Update. I've updated this article to expand from just my perceived sexualization of Worship, to the sexualization of the Church as a whole. New material (mainly in the form of images of church advertising materials) is included at the bottom of this article.

I recently ran into a bunch more of this stuff at "www.sliceoflaodicea.com" and "www.alittleleaven.com", both of which cover this stuff much more extensively than I do. It fits well with my original article, so I've included it here.

This article's original article publication date was 7/24/2006.


I originally sat down to write a much more lengthy piece than I ultimately have. There seemed to be so much to say, but as I really got into it I quickly discovered that the subject matter pretty much either speaks for itself, or it says nothing. It depends upon who you are, more than anything else.


It's one of those things that if you see it the way I see it, then you see it right away without much prodding. And if you don't see what I see in it, then there's nothing I can really do to help you, or make you see what I see.


Here's the real gist of what I see:

Praise and Worship services in "church" today have become pornographic.

The original idea hit me pretty hard all at once, one evening, when I was looking at a photo montage put up by a small church group that I occasionally visit. You'll find photo collections exactly like it all over the place - on church bulletin boards, on the internet... it's very popular right now.

Basically, it has become "hip" to walk around the santuary during praise and worship and shoot videos and photos of people while they are engaged in praise and worship. And I thought to myself, "I would no sooner publish pictures of me and my wife engaged in intercourse than I would pictures of God's people (Christ's bride) engaged in intercourse with Him." And that's what praise and worship is - it is spiritual, intimate, intercourse with our God in heaven. And to take pictures of it and publish them is, to me, completely indistinguishable from pornography.

Pornography is a word that I have a special definition for. I recognize that it has an existing meaning: "pictures or imagery designed to sexually excite or enflame passion, lust or desire." This is a definition that also serves just as well to describe worship photography as pornography because that's exactly the purpose it's used for: to excite people and stir up strong emotions and bring people to "lust" - even if it is, supposedly, after the Lord. This kind of imagery is even used for the purposes of marketing the church by churches who put this stuff into brochures that they send into the whole world. People they don't even KNOW are going to see this stuff.

But there's another definition of pornography - one that I personally hold that I think is a truly more accurate definition.

Pornography is defined as "sexually exciting and emotion stirring." That's perfectly legitimate in any marriage - in fact it's desirous and, frankly, highly sought after, and rightly so. "Enflaming passions" are totally awesome between husband and wife. And honestly, if I get the feeling that my wife is lusting after me... That's about as good as sex gets. Hugh Heffner can't touch that.

Essentially, it sounds like I'm saying that marriage is pornographic, and it is - only if you accept the world's definition of the word. But I do not.

It's not the physical act depicted in the pornographic image that makes it pornographic. So what puts the "porn" in pornography? Here's a better definition for you.

If you look up the word "adulterate" in the dictionary, you find that to adulterate something means to mix it with something else. Something that is PURE becomes adulterated when something other than itself is mixed into it. The Bible is crammed to the gills with examples of this. In fact, I'd hasten a guess that it is probably one of the very core themes of the Bible. God puts a VERY high premium on purity in absolutely everything that He creates. Adultery is not simply the sexual relations with persons outside of marriage (although it certainly includes that). Adultery is taking anything of God, or His nature, and mixing it with something else.

Pornography is the taking of something intimate, designed to be private and reserved for God-approved purposes, and publishing or broadcasting it for public consumption.

If you think about it for a moment, there's nothing going on, physically, in any porno picture (so long as it is just a man and a woman) that's not perfectly legitimate for any man and his wife to engage in, and is in fact blessed by, and encouraged by God Himself - he designed your physical bodies specifically for this purpose.

God has given us the intimacy of sex to act as a model - a faint glimpse - of the union between Jesus Christ the Son and God the Father. Think about that for moment. The best thing that God can use to describe the relationship between himself and his church is SEX. That ought to broaden your understanding of 1st Cor 2:9!!!

That powerful bond and intimacy, that intense emotional, physical and even spiritual burning that human beings feel during sexual activity is just a tiny fragment of the power of the bond and the pleasure of the union that is shared between Christ and God the Father all the time, and which we will experience also, fully, in Heaven.

Husbands and wives, in a healthy marriage, are engaging in a whole bunch of stuff that when done privately is called "the marriage bed", but when done publically is called "pornography" or debauchery.

