That Worship is for Humans, Not for God

So we see now the benefit a man gets from faith in God, while leaving it open whether God exists or not--it gives him some measure of assurance against disaster, and allows him, if not control over his fate, trust that the random issue of nature will not mean his downfall. This, of course, is merely according to his own subjectivity if God does not in fact exist; but nonetheless, its psychological and moral benefits are obvious. But a man needs more than faith in God--he needs to perform concrete praxis which will make manifest and real his faith in God.

Imagine a man who says he believes in God, but does not go to church or synagogue, temple or mosque; never prays, never reads scripture--does nothing but affirm that God exists. This man can only have a minimal, if any, consciousness that God will care for him, and not let him suffer disaster without reason or redemption. Now take--just for an example--a Muslim who does his five daily prayers. This Muslim is laboring to his own benefit; it takes action to give a man consciousness of God, and the Muslim’s prayers are the praxis that he goes through to build and nourish his sense that he is, after all, under the care and control of God. A Christian’s Sunday service or evening prayer, a Jew’s temple visits, a Muslim’s daily prayers--without these actions, human beings could never attain the consciousness of God, the awareness of, and trust in, his care. Someone believing that God exists but taking absolutely no action--or religious praxis--cannot benefit from that belief in God, cannot be conscious in a powerful way of God’s care, cannot have the sense that God is looking out for him and will secure him from disaster.

Faith in God gives us the benefit of assurance of rescue, protection from calamity, and eventual redemption from suffering. But unless we take concrete, physical action regarding that belief in God, the consciousness of God’s protection fades, becomes imperceptible; if we do not worship in any sense, nor take part in any religious action or ritual, we are not conscious of God and hence we lose consciousness of his care and protection. Worship, if there is a God, does not benefit God; it represents for us an action that can control any and every event in the world--for by prayer we are forestalling the random events in the world that can impact us as well as the predictable, just as we labor in the physical world to forestall material collapse.

Just as labor is the action that feeds and shelters us, worship is the action that covers every possible event in the world, and assures us safety and protection against the random as well as predictable events.

All of this is said not to assume there really is a God who protects us from the random issue of the world, and its disasters; but rather, this is a description of the consciousness of the religious man or woman--a description of the psychological benefit of faith. This benefit in many cases gives us all the confidence we need to succeed and prevail in the challenge that is life--it benefits us to a good degree if God does not exist, and to an incredible degree if he does. If God does not exist, we are the source of our own gain: we are filled with the confidence that is half the battle. But if God really does exist? Then it will be not only our belief, but reality, that God protects us from disaster, always has our interest in mind, and will in fact care for us at the categorical helplessness of death. This is the Pascal’s Wager argumentation that I am proposing--only there is nothing lost in this form of the wager if God does not exist; indeed even if God does not exist, there is gain.