Thursday, May 21, 2009

Teach or Unteach part 2

I wanted to follow up on my post from last week. It was mainly a discussion starter to get you all thinking. Since it was mostly a copy and paste from another source (http://www.fredmckinnon.com/myblog/2009/05/13/teaching-on-praise-or-unteaching-on-religion/) , I wanted to come back and give my thoughts now. After pondering this now for a week, I have come to this.
Teach or unteach...
The Word says in John 4 that God seeks worshipers to worship Him in SPIRIT and in truth. There is something here that I have taught for years and believe that it applies especially in this situation. Think about the phrase "worship in spirit". I don't know about you, but the word spirit sticks out to me. Think about the spirit of man. It is the deepest, most profitable part of man. The Bible teaches that we are made of three parts: spirit, soul, and body. The spirit is made perfect when you are born again. The soul (mind, will, and emotions) is a progressive work by the Word of God. The body (referred to as the flesh, where the sinful nature of man is) will not be perfect until the rapture and we get new ones. Now, think about worship as it relates. To worship Him in spirit, you need to get through the flesh and the soulish part. This is where teaching comes in. In the post, it was said that we were created to worship, therefore should just do it naturally. If it were not for the fall of man, that would be true. We were also created to walk with God on a daily basis, but when man fell in the garden it caused us to not do what should have come natural. Now, we have to be taught how to serve and walk with God. I believe that worship is the same. We have to be taught to overcome our flesh and discipline our mind in order to worship Him in spirit. So, yes, I do believe we are to teach people to worship Him.

Now, we also have been taught years of error or even incomplete truth in our religious backgrounds. Many have been taught against any physical expression of worship. Many others have been taught that there is no place for musical instruments in our worship. We have been taught to be reserved and without expression or for that matter, freedom. For these folks, I would strongly agree that they need to be untaught.

My final thought is that for the new believer, we should teach them how to worship. Then for the believer with a background of wrong or incomplete teaching, we should unteach. I guess to sum it all up, we should be all things to all men.

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