Why Does God Require Worship?

[Guest JeffCR07]

Tora, Cure has said beautifully in the words of St. Augustine and logically in the words of Mr. Kreeft what I have tried to say in my previous post. I appologize for any confusion that I have caused you.

God does not "need" our worship, because he is perfect and complete. Because He loves us, who are His creations, he wants us to be perfect and complete too. The only way we can do that is to love Him, and be in communion with Him. This is the essence of worship.

So "worship" isnt the goal or the objective, but it is the means through which we fulfill our longing to be made perfect and whole in God.

- Your Brother In Christ, Jeff

[Tora-Musume]

So the difference is, it's the wants and needs. GOD does not need us to worship him, but wants us to worship him. Did I get this right?

[Fiat_Voluntas_Tua]

Yes...but also God doesn't want us to worship Him for His sake...but for our sake.

Ave Maria, Gratia Plena.

[Guest JeffCR07]

as long as you understand that he doesnt "want" worship in and of itself, he "wants" us to be in communion with Him and to love Him, and until we are with Him in Heaven, and worship is simply how we can do this

[MorphRC]

interesting

[Crusader_4]

[quote name='thywillbedone7' date='Aug 9 2004, 11:15 PM'] Wasn't that one of St. Augustine's 5 proofs?

[/quote]
I think you are perhaps a lil confused St. Augustine as far as i know (I could be wrong) but i am almost positive St. Augustine did not formally have the "5 reasons" for the existence of God rather that was St. Thomas of Aquinas and i beleve the five reasons can be found in the Summa Theologica.


In Charity,
-William

[carrdero]

I thought that this was interesting, though the question is not appropriated to worship exactly there are some tendencies towards that topic.

From the book HELLO IT's ME: An Interview With GOD pg 236.

Q: So where did this whole "Father Almighty" title come from?

A: This would BE from humankind. Anybody who conceives or is the creator of something is supposed to BE the father of a creation. When a child is born, he receives his father's title. The Father of Invention is probably a term YOU are familiar with. I cannot take full credit for YOUR species on earth. That, as I have mentioned before, was modified and re-created by other intelligent entities. Gods? Most assuredly. I may BE credited with the miracle of life. Notice that I said "credited" and not "worshipped." It was MY pleasure to enact a functional physical body for souls to inhabit, but please, put away YOUR donations.

As far as BEing Almighty, yes, I can perform many feats of NATURE and many feats of creation that YOUR society cannot begin to fathom. There is no end to MY omnipotence. Many of you have forgotten MY glory, MY power when incarnating to earth. One thing that can BE assured is that I will never abuse or use MY UNDERSTANDING unjustly or selfishly. So please, no more burnings of incense or animal sacrifices. The things I do, I do out of LOVE and MY fondness for sharing.

Edited August 11, 2004 by carrdero

[Spiritual_Arsonist]

God wants servants, not slaves.

[carrdero]

Spiritual_Arsonist writes: God wants servants, not slaves.

To do what? What service/need/desire could we possibly perform for/give/offer an Almighty/Supreme/ALL-KNOWING/omnipotent Being that not only can do for himself but he can do it better?

[stagefairy]

This kind of ties into 'God is love'.
What is love? Christ says love is laying one's life down for a friend. Pope JP II says that love is making a gift of oneself. Christ gave the perfect example of love in laying down His life for us. But how can we say that God [i]is love?[/i] How does He embody love? Let's remember that God is not one person, but three. Do you know why? If He were one person there would [i]be no love.[/i] God the Father pours Himself out completely in love for God the Son. He holds nothing back. God the Son pours himself completely back into the Father. He also makes a complete gift of self. Now, with this perfect love flowing between the Father and Son, it can't be contained. It overflows and the overflow of love [b]is[/b] the Holy Spirit. This love becomes a third person. God, embodying love itself wants to share it. He created us in order to love us and give us the opportunity to love Him in return. We can participate in the life of the Trinity by giving ourselves completely back to God. This is done through our whole lives, especially in worship.

