Towards a Philosophy of Worship

A while ago one of my cousins said that he was attempting to write a "philosophy of worship", as he really wanted to contemplate on what worship is before leading his church's youth worship band. He commented that he was unable to find much by way of books on the "core" of worship. So, over the last little while I have been doing a little thinking and reading about worship. Below is the essence of my discovery. Just a disclaimer: the below is simply meant to provide a definition of "worship", not to give any practical advice; however, much practical advice can be worked out once a definition has been given, i.e. once the essence of a thing has been discovered.

It is my hope that people would give some feedback on this. Is something missing? Is an aspect poorly stated? What practical advice can be gleaned by reflecting on how to apply this definition to a worship service?

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What is worship? It seems to me that worship is intimately connected to 1) knowing”, to 2) goodness of the object of praise, and to 3) bestowing honours. Each moment of worship seems to combine all three of these elements.

1) What is the person doing who is worshipping? Worship comes as a result of knowing. This is easy to prove: What we do not know, we cannot worship. The more we come to know the goodness of a thing, the more we admire and worship it. Therefore, worship is limited to our ability to perceive the object of worship.

2) But what is it about the object that is worshipped that makes us stand in awe before it? We worship what we think is good. The sunset strikes us as exceedingly good, as a sign of our Creator’s care for his creation and the time he spent making certain things beautiful, for pure pleasure. The sunset strikes us as good, not only because we love beauty, but because that beauty points to something higher. The same is true of eating good food, of smelling flowers, etc. This is also true when we worship God and sing his praises. The songs we sing revolve around proclaiming and remembering God’s good character. If something is not good, we will not worship it, but disdain it.

3) Each time I have used the word worship so far, it has been imprecise. So far, I have mostly been talking of “awe” or “wonder”. Worship, it seems to me, is our reaction to seeing/knowing a good. And the better the object is, the more we will praise/honour/worship it. This is connected intimately to joy.

These three aspects are the basics of worship. In one sentence, then, worship can be defined as “the honouring of some perceived good.” Or perhaps this definition also serves us well: "simultaneously beholding and praising Goodness."