In an address on the theme “declaring God’s praise”, James Nestigen reminded us of the biblical definition of praise. Based on the liturgical line “O Lord, open my lips”, and the response, “And my mouth will declare your praise”, he defined genuine praise as that which comes forth only when God opens our lips.

These lines from Psalm 51:15 empha­sise the interrelation of God as both sub­ject and object of our worship, for his presence opens our lips to proclaim his glory. We cannot respond to God as the object of our praise unless we first see him, know him, let him be God in our lives. Nestigen protested that “sometimes these days it is hard to distinguish praise from schmooze” and insisted that real praise happens when God becomes God again for us.

I hope churches will continually use fresh words and music to praise God, but it worries me that so many new compo­sitions dumb down our perception, knowledge, and adoration of God. A principal cause of such dumbing down is the contemporary confusion of praise with “happiness”.

Some worship planners and partici­pants think that to praise God is simply to sing upbeat music; consequently, many songs that are called “praise” actually describe the feelings of the believer rather than the character of God. In the extreme, a focus on good feelings distorts the truth of the gospel into a “health, wealth, and victory” therapy. We must recognise this for the idolatry it is. Centering on happi­ness makes us forget that the world gains redemption not through the Church’s glory but through Christ’s sacrifice and the suffering of God’s people.

Genuine praise of God depends upon truth. It is not just an attitude of appreciation or an emotion of wellbeing or delight; instead, it acknowledges a superlative quality or deed. Genuine praise challenges our secularity and idola­tries and narcissism by concentrating not on our feelings of happiness, but on qual­ities in God that are truly there, not just there for me.

An emphasis on what we “get out” of a worship service — above all, that we feel good about ourselves — displaces the theo­centric praise of God with man-centred utilitarianism. Since the worship of God is an end in itself, making worship useful destroys it, because this introduces an ulterior motive for praise. And ulterior motives mean manipulation, taking charge of the relationship, thereby turn­ing the relation between Creator and crea­ture upside down.

Instead of trying to force happiness or making the music more upbeat, the Church best renews its praise by gaining a fresh apprehension of God. Because we have lacked new visions, we have let modern idolatries reduce God into such an anaemic irrelevance that we must enter­tain people instead of introducing them to God.

“Praise” that uses only “upbeat” songs can be extremely destructive to wor­shipers because it denies the reality of doubts concerning God, the hiddenness of God, and the feelings of abandonment by God that cloud believers going through difficult times. I have counselled numerous people whose experience of worship that focused only on happy praise left them with huge feelings of inadequacy. “Why do I feel so discour­aged? I know I should praise God, but I just can’t,” they say.

That is because the worship has not dealt with their feelings of guilt, their doubts and fears, their sense of hypocrisy and sinfulness. Many question their faith because they are not able to be as happy as their fellow believers. They can’t enter into upbeat worship if their lives are in a shambles. Instead of recognising the inadequacy of worship that teaches only one aspect of our relationship to God, they blame themselves for inadequate faith.

Closely related to such wishful opti­mism in worship is the problem that the lyrics of many of the new praise songs are so shallow. Constant repetition of only one attribute of God can lead to profound reflection upon it, as in the gentle cho­ruses from Taize, but often endless repeti­tions are only boring failures to reveal new aspects of the infinite God or presumptu­ous rejections of the multiplicity of images found in the Scriptures.

To sing over and over again only that God loves us is to miss the truth of God’s wrath, the need for our repentance in light of God’s justice, and God’s mercy and truth in answer to the confusions of a bro­ken and sinful world.

This same kind of narrowed outlook in worship also occurs if pastors’ ser­mons are based on only one kind of text. We miss “the whole counsel of God” if we neglect various forms of biblical literature, the multiple portraits of God. Worship requires a blend of the infinite attributes of God — focusing appropriately on God’s majesty, humility, wrath, grace, hiddenness, ambiguity, love, hate, mercy, creativity, holiness, power, suffering, imma­nence, transcendence, beauty, glory, and mystery.

The whole point of a sermon is to bring forth God as the subject and object of our praise. Genuine praise of God involves all our emotions and needs, not by focusing on ourselves, but by proclaiming God’s truth and God’s attributes and actions on our behalf. Only when we see God as God truly is can we know our­selves aright — and then we can respond with offerings of praise.