"Thinking Eternally, Acting Locally." - Neal August
Do you see "worship" as a religious ritual act? an event? By your definition, can a Christian worship someone or something other than Jesus?
All the above really. Worship is a lifestyle which one reveres and honors God. It is an ongoing act which should never cease. However, there are times when one puts a special emphasis on worship (bowing down on one’s face and such). There are also times when groups of people put a special emphasis on collective worship (i.e., worship services).
Yes, I do think that a Christian can worship some one or thing other than the Trinitarian God. It’s called idolatry and it haunts us all to one degree or another. We begin to revere things (creatures) more than God (the Creator). Items of idolatry for (contemporary) Christians typically: the self (of course), particular leaders (secular and Christian), nations and cultures (a hot one, that), traditions, the Law; those sorts of things. We all do it to some minor degree or another but there are obviously some things much worse than others, i.e., worshipping false gods, nature and ‘real’ idols and such.
There are times in the Bible where such idolatry or worship makes vain the worship of true God (Mk 7:7; Matt 15:9; Isa 29:13). Thus, even though the Jews of Jesus’ generation worshipped Yahweh, they rejected Yahweh’s Son, which made their worship of God in vain. I think the same is true of Muslims and other monotheistic religions which are off-shoots of the Abrahamic religion. Mohammed himself (a man and a flawed figure) appears to have wavered on this subject. He detested idols (‘idols’ in the classic sense of the word) and focused on the one god Allah, which was the god of the Abrahamic religion. However, he sometimes became frustrated with the idolatry of the Arabs of his generations. He once attempted to combine Allah-worship and idol-worship, basically religious syncretism (see Aaron and the golden calf of Ex. 32). He soon repented of this error and abolished idols.
Again, Mohammed’s worship of God never went through Christ and so was in vain, just like the Jews of the NT who rejected Christ.
3 comments:
keep it blazin!
Thanks for the reply on this. I guess answers always lead to more questions. It seems as though you are placing a higher "priority" on religions that are offshoots of Abraham as opposed to Buddhism or Hinduism and maybe rightfully so. Is it your belief that these religions are closer to the truth so they should be viewed differently than others?
Travis
I don’t think “priority” is the right word. Both Jews and Muslims (Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses included) identify their god as the god of Abraham. This is just the case. Whether being an Abrahamic religion or not it makes it easier for them to come to faith in Christ I do not know. I suspect that it generally doesn’t. Remember: the pagan Gentiles of the 1st century had an easier time coming to Christ than the Jews of the 1st century.
‘Closer to the truth’? Yes, that is probably correct. A monotheistic religion is closer to the truth than a polytheistic religion. We would say that Mormons, Unitarians are closer to the truth than Buddhists. We would say that Judaism is closer to the truth than Hinduism.
“Viewed differently”? I am not sure what you mean. They should be viewed for what they are. I view Catholics differently than Protestants because they’re different. I view Abrahamic religions differently than non-Abrahamic religions because one group is Abrahamic and others are not.
Post a Comment