Emotions in Worship

In this weeks reading of Give Praise to God, I was struck be Robert Dabney’s quote on page 370, “Blinded men are ever prone to imagine that they have religious feelings because they have sensuous animal feelings in accidental juxtaposition with religious places, words or sights.”

Dabney goes on to say that this mistaken perception has led many souls to Hell, but I wonder if there are not just as many guilty of improperly analyzing worship among the body of Christ. Is it only the one who has no knowledge of God who misunderstands how worship is to impact the affections, or is their an undercurrent of emotional blindness in the worship of real believers in our midst?

We have maintained that worship is engaging with God on His terms. We have further maintained that worship is to be a continuous practice for the true believer. So the one who longs for true worship will hold that our essential approach to worship must be the same each time, and that we should be worshipping all the time. When we have this opinion, we see no distinction between worshiping in song, worshipping in conversation, and worshipping in the private reading of the Bible. In fact, we will hold that there cannot be any distinction between forms of worship.

Emotion shows itself in our singing in multiple ways. Some contort their faces as if they were in great pain for their own unworthiness in relation to God’s kindness. Others raise their arms, clench their fists, or bounce around. Are any of these actions wrong in and of themselves? Clearly not. Are they wrong for worship? Not necessarily, but my concern is not with the actions themselves, but with the emotional confusion that could be behind them. Do we practice those same actions when we talk to someone about how God has changed them? Do our hearts swell with joy as we read the sweet words of scripture? Those are also worship are they not? Then there should be no difference in emotional response.

My point is not that emotions are wrong. True knowledge of God must produce fire in our hearts. But we must ask ourselves, do our emotions react this way in all forms of worship? If they do not, then we must ask ourselves, what is different about singing? What brings our worship to a new level of emotional manifestation when the activity is singing and not serving someone in need? If it is the sound of the instruments or the joy in hearing our own voices, and not the truth of God’s revelation that brings about an emotional reaction, than we are guilty of idolatry. St. Augustine once said “He loves Thee too little who loves anything together with thee, which he loves not for thy sake.” So we go on singing in an emotional frenzy, truly believing that we are revealing to God the depth of love that we have for him, when in fact, our worship has been diluted by the love of sounds. Would this not disgust a holy God? That he has not been enough to excite us?

Again I must point out, emotions in worship are not wrong. However, I maintain that an influx of emotions in one form of worship that is absent in another form reveals a terrible truth about our hearts. We must be careful then. We must examine our hearts in all areas of worship and derive where our hearts get their warmth. I personally love worshipping in song. But if my emotions are more active than in any other form of worship, I know that something has gone awry. So if I go about my week worshipping myself, and then come to dance around during singing, I know that my “religious feelings” in song are nothing more than “sensuous animal feelings in accidental juxtaposition with religious places, words or sights.”

These concerns are completely separate from the concern that some may worship in a very distracting way. The excuse “that’s just how I worship” will not suffice since worship is engaging with God on His terms. Also, the claim that each person should mind their own business in worship is ill-grounded since public worship is supposed to be communal, and to disregard the needs of others will not contribute to any worship; not even the worship of the individual who has selfishly ignored the needs of others.

So what should we do? Have I forever condemned the raising of hands or any other physical manifestation of a heart swollen with the truth of God’s grace, beauty, or faithfulness? I hope not. All I ask is that we consider two things: First, is our worship totally unto God, or has it been mixed with a love for music? Secondly, are the motions that I use bringing glory to God in a tasteful manner, or are they distracting other eager-hearted worshippers?

We must ask, and properly handle these two questions or we will be in danger of selfishness, and (worse by far), idolatry in our worship.