It's not nakedness that is pornographic. It's the "uncovering the nakedness" that makes "pornography." And "uncovering" is particularly to be stressed here. The revealing of nakedness is not, in itself, a sin. The revealing of nakedness of someone (or to someone) that is not your married husband or wife is a sin. It is the distinction between private and public that defines and distinguishes holy matrimony from unholy pornography.

Now on to the topic at hand. Having armed themselves with a bunch of "Christian Pornography" the church has now set about attracting participants to their "orgies" (sorry - it's the first word that came to mind and seems to be the only word that accurately describe the atmosphere I see).

Almost every single church in Modern America now flaunts and advertises its praise and worship service above and before it's bible preaching. For the longest time, in America, the point of church was the message - the word of God. No longer.

The point of church in America now is almost anything BUT the message. And frequently, the real point of church anymore is the praise and worship service itself. In fact, in a LOT of churches that I have even bothered to set foot in in the past ten years, the praise and worship service is the central event, and it is longer, sometimes by several times longer than the preaching of the Bible. It is getting to be common in some churches for the praise and worship service to last THREE HOURS in preparation for a 20 minute "message." - If they get there at all.

If we come to the place where the Praise and Worship service preempts the preaching of God's word, then I think praise and worship has gone way too far past it's purpose. There are scant few exceptions; although I do allow that they exist.


The content of the music, now, has ceased to be about HIM, but about US. This is the real heart of the problem as I see it. This is the bit that really makes me angry!

"Lord WE love you. Lord WE want you. Jesus, give US more of you. Lord, here I AM to worship you. Lord we lift OUR arms in praise. Lord I bow down before you..."

All these seem like legitimate worship song lyrics, and they are - or can be, coming from the lips of people properly equiped to speak them. But my concern is this total preoccupation with our SELF in our praise and worship music.

What's wrong with these lyrics? It's about what we are doing. What we are saying. What we want. What we long for. What OUR desires are. What we are offering. It's I this and I that, and I the other, and I, I, I, I, I!!!!!

There's no longer any "I must decrease so that He may increase..." Away with "I"! Away with ME.

Worship should be about HIM!! Who HE is, what HE is doing, what HE has done, what HE desires, what HE is.

I, a long time ago, became very suspicious of ANY worship song in the church that even MENTIONED the word "I" or "me" or "we" or "us." Such a song has a completely misguided focus. It ought to be very rare for a song offered to God as worship to contain any reference to us at all except where necessary.


And the title of this article ("praise and worship has become pornographic") came immediately to mind one night when the lyrics of one song ran, (and I swear, I am not making this up) "Jesus, hold me..., kiss me..., ravage my heart..."

Praise and worship in the church today has become really nothing more than spiritual masturbation: It's intensely emotional. It's highly enflamed. It starts out fast and energetic (praise) and ends slow and rythmetic (worship). And to top it off, it offers an immediate gratification - a spiritual orgasm, if you will. There is actually a "Praise and Worship" CD available right now entitled "When Angels Get Busy."

What?

(note: For those of you who are reading from outside the United States, "Getting Busy" is a common American euphemism for "sex.")

And when you punctuate all that with a "message" that is about intimacy, and closeness, and "relationship"... well, is it any wonder that most youth groups are composed primarily of a bunch of teenage girls?



UPDATE

I really can't think of much to say that the pictures don't say for themselves. I suppose I will just reiterate for the hundredth time: The Church, and what calls itself "the church" are two completely different things. Just because it calls itself "church" and just because they call themselves "Christians" means absolutely nothing.

If there's anything I might add, its just that this sexualization now seems to be aimed even at Jesus Christ Himself!

My God! How far we've fallen. But then again, it's not really a suprise. Jesus told us this would happen. I'm just stunned (and perhaps priviledged) to be seeing it myself.

Thanks to www.alittleleaven.com and www.sliceoflaodicea.com for the images. Please visit them. They go much farther into specific topics than I do.

As if it weren't already bad enough, take a moment and read the text on this one. "Welcome to the website of the STUDENT MINISTRY..."

This is for 6th graders????? And then combine it with a name like "EnterRuption?" (Should we prepend the word "coitus" to it?) Holy Cow!

PLEASE!!! Someone show me that this is a hoax or an urban myth. PLEASE, dear God, please!...

Additional Reading: Why I Am Not A Charismatic