Anyone reading my journal entries consistently over time knows one of my hot buttons is the misapplication of the term "worship". One of the words most closely associated to the true biblical meaning of "worship" is "godliness" which could literally be translated "right worship". Godliness is the condition of living a daily crucified life yielded to God's Word and way to such a degree that no matter what day it is, no matter whether attending church or living normally during the rest of the week, our obedience to His Word produces "right worship" in us wherever we find ourselves. Paul is connecting "accurately handling the word of truth" — the Bible — in order to avoid being led into "further ungodliness" — that is, "wrong worship".

In many people's mind, "worship" has come to mean "music". It's not unusual in most churches for the Sunday bulletin to list "Worship Time" on the schedule to designate a block of time dedicated to singing. Pastors or worship "leaders" will announce from the platform, "Are you ready to worship?" to indicate we're all about to sing. Whenever a song is introduced regardless of its place in the order of a service it's most often referred to as "worship before the Lord". As I've often stated, if you look up all the instances of "worship" in the Bible listed in your concordance, you'll find very, very few of them ever have anything remotely to do with music.

But what really pushes my button and sends me over the edge is that after announcing we're about to "worship", so many of the songs chosen do not use lyrics which can be supported by Scripture! They may sound good, but they aren't biblically supportable. Separate this issue from musical style — I'm not talking about musical style. Regardless of what musical style you choose to embrace from traditional hymns to punk-polka-yoddling, biblically unsupportable lyrics is the equivalent of someone who "in the presence of God" will "wrangle about words" to "the ruin of the hearers". It is not the activity of someone "accurately handling the word of truth" and which actually leads "to further ungodliness" — that is, it leads to "wrong worship".

I once observed a Messianic-Jewish congregation incorporating some of the traditional Jewish rituals in their sabbath services. It was amazing to see their Torah—- God's Word — given the central place of honor and all that went into presenting, respecting, and employing God's Word in those observances. I would submit that "godliness" — "right worship" was a much higher priority with them because, overall, "accurately handling the word of truth" was far more important than music. And yet today we have so many — particularly with the Purpose Driven agenda — who barely open the Bible, if at all, and yet talk and sing endlessly, the modern-day equivalent of those who "wrangle about words…to the ruin of the hearers"._††_†

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