I've been in a bit of a scrap....

.....of the virtual kind.

I don't want to link to it here, but it's to do with how people worship, their attitudes and what they sing.

What I DO want to say about it is that with worship, the most important thing is to be focussing on God, offering Him thanksgiving, praise, love without regard to how we feel, rather than because of how we feel. It doesn't really matter what we sing (if we sing - worship is wider than singing) provided God is the focus of it and the system we use doesn't get in the way for us.

There is this concept tied up in historical church, that if we do certain things, everything is OK. I find it strange that a church meeting is called a 'service' - as if we can do something for God (the idea comes from doing our service to God) like He needs us. It's not what we do on the outside that makes a difference, so much as what happens on the outside needs to reflect whats on the inside.

It's this which causes problems.

See, the inside isn't easy to manage. You can't easily tell it what to do, and you certainly can't tell other people how they are going to be inside. So historically speaking, people have found ways around this 'need' to be changed on the inside. At one time if you were rich, large donations could be made to the church in order to be 'forgiven'. More recently, attending church every Sunday and wearing a nice suit was enough to be 'respectable' and a 'good christian' (provided you didn't beat your wife in public/get caught having an affair). If you belonged to certain streams of the church you might go to 'confession' and be given a list of things to do in order to be forgiven. I'm sure that's one of the reasons people dress up in funny clothes - it's a way of hiding reality while going through the ritual.

It's all an illusion.

Accepting Jesus and letting God's spirit change us is the only way we can be different inside. That's it. It's only as we receive him, allow Him to move in us that we can be different, get the inside to start looking the way we'd like the outside to be.

Why the rant?

Well, this is the kind of thing I used to do here, until a couple of months ago. But I've read and re-read the article that caused the scrap in the first place, and the more I read it, the more convinced I am that I want to see Jesus ruling in my life and less of my greed and anger and selfishness.

Liv, Rachel, Kita, Dan - hope this isn't too strange for you. Just a (not so) gently aging chap letting off steam.