Busted.
Thank you.
Peter

To put it bluntly some worship services are designed to masturbate the soul…the individuals’ experience of love is more valued than the God Who is Love.

Scott, I think you’re saying something very important here. But I also think we need to be careful. Eros still has a place in our love for God. The problem with seeing God’s Face is that we can’t. The Psalmist talks about our gazing upon the beauty of the Lord in his sanctuary. Sometimes we see and experience God in beauty itself — the beauty of an organ prelude, the beauty of the visual arts, or the beauty of a quality worship song. Most worship songs go beyond simply saying, “I love You, I love You.” They talk about particular qualities of God or things that God has done. Music is a language that helps us “see” and experience these qualities as real and not just make-believe. The apostle Paul connects music was being filled with the Spirit in Ephesians 5. Ultimately we relate to God by faith, but such experiences can strengthen our faith, and hopefully make us all the more ready to obey the living God. As soon as one is “enthralled” with God’s Face, no matter how it appears to us, there is the danger of being enthralled with being enthralled. Prayer books, worship songs and even silence can be a means to an end or become the end itself. There is no way to avoid this ever constant pitfall in the Christian journey. But there is no use trying to be Gnostics, thinking we can just skip over the “natural” means to our knowing and loving God. So I appreciate what you’re saying, and I’m sure what you’re describing happens in many contemporary churches. But I’m convinced that happens just as often in churches of all persuasions, because no matter what the means, our human temptation is to settle for the penultimate rather than be Ultimate.

I’m reminded in some ways of Pope Benedict XVI’s encyclical “Deus Caritas Est”. I’ve meditated on it a number of times and own the printed version.
http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/encyclicals/documents/hf_ben-xvi_enc_20051225_deus-caritas-est_en.html
I don’t think you meant it that way at all, but there was a sense in which your article could be read as reducing or even dismissing the bodily eros of worship. I think that arises from the choice of ‘tame’ and ‘skip over’ to describe what Charity does to Eros. In the example of the encyclical above, the words most used are purified and healed. We are inherently bodily. We need to avoid the eros of worship typified by the divine madness or divine intoxication of (for one example) the ancient pagan Greek practices. We need to be healed so that our eros of worship can attain its true grandeur. I think the language of healing and purification is more helpful in moving us toward understanding how to integrate the various aspects of our love and worship for God.
I do agree that there is often an abuse or misuse of eros in our Christian worship. I would not agree that we need to eliminate it, though, or replace it with something better. Rather, just as every other aspect of our being needs to be healed and reintegrated, so too does this one.

Good post. The idea is not to do away with the “courtly love”–who doesn’t like a good love poem or elevating church service–but not to allow these to substitute for the hard work of going out into the world and doing God’s will as best we can, which is a tad harder!

To be in love with the experience of worship or the experience of church, but to miss being in love with and worshipping God himself: A subtle, deceptive problem, but I think it is not new.
I know some who are very old-fashioned who seemingly unconsciously judge a church service based on how convicted they felt about some shortcoming or some lack in their spiritual life. I know other old-fashioned folk who seem to judge the service on whether it deviated from the established norm in any way.
The old-fashioned version is more intellectual than emotional, the younger generation tend toward a more emotional flashier version, but I think at the core there is a similar wrong focus.

Thanks for posting this here. I do think that’s what many of your friends mean when they talk about “attraction-church”, “co-dependent church”, “consumeristic church”, and the like.
A friend I grew up with, he was in my wedding, is a worship leader locally. The pastor of a church he used to work for would routinely tell the staff “it’s all about Sunday morning.” Most pastors who believed that wouldn’t be so explicit, but implicitly, maybe even subconsciously, that’s what many on staff in evangelical churches are hearing and/or thinking themselves. But it’s a very harmful and deeply untrue thing to say about a church, or certainly about Christianity or Jesus generally. Plus, it’s absolutely exhausting–trying to produce emotional/spiritual/intellectual experiences for people week after week (sometimes several times a week). I’d be curious how many pastors and staff persons think (or feel) that having the attenders leave with a certain experience is a significant part of their job, or even the heaviest part.
This is a common part of “ministry” in the West that at least a significant stream of the emerging and/or missional church is attempting to drop.

Scot, you make good points. But do we want a worship service in which the worshiper doesn’t sense pleasure in loving God?
It seems to me that the phenomenon you describe – of being in love with the experience of worship rather than with God its object – can be true of just about any form of worship service. We can make an idol of the experience itself.
While some forms of worship may be more prone to this danger than others it seems that it lurks everywhere, whether we’re talking about icons in Orthodox worship, low church evangelical praise and worship music, the smells and bells of the high liturgical service, the intellectual satisfaction of learning from a scholarly sermon or talk, the quiet simplicity of a Quaker service, listening to (or singing along with) Handel’s “Messiah” etc. Each of those can become an idol – pursued solely for the “courtly love” feeling it produces in the worshiper.
But each can also be a good means, to a good end. “Any road out of Jerusalem must also be a road into Jerusalem.”
We probably never act with completely pure or unmixed motives. So while needing to be conscious of our tendency toward idolatry, we still need to worship.

