Reflect or Refract?

Christians are generally unconscious that their worship reflects the practical theology of their community. The Puritan stamp on the dictum that ‘the chief end of man is to glorify God and to enjoy him forever’ is unmistakable. The Westminster divines, with keen spiritual insight, focused the significance of man’s whole existence on glorifying God and delighting in his fellowship, because that was simply the practical outcome of their beliefs. Man-centered worship tends increasingly to deny the heart reality we confess. On the one hand, law threatens to displace grace as the foundational motive for adoring God. Both habit and the pursuit of spiritual peace must be suspect when we search for a biblical rationale for worshipping God. In sum, liturgy is theology acted out,our human response to God and his favour. But the forms persist while the content evaporates or shifts its centre from God to man. When liberalism denies the reality of a God ‘who is there’, it cannot avoid transmuting religious verities into myths. The result is seen everywhere in the secularization of the ‘post-Christian man come of age’. When liberation theology seeks to contextualize worship in a programme of sociopolitical action conscience-raising becomes identified with God-awareness in the process of history.

Carson, D. (2000, c1987). The Church in the Bible and the World : An international study (Page 120). Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House.