Itsara

Imagine what would happen if there were no electricity one morning at church. What would your church do? Would they trudge on through worship unplugged? What would that be like?

At our church on Sunday, there was no power for the first half hour or so of worship. The worship team just led with two acoustic guitars and a vocalist, singing songs that “everyone probably knows”. It was actually really cool – a reminder that it’s not the music that enables us to worship God, but our hearts.

But the lack of power revealed a lot of things that showed how consumerist we tend to be when we come to worship. It was suddenly more obvious when people showed up late, and it was really obvious that they were still chatting while others were trying to worship. I realized this goes on all the time and I just don’t notice because the sound drowns them out, but on this day, when I felt like we were all trying to come together to worship God, it felt… really rude. Not rude to me, but to the King of All Creation that we worship.

Another aspect of the consumerism was evident in myself. With no power, the worship leader couldn’t lead alone. We all had to be singing together in order to create the same amount and quality of sound that we normally had with power. Not that the quality of sound matters, but what’s the point of singing to The King if we’re going to do it lamely? I was technically on break from leading worship, and a part of me was quite reluctant to sing out – after all, it was my week off. I was immediately convicted by that feeling and began to sing just as if I were part of the worship team – louder even, because there was no mic.

I don’t think we realize, normally, that when we come to sing praises to God, we are singing before the King of the Universe. I don’t think we even understand what that phrase means, especially in America. In Thailand, the king is a big deal. There’s a whole procedure you’d have to go through if you ever even had to accept a small piece of paper from him. It would involve a lot of bowing and kneeling and lying face first on the ground, if you were even allowed close enough. When you go to the movie theater, you need to stand in respect of the king while they play a song and video for him before the movie starts. The king’s head – the most honored part of the body – cannot be lower than anyone else’s, and even the image of his head cannot be disrespected. Heck, the country banned YouTube for a while because of some videos that were intentionally disrespectful to the king.

In America, we tend to think of these things as propaganda. That’s a cultural bias that understandably comes from a history of fighting against evil kings and cruel tyrants, but what if the king is a good man? What if he is perfect? Surely such a king, who would sacrifice himself for our sake, is worthy of these kinds of respect and even more. So what are we doing, then, when we come into the King’s presence chatting with each other? What does it say about our attitude towards His Holiness that we think it’s okay while worshiping to look around distractedly, or cross our arms, or complain about the music – as if the music was meant to please us?

Think about that. We come to church thinking that the worship is supposed to be cool for us, but what we don’t realize is that all of us are part of the same chorus. Imagine a choir in front of some Earthly king or queen. While they’re singing their songs of praise to him, some of the members in the back are leaning against the wall, arms crossed, maybe chatting about the mistakes the choir director is making. “Honestly, I don’t see how the king would be pleased with this worship at all,” one of them says coyly.

Really? If the king’s going to be mad at anybody, do you think it’s going to be the director who’s trying to worship or the lazy choir members? Fortunately we are not worshiping the archetypical angry monarch who cries “Off with their head!” at the merest slight. We are worshiping our Father in Heaven who knows that we are just children. Maybe he even thinks it’s cute that we’re not really paying attention to what we’re supposed to be doing, but he’s still going to talk to us afterwards. I think it’s cute when Isaac looks back at me before getting into something he knows he shouldn’t, but cute or not, he still gets whatever consequence is coming.

I strayed off of my original point a little bit, but this – our attitude towards worship – is more important. Not just how we think, but how we act, how we sing, our body language – everything. That doesn’t mean we have to sing well – though if we have the ability then it absolutely means that; it means we put our whole heart into it. We are worshiping when our hearts are focused off of ourselves and others entirely and onto the living God and how amazingly great he is. And we don’t require electricity or music or even worship leaders to do that. God’s already given us everything we need, we just need to use it.