Let's talk about creatives first.
People who "create" writers, artists, film makers, music makers, comedians, speech writers, chefs, marketers, photographers, graphic designers, sure even bartenders and baristas, and many more occupations I'm leaving out, typically have something in common personality wise.
They're not great when it comes to taking criticism.
This is interesting and difficult, because they often occupy a world where people are constantly giving opinions of their work, and many of those opinions can be negative.
So they're not wired to handle critics but they live in a world where they are constantly doing exactly that.
Because of this, surviving in any of these fields requires more than just the creative juices to make something from nothing, it takes perseverance. You have to wade through the mire of rejection daily. It's often not the most talented creatives that survive in their industry. You see over and over again that it's the most bull-headed. The ones who are the best at allowing the negativity to bounce off of them and keep going.
God is creative.
He made something from nothing. And we're not his audience, we were never meant to be. We are literally part of the painting. We are his Mona Lisa, his Melting Clocks, even his The Screamer. That means we can affect and change his creation in negative and positive ways. We can make the painting better, or worse.
There's something I love about kids movies.
Kids movies are so much more enjoyable when there are actual children to watch the movie with. Half of the fun is watching the kids react as the movie progresses. They laugh, they cry, their eyes get huge. They are the absolute definition of a "captive audience". Their eyes are literally glued to the screen. And slowly it dawns on us what's happening to them.
They're being awed.
Then we get older. And it stops happening.
We stop being a captive audience, and we become something else.
Critics.
We lean over to each other and discuss the trailers. We even make sure we arrive at the theatre extra early just so we can review the trailers. Then we go eat, and it happens there too. We're critics. We talk about the menu, the wait staff, the speed of service, the "atmosphere".
We get in the car, and then it happens again, we do it with the music we listen to.
"You know they only digitize his voice because he can't sing."
The thing about critics is they must remain disengaged from the thing they are reviewing. They can't allow themselves to be engrosed in the event. Be it a movie, restaurant, concert. If they let themselves sink into it they run the risk of being awed. And critics don't do that.
They have to stay dissconnected.
Adding to this issue is the fact that our culture finds it very uncool to be genuinely in awe of anything.
So we go through our days with our critics mentality and then one day it happens somewhere else.
Church.
In God's world, we're the creation, but when we worship him we need to realize that we're the performers, not the audience.
"Could that guys prayer have been any longer?"
"Somone needs to tell that song leader he always starts that song too high."
"Did she really wear that to church?"
Since we're wired to be this way everywhere else, we do it at church too.
Worship however, if anything is an offering.
Something we're offering would then makes us the performers, not the audience.
The audience is of course God.
An interesting opposite occurs here.
Instead of the audience being awed by the performers, the performers are awed by the audience. Well, in an ideal world anyway.
If the audience loves the offering, isn't that what matters most?
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