digging to much into context….what is defined as enough?

Ok so from Carson I’m wondering if there is even a middle ground when it comes to worship. It almost seems like the term worship hasn’t changed from the way the Old Testament used it and the way the New Testament used it. While reading Carson’s different examples of worship throughout the bible there almost seemed like there was some sort of connection of the way people in the Old Testament used the word and the way people in the New Testament used the word and the way that we worship today. “By easy transfer, worship came to refer to the honor itself that is shown a person or thing p 18).  In the Old Testament set feast such as the Passover would have been a way of worship, because through that they were celebrating, or honoring the Lord. It was also thought of worship when people in the Old Testament would give sacrifices to the Lord, once again that was a sign of honoring also a sign of submitting. In the New Testament Paul says that we should offer our bodies as living sacrifices holy and pleasing to God, because this is a spiritual act of worship.  Scripture even says that the Angles bow down and worship the Lord. So if I look at scriptures based on this connection I would base the definition of worship on basically submitting to the Lord and celebrating him and that doesn’t just go for worship on a Sunday morning but it includes in my lifestyle… “Worship is for all the people of God at all times and places, and it is bound up with how they live.” Based on that is that not enough when trying to define worship… isn’t that how we worship today. Could it be that people have dug to much into context that there truly not able to enter true worship, because they just care about the theology of it, or could people just be making that the excuse so worship could continue to be what is convenient to them… maybe if we answer that question then we will be able to answer if worship and contemporary are legitimate aims.

Tension

In Carson’s discussion of the challenges of defining worship, he shows us two approaches to constructing a theology. One side is systematic theology, the other is biblical theology. As Carson explained the systematic approach, he showed its weaknesses, one being the possibility of reducing our idea of worship to the “lowest common denominator,” missing some of the distinctive elements of different eras (p. 16, par. 1). With the other approach, biblical theology, a possible risk is the failure to construct a workable “big picture” that applies to all eras.

As I read the challenges with systematic theology, I thought, “Well this won’t work, so we need biblical theology.” As I read the challenges with biblical theology, I thought, “This doesn’t work either, so what we really need is a balance.” But then I checked myself. Balance sounds neat, as if I have figured out how to bring both competing sides into harmony. But I really don’t think I can do this. Yesterday I listened to a message by Dr. Robertson McQuilkin on the “Tradition of Evangelical Pluralism” at Columbia International University. In it McQuilkin stressed the value of remaining in tension on certain issues that may tend to be polarized. My point in bringing this up is that tension seems to better describe what needs to happen with systematic and biblical theology than balance. Both words presuppose at least two opposite points, but tension leaves me in the middle, struggling to keep both in perspective. Balance seems to make me sound like a master performer of some sort. This seems to be a better word to describe the process of me, a learner, trying to work with different systems.

So, how can we implement tension into our treatment of systematic and biblical theology in a construction of a definition of worship (or anything else)?

Or

What specific problems in worship have occurred as a result of improper emphasis?