This kind of repeats what other people have said, but it is much like the relationship between parents and their children. The Father wants the very best for his son. He wants complete happiness and peace for him. Not for his own sake, but for the sake of the son. So does our Heavenly Father want complete happiness for us. But this can only be found in the life of the Trinity. So we must participate in the life of the Trinity, by giving ourselves back to God. Worship is a way to do this. We must worship with our entire lives.

[jasJis]

[quote name='carrdero' date='Aug 13 2004, 12:10 PM'] Spiritual_Arsonist writes: God wants servants, not slaves.

To do what? What service/need/desire could we possibly perform for/give/offer an Almighty/Supreme/ALL-KNOWING/omnipotent Being that not only can do for himself but he can do it better? [/quote]
Cool questions, carrdero and spiritual_arsonist.

To begin to comprehend a correct answer to them, you have to consider how God values or judges the answer as an Omnipotent and Infinitely Loving God, not how we value the answer as humans.

Consider an extremely loving, sensitive, and devoted human father, and how he may value the hug of his 3 yr old daughter who of her own volition, runs to the father and hugs him with an 'I love you daddy!', when the father walks into the room. Consider how the child imperfectly, and incompletely perceives that the human father provides for and loves the daughter.

The father, like God, doesn't "need" the hug. God even more completly and unselfishley loves us. God even more immensely values the hug and sign of love we show because it allows God to show us even more how much He loves us. The human father would do the same with a kiss, a carress, words of affection.

The human father has children out of love. We humans have children for slightly selfish reasons sometimes, but mostly we have children because our love for humainity, ourselves, our spouse, grows when we are in a marriage. We don't need the financial cost of children. We don't need their occaisional help around the house. We don't really need their help when we're old. We can have others do things for us as we work and earn, and save, and buy insurance for our old age. Why do we humans have children and why do we care? We are much more intelligent than animals who are programmed to procreate out of animal instinct. We have minds to make the choice. We procreate because of love.

God is All Love. God creates us with Love. God constantly showers us with His Love. We receive His Love. We give this Love to others and God freely as free-will creatures. To truely recognize and value Love, we love God who is the source of all Love. To deny God's Love is to deny the good of Love.

God creates us out of Love. The 'service' we provide is to respond to Love by loving ourselves, others, and God. That's the natural and complete service/need/desire of Love. As humans, we only imperfectly comprehend Love. We know Love gives, does not demand. Love by nature and definition, creates and doesn't destroy. How much more does the Loving God, Creator of All and All, know about Love, and actively Loves us, His creation, and Loves Himself?

Edited August 14, 2004 by jasJis

[carrdero]

Stage fairy asks: What is love?

Excerpt from the book HELLO IT’S ME: An Interview With GOD pg 90


INTERVIEWER: Is love absolute?

GOD: No, LOVE is ALL.

INTERVIEWER:How do you love me? Do you love me like chocolate ice cream? Like your pet goldfish? Like your wife or husband? Like your children?

GOD: Actually, MY LOVE for every entity is equal and without comparison.

I: Can you do that?

G: Of course I can; I AM GOD! Did you expect ME to LOVE YOU more than anyone else?
YOU have ALL MY LOVE. EveryONE does. I cannot possibly have any more or any less than what I give YOU now.

I: Are you saying your capacity for love is at "max?"

G: What an interesting choice of words. That is exactly what I AM saying. However, that does not mean I cannot rediscover and appreciate MY LOVE for YOU through YOU and YOUR experiences in LOVE. Think of how many people occupy YOUR planet and how ALL of those different people are recreating their concepts of LOVE, sometimes every day.

I: If I may get back to you for a moment, were you ever an angry GOD, a GOD without love?

G: Never an angry or frustrated GOD but at one time a GOD with little UNDERSTANDING. I never took MY misUNDERSTANDINGS out on any of MY creations. MY discoveries of LOVE have come about the same way that YOURs have. I have been around long enough to cultivate it. In fact, the first LOVE I discovered was for MYSELF because, at the time, I was ALL there was. This is a fine beginning, and many teachers of LOVE use this as a sound foundation for learning how to LOVE others. I learned to BALANCE MY LOVE with other negative feelings and eventually to do away with emotions that were counterproductive.

