Worship is to be centered around the actions and character of God and not our own actions and character. This is elementary, but the present state of worship makes such truth sound positively foreign. Modern worship is a self-centered affair, centered around our tastes, our feelings, our performance. Worship has become a kind-of self-actualization or self-aggrandizement, with "God" being a mere empty connotation word that serves to make us feel good about ourselves. God says that true worship is a glorifying of Him as a response to who He is and what He has done (and will do). It is not the great and fancy sacrifice(s) brought to the temple that mattered (vs. 8-12); what mattered was a spirit that recognized and focused on God and God alone. That fact has not changed, and any "worship" that takes your eyes off of God is idolatry, no matter how pious it presents itself.
In older churches (e.g., Medieval churches), the choir loft was often hidden from view so that you could not see the singers. Today, however, it is assumed that the singer (or performer, or whatever) is to be center stage, complete with a state-of-the-art sound system and lighting show. The spatial location of choir lofts is not the issue here. What is the issue is the apparent difference in spirit between these two methods: the former removes all distracts that it possibly can, while the former seems content with piling them on. How often we make worship about us! We raise our subjectivity above God's objectivity, making our subjectivity the central aspect, and thus make our praise idolatrous self-worship. Our subjectivity must be bound to His objectivity, not vice versa; let our glorying be in response to God and God alone, who He is and the great works He has done.
-Jon Vowell
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