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hindsight222 · 5 years

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Worship begins in respect.

I feel that the definition of worship has a become lost on the masses. Worship is not blindly following and agreeing with someone or something, humiliating yourself or others, or harming yourself or others. Worship does not require you to go broke. Worship, at its very root, is respect. When ancient man saw the moon and the sun, they worshiped them as gods for they gave both light in darkness and sunshine to grow food. Ancient man regarded all things that added to their existence with some sort of great respect. (When I say “ancient man,” I mean all ancient cultures that predate modern religion around the world). There was respect of love, fertility, lightning, rain, crops and even war. Nowadays I think that our curiosity as an ever-evolving species, has strayed us away from respect. Why worship the moon? Why not study it? Question it? Understand it? Land on it. Claim it as our own. Colonize it. Our healthy curiosity causes us to smudge the line of respect. We don’t need to worship rain anymore, of course, however, in shifting our worship to curiosity of all things, we have caused harm to so many things that we once respected a lot more. Our earth should be the MOST respected — we live on it! Our oxygen should be highly regarded as important — we breathe it! Unfortunately, us humans have done a considerable amount of damage to our world, our oceans, our air quality. The damage does not just affect us, but every other living creature that has to live on this planet with us. Even if you take the spirituality out of worship, look at how much respect and reverence still remains. I’m having restraint and compassion for whatever we set our curiosity on, we can still have respect for life. Respecting & Worshiping Others. When a man opens the door for a woman, he is not worshiping her, he is respecting her femininity. Her returned gratefulness is her respecting his masculinity, and also knowing that he didn’t have to do that. I don’t know how others were raised, but I grew up knowing that no one uses foul language around my grandmothers and grand-aunties, no matter how “grown” you were. That was simply not done. You respected them as elders of the family, as Mothers, as queens that love you with all of the positivity in their heart, so you left that foolishness outside. When a pastor walks up to the pulpit and you stand up in church, you’re not worshiping the pastor, you are respecting the fact that this is the person that is going to attempt to deliver some love and positivity to the whole room, to try to relieve someone’s anxiety and pain the best way they know how. That is honorable. That is something to be respected. When the judge walks in the courtroom and you stand up, you’re not worshiping this judge, you’re not bowing to “massa;” you’re respecting the person that has put in enough years of interpretation of the legal system, that s/he is now able to deliver sentences, fines and essentially effect your freedoms. You and your freedom absolutely should respected in return at all times. We know our legal system does not always do a good job at this.. which trickles down to general distaste and disrespect for the “justice system” from those that it oppresses, but I digress. When a bride stands at the back of the church and everyone stands up, that is respecting the union that is about to happen. The reason you came was to watch these two become one family, you stand in respect of that. Traditions and manners have often been regarded as unnecessary. It doesn’t take much to turn on the news and see someone horribly disrespecting or, worse, harming someone else. The lack of the respect and civility will eventually reside in disrespect and an uncivilized society. Now the big one. God. I am a proud Christian so this will be according to my perspective. I also love studying other religions, so I will also do my best to be respectful to all readers. Where do I start? Okay, we have disrespected, chastised and executed followers of Christ, followers of Islam, followers of Judaism, and SO many of those that dare to have their own religion and gods. Who is anyone to tell another what can comfort their heart? Disrespectful and just wrong. On television shows, internet jokes, YouTube parodies, I see so many people make jokes at Christians’ expense. There are bands with names, plenty of lyrics that disrespect Christianity, or make light of it. Costumes that I won’t even go into. How messed up is it to be enjoying a TV program or listening to some music and then hear your faith disrespected? I believe God created the universe, planets, everything, my family and even me — I can’t just sing along to that! I can’t just act like I didn’t hear it. If you heard someone wildly disrespect your Mother specifically, you’d have an issue. Christians, like other religions, get a bad wrap because of extremists, but should still have their faith respected. All faiths can respect one another without accepting the same truths. I feel for the Muslim community very much. My father taught me the Muslim faith when he was married to a Muslim woman when I was younger. I got to spend a summer with them and learned so much. I got to wake up early and eat with them for Ramadan, I got to wear the headpiece and learn the prayers and movements. My Christian Baptist Mother allowed me to do this because she knew that I had always been curious about other people in general. I was also a pretty spiritual kid; me and Jesus were tight. She allowed me to explore my spirituality and I’m so grateful. I think Islamic culture is so beautiful! Have you ever seen a Mosque?! Come on now. Just beauty and details everywhere. Anyways, I just want to say that with all the stigma and stereotypes surrounded by your faith and tensions being so awful in America, I really do feel for followers of the Muslim life. I hope it’s not disrespectful to say I pray for the families, especially those that have experienced the extreme violence lately. When I was younger, I was told that all streams, no matter how shallow, have water. I may be quoting that wrong, but what I always took from it was that everyone has something in them that is true, that you can learn from. A lot of religions, both old and new, have very similar stories, and ask people to do the same things: be respectful to yourself and your surroundings, feel good inside and do good outside, be mindful, be grateful and be fruitful. There is no reason to disrespect anyone else for following those rules out of a different book, so to speak. Worship is different to different people. Think of someone or something that you respect the most. (God? Loyalty?) to worship is to just continue to build on respect. Egyptians built great pyramids to exhibit their respect and worship of their gods and royalty. Native Americans considered certain grounds sacred, built fixtures and sculptures. Some African cultures look at their elder and storytellers as royalty as they their lips hold the history of their people. Muslims do not pray without clean limbs. We Christians write songs, poems, do praise dances to worship God. If you’re Baptist, like me, you might even get a little loud with your praise, as if to shout your worship right up to heaven. It’s not necessary if it’s not your thing though. Your relationship to your Creator is your own. What’s Not Worship.

