Let Go of Pretend

The young girl walks slowly onto the scene, her eyes flirting to the man on stage left. She empties her mind of all pre-concieved ideas, all thought-out movements and simply thinks upon the words she will say. She lets them rise up within her spirit as she imagines once again all the wrongs this man has done her. As the lights come up she walks cooly across the stage and hurls her first dart directly in his heart, using the words to direct the torrent of emotions flooding her soul. She allows her hands to hang loose at her sides, only moving when her body chooses the expression of her anger. Suddenly, as she tells the man goodbye for the last time, her eyes well up with genuine tears and she runs off stage, shaking from the most realistic work she has ever done.  

“The reality of doing.” My drama professor’s favorite definition for good acting. None of the pretending, fake crying, limp noodle stuff preformed at your local theatre by a low class operation. He believed instead that one should not attempt to conjure up emotion from a storage room next to your heart, but that each time you walked out on stage, the emotion should be fresh, real, and a hundred percent energy. It took awhile for us to understand what he meant, but the lessons I learned from his class impacted not just my acting methods, but the way I viewed my spiritual life as well. In this highly unusual blog I would like you to examine with me some acting techniques and their worship applications for the church. 

The first thing our dear Professor taught us seemed highly unconventional compared to my other directors, but revolutionized all of us by teaching us that the lines were not our focus. In fact, for the first part of rehearsing scripts we simply had to say our parts in our own words instead of memorizing them, concentrating on what lay behind those pesky phrases. We quickly learned by this that in order to express ourselves, we had to realize the words weren’t the lock to a great performance, they were only the key we used. The emotions, the passions behind the words that moved the lines through the currents of the scene, those would open the audience’s eyes to the realism we conveyed. When we  learned this, we could finally allow the words to touch our hearts, not just our heads from memory. 

Once we learned this however, a new problem arose as we quickly shut the lock after discovering that true emotion does not allow for control and habit. Instead of a clean performance every time, each time the words came from our hearts something different could happen because we let them speak for themselves. In a nervous twitch, not accustomed to the power of feelings inside us, some of us (myself included) would use body movements such as pacing or arm-flailing to release some of the pent up things within ourselves. Only when we learned to be still and wait for the emotion to dictate our movements, giving up control again, did we realize our natural human reactions would not steer us wrong if we let them lead us to a heartfelt action instead of a pre-planned habit of movement. Acting became reacting to our hearts, not simply a mind-control trick to convince ourselves we were someone else. We learned reality in the world of make-believe.  
Now one may say, I am not an actor. This blog is useless for me. However, what if we, as believers, applied the same principles to worship? What if instead of treating worship songs as words that we have memorized and sing out in carefully choreographed dances of deception did we allow them to become a tool for our actual worship instead? What if we realized that the words themselves were not the worship? The truth behind the songs, the raw emotions that come from the depths of our hearts when we allow those words to guide us to a place of complete vulnerability, that is our offering of praise to our Savior. Raising our hands in praise is all well and good, but we still are in control of ourselves by choosing to preform the action. What if we could finally stand still and know that God is God and we are not, allowing His Holy Spirit to take charge of our worship and direct our conduct? If we truly trusted in His presence we would not be afraid of what He would do through us, for the Holy Spirit is a gentleman and will not allow disorder in His work. We must stop "trying" to worship God deeper; just do it by allowing ourselves to lose control, getting lost in His glorious presence in the present.
Yes, the words of our songs are powerful and effective. But they are merely tools we use to touch our core spirit and connect with the face of God. If we could just simply allow them to penetrate our tough skin, and let the Holy Spirit control every part of our being, we could truly worship God in spirit and in truth, letting the world see how real our relationship with our Father is. It's time to stop pretending and just start letting the reality of doing shape our worship to God.