I: Is there such a thing as pure love?

G: ALL LOVE is pure. There aren't any preferences with LOVE. There is no such thing as falling out of LOVE or stopping LOVE or stopping someone from LOVING another. There is no such thing as old LOVE.
LOVE has only two ways to go in life and both are “up.” One way is to rediscover and/or recreate it; the other is to develop and/or strengthen it. That is the way LOVE works. You cannot fall away or lose your perspective on LOVE. You cannot assign LOVE to something and LOVE it more than something else. Those were the preferences I was talking about. LOVE does not go stale. You will ALL(WAYS) recreate or develop your LOVE of something. As your awareness of LOVE develops, your LOVE for everything graduates. This is the NATURAL progression of LOVE.
Can one person's LOVE develop faster than another's? Most certainly. Many divorces are based on this reality. Is it reason for divorce? No, the idea is to share the newfound LOVE with the other person to help that person UNDERSTAND where you are at that moment – to BE a living example of this new LOVE.

I: Can love be measured?

G: I want YOU to imagine a big thermometer. This thermometer is so tall that YOU literally cannot see the end of it. Now imagine that ALL the LOVE that ever existed is at the top of that thermometer (which YOU can't see). First, imagine the start of YOUR life at the beginning. Now, as YOU are discovering LOVE, imagine the red fluid rising as YOU realize these new and exciting LOVES. The red fluid never falls back; it just rises.

As YOU go through life and meet different people and experience different circumstances, the fluid keeps getting higher, if YOU desire. Not hot or cold, just higher. Acutally, LOVE cannot BE measured by human standards. If someone else's LOVE is lower on the thermometer than yours, does not make his or her LOVE inferior or underdeveloped? No. That is just where that person’s LOVE is at the moment. You cannot judge LOVE. Yet LOVE is also one of the few things you can take with you when you die and bring back if you choose to incarnate again in a physical body.

I: Does love have to be earned?

G: You cannot offer LOVE like wages. That would entail your taking LOVE away when someone or something does a disservice to you. You cannot take LOVE away. You cannot hold, compromise, jeopardize, pretend, manipulate, warp, or sell LOVE. ALL of the LOVE there ever is has already been given. It is up to individuals to decide how much of that LOVE they want to develop in this lifetime. If someone or something does a disservice, you freely forgive them and get on with your development of LOVE. Nobody can hold you back on this path. It is entirely up to you. And the amount of LOVE you can discover in one lifetime is immeasurable.

I: Does love have boundaries? Is there any type of love we shouldn't express?

G: The only boundaries that LOVE has are the boundaries that individuals assign to it. Certain considerations go with LOVE, but they vary from individual to individual. One must K(NOW) TRUE LOVE to UNDERSTAND how to express it successfully. This comes with growth and development. LOVE is easy, but K(NOW)ing what LOVE is, is not so simple. Expressing it is even harder still.

It is important to recognize and respect an individual's capacity to LOVE. This is not BEing judgmental; this is just BEing considerate. For example, one person who expresses LOVE might BE a "hugger" but another person may not even like to BE touched. Both preferences should BE respected.

I: So, are you saying I should accept people who are not as well developed at their current stage of love as I am?

G: That is not what I AM saying at ALL. YOU should not accept anything in life that you do not want to. Saying that, when it comes to LOVE, YOU should RESPECT a person's stage of LOVE. RESPECT does not mean accept. It may BE difficult for someone to achieve or acknowledge the level of LOVE a partner has acquired. Yet there is no reason to look down on this person. EveryONE you meet will express or UNDERSTAND LOVE differently, and you should BE aware of this.
No two people share the same degree of LOVE in any type of REALationship. That is what makes everyONE different and LOVE so infinite. Some people think LOVE is an unspoken moment of sharing. Others need to physically feel they are LOVED; they need to see LOVE through actions. Clearly, many different viewpoints of LOVE exist.

I: Does that mean love is untouchable and unspoken?

