Golden Streets Just Weren't Doing It For Ya?

When I was younger, I remember spending a great deal of time mulling over questions about God, the Universe, and how everything fits together. It’s no wonder that years later I enrolled in seminary. I remember two of the questions I found particularly nagging were “Why God would create people to praise Him (does He crave adoration for an unquenchable ego)” and “Why should I look forward to heaven, if all we are going to do there is praise God?” Wouldn’t that get boring? Although my thinking on these matters has shifted mightily since childhood, I must admit that, occasionally, I catch myself falling back into these arguments only to wind up confused. Much to my amazement, the renowned, Anglican theologian C.S. Lewis struggled with these same quandaries and he addresses them in his book, “Reflections on the Psalms.”[1] Below, I will share with you some of his conclusions, which I find compelling in light of the questions above.

Lewis begins by highlighting a troubling, yet frequent theme found throughout Psalms (eg. Psalm 50) in which God is depicted as shamelessly demanding praise from humanity.[2] Misunderstood, this behavior can leave readers seeing God as needy and attention-starved. This only worsens when reading the many seemingly manipulative passages where the psalmist promises to praise God if saved or conversely when God offers salvation to those who will praise Him.[3] Lewis proposes that these verses trouble modern readers because we hear them differently than their authors intended. Instead, he suggests that when we hear the word “praise,” we ought to think “admiration,” as in the proper response to witnessing something grand.[4]

Lewis believes this kind of praise is wholly natural when encountering something of wondrous splendor (think being stunned by a radiant sunset or hearing a nimble violin solo). Lewis concludes it is only natural for us to want to share such wonders with others, which is precisely what he sees the psalmist as doing. But for this idea to carry the gravity Lewis believes it should, one must grasp his notion that worship can be a revelatory—a way of encountering the Holy God.[5] In fact, sometimes it can lead us into a sacramental unity with God. Once one has experienced this, no prodding or urging is needed to encourage our return, as we all possess an in-built hunger for such transcendence.[6]

Reflecting on such encounters, we learn that the goodness and beauty tasted in these moments is such because it is of God. In short, our pleasure comes from a unity with the Divine and our mystical participation in God’s goodness. Following these occasions, we inherently desire to share them through story with others, which Lewis views as a natural consummation of the event.[7] In fact, he claims it can be downright frustrating not to be allowed to share these things—a feeling that might be unavoidable, at least wholly, because, as Lewis claims, in our present state (referring to our imperfect human finitude), our expressions of such truths and realities to one another are prohibitively inadequate. 

This brings me back to my childhood question about why anyone would want to go to heaven. Lewis proposes that heaven can be thought of as a place/reality in which we will be able to praise God fully and perfectly for the first time, without need of pulling away. Rather, we will live in constant communion and sweet adoration, participating eternally in God’s goodness.[8] Hearing this, I envision a life endlessly awash in wave after wave of inconceivable awareness of and connectedness to God’s glory. Suddenly the concept of heaven seems much more compelling.  

---

[1] C.S. Lewis, Reflections on the Psalms, (London, Geoffrey Bles, 1958).

[2] C.S. Lewis, Reflections on the Psalms, 91.

[3] See Psalm 54

[4] C.S. Lewis, Reflections on the Psalms, 92.

[5] C.S. Lewis, Reflections on the Psalms, 48.

[6] C.S. Lewis, Reflections on the Psalms, 51.

[7] C.S. Lewis, Reflections on the Psalms, 95.

[8] C.S. Lewis, Reflections on the Psalms, 96-97.