“What comes to our minds when we think about God is really the most important thing about us.” — English Theologian, G.K. Chesterton
“Many years ago now I was driving on a highway through Wyoming and I saw a billboard. A beat-up looking billboard worn with time and the elements. It said, ‘What do you think about God?’ I have often thought about that sign. It was one of those moments that time stands still for me. It is etched in my mind. I remember seeing it and thinking about it. I have thought of it many times since, almost every day.” — Adrienne McLeod
“What do you think about God?” It’s not a bad question to ask really. It certainly would explain why some people do the crazy things they do in the expression of their religion.
Did you know? That for 500 years, worshippers at a shrine in Solapur, India have practiced a worship ritual called “baby dropping”, in which worshippers take living healthy newborn babies and drop them from a 50ft temple tower.
The infants land and bounce unharmed onto a bed-sheet that’s held taut by a group of men below; the babies are then quickly passed through the crowd to their mothers. Why on earth would they do this? Because they believe that it brings good luck to the child and that their gods will be pleased with this kind of sacrifice. That’s insane!
Or how about an example that’s a little closer to home? Do you frequent Chinese Restaurants? Have you ever noticed that every Chinese Restaurant seems to have a Buddha statue sitting next to the register? I’ve never had the courage but would love to ask this question of those who placed it there. Do you really see God in that way? Do you really think that God is some jovial fat guy with a potbelly? I’ve seen many a potbelly in my day, but I’ve never felt that having one was particularly divine.
Yet, as silly as these things might be, it proves an important principle about worship:
What you think about God affects how you worship him and how you worship him reflects your understanding of him.
However flawed that might be.
So, if you see God as harsh and demanding; one who demands the sacrifice of children the way some in India do, then that belief is going to cause you to do some really bizarre things like envisioning a pot-bellied god or dropping your kid from a 50-foot tower.
Yet, this principle is at work not only in pagan religions but throughout Christian denominations, as well.
If you believe that God is like a distant grandfather who only doles out grace like candies from his pocket to the grandkids who have earned his affection, then you’re going to worship him in a manner befitting that belief! You’re going to believe that going to confession, or taking the Sacraments, reciting the rosary; collecting indulgences, attending the mass are the avenues through which God doles out grace in dribs and drabs. And if you believe that then you’ll probably believe that what Jesus did on the cross was not enough to satisfy the justice of God; that good works are also necessary for salvation.
My point is: Behind every worship ritual, there is a deeply held belief about God, for worship is a reflection of belief! Right or wrong; for good or ill!
It also explains some of our own problems in worship.
For even evangelicals can insist on particular worship requirements that reflect a skewed view of God. For example, in my early years as a believer I was part of a church that insisted that men wear suits and ties; and women wear dresses to church. The idea of coming to a worship service dressed in less than your best was frowned upon. If you happened to be a woman who just happened to attend worship in a nice pants suit, it wouldn’t be long before you’d be visited by some blue-haired older women of the church reminding you that “at this church, ladies wear skirts or dresses”!
Of course, if you were bold enough to ask why you had to be so dressed up to worship God, you’d either suffer through the recitation of some obscure passage taken out of context which supposedly spoke to the issue, or you’d be given some pithy home-spun logic like, “Well, if you went to visit the President of the United States would you not be dressed in your best? Does God deserve less? You wouldn’t go to see the President of the United States in jeans and a t-shirt, would you?”
My Response: “I would if the President were my Dad!”
But the question is: Is God really the kind of God who makes this kind of demand upon those who worship him?
And if he does; does that mean then that every time I go to God in prayer, I need to have a piece of cloth around my neck? Does it really make that much of a spiritual difference as to my acceptability and standing before him? If a suit and tie make a man spiritual, then every man who works on Wall Street is apparently spiritual? Does anyone believe that? Of course not. It’s not difficult to see the ridiculous argument of those who insist upon this kind of external conformity because the moment you question it, the logic falls apart.
Why then would Christian people make such a foolish argument? Why insist upon a requirement, which God has not commanded? Again, could it be because of the way we’ve come to perceive Him? Do we really see him as harsh, demanding, legalistic and even oppressive?
On the other hand, there those in the evangelical camp that have reacted in the opposite extreme where worship has become so casual that it’s become irreverent…and at times idolatrous. In some churches, worship is more about our need to be entertained than it is about loving God! Honestly, some of what passes for worship today in some of these contemporary churches suggests again that we really don’t know God, as well as we think we do.
Either way, whatever your propensity, it’s important for all of us to ask ourselves, “What are we saying about God by the way we worship Him?”
Now, in John chapter 4, Jesus encounters a woman by a Samaritan well who was as confused about who God, as any human being could ever be.
At this point in Jesus’ ministry, his popularity among the ordinary Jewish crowd was growing. And it grew to a point where the Pharisees and the teachers of the Law had become jealous and distrustful of him. In light of this growing opposition, Jesus and his disciples head north to Galilee. But along the way, he does something extraordinary; something that would have been considered scandalous at the time.
He led his disciples through Samaria instead of going around it. Why was this extraordinary? Because Jesus was doing something that no respectable Jew would have done. For you see, the Jews despised and hated the Samaritans for their half-breed status. So pronounced was this antipathy that Jews always made a point of taking a mountain route around Samaria whenever traveling between Galilee and Judea.
