checking our religious traditions

Last week I enjoyed studying Matthew 15:1-9 with our interns.  The teachers of the law and Pharisees were upset about Jesus’ disciples failure to follow their traditions by not washing their hands before meals.  Jesus responded by pointing out that the religious leaders were placing their own traditions above God’s commands.

The Pharisees, instead of honoring their parents by helping them financially, claimed that those moneys had been given to God.  It seems to me they’d found a way to count twice the money they were placing in the collection tray.  The Pharisees’ tradition, then, was in direct conflict with God’s commands.  

Obviously, the story teaches us to check our traditions, that they not oppose God’s desires or force us to be disobedient to God.  Traditions which are in conflict with God’s commands are wrong.  

But even church traditions which do not directly oppose God’s rules can be dangerous.  Here are two other reasons to check our churches’ customs and rituals:

injustice in the ncaa: cam newton

image courtesy of trackemtigers.com

[*If you generally skip my posts concerning sports, this one is also about Christianity, slavery, and drawing and quartering people.  Come on, give just this one sports post a shot.]

Okay, I’ll admit it.  All this Cam Newton stuff has got me really riled up. You know when one character in a movie realizes something nobody else knows, and they try to explain it but no one believes them, and you just want to yell at the screen for them to listen to the guy, because he knows what he’s talking about?  That’s how I feel.  I don’t believe I’m smarter than everyone else (or anyone else) — that’s not my deal.  I just can’t seem to find anyone willing to think through this in logical fashion.  At least no one willing to offer me acceptable or reasonable answers.

I’ve posted on some comment boards, asking some of the very questions I asked in my last post.  Basically I’m wanting to know:

Why do so many of us support the punishment of innocent people in the area of college football recruitment?

Do we really think it’s fair to end the academic and athletic career of a student athlete whose greedy relative tried, unbeknownst to the player, to shop him around for money?

So far, I’ve received three types of answers:

1. We have to be consistent.  In the past we’ve punished some players for the sins of their relatives.  We can’t just change our minds now.  We’ve always done it this way.
2. We need to be extremely strict on this, so as to deter it from happening in the future.  We punish the player regardless of his involvement or knowledge of the wrongdoing because that will teach other students’ parents not to do this.
3. Are you an idiot?!  You must be, because everyone in the whole world has met and discussed this and we all agree except for you.  The NCAA agrees with us, as do most of the conference officials and university presidents.  We punish Cam Newton and others like him simply because most of us think we should — especially those really important people.

I don’t know about you, but I believe all three of these reasons to be full of crap.  Get this — using these same three arguments, I’ll offer some other suggestions that must be good, right, and logical:

1. Slavery is good. Really, we should keep this whole people-as-property thing going.  Why rid ourselves of a perfectly good system?  I mean we’ve always done it this way.
2. Henceforth, from this point on, we will draw-and-quarter any student athlete whose parent or other relative has inquired at any university concerning a pay-for-play plan.  Then we will send the four portions of his lifeless body to the four corners of these United States.  We will teach parents that they can’t do this sort of thing.  We’ve just got to hit them where it hurts. Slaughter their children.
3. Let’s keep the current BCS system forever; it’s so awesome and all the officials and school presidents like it so much already. Forget a playoff, everybody — computers and polls are where it’s at.

And just for the sake of pushing a little further, let me try this all again but with Christianity as my subject of choice:

1. Well, we’ve always met in a building with a steeple and a lot of pews that all face the front. And you want us to consider meeting in someone’s home now?  Where will the preacher put his pulpit?  And do we really have the funds to buy songbooks for everyone to keep at home?  How in the world will we know if everyone’s following our required order of worship (welcome – 2 songs – opening prayer – 2 songs – scripture reading – 1 song – communion – giving – 1 song and mark another in your songbooks – sermon – invitation song (previously marked) – elder speaks for a moment – song – closing prayer)?
2. All forms of dancing are wrong and evil.  Males and females cannot and should not swim together or near enough to one another to be seen while in bathing suits.  Any alcohol is sin, and Harry Potter is Satan incarnate.  Anyone involved in any of these activities — or who knows someone who is — will be shunned, gossiped about, and possibly disfellowshipped or excommunicated.
3. Are you kidding?!  Everyone knows the way to reach out to the lost is to have an awesome band on Sunday morning and a knock-off Starbucks coffee shop in what used to be the foyer (we now call it the cafe).  Yeah, all the biggest churches are doing it, and all the biggest Christian authors are writing about it….

Someone please offer me a better reason for punishing an innocent student athlete for the sins of his father.

man’s traditions over God’s commands

Then some Pharisees and teachers of the law came to Jesus from Jerusalem and asked, “Why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders? They don’t wash their hands before they eat!”

Jesus replied, “And why do you break the command of God for the sake of your tradition? For God said, ‘Honor your father and mother’ and ‘Anyone who curses their father or mother is to be put to death.’ But you say that if anyone declares that what might have been used to help their father or mother is ‘devoted to God,’ they are not to ‘honor their father or mother’ with it. Thus you nullify the word of God for the sake of your tradition. You hypocrites! Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you:

“‘These people honor me with their lips,
but their hearts are far from me.
They worship me in vain;
their teachings are merely human rules.’”

– Matthew 15:1-9

A few thoughts:

• It is entirely possible — and all too common — for us to say the right words without any involvement from our hearts.
  
• I should honor my mother and father.
• I should never put man’s traditions ahead of God’s commands.
• I should never be willing to disappoint God in order to please man.
• I should study carefully to distinguish between that which is of God and that which is of man.
• In missions, we should imbed early in Bible study groups a desire to look to the Bible to know why or how to do anything — not to our denomination’s traditions or commentaries and the like.
• We tend to offer – unknowingly even – our own (cultural and church) traditions when involved in evangelism.  We should strive to 1) know when that is what we’re doing and 2) make efforts not to.
• Doing so will make Christianity “lighter.”  What we are now trying to pass on to seekers is incredibly laden with denominational baggage and cultural traditions.  It’s difficult for them to receive and even more difficult for them to pass on to others.  [Not to mention that we're blurring the lines of what is from God and what is from us, all the while making it difficult for them to be obedient to God.]
• A form of evangelism which offers the Word of God with little other baggage and tradition will be more easily accepted and more quickly reproduced.

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We know not all traditions of man are bad, so here are a few helpful questions* we should ask of each one we encounter.  They may help us determine whether to continue in that practice or not:

1. Is this tradition against God’s commands in the Bible?
2. Will this tradition be a barrier to the gospel’s advance in the culture in which I’m living?
3. Does this tradition water down or dilute the understanding of other Biblical practices?

I’ll try to go a little deeper into these questions in upcoming posts.  What are your thoughts?

 

* I found these questions in a notebook as if I’d written them (as an “I will” statement) following a Bible study on this text.  But I honestly don’t know that I’m smart enough to come up with these questions — so this asterisk and comment are here just to state that there may be credit due another individual for these questions, but if so I’ve got no idea who.  If it’s you, let me know…