I’m officially a Carolina person now I think: I’m volunteering at a plantation a couple of days out of the month. The past two days have been orientation days, and it’s been very fascinating taking a step back in time and really digging in deeply to the past, even if it it’s only about one family.

It got me thinking, though.

You see, I was walking around outside (it’s HOT here, y’all!) and there were people making pottery and doing blacksmith work and making wool and…doing it all in period clothing. I was sweating, because the humidity has to be like 2390482038%. And here were these people: in long sleeves, scarves, and bonnets. It did not look exciting.

What I didn’t ask myself, though, was why they were doing it that way. I knew why! They were striving to pattern this plantation experience – even in the 21st century – after plantation life in the 18th and 19th centuries. Would have been more convenient to wear cool clothing? Yes. Would it have been more convenient to use modern tools to do do some of the more menial tasks a little quicker? Yes. But that’s not why people come to a plantation. They come to a plantation to see the history; to see things done the way they used to be done.

When I go to worship my God, I want it to be true worship. In the New Testament, the Holy Spirit plainly lays out what acceptable worship consists of and what I can do to participate in such (spirit and truth worship). That’s why I pattern my worship after the way I know it was done acceptably – the first century worship given its pattern directly from apostles. Just because it might be more convenient or entertaining to do worship my way doesn’t mean I do it that way, because that wouldn’t be “true to the period” if  you will. It wouldn’t be true to what the New Testament spells out for me.

Now in plantation life, modern advances make work easier, air conditioning definitely makes life more enjoyable, and so understandably there are updates to modern, working plantations. And that’s fine, because men are the ones who came up with the way plantation life goes! But the Almighty God of the universe created worship. He alone spells out how things should and should not be done, and therefore only He can tell us how to worship Him. Since He hasn’t updated His will (and we know He won’t! – Heb. 1:1-2), we still do things the way He spelled out. We don’t update it. We don’t change it to suit our tastes. We do His worship His way. Otherwise, we’re making worship about ourselves, and that’s clearly wrong.

I want my worship to be true and acceptable. I want my worship to be authentic. In order for it to be authentic, it has to be done the way it was done in the 1st century. Why can we understand the concept in worldly things, but not in religious ones? May we all strive to be authentic Christians – true to the first century pattern in all that we do.