All People are Worshippers!!!

‎"Exalting is part of existence. It is so much a part of it, that when one has ceased to exalt God, something else must be exalted. Then God can be displaced by a man, an institution, an idea. Exalting remains a function of existence...Not everywhere where God is no longer truly praised will men of necessity fall into the extremity of the deification of man. But they must surely exalt, admire, honor something. There is no real, full existence that does not in some way honor, admire, look up to something...If the praise of God, as the Psalms express it, belongs to existence, then the directing of this praise to a man, an idea, or an institution must disturb and finally destroy life itself. The Psalms say that only where God is praised is there life" (Claus Westermann, Praise and Lament in the Psalms, 160-161).

As I read Westermann's book today, that quote stuck out to me. I've been reading a ton of academic commentary on the Psalms lately, and it struck me that along with a few of those commentators, Westermann knew the God he wrote about. Then I read this by Brueggemann: "Westermann developed his ideas on the lament psalms while he was a prisoner of war in a Russian camp where he had no books except the Bible. I take it as important that he was able to see, precisely while he was in prison, that the psalms of lament move from what he calls plea (lament or petition) to praise. The lament psalms characteristically culminate in joy, praise, well-being, and an offering. For Westermann, this was not a literary matter but a profoundly theological matter in which the world of the speaker is decisively changed" (quoted from 'The Friday Voice of Faith,' 13). That explains it!