SYDNEY RELOADED - Aye! Why is that boy dancing during worship?
Aye!...Why is that boy dancing during worship?
If you have ever grown up in a big conservative Church, you would have inevitably heard or overheard the whispers of judgemental mouths feigning shock over something different. Dance, dressing differently, singing or not singing, standing in the wrong direction etc.
All of this comes from when people have grown up with a form of traditional worship, but this worship is actually a mix of 'cultural practices' along with 'worship'. Those that are not able to separate the two are then caught up in a very stringent framework that when faced with time and different country, come under question. This lack of understanding leads to friction in families, between members of the Church and ultimately outside the Church.
What is worship? A form of expression of reverence to the divine.
What is a cultural practice? The customs, thinking and social behaviours that are agreed, shared and communicated between a group of people. It can define the stance in which you pray, all the way to what is an acceptable standard in attire.
One is a core belief and absolute, while the other is a form of expression as a group. By separating cultural practice, you are able to have a conversation without questioning someone's absolute. It's when people have associated culture so tightly with worship, any mention of something different in a practice is immediately linked to questioning the core relationship with God.
The amusing part I have seen is that 2 groups may believe in the same divine i.e. God but their cultural practices create conflict between these groups.
e.g. the more subdued Indian traditions prefer worshipping in quietness, chanting, sometimes incense and creating a visual spectacle to look at, whilst the African culture find it perfectly acceptable that worship is about praise style singing, clapping and dancing. Yes, I am generalising but that's not the point. The point is, what happens when you put that Indian inside an African Gospel church? Lord have mercy!
No one cultural practice is an absolute. Society at the end of the day requires structure, so they form frameworks that are agreed upon as repeatable and agreed upon. If you tell a child to pray, first thing they'll ask is "How?". Each cultural tribe created their own practice. All aiming towards building that relationship with God.
Until the day I understood that there were 2 parts to the worship style that I belong to, is when it all started to make sense and a less emotional topic. What is my core faith (core belief and absolutes)? Which practice will I use to express my faith and explain it to my children (expression)? A practice can be discussed without the emotion or question of devotion to God attached to it.
So, if that 'aunty' asks 'Aye...why is that boy dancing during worship' or your child asks, 'Why do we do this when my friends don't?", have that conversation. That conversation about cultural practice that has been passed down as tradition for your tribe, without berating them as though they had questioned the existence of God altogether.
If anyone asks about the Bible, the Bible does not codify the style of worship, it focuses on needing to show reverence to God and thankful of His Grace. The practice is adaptable to the tribe and context of its time and tribe.
Food for thought...
"And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words." Matthew 6:7
"For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I with them." Matthew 18:20
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