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While discussing my recent post on Focus with my wife, we found ourselves discussing the importance of worship. Expressing your heart through music to God. (That is our most common understanding of “worship” these days, I’d say.)
We mentioned how meaningful that has been for us at times, and just fun, too! God made music to help us express ourselves more than mere words are able to do. We spoke of how worship can even be just a couple people using just their voices to express their hearts to God.
But from there, we thought, perhaps add a guitar for flavor. But then, you really need to have someone who can really play. That enhances the whole experience when it’s actually GOOD music. 🙂 So, then once you have a good guitar player, or some good vocalists, the next step is always a few more instruments… eventually forming a BAND! And with a band, you definitely need to rehearse! So, someone has to lead the band, and rehearse the songs, arranging a layout of each song of course. And then, once you have arranged this musical portion, you probably need to get someone to oversee the whole flow of the time that we are together, perhaps even plan some other pieces of the worship time – art, drama, even video for the tech savvy…
Do you see what happened? From the simplistic offering of heart-felt worship – a heart expressed to God – to an organized mega church in three simple steps! It’s not always as quick as the steps above, but it’s what I have now deemed the Babel Syndrome.
Do you remember the story? The people of the world had one common language. They were united in their effort to achieve all they could be. There was arrogance and pride in their hearts. They were not living to know their Creator, they were trying to reach him on their own. They wanted to build a tower to the heavens. God knew this was not good for them, and so confused them by giving them all different languages. Their organization was thwarted.
It is our way. We take everything that is good, and we want to improve. We want to make it the best it can be, and that takes organization. Administration. Planning. Building. Structure.
The bane of humanity is our desire to be in control. To manipulate our surroundings to produce the finest we can produce. By itself that is not bad. Striving for excellence is to be commended. But what happens is our focus drifts off of the offering and onto our achievements. We take the joy of spontaneous expressions to our Creator and package them into something that ends up receiving (in effect) our worship. Our time, our effort, our focus, our energy.
It becomes our tower of Babel. Our greatest accomplishment. Our driving force. Just a thought, but seems to fit a lot of the stuff we do. We are always striving for bigger and better. What improves on something? To add more, of course! If we had two guitarists last week, let’s add drums this week. If we had drums last week, let’s add a stand-up bass and cello. Always improving by pulling out all the stops and making the tower bigger.
Obviously, this does not stop with worship. We know we need to “fellowship” so we create small groups. We create a structure by which we can ensure maximum participation in such groups, so as to produce maximum fellowship. Even our church buildings are a result of this syndrome. We justify exorbitant spending on such edifices by extolling them as tools to reach more people, or just to handle all of the families that God has already blessed us with.
We are always trying to build bigger and better, instead of relishing the simple life of knowing and living with the Creator. Sharing the joys and pains of life with those he has surrounded us with, and not trying to herd them in any way into any pattern of living we might think “best” for them.
It is our way. From Babel to now.
i have to agree with you on the love of ‘bigger and better’ and how that can completely distract one (myself included) from authenticity. But i have to ask:
let’s worship God through music! OK… lets sing!
Ok… let’s add a chordal instrument
OH, some low-end would add fullness
Man, drums would really make this rock…
now we’ve formed a band… did we stop authentically worshiping because we formed the band? When does the Babel Syndrome start and the authentic worship stop? have i entered the babel syndrome because i think such-and-such a tune would sound great with a sax, though i don’t have one in my band at this point? just curious… i could be missing your point
Great post, Greg. Something I think every worship leader should stop to think about before they do ANYTHING.
I would say, however, that one can still have a band and worship well – people still need leaders because not everybody has the gift of music.
I’d also say that worship is far beyond music, and that pretty much anything can be a form of worship – because worship is what happens when we glorify God.
But I really like what you wrote – and I think a lot of people need to think what you wrote a lot more often.
Just to elaborate…
My point was not that there is any specific line, but a syndrome. It is just the way we are. We continue to build and build until we (often) collapse under the weight of our structure. Simplicity is not in our nature. Often we will revert to it, due to the weight of our elaborate structures, but by nature we pile on bigger and better.
There is no defineable line that can be crossed (that I can think of) whereupon you have left the realm of worship and entered the world of sin. That was not my point. Just an observation of a direction that we seem inevitably to proceed in most everything in life.
Perhaps the Babel Syndrome (as I have dubbed it) is merely more detrimental when applied to relational areas of life, such as worship and relationships with other folks.
Cause… I rather enjoy rockin’ with the band. 🙂 But, that is just something I do… not in any way a part of my relationship with God. Does that make sense?
I AM Jen’s husband. That’s who I am. I may plan an elaboarte evening with her – all the stuff she likes to do – or perhaps just sit on the couch with her, saying nothing. At both times and in both ways, I am equally her husband. Neither one is better or worse for either of us. But, for the former, much effort was put into it, requiring lots of help from others, and lots of energy on our part to do lots of things to make for a great evening. And it probably was. In the case of the latter, all I did was sit down. My presence was hopefully enjoyable. And, with nothing planned, we have more freedom to connect however the moment unfolds.
On both occasions, I am her husband. Neither is better or worse. Perhaps similarly with God, we can create and execute the most elaborate event for him, worshipping him in every way, and it’s great. Or, we can simply sit with him. Either is worship. And everything in between. Our hearts expressed to him.
Does any of this make sense?