The Church: The Essence of Worship: Part IV Introduction Two misguided human pursuits are the aspiration to self-rule apart from God and devotion to something other than God. In the ink of these two alternatives, human history is written. Over against this story, however, is the story of God in human history, creating and providing an alternative that culminates in the work of Jesus Christ. The experiment of the Western Enlightenment, leading from a deistic rationalism to an atheistic existentialism, is characterised by human aspirations to self-rule, life apart from God. Evangelism in the West has often involved responding to the claim that there is no God. Whereas the practical implications of such a debate used to focus around such issues as praying in public schools or on the sports fields, increasingly the issues of an a-theistic culture have to do with moral freedom. In non-Western cultures, the issue is not whether God exists but who or what demands our devotion.