Study
the Highest Form of Worship
by
Dr. John D. Garr
When
Christians think of worship, images of the Sunday
morning worship service come to view, with singing,
praying, giving, preaching, and sharing the sacrament.
Study is perhaps something that is done in preparation
for worship, but could Christians ever conceive
of study, itself, as an act of worship, even the
highest form of worship? When we analyze this
concept, however, we begin to understand that
intensive study of the Word of God is the most
reliable way in which God can speak to us and
cause us to understand his will and his ways.
Even the most intense and profound subjective
experiences must be judged by the written Word
of God (II Peter 1:16-19). Study of the Word of
God, then, with a view toward doing the Word,
is an act of submission to the divine will, the
essence of true worship. When we pray, we speak
with God; when we study, God speaks to us.
For
many centuries study has been at the very heart
of the Jewish experience, so much so that much
of Judaism has considered study as the highest
form of worship. Humbly submitting oneself to
the wisdom of God revealed in the Tenach (Hebrew
Scriptures) was viewed as worship, which literally
meant to "prostrate oneself" before
the Eternal. The Hebrew word for worship, dg"s]
(segad), means to "bow down or do
obeisance to," and it has the connotation
of total submission to a superior (as the king).
The Greek translation of this word, proskunevw
(proskunéo), is even more graphic, meaning
to "kiss as a dog licking its master's hand."
The
decision to study God's Word in order to do His
Word is a meaningful act of submission and reverence-in
short, it is worship. Study carried out with this
motive is the very essence of Jewish learning.
This is not study in order to understand; it is
study in order to do. Abraham Joshua Heschel encapsulated
this Jewish approach to study by saying that the
Greeks study in order to understand while the
Hebrews study in order to revere. God's Word and
ways are ineffable: only by doing them does one
understand them.
Study
of God's Word in order to mold one's lifestyle
to that Word is also worship in the truest sense
of the English word worship, which means
to "ascribe worth to." When we fully
submit our lives to God's Word, when we study
what he has said with complete devotion and intensity,
we do, indeed, ascribe worth to him: we worship
him.
Synagogal
Life Reveals the Model
The
importance which the Jewish community attaches
to study is reflected in the life of the synagogue,
the focal point of the Jewish experience since
the time of the Babylonian captivity. The word
synagogue is from the Greek word sunagoghv
(sunagoge), which was used by the Septuagint scholars
to translate the Hebrew hd;[e (Eda), the
word which referred to the meeting of the congregation
of Israel. The word synagogue was also
used to translate d[e/m (moed), which meant
"an appointed place of meeting" (Psalm
74:8). In ancient times the synagogue was probably
the assembly of the people in homes for social
interaction, for prayer, and for study. Later,
these meetings were housed in buildings designed
specifically for such use, which took on the name
of the meetings, themselves, and were called synagogues.
The
synagogue has had three traditional functions
which were manifest in the names given to it:
Beit Knesset (House of Assembly or Meeting
Place), Beit Tefillah, (House of Prayer),
and Beit Midrash (House of Study or
Learning).The synagogue was a place where the
Jewish people assembled for the interaction of
their collective lives. It was probably first
a simple meeting (knesset) place of the
people or their gathering for the dispensing of
justice (din) through the rabbinical court.
Then it became a place for corporate prayer (tefillah),
which requires a minyan (quorum) of ten
men, underscoring the Jewish mindset that salvation
and interaction with the Divine is a collective,
not individualistic exercise. Over time, however,
the emphasis came more and more to be on the assembly
of the people to study, learn, or investigate
(midrash) the Torah. A Beit Midrash
was most often attached to the synagogue, and
the functions of both tended to overlap. Eventually,
the Beit Midrash came to be viewed as more
sacred than the rest of the synagogue.
The
continuing recognition of the synagogue as a house
of study is seen in the fact that many Jews today
prefer the Yiddish term shul over the term
synagogue to identify their place of meeting.
Shul literally means school and probably
is related to the Latin schola, from which
we get the words scholar and scholastic.
A
Holistic World View
The
traditional importance that the Jewish people
have placed upon education is based in Judaism's
holistic view of life. Jews have long viewed all
of life as a continuum in which each part of the
human experience shares equal importance with
every other aspect of life. Jews do not embrace
the bifurcated dualism that much of the Gentile
world has espoused. There is no such thing as
a dichotomy between the spiritual and the material
aspects of life, as in neo-Platonism or Eastern
Monism. All of life is spiritual and good. Yahweh
is the Creator of all things, and he declared
all the things that he had created to be "good"
and "very good" (Genesis 1:31). This
Jewish holistic view of life is encapsulated in
Paul's declaration: "I know, and am persuaded
by the Lord Jesus, that there is nothing unclean
of itself . . ." (Romans 14:14).
