thread: 2007-01-10 : Some questions about worship
On 2007-01-10, NinJ wrote:
Heh.
Uh... well, do you care if it's worship? I bet you don't. So it's moot.
OK, here's the thing: there's a longstanding Jewish tradition that you never, ever ask God for anything because you don't know what other effects that will have. So if I ask God for a storm to not hit my house, it hits someone else's. And now it's your fault because you couldn't keep your fingers out of the magic pie.
This is obviously overridden by folk tradition, which has possessor demons, ghosts, and the evil eye. But ignoring that part, we don't typically ask God for things. We have our covenant; other stuff has to be contracted for, and it's kind of hard to figure out how to do that. (Many feel that the covenant was broken in the Holocaust. I'm not sure what to make of that.)
The upshot of this is that 1) "Worship" of God mostly comes in the form of acknowledging the position of God in the Universe. It's a meditative practice. 2) Nothing forbids you from thanking people for providing for you in some way. In fact, you have to pay for things fairly by Halachah. 3) Were it Jewish practice, the way you do things is by saying, "Thanks, God, who made the whole Universe, for making bread come out of the earth. Thanks for making grapes. Thanks for making light and fire. Thanks for making my children. Thanks for making fruit come out of the earth. Thanks for making fruit of trees." Oddly, there's no blessing over meat; Jewish tradition implies that vegetarianism is preferable, so when you eat meat, you say, "Bless are you, God, whose word makes everything be."
But!
This is a technical answer. The real answer is in my question: are you worshiping the stuff? Are you saying, "Wheat, there are no causes that contribute to your existence, so by speech (a sacrifice) I am making you grow." No, I think you're doing the opposite. I think you're saying, "I like my existence, and I thank all the things that cause it, and the things that cause those causes, and the things that cause those causes..."
You're just not shouting "Infinity!" at the end.
