What does worship mean to you?

[Anonymous]

DoubtingTom wrote:

Great thoughts here. Echoing what many have said, worship for me is feeling connected to my fellow human beings. Striving to be filled with the type of charity that leads to action. I do not seek anymore to “worship” a divine being, in the sense of bowing down before it or striving to keep all the commandments so I can be “worthy.”

It is much simpler than that now, and thus, becomes much more beautiful and complex. It is about seeking the divine within myself and allowing that divine spark to grow and flow through me until I feel the desire to reach out to others. That love, that compassion, those feelings of connectedness – that is what I seek in my worship.

DT makes me think about something I hadn’t considered before. Connected to others. Fellow citizens with the saints. What if that objective meant Bible stories were told to connect the group. They were at wars, they had to kill their enemies. How do they feel good about themselves? Make worshipping a God that confirms the group is doing what they should be doing.

Maybe Bible stories aren’t about God, and what he requires from us, but the group and what they need to survive.

That train of thought can go in many directions about today’s church and out worship services.

Sorry if you all knew that stuff already. It just hit me thanks to Tom. I’m slow sometimes to see the obvious.

[Anonymous]

mom3 wrote:

Even as my core style of worship has changed, I still value the community worship we have (even though sometimes its really lame). Being together with a hope for good things shapes me like wind over a rock. The luxury I now have, that I didn’t trust before, was being able to sit in the company of that community and shape the worship before me. If the topic doesn’t uplift I choose to read, ponder, or write on things that do. Heart open to the moment.

:angel:

Sometimes I like just reading what mom3 is thinking…and wanna just say “thank you”.

If I say more…I will mess it up. Just… thanks. Beautiful example of worshipping in how you take time to post this stuff for the benefit of others. That’s true worship. :silent: I’m gonna ruin the vibe. Must stop. Thanks mom3.

[Anonymous]

Heber13 wrote:

What if that objective meant Bible stories were told to connect the group. They were at wars, they had to kill their enemies. How do they feel good about themselves? Make worshipping a God that confirms the group is doing what they should be doing.

Maybe Bible stories aren’t about God, and what he requires from us, but the group and what they need to survive.

Richard Bushman said something similar. It was something along the lines that he tries to look charitably upon people that lived in such a world that they craved and sought after a God that would rain down vengeance upon their enemies.

[Anonymous]

Heber13 wrote:

What if that objective meant Bible stories were told to connect the group.

I hear nothing brings people together quite like having a common enemy. :angel: 😈

[Anonymous]

Heber wrote

Quote:

Sometimes I like just reading what mom3 is thinking

Sometimes is the optimal word. One needs to tread carefully around my thoughts. You never know when you might step in something.

Heber – on a sincere note, Thank you.

[Anonymous]

mom3 wrote:

Sometimes is the optimal word.

Maybe you can just tell us when you’ve had your green smoothie or not…that might help

[Anonymous]

Roy wrote:

It was something along the lines that he tries to look charitably upon people that lived in such a world that they craved and sought after a God that would rain down vengeance upon their enemies.

So…once again…that seems to support the notion that what they wrote down about God was what they were thinking about God. It doesn’t necessarily describe God objectively or with scientific proof of a repeatable and independent character of an unchanging God. Therefore…those stories are there for a reason … take from it what you can…but don’t assume God is always some jealous creature to me because someone else had a story about how jealous they were. Right?

nibbler wrote:

I hear nothing brings people together quite like having a common enemy.

Yep. It seems we can mature and develop as a group to realize those aren’t the most healthy of motivations…it creates us vs them to strengthen us at the expense of them…which is weird when we want to try to go out and convert them hoping they change to be part of us. But…you know…stage 3 and all that jazz.

[Anonymous]

I definitely agree with this line of thinking that the ancients might have wrote down what they hoped for or what they thought God might have done. It’s very much like a modern testimony meeting. “I was sick. I got a priesthood blessing. I got better. Therefore God healed me.” “We were captive in Egypt. Some bad things happened there and we escaped. Since we had asked God for help for many years, God helped in his own way and time.” “This man was a leper. Jesus spoke to him and he was healed.”

It is pretty clear that the ancient Hebrews interpreted Messianic prophecies very literally. Thy seem to have wanted the kind of God some of us long for – who will smile upon us, answer every prayer and smite our enemies.

[Anonymous]

On that point and getting down to a specific thing I read:

Abraham 2:1″ wrote:

Now the Lord God caused the famine to wax sore in the land of Ur, insomuch that Haran, my brother, died; but Terah, my father, yet lived in the land of Ur, of the Chaldees.

If you take the scripture literally god caused the famine to teach people a lesson but a different literal approach is that:

A) A famine happened. No one was behind it. It just happened. That’s life.

Abraham (just roll with me) believed god caused the famine and it was Abraham that gave the famine meaning. “This famine happened because god is angry with us… and by us I mean you.”

3 Nephi chapter 9 is a little harder to get around using this method because it’s presented as Jesus speaking in the first person. In that case it could be a simple story that uses physical harm and trauma as an analogy of spiritual harm and trauma that is the result of sin.

The scriptures are really no different than thoughts on god by average Joes (no pun) like you and me. A single facet in the lens through which humanity views god… and in some cases a bunch of people get together and agree on one view… but there are many.

So it’s kind of sad that *ahem* …Abraham… would view god that way. An entity that rains down justice and vengeance. If something bad happens in your life you better find out what you did wrong and start walking on eggshells from that point forward. That’s the kind of god that I feel wants people to appease god’s ego via a form of worship (to tie it back in) but I feel like we’ve traded up, for the most part.

[Anonymous]

Reminds me of a statistics article, in it you find:

Quote:

Pat Robertson, founder of the Christian Coalition, recently warned Orlando, Florida, that it was courting natural disaster by allowing gay pride flags to be flown along its streets. “A condition like this will bring about … earthquakes, tornadoes, and possibly a meteor,” he said, apparently referring to his belief that the presence of openly gay people incurs divine wrath and that God acts through geological and meteorological events to destroy municipalities that permit gay people the same civil liberties as others. (Robertson also warned Orlando about terrorist bombs, suggesting the possibility that God may also employ terrorists.)

Before Pat and his Christian cronies get too carried away promulgating the idea that people who displease God prompt natural disasters, they should take a hard look at the data.

The data statistically shows God is neutral on sexual orientation.

But…that doesn’t change the mind of many religious people, does it?

My guess is that statistics might now support claims by Abraham and others in the bible either. They often make the error of correlation and causation from their point of view.

We’ve since developed.

The best part of the article is the idea that if we accept the notion God is so vengeful…the data actually shows which group he is vengeful to..which is..certain religious groups:

Quote:

But Baptists and Others share the prize: both groups show a definite correlation with tornado frequency (r = .68, p = .0001). This means that Texas could cut its average of 139 tornadoes per year in half by sending a few hundred thousand Baptists elsewhere (Alaska maybe?).

[Anonymous]

Heber –

Quote:

Maybe you can just tell us when you’ve had your green smoothie or not…that might help

[img]https://i.ytimg.com/vi/eOdXzgaOwko/maxresdefault.jpg[/img]

[Anonymous]

you have a little…shmootz…right there…on your upper lip…there… :wave:

What I wanna know is who helped you embed an image inline into your post?? When did you learn to do that maneuver, you techie?

…or…has someone hacked your account?

[Anonymous]

Heber – Nibbler is King of Tech Cleverness. I hack from him. His image though wouldn’t have taken half the page so, I have a long way to go. I think I will limit my input on images. Otherwise we are all in trouble.

[Author]

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