Satan
never has and never will create anything!
He has and always will, however, attempt to pollute
everything that God has created for the good of
man. God created everything good and set parameters
for man's enjoyment of the good that he had created.
Satan, however, has successfully enticed men to
go beyond God's set limits and to commit sin with
virtually everything that God has created, including
the grace and the Word of God (Jude 4).
Because
of their holistic view of life, Jews do not make
a vast distinction between "spiritual"
and "secular" knowledge, for all knowledge
is from God and is designed for the human good.
Elihu of ancient times encapsulated the truth
about the origin of knowledge: "There is
a spirit in man: and the inspiration of the Almighty
giveth them understanding" (Job 32:8). All
knowledge is the product of divine inspiration,
often received by men as a "flash of insight."
Most of the great inventions and discoveries of
history have not been merely the product of accumulated
empirical evidence. They have come as a flash
of inspiration. Both spiritual understanding and
secular knowledge come from the "inspiration"
or breath of the Almighty.
If
all of life is sacred, then both traditional "spiritual"
and "secular" knowledge have relative
importance to man. For the Jewish people, there
can be no withdrawal from society into monasticism
or asceticism that denies the "secular"
or material through constant self-abnegation in
order to elevate the "spiritual." Gentiles,
on the other hand, have thought that nearness
to God was measured by withdrawal from the world.
The
neo-Platonists who Hellenized the earliest church
took their cue from Greek philosophy, which declared
that the spiritual good had become entrapped in
the material evil. Official Christendom, seeking
escape from the material world, concentrated its
erudition on the spiritual to the neglect of the
natural and cloistered what knowledge it had among
a sterile elite, denying it to the "secular"
world. This philosophy of education plunged the
Western world into the Dark Ages of human ignorance,
superstition, disease, and depravity.
The
religions that spring from Eastern Monism sought
escape into nothingness as the ultimate experience
that could be produced by meditation and separation
from the material. There was, therefore, no thought
of improvement of the human scene. The only hope
was escape from the endless cycle of reincarnation.
Is it any wonder, then, that the nations which
feature this philosophy suffer a profound toll
in human suffering and environmental, social,
and economic disaster.
For
the Jews, on the other hand, the way to be close
to God is not withdrawal from the world but involvement
in the "nitty-gritty" now and now, taking
the knowledge and wisdom that one has acquired
and using it to improve the human situation. Man
is not on some mindless treadmill of fatalism,
a "good" spirit trapped in an "evil"
body and in an "evil" world. All of
life is to be celebrated to its fullest and is
to be dedicated to God and his service.
The
Spirit of Improvement
Continual
improvement in the earth is the goal of Judaism,
as man works in partnership with God for the improvement
of his environment-physically, socially, economically,
and spiritually. This is, no doubt, the reason
that so many Jews have chosen professions which
deal with health and welfare. When one understands
this holistic approach to life, he cannot have
one set of ethics for the "spiritual realm"
and another for the "secular realm."
He cannot abuse his environment, his society,
his government, or his religion.
Jewish
emphasis on education, then, is based on the philosophy
of continuing self-improvement and the improvement
of the world around us. And, that emphasis has
produced some of the greatest accomplishments
in virtually all fields of learning, as Jews have
led the way in the betterment of the human race.
This
dedication to improvement of the human lot is
in context of God's command to Adam and Eve to
"subdue the earth." This is an ongoing
work that is generational and universal. Working
in concert with God is such a massive job that
no one person or no one generation can ever accomplish
his plan. Working continually to improve is the
essence of the spirit of perfection which is enjoined
upon believers. "Be ye perfect, as your Father
in heaven is perfect," is the command of
Jesus. This perfection is not the achievement
of some plateau or apex; it is the continual walking
with God to make improvement, which requires continual
study.
The
spirit of improvement is the factor that has contributed
to the value which Judaism has traditionally placed
on education. It is reflected in the Jewish view
that the role of man in the earth is to be the
same as it was in the beginning of creation: the
keeper of the garden. Jews believe that God has
called man into a partnership with himself to
work at improvement of the planet to which man
has been assigned. If continual improvement is
to be made by each succeeding generation, then
the knowledge acquired in each generation must
be passed on to the next. This was one of the
primary reasons for which Yahweh had chosen Abraham,
the first Hebrew, in the beginning: "For
I know [Abraham], that he will command his children
and his household after him, and they shall keep
the way of the Lord, to do justice and judgment"
(Genesis 18:19). Jewish perspectives on learning,
then, involve both the acquisition and transmission
of knowledge.
