Reverence

We had a lesson on Reverence on Sunday and the general consensus seemed to be that reverence = respect and that kids nowadays have no respect. I think I have problems with both those assertions—with the first because if reverence meant respect, we wouldn’t have two words, and with the second for two reasons (a) our parents all said the same thing and (b) the respect of the children is often an implicit reflection of the respect of the parents.

What is reverence? A couple of dictionaries say that it is profound respect, tinged with awe. In other words, respect that reminds you of your own humility in comparison. What I feel for a judge might be termed respect as I am a law abiding citizen with little to fear from him but I hold in honor the work that he does and understand that I will support his lawful execution of his office as much as I can in reasonableness but when I am introduced to a judge, I am not reminded of my own lowly station in life, nor do I quake with the thought of his awful power (or potential power) over me. So when we talk about reverence, we have to mean more than simple respect, but humble, awed respect. I think that this is the reason they so often use the term “fear” when talking about how we should contemplate our relation to God. The term “God-Fearing” is not so much in vogue now as it has been in times past and I think it is a reflection on our loss of understanding of reverence. People often get so caught up in the notion that God is our father and the fact that he loves us that they forget that he is also an all powerful being, whose ways are not our ways, and whose thoughts are not our thoughts that they forget to consider him with an attitude of humble awe and respect.

In defense of the kids nowadays, our parents all thought we had lost all respect when they were dealing with us and it is certainly true in my particular case that I had little respect for anyone or anything for a few years too many. It wasn’t so much that I had no concept of respect, or didn’t actually feel any respect for anyone, but that I thought a person needed to earn my respect, and I saw so few people doing anything worth respecting that it led me to feel that no one was my equal, much less my superior, and therefore, no one deserved my respect. As I’ve grown, I think I’ve altered my perspective somewhat to believe that people deserve a modicum of respect as common courtesy. This was reinforced as I read some of the concerns that the Chinese government was having about the deportment of the common Chinese that Westerners might find objectionable. They were concerned because it is common practice to spit without concern for whether you hit someone, smoking is ubiquitous, and the concept of queuing is completely incomprehensible to them. To me, these seem like the disrespect of a teenager—that is, a complete lack of concern for the preferences of the person on the receiving end of the action, coupled with the mindset that a person worthy of respect would not be spat upon and if he was, the spitter would surely regret his actions.

But God doesn’t impose respect on us. He doesn’t walk around punishing people for irreverence much. As a society, we are remarkably irreverent. We’ve become so full of our own supremacy that we rarely consider others and almost never consider God. How many times have you been in a church meeting and hear someone’s phone going off? How committed to reverence are we if we tell the outside world how to interrupt our worship with the latest ringtone? And it’s not only irreverent, it’s as bad as spitting on the people who have come to worship for all the respect it shows to them. The fact that they don’t smash our phone does not mean they feel respected. How often do we walk in late, walk out early, talk to someone about another topic while the sermon is being uttered? I often think that the reason our children are irreverent at church is because we are checking our email while our wife is telling us about her day, texting during dinner, cursing while we drive, and staying at work late without calling ahead to our families. Our speech patterns have become commonly full of interruptions, our empathy filled with vague uh-huhs while we type on our laptops, and when we should be listening, we are planning our next witty remark. We’re shopping on our employer’s time, socializing at worship services on the Lord’s time, and absent during family time.

My hope is that we’ll learn to demonstrate respect and reverence, not demand it. Our children are highly influenced by what we say and do and I think the world would be better off with a little more reverence for divinity, respect for humanity, and general courtesy.