believed. Theology used to be fought over — wars waged and heretics killed, smoke rising up toward heaven where once the sacrificial plumes had risen to the nostril of God. So theology is hard. And it should be. And we need people who are passionately pursuing greater depths of knowledge and understanding so that those of us who lack the more formal means might find the crumbs and feast.
Those people who fought and died over theology — their interpretation of the things of God, informed by their devoted study — they found an importance in what they were studying that I think we’ve lost today. I’m not advocating that we slaughter those with whom we disagree (not even on social media), but I do argue that we’re missing out on a level of humanness by ignoring the depth of understanding we can glean from a methodical study of the things of God — a study shaped by and shaping the world around us.
As the study of who God is, when we engage with theology, we are engaging with him in worship. To worship is, after all, to express our devotion to something. And the something we study in theology is the God of the universe — the creator of the universe — and his infinitude means his depth is inexhaustible. We can spend the rest of time everlasting plunging into his depths and always coming up with more. And if every moment time everlasting is shaped by, and shaping, our theological lens, for better or for worse, then every moment of our lives is an act of worship. In worship, we are looking into, learning about, and responding to, that which we hold dear; thus, in theology, we are engaging with God in worship.
Scripture teaches us of the immeasurable depths of God (cf. Isa. 55:8–9), which we have covered in the preceding paragraphs. Scripture also teaches of his nearness, which we hear preached at length in the songs and sermons of Christmastide; we proclaim with Prophet Isaiah, “Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel” (Is. 7:14). Matthew expands on Isaiah’s prophecy with a parenthetical explanation for those of us who don’t speak or read Hebrew: “‘they shall call his name Immanuel’ (which means, God with us)” (Mt. 1:23, emphasis added). Therefore, if God is with us and is always present and working in omnipotence throughout the world and all created order; and if his ways, thoughts, and being are immeasurable, it stands that there is always someone deserving of worship, something done to which we ought to respond in worship, and someone available to carry out the act of worship. (Jesus actually addressed the Pharisees in Luke 19:40 to highlight this fact: “I tell you, if [my disciples] were silent, the very stones would cry out.” God will be worshipped!)
We believe, teach, and confess that the eternal God created the universe and upholds and sustains it. Further, we preach and proclaim that the eminent God Almighty is also the imminent God of love who seeks us and desires relationship with us through his Holy Spiring and because of the redemptive being, life, and work of his Son Jesus Christ. Thus, in light of the eminent, imminent God, we must acknowledge that worship only one day of the week fails to attain the mountaintop that is his worth of worship. Indeed, he is worthy of moment-by-moment worship, breath-by-breath worship, every-fiber worship. What’s more, we’re already engaging in every moment with some form of worship — always at work in response to things we admire or desire. Ought we to direct even the mundane in life toward the holiness of God and be about the redemptive work to which he has called us, the imago Dei, as agents of reconciliation (2 Cor. 5:11–21)? Indeed, such is worship. And if we are not willing to stand on this front, I fear we will hear the song of rock and hill (Lk. 19:40). How much more joyous ought to be the daily-rhythm song of simul justus et peccatur (at once both sinner and saint) — for such are we; thus, for his grace and to his glory, we worship Almighty God.
Amen.