Being
Led Out
The
word education comes to us from the Latin
ex ducere, which means to be led out. It
is a simple fact that learning leads us out of
ignorance, out of darkness, out of superstition,
out of misery, out of suffering. While all of
Europe was being decimated by the Black Plague,
Jews were spared because they had the knowledge
to "be clean, and change your garments"
(Genesis 35:2) and to keep their homes free of
rodents and the attendant fleas that spread the
plague. While Gentile women have been afflicted
with high instances of uterine cancer, Jewish
women have largely been spared because of the
circumcision of Jewish men and abstinence from
sexual intercourse during the woman's time of
niddah (forbidden), beginning with the
onset of menses and continuing for seven days
after its conclusion. While the Gentile world
has been dominated by superstitions founded in
false religions that produced a pantheon of gods
or worshipped an impersonal force, the Jews have
enjoyed the freedom and fulfillment of worshipping
the God who is one and who can be approached as
Avenu, Malkenu (our Father, our King).
While the world and the church knew that the earth
was flat, Christopher Columbus, with the support
of the Jewish community, set out toward the east
by sailing westward because he knew that "the
Lord sitteth upon the circle of the earth"
(Isaiah 40:22). And, the list goes on and on.
Learning the wisdom of God leads us out of darkness
and into his marvelous light.
Training
Up Children
The
importance of educating children is also seen
in Solomon's dictum in Proverbs 22:6: "Train
up a child in the way he should go: and when he
is old, he will not depart from it." This
text has often been misinterpreted to mean that
if one trains his child in the knowledge of God,
the child will never depart from that understanding
in his adult life. The true meaning, however,
is that parents are responsible for training their
children in the discipline to which the child
is inclined. How many parents have forced their
children to be educated according to their own
preferences and have consequently enslaved their
children to professions that they despise? It
is the responsibility of parents to discern the
interests of their children at as early an age
as possible and then to see that the child is
educated to the greatest degree possible to facilitate
his performance in that field of endeavor in which
he is interested.
This
truth is seen in the responsibility incumbent
upon every Jewish father to teach his children
both Torah and a means of livelihood. The home
is the center for spiritual growth and the primary
source of life training. The acquisition of secular
knowledge, then, when subordinated to learning
the Word of God, is also an act of worship. It
is a response to the commandment of God that man
should "work six days a week." In this
context, work is also worship, another concept
that is foreign to the Christian mind because
of the influence of neo-Platonic thought. Indeed,
the Hebrew word abodah means both "work"
and "worship." There is no such thing
as a menial job. All work that is done in obedience
to the commandments of God is an act of worship
and, therefore, of import.
Study
For Approval Before God
The
importance of studying the Word of God is seen
in Paul's instructions to Timothy: "Study
to show thyself approved unto God, a workman that
needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the
word of truth. . . . from a child thou hast known
the holy scriptures, which are able to make thee
wise unto salvation through faith which is in
Christ Jesus. All scripture is given by inspiration
of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof,
for correction, for instruction in righteousness:
that the man of God may be perfect, throughly
furnished unto all good works" (II Timothy
2:15; 3:15-17). Intense study is necessary to
avoid the shame of inaccurately interpreting God's
Word. This is in keeping with David's description
of the righteous man: "His delight is in
the law of the Lord; and in his law doth he meditate
day and night" (Psalm 1:2) The meditation
to which David refers is not Eastern Monism's
meditation that seeks to focus the energy of the
mind on the third eye in the center of the forehead
(where the pituitary gland is located) so as to
achieve the understanding of one's inherent deity.
It is the repeating over and over again (like
the rumination of a cow) the words of God until
one so ingests the Word that it becomes a part
of the very fiber of his being.
This
is the vision that keeps God's people from casting
off restraint: "He that keepeth the law,
happy is he" (Proverbs 29:18). Without the
prophetic vision of the Word of God, people perish.
With the understanding of rightly-divided Holy
Scripture, one can be taught, corrected, and instructed
in righteousness, thereby becoming mature (perfect)
and be completely equipped unto all good works.
It is then that the light of God's Word can shine
through him so that men may see his good works
and glorify the Father in heaven (Matthew
5:16).
Study
is indeed the highest form of worship, for it
is our subjection of our human reason to a conscious
act of our human will to believe what God
has said that manifests the faith that is credited
to us for righteousness. When we believe God and
act on our faith, we receive the imputed righteousness
of Jesus Christ. When we study God's Word with
a view toward obeying it, we become wholly submissive
to God and can then walk in the Spirit, not in
the flesh. In such a state, there is no condemnation
to us, for the law of the Spirit of life in Christ
Jesus has freed us from the law of sin and death
(Romans 8:1, 2).
O
that men everywhere would seek the Lord and worship
before him in the beauty of his holiness, studying
his Word and his ways!
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