Pizza. One of the most tempting and adulterous foods out
there (more than ice cream). Why? Because pizza contains mainly 3 ingredients:
sugar, salt, and fat (ice cream only has 2 of the 3). These ingredients are
what the body craves most (if you don’t, you are a mutant). We are
physiologically wired to desire those 3 ingredients: sugar for energy to
perform physical tasks and maintain brain focus; fat as a reliable source of
long-term energy and storage for times of metabolic fasting; and salt to
regulate blood pressure and various organ function. But we also know that too
much sugar, fat, and salt lead to severe health problems and take away the
point of eating: to stay alive. Our bodies need more than just those 3
ingredients. We also need protein, vitamins, minerals, water, electrolytes,
fiber, flavenoids, cholesterol, and other do-dads. Pizza sometimes will contain
these (buffalo chicken, pineapple etc), but for the most part pizza is not a
reliable source for other essential nutrition.
Musical worship is like pizza. Our souls are naturally wired to love
music, emotions, and personal attachments. This is what worship songs give us.
But over indulgence will make us lose sight of what is truly important: knowing
God and knowing Christ. And music and emotions are not necessarily needed for
sincere worship, else people who are born deaf or those who have lost emotional
centers or undergo periods of depression and sorrow cannot be Christian. The
ingredients we must need for our souls are truth, hope, faith, and love. These
can be and often are found in musical worship, but like I said above, there are
other forms of worship out there that do provide what we need. Let us not
idolize a single form of worship by designating it as the only form of worship.
Let us enjoy it for what it is, God’s gift to us as a single expression of
worship among many, but it doesn’t replace any of the forms of worship that are
actually mentioned in the Bible (musical worship in scripture is never related
to worship but instead to praise, and depending on your denomination, worship ≠
praise).
So let us worship God, not worship worship.
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