Scot…I think you’re on to something here. Sounds like the makings of a good book!

And I agree with the other comments. John, tell us how you really feel about it. And MatthewS, yes, it’s unfortunate that this type of thing is sometimes seen as applicable only to the more emotionally expressive churches. Some prefer intellectual stimulation (maturbation, John?) to other varieties.

It’s a mixed bag as the comments reflect. I have come to pretty much agree with what you’re saying Scot, and, although not using the term “masturbation”, I have used the term “spiritual orgasm” which is really not much different, if at all.
I’m mixed too on the topic. Worship has to be verticle, directed and focused on God. But we are emotional/physical beings that do have real responses to God’s presence and our “experience” of Him through worship.
But it can easily slip into narcicism on our part and being in love with the feeling instead of Him, which, I think, is what you’re saying. At that point “worship” becomes an idol, and, spiritually we make God into a temple prostitute.
“Plus, it’s absolutely exhausting–trying to produce emotional/spiritual/intellectual experiences for people week after week (sometimes several times a week). I’d be curious how many pastors and staff persons think (or feel) that having the attenders leave with a certain experience is a significant part of their job, or even the heaviest part.”
You’re absolutely right T. As a former worship leader in a Charismatic style worship context, there was definitely an expectation. The worhip was evaluated by both members and staff/worship team by how strongly we “felt/experienced” the “presence” of God. When the worship was “good”, I would experience an incredible rush and high, followed by a mellow after-glow and later an emotional/physical let down, that left me weak and tired. For those who are sexually active (hopefully you’er married!), you understnd the parallel. The pressure to produce that experience each week was pretty constant.
One other wrinkle: We are the Bride of Christ, so how much erotic imagry and experience is valid and even desireable? My read in those days when I received my weakly corporate “release” was that I was passionately worshipping Jesus spiritually like a husband and wife become one flesh, thus reflecting the reality of Christ and His Bride (Church) as laid out in Ephesians 5.
That’s where I’m still ambivalent. I see the danger in what has been described in Scot’s post. I also see the validity of Ephesians 5, but am not sure how far that imagery can be taken. I still enjoy this style of worship at times, but have weaned myself from the weekly fix mentality and do not want to go back there as a leader or a participant.

Right now I’d settle for a worship service that didn’t give me a headache and leave me feeling ill.

I don’t think it has to be either/or. I think worship should be interactive with God but does not have to include barking in the aisles or convulsing on the floor. I think good solid praise songs does bring us to throne roon of heaven and worship is intimate and life altering. I think you can have both.
Vivien Hibert’s book “Prophetic Worship” has been a godsend to me regarding this subject.

Perhaps the issues are focus and balance. Eros is a wonderful component of marriage, part of its joy and emotional bond, but not the heart or substance of it. Our culture has suffered greatly from confusion and false expectations about this. Likewise, while eros may be a beautiful component of worship, it distorts and stunts true spiritual growth if it is pursued/valued at the expense of the deep love, trust, sacrifice and commitment that give worship its best foundation. Part of the problem with courtly love seems to be that it placed idealized fantasy above real-life responsibility. Maybe the eighteenth-nineteenth century Romantics’ exaltation of emotional responses to beauty, nature, tragedy, absinthe, etc. should also make us think about the dangers of imbalance in our approach to God.

I would add a caution that we should judge our brothers and sisters, including the worship leaders, carefully if at all. We are each responsible for our attitudes, not theirs. It is possible that they are much more or less sincere in their own hearts than we realize. I have found it is very easy for me to hold part of myself back in worship, assuming bad things about others; eventually no worship service will be perfect enough to usher such a one into worship. To be sure, we should all be open to constructive criticism and do what we can to learn and grow. So posts like this certainly have a place. But we should be careful not to slip into being those folks whose main stimulation becomes looking down on the unenlightened-everyone-else. I don’t believe the post or the comments here are guilty of that but I am aware of my own tendencies enough to know that I need the reminder.

Roman Catholicism, of course, has a courtly love-object, Mary; who was the object of much of this kind of devotion at the height of the middle ages.
The romantic love language we Evangelicals use for Jesus is often embarrassing and WAY overdone (e.f. Jars of Clay “Love Song for a Savior” and every other praise song currently composed)… Maybe we just need a more natural courtly-love object of our own.
I nominate… Kirk Cameron.

i likw the last paragraph. I have thought we must not call a worship service good because we were emotionally moved. As if that’s the value system. At the same time I acknowledge that praise to God can be an emotional experience. The test is when we praise God and there is no emotion to go with it. I went through 2 such desert/dry experiences and hung onto what I believed to be true without there being the feel-good to go along with it. We praise God because he is God and we are not, that’s the bottom line, no matter how we feel, we do it out of believing it to be true. That’s why we praise God and if feelings come along with it then that is a blessing,

Your Name is me, BeckyR. That trips me up a lot.