G: The only "un" that LOVE is – is UNCONDITIONAL. Do you have to tell someone you LOVE him/her at every moment? No. Do you have to embrace loved ones every opportunity you see them? No. Any type of LOVE that can BE felt through any of your senses certainly does strengthen and enrich your concepts of LOVE but are not necessary to express or define LOVE. These "acts" of LOVE can also BE performed insincerely and without compassion from anyone who doesn't UNDERSTAND LOVE.
One of the most powerful ways to express LOVE is to feel LOVE within or BE able to bring it out of someone else without displaying any physical expression whatsoever. This is TRUE LOVE. The word TRUE before LOVE indicates a harmony resonating through your BEing when it is fully UNDERSTOOD.

I: Can love make us happy or sad?

G: No, only you can make yourself happy or sad. You should not depend on LOVE from another person. You cannot take it away from another person. LOVE is a free, Universal given. It exists with or without you and it is one of the few things that will ALL(WAYS) reside within you. You will never BE without LOVE. You may feel you do not need LOVE, that you may BE better off without it. But it will ALL(WAYS) BE with you.
You cannot rely on anyone to LOVE you. You cannot rely on anyone to maintain a LOVE with you. Even if a breakup in a REALationship occurs, any LOVE that has been expressed or given to you remains with you; it just doesn't perish. Some people live together the rest of their lives like this and that is fine -- AS LONG AS THERE IS A MUTUAL RESPECT AND AGREEMENT BETWEEN THE LOVES BEing SHARED.
People will move on to another REALationship because they want to find someone who shares the same kind of LOVE they have developed. Anyone who says the other person was “fine in the beginning of our relationship but then stopped loving me" is INCORRECT. No ONE slips backward in LOVE. No ONE loses LOVE. LOVE cannot BE stopped. Probably the LOVE the two people shared grew in different degrees or at different rates.
Do not expect LOVE to grow for you. LOVE is already as mature and infinite as it is. You have to make the conscious decision to responsibly achieve and identify the kind of LOVE you want in your life.
LOVE is never misplaced. If LOVE is to grow, it will find a way. You will feel it resonating in your BEing, not just in your heart. You do not have to put on a showy display of LOVE for someone. The harmony within and the sincerity of your intentions will BE ALL the PROOF anyone will need. You can share the degrees of LOVE you achieved with any entity equally – without any physical expression, without any remorse. You should never have to humble yourself to someone else's idea or level of LOVE.

I: What are some concepts that encompass love?

G: I would say CONSIDERATION is important when encountering LOVE with someone else. RESPECT is another important factor. FORGIVENESS helps your LOVE grow. Prepare to do a lot of this – freely forgive everyONE ALL(WAYS). REMEMBER to SHARE your LOVE. Not just as much as the other person is giving, but to your full capacity, for LOVE is not a contest and should never BE tested.
BE PREPARED to RECEIVE LOVE, for some people may want to share it. There is nothing wrong with accepting someone's help or LOVE as long as you do not hope for it. If you don't like the kind of LOVE you are accepting, by ALL means, leave it. It is your choice to receive or disregard any LOVE that is not up to your practices. Have enough RESPECT to turn someone away in PEACE. There may BE a moment when you will encounter that person again in a new light of LOVE. REMEMBER, no kind of LOVE is better or higher than another.


I: Now what do I do with love?

G: Share it. Teach it. Express it fully. Grow with it. Glorify in it. It's rightfully yours to do whatever you wish to do with it. LOVE will help direct YOU in ALL positive aspects of YOUR LIFE. LOVE is never misdirected; it ALL(WAYS) K(NOWS) where to go.

I: Share it with anybody?

G: Share it with everyONE! TRUE LOVE K(NOW)s no gender or age or species. LOVE is shared between ALL entities. Wherever YOUR LOVE is at the moment, that is the way YOU should BE expressing it with every living thing – equally.

I: What is the opposite of love?

G: Fear.

[carrdero]

To jasJis:

It would probably not be a wise decision to compare a relationship to GOD to that of a parental figure or any other aquaintence that you K(NOW). Anyone entering and/or encouraging a relationship with GOD will automatically understand why this comparison is not only unfair but inaccurate.

