"Shall We Dance?"

Almost every baby moves to music. He might bob up and down to the rhythm—or not quite with the rhythm. It’s so cute!

I have a life-long love affair with music, especially classical. When I was in junior high, I would put on Tchaikovsky and twirl around our living room. I was a prima ballerina! I could float! When someone entered the room, I’d quit immediately in total embarrassment. (I’ve never had ballet lessons.) But, I remember the pure joy of moving to the music.

Just a few years later, when I was a teen, I heard lots of preaching railing against certain sins. Smoking and drinking topped the list. After those: going to theaters, “mixed bathing” (meaning men and women swimming in the same pool at the same time), dancing, women wearing pants, and playing cards with a regular card deck. This list always rankled me. I have never smoked or drunk alcohol. I don’t play cards or gamble, and I prefer skirts. But dancing? What was wrong with dancing? What was the big deal? After all, in the Bible, we read:

• They send forth their little ones like a flock, and their children dance (Job 21:11).
• Let them praise his name in the dance: let them sing praises unto him with the timbrel and harp (Psalm 149:3).
• Praise him with the timbrel and dance: praise him with stringed instruments and organs (Psalm 150:4).
• A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance (Ecclesiastes 3:4).
• Then shall the virgin rejoice in the dance, both young men and old together: for I will turn their mourning into joy, and will comfort them, and make them rejoice from their sorrow (Jeremiah 31:13).

It seemed to me like dancing was one of the ways people praised God and expressed their joy. I was right! Consider these passages:

• And as the ark of the LORD came into the city of David, Michal Saul's daughter looked through a window, and saw king David leaping and dancing before the LORD (2 Samuel 6:16a).
• Thou hast turned for me my mourning into dancing: thou hast put off my sackcloth, and girded me with gladness (Psalm 30:11).
• Now his elder son was in the field: and as he came and drew nigh to the house, he heard musick and dancing (The Parable of the Prodigal Son, Luke 15:25).

What kind of dancing was this? What dancing is God-inspired? How does a Christian—did believers in the Old Testament—show joy and worship in dance?

Perhaps it would be easier to understand what it wasn’t:

1. Dancing for God wasn’t sensual. You can be sure that pure, joyful, holy dancing didn’t mean moving the body in a sensual way. It might have been similar to Israeli line dancing or holding hands in a circle. David was actually leaping in joy. But, this dancing was not anything like what we usually think of when we hear the word dance. It was probably more like shuffling and hops than sinuous movement.
2. Dancing for God wasn’t performed in revealing clothing. How do I know this? Biblical dance pleased God, and He wants us to be modest.
3. Dancing for God wasn’t choreographed. It was an expression of spontaneous joy. I may be reading between the lines, here, but in all the instances I remember of dance in the Bible, the people merely expressed their joy in dance. Miriam led the women with a tambourine in her hand after God had led the Israelites over the Red Sea on dry land. David danced before the Lord when the ark was returned. In the Parable of the Prodigal Son, there was joyful dancing at the party for his return. You don’t see these people planning out their movements; they just moved joyfully.
4. If there was music with biblical dancing, it was beautiful and honored God’s holiness. What did it sound like? I have no idea. Maybe it was like Hebrew folk music. But, you can be sure that the rhythms and melodies were beautiful and God honoring.

Only one time have I ever been in a church service where liturgical dance took place. I was a teen, and my family was visiting an aunt. With her, we attended the nearest church of her denomination. They celebrated the Lord’s Supper, and there was a segment with dancers. They were modestly dressed—in long, white robes—and their movements were similar to classical ballet, lots of arms swaying and walking across the platform with graceful strides. All the dancers were women. At the time, I thought it was the strangest thing I'd ever seen. It felt like a performance and out of place.

So, we ask the question: can a Christian dance and please God?

Personally, I believe dance should be in two separate categories: secular and sacred. While I see nothing wrong with many folk dances—they wear modest clothing, and the movements are fine—I’m not sure I’d want to see folk dancing in a church service. In the church, I believe it’s debatable that dance can serve a purpose. In Acts and the New Testament, the beginning of the church era, you don’t see dancing in the services. There’s singing, praying, and preaching, but you never see dance. Does a performance of dance actually add to worshipping God? I’ll let you decide.

Can your child take ballet or participate in folk dancing? You can make up your own mind about that, based on the criteria of modesty, music, and movements. Pray, and ask God to help you decide.

Should Christians attend "dances"? I don’t think so. Let me share why. (These are all true stories.)

• Years ago, a dance club decided that only married couples should dance together. Within a short time, the participants weren’t even interested any more. Why? Obviously, there was more to the dancing than the dancing.
• A church began having non-alcohol dance nights for their teens. Most of those teens aren’t even in church today.
• Christian teens attended community swing dances. The kids wore very short skirts and had lots of physical contact between the sexes. Some of these teens are out of church and dating unsaved friends that they met out dancing.
• Strictly Come Dancing, Dancing With the Stars, and other popular TV contests never feature perfectly clean, non-sensual dancing. The women’s costumes are immodest. How can you say you love the Lord and participate in something like that?
• Most music that people dance to is sensual. There’s a beat that just begs a person to move his hips and slip his spine.
• When a friend of mine was a teenager, her girlfriends convinced her to join them at a discotheque. She was a new Christian at the time. She told us, “When I entered that place, I could tell I left Jesus outside.” What she meant was that the atmosphere negated her identity as a Christian. She soon made an excuse and left.

