I Hate All Your Show and Pretense --God

There is a song called 'Instead of a Show' written by Jon Foreman. It is direct, convicting, and I imagine to a lot of people, controversial ... just the kind of thing I like. The theme is that God hates all your shows, pretense, and noisy hymns. Instead, he desires justice and righteous living.

I have often wondered about it. It sounds right, but I wasn't quite sure about the 'hate' word. Does God really hate all the things he commanded us to do like gather together, celebrate, sing, and have festivals? Then I found it in the Bible.

Amos 5

21 “I hate all your show and pretense— the hypocrisy of
your religious festivals and solemn assemblies. 22 I will not accept your
burnt offerings and grain offerings. I won’t even notice all your
choice peace offerings. 23 Away with your noisy hymns of
praise! I will not listen to the music of your harps. 24
Instead, I want to see a mighty flood of justice, an endless river of righteous
living.

So there it is ... When we make following God all about attending a worship service, we have completely missed the point, and He hates it.

The tragic thing is that our first response to this passage is to think we need to fix our shows. We think we need to make them more flat, boring, and uninspiring, or do away with them completely. (Everyone knows that boring is more authentic, right?)

I guess in some ways this is accurate. If we're not following God, cancelling the show is probably the best thing we could do. However, if we want to address the core issue, we need to look at what God tells Amos in verse 24 - following God should be about justice and righteous living. The 'show' is intended to flow out of that.

Festivals and assemblies were commanded by God - we should not do away with them, but they must become a celebration of our justice and righteousness rather than take the place of it.

I confess, that too many times I make following God all about participating in the shows rather than doing justice and living righteously. I don't think I'm alone in this regard. Americans as a whole are on a dangerous path. Think about it. When we hear the word 'church', we automatically think 'a meeting on Sunday'. We measure our spirituality based on attendance. We feel good about ourselves for just showing up (particularly if we sing something heart-felt while we're there). This is exactly what God hates.