How can God desire worship?

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clarkgamble1

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How can an omnipotent (along with all his other attributes) God desire worship. To me worship is what I’ve seen in movies where frightened ignorant natives grovel in the dirt before some volcano, or idol, or a white man they think is their God. If I were God I would find that kind of worship a disgusting and degrading thing for a human to do. Yet religious people the world over, Muslims, Catholics, etc. in some of their ceremonies bow down to the floor like the natives in the movies. Why do so many believers still today think of God as some tyrannical dictator who they are terrified of offending. If that kind of God moved in next door, I would sell my house. When I was younger and really believed in God, I thought of Him as someone who I could have had a friendly conversation with, someone who deserved my respect, and someone whose commandments I tried to obey because they made sense. I never thought of Him as a tyrant.
 
You don’t have to think of him as a tyrant.

God is goodness itself.

Bonum diffisivum sui, that is, the good is diffusive of itself. Goodness desires that others share in its goodness, because it is good.

To worship God is how we share in his goodness. He created us to know him and share in his divine life. This is why he gave us free will. So to worship God is to achieve the goodness for which we were created.

God desires our worship not because he needs it, for he needs nothing, but because he desires our good, and to worship him is our highest good.

-Fr ACEGC
 
It is appropriate and fulfilling for man to worship God. God is our final end and purpose, and God desires that we obtain our ends and reach fulfillment. God does not have an ego that needs us to satsify him.
 
clarkgamble1 said:
How can an omnipotent (along with all his other attributes) God desire worship. To me worship is what I’ve seen in movies where frightened ignorant natives grovel in the dirt before some volcano, or idol, or a white man they think is their God. If I were God I would find that kind of worship a disgusting and degrading thing for a human to do. Yet religious people the world over, Muslims, Catholics, etc. in some of their ceremonies bow down to the floor like the natives in the movies. Why do so many believers still today think of God as some tyrannical dictator who they are terrified of offending. If that kind of God moved in next door, I would sell my house. When I was younger and really believed in God, I thought of Him as someone who I could have had a friendly conversation with, someone who deserved my respect, and someone whose commandments I tried to obey because they made sense. I never thought of Him as a tyrant.
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I don’t think of God as some tyrannical dictator I’m afraid of offending and neither does Catholicism. I can’t generalize about the beliefs of others. I actually hate terms like “God fearing”, that is not why I worship. I worship to humble myself. God wants us to worship not because of the effect it has on him but the effect it has on us. Same with prayer, my prayer cannot alter God’s will but God wants us to pray to alter our hearts. He doesn’t need our worship, it is a gift to us. We are also hard wired to practice worship, prayer, ritual. If not, why does almost every culture since the beginning of time do it. Even atheistic pagans seek to worship nature. We are called to give reverence to what is higher than us. God inspires this in us as our best means of communication and intimacy. What I find disgusting and degrading is modern man’s view that we are above a higher power and the placing of ourselves on the throne.
 
Who told you to view Him as a tyrant?

Did something happen to cause you to leave the faith?
 
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Pride comes before a fall.

Catholics, as do Christians, Jews, Muslims, humble themselves to recognize there is a power greater then us, God.
 
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I am sorry you have such a distorted view of God, and the relationship that can be had with God.
God desires worship because it is good for us to commune with God, and that is anything but grovelling.

Not everyone gets on their knees to worship. I do frequently.
Why do I get on my knees? Because the things and people that I love draw me to them as a complete person. Right? Getting on my knees says something about who I love and what I am doing. I can also stand when I pray and sometimes I do that.
But out of love, we employ our whole body and soul to express that love.

I love baseball. I don’t just love in theory. I actually do something about it. I spend money on tickets, and go sit in the 90 degree sun and sweat, and drink beer while I watch it. Am I grovelling? No. My love draws my whole being into the love. I think things, I feel things, I say things, and I do things out of love for baseball.

My wife.
My love for her draws me to spend money, take her to dinner, listen to her when I am tired.
That involves my whole being, body and soul. Am I grovelling?
 
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clarkgamble1 said:
When I was younger and really believed in God, I thought of Him as someone who I could have had a friendly conversation with, someone who deserved my respect, and someone whose commandments I tried to obey because they made sense. I never thought of Him as a tyrant.
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Are you continuing to have a friendly conversation with God in prayer, today?

There may be people in your life who think of God as a tyrant and stay as far away as possible from this God, as you would yourself. You can make a difference in their life, showing them that God loves us and wishes to walk along with us every day, to guide and help us, to strengthen us when things get tough. This is a message that the world very desperately needs today. It’s certainly good news.
 
@clarkgamble1

There is a necessity understand what was going on historically with incidents in the Old Testament.
Let’s take one incident at a time and put it in its historic context, and what it was the Jewish people were doing, or believed at that point.

What is the first incident we can discuss?
 
I think you have a great misunderstanding of Christian worship. In Christian worship there are sacramental and sacrificial parts of the divine service. So in the divine service, it is God who provides to us his gospel, his Word that brings us news of the forgiveness of sins, we receive his body and blood that confirm that we are forgiven, we receive baptism which brings us into relationship with him. We in turn out of thankfulness give him our prayers and petitions, thanks and praise. But ultimately, it is the worshipper who is in the posture of receiving.
 
Worship is simply the appropriate response to something so good, so deserving, that said worship is actually called for by justice itself. Because it puts us in right order, how/who we were meant to be. We worship cars and rockstars and money for crying out loud. We need to have something bigger and better than ourselves and anything in this world-but it must be the right Thing. Anyway, to worship “in spirit and in truth” is good for man-God doesn’t need it.

"As He rode along, the people spread their cloaks on the road. And as He approached the descent from the Mount of Olives, the whole multitude of disciples began to praise God joyfully in a loud voice for all the miracles they had seen:
“Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord!”
“Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!”
But some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to Him, “Teacher, rebuke Your disciples!”
“I tell you,” He answered, “if they remain silent, the very stones will cry out.” Luke 19
 
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I guess the same way a parent desires their child good health and happiness. God desires us to love and obey him because it brings us love and happiness.
 
I would like to say you should think of God as someone you could have a friendly conversation with, while other times you would just be expected to follow along because they would know better. I do not believe it hardly ever completely one way or the other. Believing that God is a tyrant that you should blindly follow could lead you to the path of true and false prophets. I would not put it past God to say something on occasion just to get you to object or to try to make more passionate angels. It is a battle of influence after all. On the other side of the dichotomy, believing that God is only someone to have friendly conversations with that you should never blindly follow would entail its own problems. I find it funny sometimes that people pray with their heads and hands, but dont always use their hands and their dollars to make the actions come to fruition as much as they pray for them. What if part of worship was wanting the right thing (possibly as discussed in church), and the other part was making that a reality with your hands(in a way other than praying)? God helps those who helps themselves, and loves everyone coincidentally.
 
clarkgamble1 said:
How can an omnipotent (along with all his other attributes) God desire worship. To me worship is what I’ve seen in movies where frightened ignorant natives grovel in the dirt before some volcano, or idol, or a white man they think is their God. If I were God I would find that kind of worship a disgusting and degrading thing for a human to do. Yet religious people the world over, Muslims, Catholics, etc. in some of their ceremonies bow down to the floor like the natives in the movies. Why do so many believers still today think of God as some tyrannical dictator who they are terrified of offending. If that kind of God moved in next door, I would sell my house. When I was younger and really believed in God, I thought of Him as someone who I could have had a friendly conversation with, someone who deserved my respect, and someone whose commandments I tried to obey because they made sense. I never thought of Him as a tyrant.
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When you think of God as the most powerful man in the universe it’s off-putting when people demand you to worship that being, and perhaps it’s even a cowardly thing to do so. In fact if the only reason we worship God is because he could destroy us otherwise then that is the most horrifically nihilistic situation imaginable.