I still haven’t figured out how to praise the Lord in the dance, though I'm sure our Old Testament examples actually did. I don’t see that dancing has a role in biblical New Testament church worship.

But, I sometimes watch folk dancing, Fred Astaire, The Sound of Music, and Gene Kelly. I don’t have any issues with modest, non-sensual dancing in a purely secular context.

What do you think? Shall we dance?

The Abomination File: Why Pride Tops the List

Every time I read this list, I’m struck by the number one sin: a proud look. I mean, wouldn’t you think murder is worse? Or lying? (It’s mentioned twice.) No, it’s pride. Simply pride.

These six things doth the LORD hate: yea, seven are an abomination unto him:

A proud look, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood,

An heart that deviseth wicked imaginations,

feet that be swift in running to mischief, A false witness that speaketh lies,

and he that soweth discord among brethren (Proverbs 6:16-19).

Why does God head His list of abominations with pride? I believe it could be for two reasons:

1. Pride was the devil’s downfall.
2. Pride was Adam and Eve’s downfall.

Way back when Satan was called Lucifer (which means “brightness”), he was a beautiful created being. (See Ezekiel 28:12-19.) Verse 15 says, Thou wast perfect in thy ways from the day that thou wast created, till iniquity was found in thee. In verse 17, we see his sin of pride: Thine heart was lifted up because of thy beauty, thou hast corrupted thy wisdom by reason of thy brightness: I will cast thee to the ground, I will lay thee before kings, that they may behold thee. The passage concludes with Satan’s final demise. The prophet Isaiah laments, How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! How art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations! (Isaiah 14:12)

Satan, the greatest liar, convinced Eve to sin by contradicting God’s Word and telling her, Ye shall not surely die: For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil (Genesis 3:4b-5). Eve wanted to be greater than God. Her sin was pride. The Bible says, And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat. And the eyes of them both were opened (Genesis 3:6-7). Their first reaction? Hide from God. In their desire to be great—pride—they sinned. I can almost hear Satan’s wicked laugh.

Pride is an abomination. Abomination means God hates or loathes it.

God absolutely hates pride. Why? We can understand better from reading what He says:

• Therefore pride compasseth them about as a chain; violence covereth them as a garment (Psalm 73:6).
• The fear of the LORD is to hate evil: pride, and arrogancy, and the evil way, and the froward mouth, do I hate (Proverbs 8:13).
• When pride cometh, then cometh shame: but with the lowly is wisdom (Proverbs 11:2).
• Only by pride cometh contention: but with the well advised is wisdom (Proverbs 13:10).
• In the mouth of the foolish is a rod of pride: but the lips of the wise shall preserve them (Proverbs 14:3).
• Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall (Proverbs 16:18).
• A man's pride shall bring him low: but honour shall uphold the humble in spirit (Proverbs 29:23).
• And he (Jesus) said, That which cometh out of the man, that defileth the man. For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, Thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lasciviousness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness: All these evil things come from within, and defile the man (Mark 7:20-23).
• A pastor should Not be a novice, lest being lifted up with pride he fall into the condemnation of the devil (1 Timothy 3:6).
• For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world (1 John 2:16).

Those biblical men who pleased God humbled themselves before Him, and their lives were characterized by humility, not pride. For example:

• Abraham—And Abraham answered and said, Behold now, I have taken upon me to speak unto the Lord, which am but dust and ashes (Genesis 19:27).
• Moses—(Now the man Moses was very meek, above all the men which were upon the face of the earth) Numbers 12:3.
• Josiah—Because thine heart was tender, and thou didst humble thyself before God, when thou heardest his words against this place, and against the inhabitants thereof, and humbledst thyself before me, and didst rend thy clothes, and weep before me; I have even heard thee also, saith the LORD (2 Chronicles 34:27).
• David—My soul shall make her boast in the LORD: the humble shall hear thereof, and be glad (Psalm 34:2).
• Isaiah—When he saw a vision of God, Isaiah’s reaction was: Then said I, Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips: for mine eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts (Isaiah 6:5).
• Jesus—This is the Old Testament prophecy of Jesus’ entrance into Jerusalem (Palm Sunday): Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion; shout, O daughter of Jerusalem: behold, thy King cometh unto thee: he is just, and having salvation; lowly, and riding upon an ass, and upon a colt the foal of an ass (Zechariah 9:9). Jesus said, Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls (Matthew 11:29). Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus: Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men (Philippians 2:5-5).

You might be thinking, “I don’t have a problem with pride. Not me!”

Oops!

We all have a pride problem. We might even be proud of our humility! But, God knows our heart, and He judges what He sees. Does He see a soul that’s dependent on Him and attuned to His desires? Does he see willfulness, stubbornness, and resistance, or does He see a submissive, meek, and obedient spirit?

By the way, it’s interesting that what God values in a woman is the hidden man of the heart, in that which is not corruptible, even the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit, which is in the sight of God of great price (1 Peter 3:4). 

I wonder how we’re decorated!

May we be challenged today to avoid being prideful—catch and confess it when we are—and to keep a proper perspective.

By humility and the fear of the LORD are riches, and honour, and life.

(Proverbs 22:4)

Likewise, ye younger, submit yourselves unto the elder.

Yea, all of you be subject one to another, and be clothed with humility:

for God resisteth the proud, and giveth grace to the humble.

 (1 Peter 5:5)