Subjectivism in Worship

Recently I saw a video of some folks talking about worship. They were apparently asked “What does worship mean to you?” or “Why do you love worship so much?”, etc. . Their answers were heartfelt and I appreciated their sincerity and heart of love for God. Some of their answers were:

“When I worship, I forget where I am, . . . . . . . I don’t even know that I’m doing this or that when I’m up there. . . . . I feel like I’m saying, “God, can I talk to You?” . . . I love worship, it fills me up so much to sing to God”.

I resonate with a lot of those emotions. There is a felt benefit to leading God’s people in worship, and in the presence of God there is “fullness of joy”.

However, these feelings that leading the singing (I’ll stop using the term “worship” now, since worship is our life’s response to God, and singing with our church body is only one, important, outlet for that) produce are not the most important thing about our times of corporate worship together.

The most important thing when we get together is God, who He is, what He has done, and what his Son, Jesus, has done for us. It was a bummer that no one referenced anything objectively true about our great God in that video,. . . but only their subjective feelings about Him.

Unfortunately, many worship songs lead us to those responses with mainly subjective lyrics (not just “new” songs. . .how about “I”ll fly away”. . . now there’s a theological masterpiece J )

That’s why I make it a priority to sing objective truths about our God with songs like “The Solid Rock”, “Creed”, “In Christ Alone” and “Jesus, Messiah”. It’s these truths that we can hold onto no matter what our circumstances are like. And, yes, when our corporate worship is not going so well, and we’re missing notes, and we’re not feeling it. . . .these things are still true, and always will be.

These are the truths that I want to celebrate and “lose myself’ in. As Rich Mullins once wisely stated. . .

“Someone came up and said to me ‘ I really felt the Spirit at that one point of the song when you guys hit that crescendo’ . . . I said, no, I think that was the kick drum”

Let’s build our faith, and our gathered, musical worship on The Rock, and not on the subjective “sand” of our feelings, or the emotional effects of the music.

Let’s use all of that to glorify great truths about God and help folks to know and treasure Jesus in all of His Greatness and Grace.

Worshipping with you,

Aaron