It’s easy to worship God and praise Him for the beauty of His creation, even when it’s cold and there’s snow on the ground. It’s also easy to worship idols, often without realizing that’s what we’re doing. Today, reflections on worship from David Zahl, David Foster Wallace, and Peter Hitchens, brother of the late writer, bon vivant and famous atheist Christopher.

Zahl on worship

In his 2019 book Seculosity: How Career, Parenting, Technology, Food, Politics, and Romance Became Our New Religion and What to Do about it, Episcopal priest and Mockingbird Ministries cofounder David Zahl, wrote: “…most talk of worship tends to frame it as a conscious pursuit, suggesting that life is simply a matter of finding the right thing to worship and doing so… we fail to recognize that what we’re actually worshipping when we obsess over food or money or politics is not the thing in itself but how that thing makes us feel… Our religion is that which we rely on not just for meaning or hope but enoughness.” We feel that if we reach our self-defined “enoughness” benchmark, if we do enough or get enough, we will be enough. 

But here’s the catch: “no matter how close we get or how much we achieve, we never quite arrive at enough.” Sound familiar? But why?

Wallace on worship

In his 2005 Kenyon Commencement Address David Foster Wallace tackled the question of worship. People can choose what to see, Wallace stated, and decide what has meaning and what doesn’t. But “…in the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everyone worships. The only choice we get is what to worship.” Wallace recommended a Deity or an inviolable code of ethics because “pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive.”

He explained, “If you worship money and things, if they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you will never have enough, never feel you have enough. It’s the truth. Worship your body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly. And when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally grieve you… Worship power, you will end up feeling weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to numb you to your own fear. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart, you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out.

“But the insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they’re evil or sinful, it’s that they’re unconscious. They are default settings.” How to change those unconscious defaults?

Hitchens on worship

In ­The Rage Against God: How Atheism Led Me to Faith, Peter Hitchens wrote about his return to faith. As a young adult, he changed his default.. While visiting cathedrals and churches in England and France, Peter Hitchens recognized the great skill and wisdom of his forbearers and “the inevitability and certainty of my own death.” Standing in front of an altarpiece depicting The Last Judgment, he trembled, “for the things of which my conscience was afraid.”

Fear challenges me like Peter Hitchens’ conscience because of David Zahl’s not enoughness, and David Foster Wallace’s ‘power’ worship. The desire to overreach, manipulate others in order to fix the world, and earn ‘enoughness’ lurks in the shadows of my brain and can leap into action unless I stop and turn my face to God.

So, when I wake to the natural beauty here at Vanaprastha, I recognize God’s blessings, His grace, and worship Him. And try to hold that humility close throughout the day.

Linkup with Five Minute Friday: https://fiveminutefriday.com/2025/02/20/fmf-writing-prompt-link-up-worship/