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"Worship" Is Not a Dirty Word

If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck…

While I appreciate technical distinctions made for tradition-specific discussions, I'm also so tired of supposed-universal differences between latria, dulia, reverence, veneration, and so on. Worship is worship. "Worship" is a generalizable term, and it's a good one to use—and not one we should shy away from.

One might not worship a god like how they'd worship a hero, or a prophet how they themselves worship their god, but one still worships them both. While there might be specific ways of worshipping them appropriate for different recipients, they are still worship; humans or non-god forces and entities can be divine (if not divinized or apotheosized) too, and can be equally worth our worship as any god, even if that worship is done differently for different recipients. And yes, sometimes technical distinctions matter in a tradition-specific context to delineate and delimit what kinds of worship is appropriate to specific recipients or in specific rites. That's very well and good! But it all still generalizes to "worship" in the end, with all these various forms of veneration, reverence, etc. all just being types of worship.

"Worship" is not a dirty word, and I'm tired of people thinking it is. We should rejoice in our worship, whatever the form. Besides, to my mind, it's less important which gods we worship and more important that we worship them at all. What matters more than trying to pick out which god is the right one to worship, like the right app button to press, is your devotion and right-relationship to the gods in the first place. Yes, it's true that some gods are better at some things than others, and it's true that some gods find some things objectionable or taboo—but, in most cases with most gods for most people, whatever desire or goal you have, the god you care about most can handle it just fine. There's more than one way to pluck a duck; all the gods have tricks up their sleeves. Figuring out how to go about attaining a particular goal with any given god is a matter of creativity, ingenuity, connection, insight, and perspective—all of which is grounded by reverence.

We should not fear worshipping the gods, nor should we let a desire for pure intellectualism and rationalism get in the way of our souls. The cosmos is too big for cold rational discourse and bitter reason alone to traverse it. Even the gods worship gods; should we not emulate them, then, too? Affection and gratitude are nice, but bloodless on their own; without awe, adoration, or reverence, without a desire and fulfillment of the union of love of the divine, it's no more than just happy thoughts, and happy thoughts alone do not worship make. True faith is crucial, but, by the same token, faith alone is as unhelpful to us as reason alone. Reason is too cold to burn, faith burns right up; we need both, each to temper the other, so as to propel ourselves as an engine in the proper way fast enough and long enough to reach our Destination.