One of our greatest errors, I believe, lies in how we approach Christianity as a religion. Jesus was not the beginning of a new type of religion with a different God at its center, but the destruction of religion as a system and the death of all its gods. Jesus does not call us to worship as pagans worshiped, but calls us to follow.
The difference between these two concepts couldn't be greater.
The way we "worship" Jesus is by following Him, not simply by chanting, bowing low or raising our arms. All of that is fine and dandy, but we've too often mistaken Christian worship for something, I believe, Jesus never intended.
Christianity is not a new take on old forms of religion. It's not a call to worship a disembodied spook, or to sing songs to an unseen entity. No, it's a call to serve humankind, and in so doing to perfectly serve God. Christianity, first and foremost, is a call to follow the radical, self-giving person of Jesus. While other religions seek to ritually engage their deities through various practices, our God only asks that we take His love and make it manifest to the world. True religion, James tells us, is to love the broken and to keep ourselves from being corrupted by the system that breaks them.
In short, Christianity is less about worship and more about following. Or, perhaps a better way to say it would be that, in Christianity, following is worship.
The difference between these two concepts couldn't be greater.
The way we "worship" Jesus is by following Him, not simply by chanting, bowing low or raising our arms. All of that is fine and dandy, but we've too often mistaken Christian worship for something, I believe, Jesus never intended.
Christianity is not a new take on old forms of religion. It's not a call to worship a disembodied spook, or to sing songs to an unseen entity. No, it's a call to serve humankind, and in so doing to perfectly serve God. Christianity, first and foremost, is a call to follow the radical, self-giving person of Jesus. While other religions seek to ritually engage their deities through various practices, our God only asks that we take His love and make it manifest to the world. True religion, James tells us, is to love the broken and to keep ourselves from being corrupted by the system that breaks them.
In short, Christianity is less about worship and more about following. Or, perhaps a better way to say it would be that, in Christianity, following is worship.