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This is simply a blog of my thoughts. I love to get feedback so if you read somthing, give me your thoughts!
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About Me
- Wade Huggins
- I am currently a SR. Biblical Text Major at ACU. I am a Worship Ministry intern at Southern Hills Church of Christ in Abilene, TX. "Love the LORD your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. And love your neighbor as yourself."
4 comments:
I like the question. Really, I do. I should probably start by saying that I'm not a big fan of tradition for the sake of tradition. I think that there are some things that we do, and call tradition because a precedent has been set for us to follow (e.g. breaking bread together, praying together, etc). However, I do not think that these are good because they are tradition. They are good because they are good. It's sort of like saying that a sunset is beautiful because it's similar to every sunset that has ever preceded it. That's absurd. A sunset is beautiful because of the remarkable canvas that it is, not because of its formal similarity to other sunsets.
I think that when we follow tradition simply because it's tradition, we confuse both ourselves and others. I think that this is especially true for people who aren't familiar with the tradition. A newcomer to the gospel, being presented with dogma of varying ambiguity, would have to sift through novels of church history, and unspecific, often substance-less explanations, just to see how our traditions tie into the Gospel itself. Does that make sense?
I suppose to put it more simply, anything embodied in the gospel, whether called 'tradition' or not may well be good. However, I hesitate to say that Jesus would like us engaging in some of our traditions that may detract from His message. He was pretty clear on most things and I think we kinda muddy the waters sometimes.
More directly to your question, I feel that traditions that hurt people (and I don't mean convict, I mean really hurt) are not traditions that Jesus would have set (assuming Jesus would set traditions). Jesus calls us to love Him, and to love each other. He does not call us to love Him in a way that hurts each other.
I'm not sure if this addressed your question as you would have hoped, but thanks for the opportunity to respond. Thank you also for the thought!
Grace & Peace Wade,
Bob Kessler
Thanks for the great thoughts Bob.
You make several great points. Tradition can and is good in some ways. And it doesn't make sense that we almost expect visitors to understand our arbitrary traditions just because they came into our building.
Great thoughts...keep em coming
Yes! Tradition is good and necessary.
Yes! Tradition is bad and unnecessary.
As people, there are many things we do that are traditional that make life easier. Some of these are made into laws -- drive on the right side of the road in U.S. -- and many that are not -- wait your turn in line. We develop those in any place where people meet. Whether you want to call it the culture of a place or protocol or courtesy, it becomes a way to operate that becomes a tradition. We also have ways of giving something importance or value by incorporating it into a tradition -- Memorial Day for example, or Mother's and Father's Day.
But, when tradition becomes more important that a person, when we break people because they don't know our traditions, then we've crossed the line. That seems to be one of the lines Jesus draws in His life and His conflict with religious folks. The other is when we establish traditions that help us violate the heart and will of God and make those violations sacred.
The tough thing is that we have no easy quick fix on discerning between these two. It's why so many of us are undecided, or really ambivalent, about traditions. I think we all have to live where you do -- the in the land of Undecided -- as we deal with traditions. Slogans and simple solutions are shallow tend to let me keep my traditions and complain about someone else and their traditions.
Phil
Thanks for your thoughts Waders! I love that you are blogging again!
I think that tradition easily goes one way or the other and is quite subjective in nature. Here's to you for dabbling in an age-old question! Here's my take. This is my new life motto. I would be glad to share it with you if you so desire. Perhaps it is not that brilliant, but after about a year or playing with it in my head, I think it emerged as a brilliant saying and goal for life: "Learn from where you have been, dream about where you are going. But mostly be where you are."
I think there are traditions that are valuable and we learn from them. But once we get to the point of living IN them so much, it seems to evolve into a kind of worship of the tradition itself. At that point we are living in the past. We can also err on the side of residing in the future which will also get us in hot water fast.
In ministry, as you know, I just encourage people to be real and intentional about what they are doing. I know how much planning and prayer go into the worship services that you plan and I am so proud of you for that. Keep it up buddy!
Thanks again for your thoughts. I am so amazed and proud to call you my brother (even as phony as that sounds). Now you can go read my blog about pain and suffering and develop a theology for that for your next entry! :)
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