Yet, the wonderful thing about Jesus was, he didn’t care about any of that. He didn’t care about social convention or in perpetuating long-held, deeply-felt animosities. No. His heart expressed the heart of God; the kindness and grace of God to sinful, needy people.
At about noontime, Jesus was sitting by Jacob’s well near the city of Sychar. Exhausted from travel, and with his disciples away in the city buying food; the Scripture says that a Samaritan woman came to the well to draw water.
Now, to her surprise, Jesus engages her in conversation; first about his physical thirst; and then about her spiritual thirst. Yet, all throughout the conversation, you can see that this woman had been living in spiritual darkness for quite some time, because she doesn’t understand the spiritual connection that Jesus made between physical water and eternal life.
In order to bring her out of her darkness, Jesus kindly helps her to see her true condition. “Go call your husband and come back,” he tells her. “I don’t have a husband.” She responds. “Your right when you say, I don’t have a husband”. He tells her. And then he proceeds to relate to her the brokenness and the sinfulness of her life in detail. It is at this point; the conversation takes a unique turn.
How life-changing and stultifying would it have been for her to discover that this stranger whom she had just met, knew the intimate details of her life? This shook her; it woke her up both to her need and to the identity of the person to whom she had been speaking.
“’Sir,’ the woman said, ‘I can see that you are a prophet. Our fathers worshipped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem.’”
Now, there are many things of interest here, but the one observation that jumps out from the passage is that the woman appears to be changing the subject. Jesus, being God, knew everything about her life; and her life was a mess! But instead of dealing with the issues Jesus raised, it appears that what she really wants to do is, to steer the conversation away from her sinful life toward a theoretical, albeit, theological question.
The debate she raises, however, is one that Jews and Samaritans had been arguing about for ages: Where should the true worship of God take place, on Mt. Zion in Jerusalem or on Mt. Gerizim in Samaria?
Was she defecting her guilt?
I honestly don’t think so. I don’t think she was changing the subject at all. Because there is a link between her guilt revealed by Jesus in verse 18, and her question about the place of worship in verse 20. And what is that link?
The link was her need for God!
In other words, she was essentially saying, “You’re right Jesus! My life is a mess! What I need is to be connected with God again! But how do I do that? In order to be connected with God, don’t I need to be where God is being worshipped; don’t I need to be in the right place? Don’t I need to go where God is? But where is that? Where can I go to be connected with him? Is God at the temple here on Gerizim or is he in Jerusalem?”
Jesus’ response? It was neither.
“Believe me, woman”, he said, “a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem.”
In other words, being connected with God is not about being in the right place! It’s not about this mountain or that mountain; this temple or that one! There is only one place you can go to be connected with God, and it’s not a place…it’s a person. (v.22 “salvation is of the Jews” = A reference to Jesus)
“You can only connect with God…if you are connected with Jesus Christ. And this is why even though you Samaritans are trying to worship the Father, you’re worshipping in ignorance. You don’t know who you’re worshipping!”
Both Jews and Samaritans had this in common, they both thought that their real need was to be in the right place for worship; to perform the right rituals and the right ceremonies, but actually, their real need was to have a living personal relationship with the person of the Living God.
So, in a sense, there they all were, both the Samaritans and the Jews, standing before the well of God, as it were, for centuries, as spiritually thirsty people, and what had they been doing the whole time? They’d been arguing about what kind of bucket should be used to draw the well water!
It was as though, the Jews argued that the bucket had to be round; while the Samaritans claimed the bucket should be square, but what had God been saying this whole time?
It’s not about the bucket, it’s about the water!
I mean seriously…if you’re thirsty who cares what size and shape the bucket is! It’s not the bucket you need, it’s the water! The temple’s just the bucket…Jesus, the water.
I could say the same to those in the church who seem to think the window dressing of external conformity is what’s important. Who cares what someone is wearing as long as they come with a humble, open and hungry heart for God and righteousness? Or, why spend so much time and energy on dressing up a worship service to entertain the worldly, when what God wants are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness?
What you need is the water, not the bucket!
“And that’s who I am”, says Jesus, “I’m the water!” (see v.13) “Drink then…” says Jesus, “Drink deeply of me! For I am the only one that can quench your spiritual thirst! What you’ve been looking for your whole life…is me!”
I see this same misconception being played out in the lives of people all the time. You talk to people with messed up lives and what they’ll tell you is, “Well we just need to get back to church!”
And yes, I agree, church attendance is a necessary thing for a believer. But church attendance is merely a bucket. Man’s problem with God is larger than that! Your problem is larger than that! Your disconnect with God cannot be cured simply by being in the same vicinity where worship is going on. Again, you need the water, not the bucket!
And yet, people do this all the time. People, whose lives stink spiritually, come to church for an hour, thinking that all the broken pieces of their lives will magically come together if they just participate in a ritual, or in a ceremony of some kind.
But Jesus promises:
“Whoever Drinks of the Water I give him will never thirst!”
Malcolm Muggeridge came to understand this! This man who was once a hostile atheist turned devoted, passionate Jesus follower wrote:
“I say to you, and I beg you to believe me, multiply (any of my) tiny triumphs by a million, add them all together, and they are nothing – less than nothing, yea a positive impediment when measured against one drop of that living water Christ offers to the spiritually thirsty.” – Malcolm Muggeridge.
What do you really think about God? What kind of a God is he? He’s the kind of a God who offers a drink of water to thirsty people!
It may be that you are one of those people.