Q&A: “To what degree should emotions play into worship?”
Scott AniolI recently received the following question:
I have for sometime, about 2 years, had questions regarding worship and emotions. I had ran across your website on my search for some content about this very thing. I do have a question if you don’t mind, actually a lot of questions, so here they are: To what degree should emotions play into worship and is that different per individual? Or are there absolute, objective, truths that apply to worship and a congregation as a whole? Are these things someone of my age thinks about often? I just feel as if worship amongst my peers and even in the Church has become a pusuit for emotional highs. These questions have slowly become quite distracting to me and another friend of mine. We spend most of our times together discussing this. It would just be great to have some direction of where to look, read, and think about. I understand that I have asked you, a person I don’t know, many questions, but I would really appreciate it if you would take some time and offer your thoughts. Regardless, Thanks Sir.
Here was my answer:
The questions you ask, I believe, are at the heart of what it means to worship and what is fueling the music/worship debates today. I am thrilled to hear that you and your friend are questioning these things.
I think the first step in answering your question is to nuance the category of “emotion” itself. The term “emotion” is an imprecise one, and the category itself is one that is unhelpful to try to work in.
The idea of emotion as a general, nebulous category was the invention of evolutionists who wanted to deny the spiritual component of man and make us no different than animals. Prior to the Enlightenment, most people, Christian and non-Christian alike, thought of man in terms of spirit and body — immaterial and material. They distinguished, then, between the affections and the physical feelings that may accompany them. Today, “emotion” encompasses both of these ideas and usually has more of the idea of feeling in mind.
No one can deny that affections are the essence of spiritual life and that they are at the heart of what it means to worship. The center of Jewish religion was to “Love the Lord [their] God” — affection. Christ said that they greatest commandment was to “Love the Lord our God” — affection. Jesus said that worship was a response of the spirit — an immaterial response of the affections — to truth about God (John 4). The distinguishing characteristic of true, biblical religion is not certain beliefs — even the devil believes certain facts; the distinguishing characteristic of true religion and worship is affection for God. This is why Jonathan Edwards argued that “true biblical religion consists, in great part, in the religious affections.”
But Jonathan Edwards was also quick to distinguish in his day between the religious affections and the passions — physical, “gut” reactions. He argued that true affection may be accompanied by such physical feelings, but those feelings do not define the affection. Those external, physical kinds of responses can be artificially stimulated without any spiritual activity whatsoever. If I shout “Boo” as someone rounds the corner, that person will have an intense physical response, but that response is merely a chemical reaction to a stimulus.
Edwards saw a lot of external enthusiasm during the Great Awakening. That caused two problems, because people in his day began to define what was happening by the physical externals. Some people began to earnestly pursue those same kinds of physical experiences as the essence of what it means to be spiritual, and others denied that anything truly spiritual was happening. Edwards argued against both in The Religious Affections, asserting that intense physical feelings may sometimes accompany true moving of the affections, but those kinds of feelings are not the essence of the spiritual experience and may be absent altogether. In fact, he noticed after the Awakening had died down that most often the people who truly persevered in their faith were ones whose spiritual experiences were characterized by humility and modesty, not enthusiasm.
But Edwards lost the battle on this issue. Most everyone post-Enlightenment has mixed the ideas of spiritual affections and physical feelings, and the two extremes that Edwards experienced have come to characterize the Church ever sense. Some people have defined what it means to be spiritual by physical feelings and have done whatever they can to stimulate those kinds of feelings. Charles Finney was the first to do so on Pelagian grounds — he thought that if he could drive a person to have a “moving” experience, he could convince him through such means to convert. The charistmatic movement did so on Continuationist grounds, believing that external, physical signs accompany true, spiritual experiences. Others, rejecting both the Pelagianism of Revivalism and the Contuationism of Charismaticism insist that biblical religion consists of intellectual assent to propositions alone.
Unfortunately, it is very difficult to find a Church today that has not been influenced to some degree or another by Revivalism or Charismaticism. Most believers today, I think, equate spiritual experience with some kind of feeling. This takes all kinds of shapes, of course, depending on the particular movement. Some define spiritual experience by “holy laughter” and “slaying in the Spirit.” Others define it by mystical trance. But most people define spiritual experience by some kind of intense “enthusiasm” of “zeal” or “passion” for God. People who are truly worshiping are those who are filled with excitement or exhileration or tears or goosebumps. In essence, as you observe, to worship is to gain a spiritual “high.”
Ever since Finney, Christians have used pop music to stimulate such highs. Pop music is novel, it is exciting, it is physically stimulating. It creates an immediately gratifying response of the feelings, and if you define worship by a feeling, pop music (set to biblical lyrics) is the perfect tool for worship. The problem with pop is that it artifically stimulates feelings without involvement of the spirit. Certainly good, biblical lyrics will invovle the mind and affections as well, but as Edwards argued, any time the passions are the target, they easily overpower the mind. The other problem with pop is that its effects wear off quickly, so people are constantly having to look for new, more exciting means to create the same “highs.” The Victorian sentimental pop of Finney’s day seems boring to our 21st-century ears; it no longer has the same effect it once had.
I truly believe that a right distinction between the affections and physical feelings needs to be recovered today. We must stop defining spiritual experience by external, physical kinds of responses. Our worship shoudl be characterized by rich doctrine, and humble, modest expressions of true spiritual affection for God.
