FROM: Banbury, Oxfordshire, United Kingdom
ABOUT ME: Living the highs and lows of life in the adventurous pursuit of God Himself and of who I'm meant to be as the Bride of Christ.
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Monday, March 06, 2006,7:43 p.m.
Head and Heart
I have lately been reading a book by David Peterson called Engaging with God: A Biblical Perspective on Worship. Sounds intersting, doesn't it? (OK, perhaps to some it might not....) The book, however, is a pre-requisite for a course I am taking in a couple of weeks, and so reading it and writing a paper on it is necessary.
The book itself is not that bad. It reads much as you would expect someone's doctoral thesis to read - very detailed, conclusions to chapters well laid out and ideas stated and re-stated. No problem. I am, however, realizing something about studying worship (and any other aspect of our faith, I imagine) that I had not connected with quite this clearly in the past: the head and the heart must both be touched.
Granted I am only about a third into the book, but so far it has mainly been an intellectual pursuit - one person attempting to support their theory with facts and verses and, yes, Greek, Hebrew and big scary things like the Septuagint and Deuterocanonical writings. (Heh heh.... I love studying....)
But I am finding myself as a worshipper frustrated and wanting to keep asking my book, "What's the point - how does this help me worship God better?" It is a fair question, and one that the book proposes to answer (the introduction to the book states that we can only be true worshippers when we understand what God desires and defines as worship and learn to live that out). It has so far however, in the first 100 pages, fallen short of its professed desires to teach me these concepts.
It leaves me thinking that we can study as much as we want, and understand or "know" as much as we want about the scriptures or living our faith (in the head), but until we actually put those things into practice (in the heart), our knowledge is useless.
Learning and pursuing knowledge are not wrong. I have a few friends who are philosophers by nature - it is the way that God made them, as people who love to dig into things deeply until they find deep truths. The real truth for all of us, though, is that we can dig as much as we want, but until we apply those truths to our lives, we are about as useless as the clanging cymbals in 1 Corinthians 13.
If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love, I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. (1 Corinthians 13:1)
The book itself is not that bad. It reads much as you would expect someone's doctoral thesis to read - very detailed, conclusions to chapters well laid out and ideas stated and re-stated. No problem. I am, however, realizing something about studying worship (and any other aspect of our faith, I imagine) that I had not connected with quite this clearly in the past: the head and the heart must both be touched.
Granted I am only about a third into the book, but so far it has mainly been an intellectual pursuit - one person attempting to support their theory with facts and verses and, yes, Greek, Hebrew and big scary things like the Septuagint and Deuterocanonical writings. (Heh heh.... I love studying....)
But I am finding myself as a worshipper frustrated and wanting to keep asking my book, "What's the point - how does this help me worship God better?" It is a fair question, and one that the book proposes to answer (the introduction to the book states that we can only be true worshippers when we understand what God desires and defines as worship and learn to live that out). It has so far however, in the first 100 pages, fallen short of its professed desires to teach me these concepts.
It leaves me thinking that we can study as much as we want, and understand or "know" as much as we want about the scriptures or living our faith (in the head), but until we actually put those things into practice (in the heart), our knowledge is useless.
Learning and pursuing knowledge are not wrong. I have a few friends who are philosophers by nature - it is the way that God made them, as people who love to dig into things deeply until they find deep truths. The real truth for all of us, though, is that we can dig as much as we want, but until we apply those truths to our lives, we are about as useless as the clanging cymbals in 1 Corinthians 13.
If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love, I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. (1 Corinthians 13:1)
