However, if someone suggests dancing or drama is a valid aspect of public worship, the question must be asked — where is the biblical justification for it? (To suggest that a preacher moving about in the pulpit or employing “dramatic” voices is “drama” in the sense above is to trivialize the debate.) The fact that both may be (to employ the colloquialism) “neat” is debatable and beside the point; there’s no shred of biblical evidence, let alone mandate, for either. So it is superfluous to argue from the poetry of the Psalms or the example of David dancing before the ark (naked, to be sure) unless we are willing to abandon all the received rules of biblical interpretation. It is a salutary fact that no office of “choreographer” or “producer/director” existed in the temple. The fact that both dance and drama are valid Christian pursuits is also beside the point.”
While God calls us to be zealous for the purity of His worship, we must be equally zealous to resist the temptation to think that the circumstantial ways in which we administer the elements of worship ought to be binding on every other local congregation. We should be exceedingly slow to call something evil that God has not called evil. We should, instead, seek to discern whether or not the particular way in which we carry out the adiaphora circumstances of worship merely falls into the realm of our subjective opinion about what may be good, better, or best. When we recognize this, we will not seek to put down other fellowships that may not carry out the circumstances of worship in the same way as we think that our congregation should do so.
This article on the regulative principle of worship originally appeared here, and is used by permission.
