I was listening to the BBC one night going home and the programme at the time was "World have your say". The topic was about people having to act "White" in order to be looked at as successful in their careers and other aspects of their lives.
The programme unearthed many attitudes that many people have especially here in Africa, Uganda to be specific.
We are slowly being conformed to a certain lifestyle and its not deliberate. That is the direction that the whole world looks to be going. the language is changing. The dressing has changed. billboards are screaming at us to conform. The television insists that we change or else we are left out.
I recently was watching "The bachelorette" on TV and one of the guys said he was a virgin and was keeping himself for that one special person. And how he was made fun of! Hollywood insists it is out of fashion to be a virgin and we are conforming steadily!
How does all this fit on a Worship blog?
The culture of a worshipper determines his response to God's revelation of Himself. God even reveals Himself differently to different cultures. To a nature lover, He reveals himself through this nature. To an astronomy enthusiast, He reveals Himself through a peak into the Cosmos. To a poor hungry man, He is a God who provides food and pays school fees for his children.
Now response to God will definitely be different.
The secret in a true genuine response is in discovering who you actually are and responding to our awesome God respectively.
The danger in trying to be who you aren't is that you say words that you don't mean. You act in ways that are obviously imported from another culture.
You are lying to God if what you say to Him doesn't apply to your life. It is an ingenuine response to what He has revealed himself to be.
How can a poor man from Butambala who has never had a chance to go out of his village sing of vastness of oceans and the beauty of snowflakes and the beauty of autumn? It is not genuine at all! True the oceans are vast and snowflakes are individually unique and beautiful and Autumn(the fall) is beautiful in New England but that from our gentleman's mouth is not genuine.
The reason we are born where we are born, live where we live and in the cultures we have is that through all this we shall derive an honest response to God.
God has entrusted us with who we are for the length of time He has decided that even in the most painful of such times we shall come out with something that would glorify Him.
It is a shame for a person who God has enabled to go through fire to refuse to come up with a creative way he can honor the God that pulled Him through but rather use an off-the-shelf response.
We in Africa should come up with worship that truly and genuinely honors God. Something that comes out of our experiences and speaks of a God who has seen us through. It is painfully sad that the urban African church has distanced itself from making this happen. But rather we want to go with the latest trend and the latest song whether or not it is representative of who we are. The guitarist has lengthened his strap till he plays it from the below the knee. Why? Well some popular worship leader does so, so why not?
God help us.
There has been no better time than this time to effect change in the church. There has been quite an outpouring of God's Spirit in the Church in Africa. The church is growing rapidly. Don't we have enough testimony in our lives that we can't sing about it? Have our dances become so demonic that we can't even dance with our local dances to honour our God? Then why did he give us custom designed bodies that can take on such rigorous strokes?
Come on Africa, arise to your place!