Good points, but a couple of observations…
“Courtly” love is in the Bible — Song of Solomon. It wasn’t invented in the Middle Ages. The Patristics may have gone a bit too far in allegorizing Song of Solomon, but I think there still is something valid here — the lovers in some way prefigure the love of Christ for his bride.
That said, yes, far, far, far too much of our contemporary worship has become about “me” and my “experience.” The phrase “worship experience,” which I’ve heard used many times, gives me the willies. And any praise song in which the name “Jesus” could be exchanged with the name “Suzie” should be banned.

Thanks Scot,
I think this is an excellent analogy for what happens when worship is removed contextually from what the church does the other 6 days of the week. We spend our days being in love with being in love, while never bothering to actually Love. This describes exactly the result of the infamous “worship wars” as I’ve experienced them sojourning with mainline churches. In my context, regardless of one’s theological orientation, everyone has a worship imagination that is titillated by a particular kind of experience. My guess is that these experiences are shaped in large part by childhood associations with worship or worship at the time of conversion. What amazes me is how easily we can divorce worship from our theology, particularly a theology of mission. I’ve been most surprised by congregations that regard themselves as socially conscious and engaged. I’ve found their worship life to be inconsistent with their public face. On the one hand they say, they are willing to work on public matters of justice and community wellbeing, but on the other hand they want their fellowship fenced in and fixed in a certain form. Which has led me to ask if worship does not overflow the bounds of a worship “service” or “fellowship”, is it really worship? I’d love to see more writing about this. Where else can we look?

Thanks, Scot. I agree and well put. All the stuff going on should be the means to the end of loving God and our neighbor as ourselves. If it doesn’t lead us to that, something is amiss in us, or that.

On approximately this topic, I could recommend the fairly recent book “The Dangerous Act of Worship” by Mark Labberton.
If I could summarize Labberton’s book in one sentence, it would be: “Worship is worthless unless it helps to motivate and transform the gathered community to have God’s heart for the world.”
I thought the book was longer than it needed to be, as the basic point was made from numerous angles, but it was/is a good point.
We had Mark Labberton at our church for a weekend recently (good material on living as “exiles”, which sounded much like “missional” to me though he avoided that word), and I thought it was ironic that, at our contemporary worship service, the song before his sermon featured the line “you are MY Jesus and you love ME” which is about as “me-and-Jesus” as it gets.

dopderbeck #20: “Courtly” love is in the Bible — Song of Solomon.
This may not be how you’re using the term, but I’d never call that courtly love. Courtly love is about appreciation without intimacy. The courtly lover admires the fair lady, or the Blessed Virgin, from a distance. The “beloved’s” name is honored (the knight might dedicate his victories in battle or tournament to his lady), her image is revered, objects associated with her carry symbolic weight, but she herself is excluded. Applied to God, this is classic idolatry. “Did we not prophesy in your name?” “Get away from me. I never knew you!”
The Song of Solomon is all intimacy, all the time. These lovers may be blessed, but they’re not virgins–he’s browsing among the lilies and she’s enjoying the taste of his fruit. The man’s celebration of his beloved’s body emphasizes that she has, so to speak, become flesh and dwelt with him. Courtly love is asymmetrical: the knight is supposed to be utterly devoted to his lady, but her admiration for him has to be cloaked in symbolic gestures and tokens and rationed out with an eyedropper. In contrast, the woman of the Song is lavish with her affection. She’s the antithesis of the distant, objectified lady of courtly love. (She’s not even a fair lady! “Dark am I, yet lovely.”)
That’s the paradigm of true worship and of the Eucharist. “Here is my body; take and eat.”
(Anyone bringing up the question of whether the Song is an erotic poem about two lovers or an allegory for love between Christ and the church will be assigned pushups. It’s a meaningless question, because erotic love between humans is itself a metaphor for Christ and the church. And vice versa.)

I?m more concerned about the Christian or religious person who wrings hands and points fingers at others? preferences, styles or outward affection in worship. I cannot help but think of Mary Magdalene at Jesus? feet, whose behavior and emotions embarrassed many, including Jesus? own disciples – especially Judas, who basically accused Mary of being so heavenly minded that she was no earthly good.
There will always be those who ridicule or downplay the importance of emotions or experience in worship – or accuse those who do of “intoxicating impulses”. This essay comes really close – steps right up to the line – of equating emotion or pursuit of an experience WITH God, of being idolatrous. At the very least, it plants the suspicion in the mind of the reader/fellow worshiper.
It seems to me that Scripture and Christ Himself affirms those who come to Christ unabashedly and unembarrassed. 9 times out of 10, when someone approaches God in this manner, it involves some kind of emotional or experiential expression. They should get the benefit of the doubt. Those who see this should look inwardly, possibly to ask why their own response is so dispassionate and calculating.