"Pastor, why do we worship like Gnostics?"

Have you ever heard something like this? "God isn't concerned with the posture of our bodies, just with the attitude of our hearts." If you haven't, try going to your pastor or elders and suggesting that your church install kneelers (similar to those pictured to the right) so the congregation can more faithfully worship according to the Bible. After giving you a strange look, and muttering something about "catholic," the answer in the typical evangelical church will probably be close to the "posture" statement above. If you get such an answer, it would then be appropriate to ask, "Why do we worship like Gnostics?" If you make it this far in the conversation, I would love to know what happens next!
I would guess questions like this never occur in most congregations. Oh, occasionally the "young folks" who want to hold up their hands to some choruses will cite something like Psalm 134:2, "Lift up your hands in the sanctuary and praise the LORD," but in general, in church after church, we continue more and more to divorce the posture of our bodies from the attitude of our hearts. Why do we do this? Well, I would say it is because we are too Gnostic. . . . It's certainly not because we get the idea to divorce posture from attitude by reading the Bible.
The very Hebrew and Greek words that we translate as worship mean "to bow down." In each of these examples try substituting "bow down" for the word "worship":

• Abraham told his two young servants, "Stay here with the donkey. The boy and I are going over there to worship; then we'll come back to you." [Genesis 22:5]
• All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the LORD, and all the families of the nations shall worship before you. [Psalms 22:27]
• "Where is he who has been born king of the Jews? For we saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him." [Matthew 2:2]
• Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you say that in Jerusalem is the place where people ought to worship." Jesus said to her, "Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth." [John 4:20-24]
  

The Bible makes clear that worship is not some disembodied activity that takes place solely in the "head" or "heart." In addition to "lifting hands" and "bowing down," the Bible speaks of worship that involves singing and music, responsive prayers and recitations of Scripture that actively involve the congregation, and other "active" and "physical" worship. In fact, the only posture that the Bible does not speak of in regard to prayer is sitting! It does describe prayer offered face down, kneeling, or standing.
So, what does any of this matter? It matters because God is concerned (even if we aren't) with what we do with our bodies, not simply what we don't do with them("Thou shalt not . . ."). When God says in Isaiah that He has "had enough of burnt offerings," it is not because He wanted the offerings to stop, but that He wanted the attitude accompanying the offerings to be out of a sincere, faithful heart. God wants both--our heart and hands. This is because God is not Gnostic.

G-N-O-S-T-I-C-I-S-M

Okay, boys and girls. It's time for another "four dollar word." Gnosticism. The "g" is silent, the "o" is like the "o" in "pot," and the "c" is an "s" like in "exorcism." So, try it again. Gnosticism. I have several posts coming up on various topics like food, worship, beer, Baptists, death, etc. All of these will tie in (believe it or not) with "Gnosticism." So, what is Gnosticism? The term comes from the Greek word gnosis, which means "knowledge." An "ism" is a system or doctrine of belief. Gnosticism, therefore, is a system of belief that regards the attainment of certain hidden, or secret, knowledge as the means of escape from the physical and material world (which is inherently evil) to the spiritual and immaterial world (which is inherently good).
The New Testament suggests that even then a germ of Gnosticism was making inroads into the church. John appears to be addressing this heresy directly in the verses below:

• John 1:14: And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.
  
• 1 John 4:2-3: By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you heard was coming and now is in the world already.
  
• 2 John 1:7: For many deceivers have gone out into the world, those who do not confess the coming of Jesus Christ in the flesh. Such a one is the deceiver and the antichrist.

Now, this all stands in stark contrast to the so-called "Gnostic gospels," like Thomas, Mary, and the recently hyped Judas. For example, the latter has Jesus saying to Judas, “But you will exceed all of them. For you will sacrifice the man that clothes me." The idea here is that Jesus' crucifixion is something which will liberate him from the (corrupt) flesh that masks the true, spiritual him. This is a biblically absurd notion! If Jesus was to be liberated from the flesh, then why did he appear to his disciples again, after the resurrection, with a fleshly body and not as an immaterial spirit? To be fair, it was a remarkably transformed (i.e., glorified) body. But it was still a "flesh and bone" body that bore the scars of the crucifixion, that could be touched, and that ate food. Jesus' own words about this body confirm that he was not simply a spirit: "And He said to them, "Why are you troubled, and why do doubts arise in your hearts? See My hands and My feet, that it is I Myself; touch Me and see, for a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have." (Luke 24:38-39).
The resurrection is the final repudiation of Gnosticism. It is impossible to be Gnostic and to also believe in the Christ of the Bible. The Christ of the Bible shows Gnosticicsm to be a lie. And yet in many ways we are modern day Gnostics--even us church folks. We have learned it from the Gnosticism of popular culture (things like the Star Wars and Matrix movies) and from frankly bad Bible interpretation. I hope to explore some of these things over the coming days. Stay tuned!