Everything is Worship
This is Part 2 in a multi-part blog series laying out a philosophy for spiritual formation. You can read the earlier installment by clicking this link – Part 1: Everything is Spiritual.
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Everything we do is spiritual, which is why Paul says that true Christian “worship” is not merely a visit to the temple or even time spent in prayer or scripture, but rather the sacrifice of one’s whole life to God:
Therefore I urge you brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God – this is your spiritual act of worship” (Rom 12:1).
Worship is not only certain things we do at certain times – such as singing, or praying, or receiving communion. Since everything we do is spiritual, worship is whatever we do with our bodies. We spend every moment of our lives – waking and sleeping – devoting our thoughts, dreams, decisions, and subsequent actions to something. Sometimes what we devote ourselves to is another person, or group of people; sometimes it is activities or objects – cars, motorcycles, sports, or hobbies; other times it is to the pursuit of sex, money, food, or some other form of surrogate power.
All of it is worship.
Moreover, whatever we do with our bodies is itself always a result of the condition of our spirit. Always. We always act in accordance with the true values and beliefs that reside in our spirit, whether they be motivated by faith or fear. We simply can’t help it. We may have competing beliefs that will cause bizarre, erratic, or even contradictory behavior, but our spirit – however fragmented – dictates our actions nonetheless.
Hence, just as we are indivisibly spiritual beings, so are we indivisibly bodily beings. Therefore, not only is everything we do spiritual, everything we do is worship. Humans are worshipping creatures. We were literally created for the purpose of existing for something, and to offer our bodies to anything is to worship that thing.
This is like saying everything light does is shine. Light does a million different things and resides in a million different places, but all of it is the act of shining. To say that humans are only worshipping when they are in a religious space or when they are doing a religious activity is like saying light is only shining when it is emanating from the sun or when it is shining on a certain kind of object. Light is always shining, just as humans are always worshipping. Consider this:
What then? Shall we sin because we are not under the law but under grace? By no means! Don’t you know that when you offer yourselves to someone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one you obey—whether you are slaves to sin, which leads to death, or to obedience, which leads to righteousness? But thanks be to God that, though you used to be slaves to sin, you have come to obey from your heart the pattern of teaching that has now claimed your allegiance. You have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness.
I am using an example from everyday life because of your human limitations. Just as you used to offer yourselves as slaves to impurity and to ever-increasing wickedness, so now offer yourselves as slaves to righteousness leading to holiness. When you were slaves to sin, you were free from the control of righteousness. What benefit did you reap at that time from the things you are now ashamed of? Those things result in death! But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the benefit you reap leads to holiness, and the result is eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Rom 6:15-23)
Paul is pointing out that offering our bodies to any particular kind of thing, for any particular time, is literally to make that thing our lord. That is worship. I don’t mean that to sound sinister…it isn’t. There’s nothing inherently wrong with it; it’s simply how we’re wired and it’s a good thing. When we find great worth in something – for whatever reason – we literally sacrifice ourselves to it. That is the definition of worship.
Moreover, it’s this ability to offer ourselves whole-heartedly to something that makes us astonishingly powerful beings. Because of our capacity to worship we’re able to raise children, love others, design complex structures, organize social movements, bring political order, create art of all kinds, and generally govern the planet.
Of course, it’s this same power that enables us to destroy ourselves and others with horrific efficiency as well. And that’s exactly what Paul is warning about.
The most important question, then, is what or whom are we worshipping in the midst of our everyday activities? The answer to that question will determine whether our devoted bodily efforts produce life or death. This is why the chief pre-occupation of the Old Testament prior to the Babylonian exile is with idol worship (afterward it is with genuine goodness, which as Paul points out above, should be the natural by-product of good worship). Rightly-placed worship is the most powerful force for good on the planet; misplaced worship is a waste of time at best, and a firestorm of destruction at worst. One need look no further than the history of religion to confirm that. But this is not just a religious reality. The atheistic, hedonistic, and political atrocities of the 20th century were also by-products of mis-placed worship.
The goal of Christianity is that our worship would cease to be pointless, fragmented, double-minded, and destructive, and become, instead, whole-heartedly unified and directed in our devotion toward one truly good, consolidating object; namely, God. Furthermore, because God encompasses all good things (James 1:17), the worship of God doesn’t divorce us from real life and all the good stuff it potentially entails (like food, fun, friendship, sex, work, rest, art, entertainment, etc.); on the contrary, everyday human worship rightly fulfilled in God finally reconciles us with a truly good life, allowing the proper enjoyment of those things to become redemptive, righteous worship.
Because everything is spiritual and everything is worship we can readily know the condition of our spirit or heart by simply observing our behavior. This is a hard truth, but it is exactly what Jesus taught when he said, “A good tree cannot bear bad fruit and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit,” (Matthew 7:18) and likewise, “Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks” (Matt 12:34). Paul agrees, saying,
The acts of the sinful nature are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God.
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.
Simply put, for the purposes of spiritual formation, the quality of one’s spirit can be readily discerned by the character of one’s outward acts. Therefore, if we’re to assess and train our spiritual condition we must begin in the realm of the mind, the will, and the emotions – but, because we are indivisibly both spiritual and bodily beings we must not be afraid to look to outward behavior as both the indicator and the fulfillment of our inward spiritual conditioning, and use outward acts as a means of teaching and training – just as Jesus did.
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