Compelled to Dance

It seems that for a person seeking after God, the worship of God has something to do with love and service. I've read enough about both to see a kind of chicken-or-egg relationship between the two, but the sum of - or, maybe more illustratively, the relationship between - the two is where worship happens. My love for God compels me into service unto him. My desire to serve teaches me more about love, namely its tendency to consume a life from every angle.

I believe this works the same with things other than God. We worship that which we love and serve, but, of course, these two terms are corrupted to a certain extent depending on what is the object of our worship. If I am consumed by a desire for a certain person (as I recall myself being in college for a certain girl), my thoughts are blessed/plagued by said person, my actions adjust to that which will please/impress that person, and my speech is measured, to the best of my ability, to interest/attract that person. The same behavior, only slightly altered to specifics, goes for anything really. A certain job, a particular status, a large savings account, a new car, an iPhone.

That which affects are level of love (the devotion we feel) and service (the things we do) for something is what we worship. And if this is so, then not only can loving and serving become corrupted, but our target of worship can be become skewed by confusion. Thus, we can think we're worshipping God, when in reality, we're worshipping our limited, selfish construct of him. The same goes for a person. Pornography owes a lot of its popularity to this concept.

So how does one avoid corruption of love and service, and keep from confusing that which is worshipped?

I really don't have an answer for that, at least not at this point in my life. However, I have begun to understand that what we choose to worship - and how we love and serve - seems to be directly related to our environment, the trappings and cosmetics that fashion our physical, social world. For example, I worship a certain status/lifestyle because pretty much everything around me validates that lifestyle. In essence, I'm tempted to love and serve something that really doesn't deserve to be loved and served at all. I've been duped. I suppose this is partly what idolatry is all about.

What is interesting is how easily our love and service can become confused, and our worship corrupted. My assumption is that there are churches all across this country that unknowingly specialize in corrupting our worship, feeding us an edited image of God for us to worship. And, at the same time, there are people coming to participate in "worship services" with the baggage of a selfish, manipulated image of God.

I'm not advocating the deconstruction of religion or doctrine or anything of the sort. What I'm searching for is worship that has been simplified. Love and service that flows directly out of relationship, rather than the rules or common practices of a particular environment. We should be compelled to worship, not tempted. Within such a distinction is a life change that I believe God desires for us all. That which draws us into a dance with him. Religion is the dance hall, and doctrine is the music, but the dance is all our own. Anyone who has ever shared a dance with someone they truly love can tell you that other than maybe remembering the name or chorus of the tune, nothing else really mattered at the time than the person whom they were holding and sweeping and twirling across the floor.

True worship, therefore, is authentic. We must be transparent - honest in full. No one wants to dance with someone who pretends to know the moves when they really don't have a clue. I think God would much rather dance with someone who isn't afraid to admit they need him to lead.