Saturday, February 22, 2020

Hot-Tub Religion

"Worship -- in the sense of telling God his worth by speech and song and celebrating his worth in his presence by proclamation and meditation -- has been largely replaced...by a form of entertainment calculated to give worshipers the equivalent of a sauna or Jacuzzi experience and send them away felling relaxed and tuned up at the same time.

"Certainly true worship invigorates, but to plan invigoration is not necessarily to order worship.  As all that glitters is not gold, so all that makes us feel happy and strong is not worship.  The question is [not a matter of the 'style' of the service] but whether a God-centered as distinct from a man-centered perspective is maintained -- whether, in other words, the sense that man exists for God rather than God for man is cherished or lost."

-- J. I. Packer, in the Introduction to "God the Evangelist" by David Wells

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