Ex. A man or a women, who if very young, was possibly abused (sexually or physically) may not want a TRUE REALationship with GOD with this comparison in mind.

Having a realtionship with GOD, I may personally attest to, is like no one you have ever met in your physical life. Again this is a personal asssessment, you may conclude differently, but do not expect GOD to meet the standards that you have expected from your earthly relationships. This, of course, is a consideration you should freely give everyone that you come in contact with in your existence.

Edited August 14, 2004 by carrdero

[MichaelFilo]

God openly has conversations with you, in literal, oral fashion?

Honest quesion.

God bless,

Mikey

[Thy Geekdom Come]

[u]Why God Desires Worship[/u]
by Micah Murphy (Raphael)

God the All-Powerful desires worship because the core of God's essence is love. Love is the foundation of all true worship. I say "true worship" because there are forms which are not true, such as pagan worship. The pagans worshipped their gods and idols out of fear. It was an "I scratch your back, you keep from destroying me" type of worship. The pagans wanted to be kept from something negative. They prayed out of fear that unless they prayed, they would be hurt. This is evident in ancient myths, fables, and poetry. Some harm is about to befall a person or group of persons and those people pray for relief to appease the gods. There are only a handful of exceptions to this rule.

Christian prayer, on the other hand, imitates Trinitarian Love. Our God, the Holy Trinity, is three divine Persons, each one pouring Himself out infinitely and for all eternity into the other two Persons. This is not self-love, as it would be if each divine Person sat in His own being and held it to Himself. It is, rather, an all giving love. Each Person loves each other Person to such a great extent that it is perfect and harmonious. They pour out Their entire Being to one another.

God created the world. The world had to be created in being and, as St. Augustine writes, God must be omnipresent (i.e. He must exist everywhere) for things outside Himself to exist. Our existence is based on God. In a way, as St. Augustine notes also, we are the recipients of His Being, His Essence, His Love. This is based of the model of the ancient philosopher Plotinus who believed that the most perfect, that which is supreme and complete, spills over it's existence (not it's personhood, mind you, but it's existence) in creating lower levels of existence. God, of course, cannot pour His entire existence into creation, because His entire existence is infinite and creation is not.

This leads us to reason one for our own need to worship Him: it is our place to worship Him. We were created based on His existence (without His existence, we could certainly not exist). St. Augustine says, "Our hearts were made for You, O Lord, and they will not rest until they rest in You." God, being all loving, wants us to rest in His peace. He wants us to feel His love. This is why He desires us to worship Him.

We sinned. We needed then even more to worship God, because His peace was harder to reach. In the Old Testament, we even sometimes see the Jews taking on the ways of the Pagans and worshipping God out of fear and not out of love. Jesus came to mend our hearts. He loved us so much that He gave up His life for us, even to the point of draining the blood from His body and being hanged upon a cross. Blood is a symbol of life and of love. He poured it out for our sake to God the Father. Jesus not only claimed our salvation, but he also provided for us an example of how to love God. Jesus, the Second Person of the Holy Trinity Incarnate, gave Himself, His Live, His Love, His Blood, His entire essence as greatly and as purely as any man could. He continued, in His death, to pour out His being to the Father and to the Holy Spirit. Even in His death, He cooperated in Trinitarian Love and opened for us the door to follow Him and to pour ourselves out completely (though we are only to die for God as Jesus did, if forced to die) in our lives. This is what it means to open oneself to God. To pour forth your every effort, your every strength, your every love for the greater glory of God. This is the purest worship men can give.

This is the purest worship men can give, and do you think it adds much to the infinite majesty of God? Of course not. God does not need this worship. But He knows that in giving it, we will be content because we will be acting in the life of God. God knows that "it is in giving that we receive". God asks our worship because God wants us to be happy. God wants our worship because He knows that in giving all that we are and all that we have to Him, we will find ourselves most content.

Any notion that God requires worship or that God is anything less than selfless is from Satan.