A Year Of Humility (XXIX): Respecting Tradition

 In yesterday's post concerning training in the art of Iaijutsu, FOTB (Friend Of This Blog) Leigh from Five Acres and a Dream made the following comment:

"What I find curious is that people wanting to make their mark in any field prize their personal adaptation, yet seem to end up just imitating others, usually with poorer quality.  I think it takes great strength of character to follow and respect an established art and its traditions."

If true of art - and it is - it is even more true of Christianity. 

Christianity, in its truest expression, is all about A Person - Jesus Christ - and about His work to reconcile us to God.  This is the core of the Christianity, and the New Testament is all about His life and His work.  As Christians, we have the template of His life, the life of His followers, and the reflection of this same sort of relationship in the Old Testament between God and the Jewish people.  Time and time again in both Old and New Testament the example is given of how we are supposed live and act, based on how God acts.

And yet, throughout history, humans have always insisted on putting their "stamp" on Christianity.

There is a fuzzy line (at least to me) between "culture" and Christianity at times, sometimes a line that (frankly) the Church has gotten wrong as both the underlying implicit concepts of Western Thought and Western economics have sometimes been interpreted as "Scripture" and much has been done to cultures that had little to do with Christianity: we forget to our detriment that the Apostles' initial requirements for the Gentiles was pretty straightforward.  But Christians have always had to interpret Scripture in the context of the situations that they have found themselves.

Some simply followed Scripture and influenced everything around them because of it.  Others made Scripture their interpretation and, while perhaps also having an influence on things around them, perhaps not to that of Christ.

But that is "out there".  What I always have to be concerned about is "in here", or myself.

It is easy enough to point to others and how they have put their own stamp on Christianity; what is more difficult (because I do not like the implications) is how I have done it.

An overgeneralization would be to say that very often, my stamp is reflective of an excuse for me to commit sin - usually starting with sentences like "Well, what I really think this means is..." or "It seems like that was something that was true then....".   The funny part is that just as humanity has been the same for all these years, so the base things that we stumble on has also been the same:  The technology or the circumstances or the culture might have changed, but not the underlying base concepts of sin.

How much more should I have started from the phrase "Scripture says..." and have gone from there.