The latest article by Rod Dreher is worth pondering. I hope you will take 15 to 30 minutes to soak it in. He is interviewed by a college student, and thus, he is forced to give a sketch of his last many years writing and wrestling with the biggest issues.

Since I have kicked the wasp nest of worship here and here, I thought I’d excerpt his thought-provoking words on worship as a teaser to the larger article. Please savor the whole thing one morning this Christmas season.

My interviewer told me that there’s a strong tendency among his Christian peers to dumb down Christian worship — to make it instantly accessible to anybody, without having to do any work. He said he struggles to understand the anti-intellectualism of all this, especially as it manifests itself among college students. What’s more, they act as if anti-intellectualism was an egalitarian virtue.

This, I responded, is exactly the wrong approach. It’s not that they ought to be making worship more complex and demanding, necessarily, but this stance assumes that we stand over worship asserting the right to mold it to fit our preferences. You end up with a ritual that worships yourself, not God, whether you mean for it to or not. Similarly, if you see the Christian tradition that way, as a repository from which you can pick and choose this or that thing, and make a bricolage of it, you may soon find that you have decorated a temple to yourself.

Powerful words. Read the whole enchilada… It’s worth it!

Love to you all!

Darren