Worship that Changes Us
Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship. Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing, and perfect will. (Romans 12:1-2 NIV)
We are fundamentally worshipping beings, created and made to desire and worship something outside of ourselves. [1] By design we are made to worship God, but a simple look around reveals how easily that can go wrong. It is all too easy for our innate need to be hijacked, and we end up worshipping all the wrong things.
Romans 12:2 speaks to the “patterns of this world” that our culture teaches us to worship. In our day, these might be the same things that Vincent J. Miller delineates as he explains the “commodification of culture” most notably throughout the Fordist era of the mid-twentieth century. As consumerism grew ubiquitous our worship (i.e. attention and desire) turned more and more toward the comfort of material things. The “American dream”, represented by the single-family home filled with all sorts of appliances designed to make life more convenient, became a much-sought-after goal. [2] But beyond the simple idolization of the “American dream”, Miller contends that even our religion, our faith rituals and our worship practices have become commodities. [3]
Even as we desire more and more consumer goods, the problem is still rooted in worship. As Miller puts it, “Consumer desire is, surprisingly, not really about attachment to things, but about the joys of desiring itself. It is the joy of endless seeking and pursuit. Actual consumption always comes as something of a disappointment, as the object can never live up to its promise. This form of desire is hauntingly similar to Christian portrayals of desire as an endless, unquenchable seeking after an infinite God.” [4]
So we are stuck. We are being pulled between this “endless, unquenchable” desire the only “true and worthy object” of which is Jesus Christ [5] and the “migration to the commodification of all aspects of society” [6] which drives us to materialism.
At about this point in reading and processing this week’s texts, I’m starting to despair. What is the solution to this problem of conspicuous (religious) consumption? Dr. Jason Clark’s answer surprised me, but it resonates deeply. The answer is worship. More specifically, training our desires, imaginations and hearts to worship Jesus by practicing rituals and disciplines of worship that bend our hearts toward him. [7] And I would add, practices that bend our hearts away from consumerism.
Practically speaking, what habits might draw us deeper into a lifestyle of consumerism that prioritizes comfort above all? And what habits might we put in place to intentionally correct that all-too-common human tendency? What limits do we put on our own consumption? Do we ever choose discomfort as an act of worship? Do we ever intentionally limit our choices in order to lean into what God wants for us? Of course we do; Every time we sacrifice something, give of our time, engage in fasting, and many more examples come to mind. I’m curious to hear from you if you have a particularly meaningful discipline in which you sacrifice something in a “true and proper act of worship” as we see in Romans 12:1.
To go one step further, what we worship ultimately forms our identity. This harkens back to Francis Fukuyama and his Identity: The Demand for Dignity and the Politics of Resentment. He too ties our identity to our faith practice when he posits that the modern, Western sense of identity was born out of the Protestant Reformation. [8] Five-hundred years later our worship is still forming our identity because it is the vehicle by which we orient our desires.
Predictably, I’ve come to the end of my available space, and I’ve barely scratched the surface of this topic. I’ll conclude with a hymn, which is a prayer, for all of us. As we desire to worship Jesus alone, but recognize our own human frailty, we need God’s grace even to worship truly and properly.
Oh to grace how great a debtor
Daily I’m constrained to be
Let Thy goodness like a fetter
Bind my wandering heart to Thee
Prone to wander, Lord I feel it
Prone to leave the God I love
Here’s my heart Lord, take and seal it
Seal it for Thy courts above [9]
_______________________________________
1 Or “liturgical animals, creatures who can’t not worship” as James K. Smith articulates it in Imagining the Kingdom: How Worship Works Cultural Liturgies. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Academic, 2013.
2 Vincent J. Miller, Consuming Religion: Christian Faith and Practice in a Consumer Culture (London: Bloomsbury, 2003) 47.
3 Ibid., 105-106.
4 Ibid., 7.
5 Clark, Jason. Evangelicalism and Capitalism: A Reparative Account and Diagnosis of Pathogeneses in the Relationship. London School of Theology, 2018. 211.
6 Ibid., 201.
7 Ibid., 216.
8 Francis Fukuyama, Identity: The Demand for Dignity and the Politics of Resentment, 29.
9 Robert Robertson, Come Thou Found of Every Blessing, 1758.
About the Author
Kim Sanford
7 responses to “Worship that Changes Us”
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
Kim, I love what you’ve shared here… worshipping Jesus is the answer. Not just singing songs that have become commodified, or getting a nice emotional high but the kind of worship that rearranges our hearts and desires. I appreciate the challenge that worship is much more than a service or a song. Thanks!
Kim,
I love that you concluded your post with such a beautiful hymn. You wrote, “By design we are made to worship God, but a simple look around reveals how easily that can go wrong. It is all too easy for our innate need to be hijacked, and we end up worshipping all the wrong things.” I could not agree more. If we are designed this way, if it is natural to do so… how is it that we are so easily distracted?
Kim,
Your post is inspiring. Thank you for reminding us of our focus and turning our hearts to worship the One who desires us. John 4:24 comes to mind. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and in truth. I sense God’s invitation to worship right along-side honest reflection. We will worship what we desire and God is the One who rearranges our desires towards himself.
I will jump on the bandwagon add that I also loved this post. Your question: “Do we ever choose discomfort as an act of worship? Do we ever intentionally limit our choices in order to lean into what God wants for us?” struck me. I appreciated your answer: “Of course we do; Every time we sacrifice something, give of our time, engage in fasting, and many more examples come to mind…” however I would confess that sometimes I do these things without a worshipful mindset. Sometimes I am just going through the motions.
I particularly liked your reminder of the hymn. With the rule of the market fictions from Polyani’s work that controls so much of our time and energy, I am now encouraged that the debt we have in Christ is actually one to celebrate. Thanks, Kim!
I was waiting for someone to draw a parallel between our readings and Romans 12:1-2, and here we are. In my perspective, the content resonated deeply.
It serves as a reminder that our natural inclination’s to venerate yet we often find ourselves swayed by the distractions of the world idolizing material possessions and comfort. Dr. Clarks perspective on worship, which emphasizes redirecting our desires, towards Christ than consumer goods offers a solution, to this prevailing cultural trend.
It urges us to realign our routines and make sacrifices as acts of worship harmonizing our sense of self with our faith. Have you discovered any practices that help you centre your worship and resist the allure of consumerism?
Mathieu, I’ve been thinking about your question for a couple of days since you posed it. Initially I couldn’t come up with a specific practice or discipline (and I was started to feel like a hypocrite for all that I had written!) until yesterday. I went to the store to buy something that was by no means a necessity but definitely something that is useful and not an impulse purchase. Even so, standing there in the store I realized that my knee-jerk reaction is almost always to talk myself out of buying something because I can live without it.
On one hand, yes, this is reflective of my frugal nature but I think it’s also reflective a posture or attitude that doesn’t want to buy into consumerism. We’ve taken up the practice of asking ourselves how a particular purchase will enhance our quality of life, reduce our stress, or incarnate our values. Those have proven to be pretty effective guardrails against blind consumerism.
Hi Kim,
You wrote, “Five-hundred years later our worship is still forming our identity because it is the vehicle by which we orient our desires.”
I love thinking about what IS my act of worship? Surely, not the American view of songs before the service. Is it the micro missions projects that the church sets up? Is it being the best husband and father?
Sadly, I live in a world with “he who has the most toys wins.”
But to be frank despite the upper middle income white community I live in, the churches has NOT lost their focus on serving God. The concept of “servant Leadership” is alive and well in Colorado Springs.
Nice post.
Shalom..