Celebrity and pop culture are ruining the line between fame and blasphemy. To respect the talent and beauty or whatever of a famous person is fine, to admire it is even good too. To support, be a fan of and be inspired by celebrities is all okay. What is not okay is to worship these people as gods. Celebrities are just famous PEOPLE. Just like you and I. You even put too much pressure on the famous people by overly loving them and wanting them to be a role model for your children, agree with what you believe in politically, and literally scrutinize every move they make! These famous people exhaust themselves to death to try to live up to an impossible standard because the masses don’t know how to RESPECT boundaries, within self or others. You shouldn’t love celebrities too much and wanna know everything about their lives simply because you like their songs or movies. You’re disrespecting their right to be a flawed human like you are. You’re disrespecting yourself by obsessing over the life of someone else. And you’re disrespecting GOD by giving that much energy over to someone who He made just like you! God loves you and made you special and you turn around give your self-love and self-worth over to someone else who is human just like you. God wants you to love Him and yourself. You gotta respect yourself too. Respect yourself. Respect yourself. You don’t need to worship yourself either. Comparing yourself to others to show how superior you are is... well it’s just silly, first of all. Second, it’s disrespectful. If you were born with fair skin or pretty feet or great hair, you can’t help that; you had NOTHING to do with it. If someone else was born with a learning disability, big ears, or something like psoriasis, THEY had nothing to do with that. If you’re the fastest person on your track team, that’s good for you, but that doesn’t mean everyone else on the team is just crappy. It means you’re the best, today. People that overly exalt themselves and brag on their talents, cause others to wish for their downfall. People that are humble about their many accomplishments, make others wanna exalt them for him/her and can’t wait to share in more of their victories. Don’t gas yourself up from your own headlines. Respect yourself.

Take care of yourself. Remember yourself. Pay attention to yourself. Who else is gonna be thinking about you, if you are never thinking about you? You can’t get mad at people for not considering you, if you don’t speak up for yourself when you should, if you don’t take care of yourself when you need care. It won’t even be intentional that you get disrespected or counted out, sometimes. You can’t forget about you and expect everyone around you to pick up the slack in your own self-love. Many of us are having a hard time with our own as well. Love. I think worship and love get confused, too. So many are obsessed with and even worship their partners, but they do not love them. If you’re obsessed with your lover, you need to take a step back. Being their biggest supporter, admirer, and genuinely just loving them so much, that is great. But can you imagine if someone just straight up told you “I’m obsessed with you.” That is terrifying! Men that are obsessed with their woman so much that they have to know where she is and what she is doing at all times, even hitting her when she steps out of line, do not love their woman. Women that are so controlling over a man that they don’t want him to have friends or do anything without her, don’t love him. That’s a human being. Human beings need friendship, love, community, alone time, freedom. If you wouldn’t want another human being trying to control those things in your life, think about if you’re obsessing over those things in someone else’s life that is not your young child. Then there are some women that lose themselves in a man so much that they end up disrespecting themselves in order to worship him. This is a sin against God, and, sis, it’s a sin against yourself. Willpower. Boundaries. As a “free spirit,” BOY do I struggle with those two words. I don’t like saying “no” to myself. Jackie Kennedy said that. I don’t remember the exact quote, guys, but she said it. I really don’t like stopping my joy. I struggle with depression and anxiety so much so that when I’m doing something that I like, that distracts me, I don’t want to stop. That doesn’t make it right, and it’s also single-minded. I’ve found that there is joy and great reward in having willpower. It goes without saying that you absolutely need boundaries in life, but typically that’s with others.

In order to respect oneself, I feel that you have to set boundaries on everything. That sounds mechanical which is not my intent. I mean that you should pay attention to yourself in order to continue to enjoy your whole life the way you want to. If you love cheese, but know it can gum up your arteries, then you have to set boundaries on how often you indulge so that you can continue to indulge for as long as possible. I like alcohol, but if I want my liver to like me for the rest of my life, I have to set boundaries. Paying attention to the things you like, the things you need, and effects of those things all make it possible for you to set more reasonable boundaries for yourself. Love for yourself is rooted in respect, just like worship is rooted in the ultimate amount of respect that you can induce.

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