(Courtesy NASA.gov)
Last week in the combox discussion related to SDG’s post, I wrote
the following in response to an unbeliever who held that the praise and
worship of God – especially in heaven for all eternity – strikes even
most Christians as a bore and a drudgery, but they do it anyway because
it’s what God commands;
I have always been an artist. I have always understood that the
world is a work of art, that it means something, and if it means
something, then there must be someone to mean it.(I know I’m paraphrasing Chesterton here and there)
The worship of God – due praise to the artist – is not only
something I don’t find AT ALL to be a dreary duty, but is something
that can hardly be helped. It wants to leap out on its own, like a
laugh or the "Oooohs and Aaahhhs" you hear at a fireworks show. They
won’t be able to shut me up in heaven.
I believe I did get the point across that the praise and worship of
God is a very natural response, and this statement is alright as far as
it goes, but it doesn’t go far enough and could leave the false
impression that we worship God mainly for what he does, rather than who he is.
God does deserve endless praise just for his work, his artfulness in
creating the universe, but that is only the beginning of the story. The
universe is as achingly beautiful and subtle and powerful and
fascinating as it is because it reflects in many ways the character –
the attributes – of the artist who made it. If the world is an artwork
and does have meaning as I maintained above, then it all points back to
the one who made it and what he is like. Not that a
person would be able to really understand everything about God from
nature alone (the pagans demonstrate that), but as St. Paul said in
Romans 1:20, "For since the creation of the world God’s invisible
qualities—his
eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being
understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.".
As we pray in the Gloria, "We praise you for your glory.".
God’s glory is this revelation of himself, this radiant presence that
comes to us through all of his creation. His glory consists in the very fact that the Triune God, infinitely perfect and complete, does not keep himself to himself.
He continually shares his divine life with all creation, holding every
atom in existence by his will from moment to moment. God shares with us
the attributes of existence and free will in a completely unnecessary
and ongoing act of love.
We praise God for who he is, and we only know who he is because he
has revealed it to us in this radiant penumbra of glory called Creation. We often think of Creation as a noun, like it’s
only a thing. Creation is also a verb, the ongoing act of God.
Visit Tim’s blog Old World Swine)
