Why Do We Clap?

It’s that time of the year in our household, as it is for so many other families, when we attend all the things. We’ve got spring band concerts, award ceremonies, and, this year, for our twins, we have high school graduation. It’s a big deal.

At each event, one thing is certain. There will be a lot of clapping. I’m reminded of the seminary I used to teach at that would remind people at graduation that it was a “service of Christian worship” and attendees should therefore refrain from excessive celebration and save their applause until the end. Why?

Is excessive celebrating somehow at odds with Christian worship? I did fail to mention, it was a Baptist seminary in case you were wondering. That might answer the question. But what is it about our impulse to clap, whistle, shout, shake milk cartons filled with clangy things, or fire off the fog horn, that seems so fitting? C.S. Lewis gives a helpful insight. Our praise isn’t complete until it’s expressed. That’s true of our gratitude for God, as it is of our joy in our kids’ accomplishments.

“I think we delight to praise what we enjoy because the praise not merely expresses but completes the enjoyment; it is its appointed consummation. It is not out of compliment that lovers keep on telling one another how beautiful they are; the delight is incomplete till it is expressed. It is frustrating to have discovered a new author and not to be able to tell anyone how good he is; to come suddenly, at the turn of the road, upon some mountain valley of unexpected grandeur and then to have to keep silent because the people with you care for it no more than for a tin can in the ditch; to hear a good joke and find no one to share it with. . . . The Scotch catechism says that man’s chief end is ‘to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.’ But we shall then know that these are the same thing. Fully to enjoy is to glorify. In commanding us to glorify Him, God is inviting us to enjoy Him.” (C.S. Lewis, Reflection on the Psalms)