But to worship God, in the Catholic sense of the word, isn’t just about worshipping a powerful being that holds our fate in his hands. To worship God is essentially to worship Love itself. It is to be a servant of love and to move our being towards that existential end.

How many of us really are servants?
 
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The thing I find about worshipping God, specifically Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament is that the more we worship and adore Him, the more He gives us in return. He is not a greedy God Who hoards our worship and adoration. He gives back and in abundance. In fact it is He who gives first. We can never love, worship or adore Him too much.

God is so so generous. God is owed worship as a matter of justice anyway. Everything we have comes from Him, literally everything. We owe Him this acknowledgment and recognition. Once we acknowledge and recognise this fact then our natural response is to thank Him. This is where worship begins because we see that He is literally our everything, our creator, source, the One who sustains us and our end. It is in Him that we live, move and have our being.

God does not need us. We need Him.
 
God has divine pleasure. God loves goodness and does not like evil. God love servants(people) very much. People were created in weakness and neediness. People need very thing but own nothing just a free will to select good or evil.

God needs nothing. God do not need worship of people but people need to worship. Because we need Mercy and Grace of God. We can get these by faith and worships. God want people to worship because people need that and God is Merciful and Graceful. If people do not worship God will not lose any thing and by worshipping people cannot add something to God. God just love people and God become plesant and happy but that is not because of requirement for God but a requirement for people.
 
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Only man among all his types of creatures worship God? Why? If God wanted worship he could have made all creatures which are more than million times the no.of humans, also to worship him.So getting worship was not the basic intention of creation.
By creating man,God gave us chance to know about him and to share his glory for ever.This he gave out of his magnanimity and love for us but not expecting worship in return.If we worship him it is only because we know that we owe him the worship for his power and glory and for his everlasting mercy towards us…
 
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clarkgamble1 said:
How can an omnipotent (along with all his other attributes) God desire worship.
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Worship is the best thing we can possibly think of to do. It is our side of our infinite Friendship with God, with the LORD, with ‘I AM’.

Our God poured his whole being into creating me, 100% of himself. A gift of being to me, so that also, ‘I am’.

It is the initiation of friendship, where my benefactor gives his most valuable gift, himself, to me so that I may know Him in me.

Now it is the time for the reciprocation of this love - that is God’s Justice, which is Friendship, eternal reciprocation of 100% of the self to the other. Being human, I die when I pour 100% of myself out in love for my Friend, and any reciprocation would end. I would not mind that - he is my love.

But, desiring to be my friend, my God came to be me with me (Jesus), He is “myself”, as the Commandment says, “You will love your neighbor as yourself.” And he came to let me participate in pouring himself, myself, out to the Father, to ‘I AM IN HEAVEN’. And to give me his Flesh and Blood to consume here on earth. The Flesh and Blood of the Son from the Father.

In reciprocal eternal giving of self to the Son, the Father, receiving the outpouring of the Son that Friday, pours out his whole being into the Son, the eternal reciprocation of giving his whole being to his beloved in a reciprocal gift.
Oooh, but where is the body of his Son, the blood of his Son? Why, I believe I consumed what was given to me when I heard my Lord say, “Take and eat; take and drink.”
The Father, pouring his being, his life, his Holy Spirit, into his Son includes pouring it into the wholeness of his Son, including into his Body, which we have consumed.

We worship, offering sacrifice of our life (who is Jesus) up to the Father, in reciprocation of letting Him have our whole being, which is Jesus, our Life. And He reciprocates by pouring his whole being into us, pouring into us his Holy Spirit, the Spirit of his Son, and his Son is resurrected in his presence and in us.

Father, Friend, Lord, Jesus, Most Holy Spirit.

There is nothing like worship.

John Martin
 
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