Why Praise God?

Why do we praise God and how?  Does our motivation matter?  What is true adoration? In sorting through these questions, an apparent conflict arose.  There seemed to be two distinct answers to these questions:

1.  Our praise comes out of an understanding of God's interactions with us.  There are countless examples of this in scripture.  Here are a few:

Give praise to the LORD, proclaim his name; make known among the nations what he has done. (Psalm 105:1)
LORD, you are my God; I will exalt you and praise your name, for in perfect faithfulness you have done wonderful things, things planned long ago. (Isaiah 25:1)
I will tell of the kindnesses of the LORD, the deeds for which he is to be praised, according to all the LORD has done for us— yes, the many good things he has done for Israel, according to his compassion and many kindnesses. (Isaiah 63:7)

And elsewhere when the people of God are commanded to remember and worship God, this God is identified as the God who acted - the God who brought them out of slavery, etc.  (For example, see the core teaching of the Old Testament in Deuteronomy 6:1-25)

2.  Genuine praise does not depend on what God has done for us.  Albert Day writes,

We never really adore Him until we arrive at the moment when we worship him for what He is in Himself, apart from any consideration of the impact of His Divine Selfhood upon our desires and our welfare.  Then we love Him for himself alone.

This seems a good caution, for is there not danger of self-worship confused or mingled with God-worship, when we focus on what he has done for us?  Yet at the same time, how can we ever separate our understanding of God from his direct action in our lives?  We cannot worship an abstract idea.

Resolution
This morning matters became more clear to me as I read from Isaiah 43:

"You are my witnesses," declares the Lord,
"and my servants whom I have chosen,
so that you may know and believe me and understand that I am he. [...]
I have revealed and saved and proclaimed [...] (v10,12)

God has made us his witnesses - this brings him glory.  The two thoughts unite: we understand who God is because he has revealed it through what he has done for us, and we praise him not because of his acts necessarily, but because of who he has revealed himself to be through them.

Hymn of Thanksgiving

I give thanks to you O God,
for when we are inadequate you are more than enough
when we are too tired to think we can feast on your infinite wisdom
when we are weak you reveal your strength
when we have no words you fill the silence

You are a God who is endlessly joyful yet shares in our sorrows

I give thanks to you O God,
for when we feel alone you teach us true fellowship
when we are proud your greatness makes us humble
when we don't know how we are to live you lead by example
when we fall short in praising you, you glorify your name

You are a god who is infinite yet chose to take on the finite form of man.

You bring us to others who delight in you
you made the sky and leaves and shadows and all colors
you gave us minds which can think and glimpse your glory and delight
You are a God who gives us ridiculously good gifts.

I give thanks to you O God.

Let the Painting Begin!

Visual art. Some of the best art has been historically found in churches, and yet now it is conspicuously absent from much of protestant church life. Many of you who know me will know that this is a subject of great interest and concern for me. Thus, while I know that there is an increasing amount of writing and thinking being done on the subject, I will let this post be an opinion piece, drawn out of my thoughts and experiences.

It has been said that a church is not just a building, but a church building does reflect a lot about a church(see also a previous post). I have been inside so many churches with bare white or brick walls, conservative architecture, and direct lines to the pulpit at the front. The focus is on the spoken word (as taught during the sermon) and, only slightly indirectly, on the written word.

This makes a lot of sense with the birth of the Protestant tradition. The epistemic focus shifted from church authority to individual understanding of the Bible. The beginning of the modern era, so linked to the Reformation, revealed a confidence in the human ability to reason and understand God's word. These things, combined with the break from the traditions of the Catholic church, meant a significant change in the church's attitude toward images.

I am arguing here that the church needs to more consciously and carefully think through its use of images, especially visual art. Intentional change may be needed. First of all, we in the church worship an incredibly creative God! Not only that, but we have been made in his image, and I think creativity is a big part of that. Doesn't it make sense that we should express our exuberant joy in God through the arts? Much of this has been done with music. But why neglect the visual arts?

Many of the most artistically impressive cathedrals were build during a time when your average person could not pick up and read a bible. The art served an important role in helping people understand God and his workings in our world. It is much different now, of course. Or is it?

We live in an image-saturated world. Everywhere we look there is a billboard or a colorful label or a screen. The advertising world has certainly picked up on the power of an image. Children grow up with high visual stimulus through TV and computer screens. Many people, myself included, absorb information much more easily visually than aurally. And sometimes words are quite simply inadequate. Perhaps the church is in need of the arts more than one would think.

I want to close by noting a few of what I would call "successes" or "inspirations" pertaining to art and the church.

• St. Andrew's Ottawa: I was struck during a visit that they had on display the work of an artist who had done these beautiful textile works which included passages of scripture. I just visited their website and noted that they have installed a sculpture outside.
• HTB, London: the prodigal son sculpture, by artist Charlie Mackesy, is a powerful work and features prominently in the church space.
• Orthodox and Catholic churches: I think we need to be willing to learn from them
• Nathan Turner: a Canadian artist I was first introduced to through his show in a local gallery. His work is not always explicitly Christian, but it certainly speaks of his faith.

Thanks for taking the time to read this far. I challenge you to get involved in some way in bringing the visual arts into our protestant churches.

Nathan Turner. "Through The Veil". Charcoal, conte, graphite, gesso on plywood.

don't [just] smile at the daisies

I was going to call this post "the Power of Praise", but it sounded like the title of a cliche book, so I didn't. I've been reflecting recently on the role of praise in my life and why it makes such a difference.

Beautiful things are all around us, and I am usually one of those people who walks around noticing that and smiling inwardly to myself or painting about it or writing in blogs about it. This is all well and good and tends to enrich my life, but most of the beauty around us is fragile and transient. And there is a whole lot of pain and ugliness also present in our world. Remembering a beautiful sunrise or the first daisy of the year, perfectly white against grass just new green, is not going to lift my soul when I sit in a dark room or when I listen to the troubles of a friend. The colors of that sunrise have long vanished and the daisy probably got stepped on or wilted when it snowed.

In times like these, I find that my prayers, though they may be desperate pleas, inevitably turn to praise. The psalms declaring who God is weave their way ever more strongly into my prayers until I find myself not just calling out to God, but praising that God because of who he is.

While my rejoicing in good things around me may have helped train me to do this, praising God is ever so much different than just loving good things alone. For God does not change. He is not far away. He is faithfully merciful in the midst of our unfaithfulness. He embraced death because he loves us that much. He is risen!

Have mercy on me, O Lord,
for I call to you all day long.

Bring joy to your servant,
for to you, O Lord,
I lift up my soul.

You are forgiving and good, O Lord,
abounding in love to all who call to you...

For you are great and do marvelous deeds;
you alone are God...

...you, O Lord, are a compassionate and gracious God,
slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness.

(Ps. 86v3-5,10,15)

Sacrifice of Praise

As soon as I spoke it I knew
it was one of those words
that drops from my lips
and sinks to the ground
and moves along like dawn mists
as they pool in eddies in the low places.

Unlike the word I could have said
rising to meet the coming light
unassumingly tinted with such glorious hues
that the sleepy soul
cannot help but be stirred
to joy.

Sometimes it is so much easier to say the thing that need not be said, the dull or even selfish thing. How important, yet how much harder, it is to speak that which should be spoken, graceful expressions of thanks or wonder or love or encouragement.

For three years during high school I drove through beautiful countryside at dawn every morning to get to school. Those sunrises over the Grand river, with mists rising from the river and sliding along the ground, making the trees into layers of silhouettes, have been imprinted in my memory and are the inspiration for the imagery of this poem.