Question:
Are Biblical references to lifting one’s hands while singing or praying literal?
Answer:
I don’t see why not. In fact, it seems that people in Biblical days were a lot less dignified and restrained than we are nowadays. I’m sure that they really shouted and danced and played music (2 Samuel 6:5) before the Lord. Michal’s contemptuous words to David when he had danced before the Lord make this clear. David responded, “And I will be even more undignified than this, and will be humble in my own sight” (2 Samuel 6:22).
As John White writes in Daring to Draw Near, “We are not made in the image of a Stuffed Shirt.”
People have not always been so afraid to stand out in public. Conformity is a modern disease that Satan uses to keep people from thinking or standing up for what is right. (Of course, let’s remember that the twin modern disease is individuality for its own sake.)
In Ephesians 4 we see that God wants us to be individuals in a community and in the assembly.
In a community: “This I say therefore, and testify in the Lord, that ye henceforth walk not as other Gentiles walk, in the vanity of their mind . . . And that ye put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness. Wherefore putting away lying, speak every man truth with his neighbor: for we are members one of another” (Ephesians 4:17, 24-25). In the assembly: Eph 4:7 But unto every one of us is given grace according to the measure of the gift of Christ. . . . And He gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers; for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ” (Ephesians 4:7, 11-12).
Perhaps Satan is using conformity to keep believers from enjoying their liberty in Christ. The point of 1 Timothy 2:8 is that we should exercise godly liberty: