Here’s how I understand it…
Worship is an act of the will. Something we do with our wills. When you really get down to it, worship doesn’t matter much on WHAT we do, but what we intend or what it is our “will” desires.
The same acts can be both worship or not worship, depending on your intent.
Imagine that I put a gun to your head and said “bow down to me” – you may do that… but are you “worshipping me” ??? – HECK NO! - you don’t intend to, you don’t really believe that I am a demi-god, in fact, I’m willing to bet everything in your mind is in fact rebelling and cursing me.
Q: So did I make you ‘worship’ me?
A: – NO!, because worship is an act of the will… and only YOU can do that, yourself.
Q: If I see you kiss a pictue and ASSUME you are worshipping it, does that make it so? Does my judgement change your actual actions in any meaningful way?
A: – NO!
I can only judge your external actions, however, God judges our heart. I may think that because you kneeled before a statue and said a prayer, that you are worshipping it.
YOU, however, are the only one who knows that what you were TRULY doing was praying to God, using the Statue as a reminder, as a catalyst for the correct worship owed only to God.
Part of the issue is that in the English speaking world, we have very few words to describe some VERY important things.
We have but 1 word for Love, and we use this 1 word to describe our feelings for our pets, our like of food, our feelings for our children, and our feelings for our spouse, not to mention our love of God.
The Greek differentiates these by calling them totally different things.
Similarly, the Greek differentiates the Respect and Honor we give to the Saints, family members who have passed on, from the Worship that is due only to our Lord and Savior, the 1 true God.
Catholicism is great at differentiating this because it actually has different words for honor and Worship.
Dulia is honor and respect owed to someone
Latria is worship owed to God alone, which no man or saint is EVER worthy of receiving. Giving Latria to anyone or thing besides God, alone, is Sacrilege, blasphemy, and damming.
Many English speaking countries, especially those which are pre-dominantly Protestant, like the U.S. and England… seem to have lost this distinction to a certain degree.
The 2nd part of the issue, is that many people don’t really understand WHAT worship is. When you have an improper understanding of Worship, it is easy to make everything worship.
Worship is not anything we do which is religious. Unfortunately, according to many Christian groups, Music is worship, Prayer is worship, anything done religiously is worship.
Not everything we do religiously is worship. For example…
The root of the word Prayer is “precari” which means a sincere “petition” - NOT worship.
Prayer itself is not a form of worship.
I can “pray to my parents to let me go to the party” I can “pray to my abductors that they let me go”
I can pray to anyone, because Prayer, itself, is not worship. It is merely a petition, expressing what my heart desires.
To claim that ALL prayer is worship is to corrupt the meaning of the word and confuse what worship is.
Going back to my earlier point… Worship is a specific act of the will. Therefore Prayer BECOMES worship, when that is what my will intends it to be. Another wards, prayer combined with the intent to worship, then becomes worship.
Otherwise, alone, void of intent, prayer is merely a form of communication. I can pray to a saint, pray to my Dad, even pray to my wife. I can use prayer in all sorts of situations, even as a mediation. But as long as I know I don’t worship the saints, my Dad, or my wife… I’m OK.
Again, good point.