Human Traditions

https://odb.org/MY/2022/06/09/driving-through-loopholes

I think there is a fine line between human traditions and divine instructions as a lot of our practices do end up as human traditions. For example, while praise and worship, and preaching from the pulpit are means for us believers to celebrate God’s goodness as a congregation – the sequence of the service and all the items in it like testimony time, announcements, time for tithes and offerings are all human traditions. Even the act of holy communion is a man-made ritual as Jesus broke bread as part of a proper passover meal and we have reduced it to only a piece of corn flake and a little sip of Ribena! That is why I personally think that churches that have a meal together after a Sunday service is closer to the breaking of bread that Christ instituted as that was also practiced during the days of the Acts of the Apostles. Even meeting on a Sunday is very much a human tradition that has pagan origins as the Sabbath or Shabbat is observed from Friday evening to Saturday evening.

Are human traditions wrong? Are church practices ungodly? Are we breaking God’s laws in the process. I think the moral of the story is that in whatever we do whether as a church or as individuals, our hearts must be right before God and we must have God’s heart as our true motivation. So if a shabbily dressed unkempt homeless man from the street wearing worn out slippers enters our church during Sunday worship, do we deny him entry on the basis that he is disrespecting God’s presence? Let’s take it further – what do we do if a gay couple or a gangster or a prostitute comes to church?

The message today is that we cannot avoid human traditions as we are humans and some practices are passed down for generations. The deeper message is that we must not rationalise away what God is speaking to us by hiding behind human traditions. So religious leaders of past devoted their money to God while neglecting their parents. Or we could be faithfully giving our tithes and offerings to our local church while neglecting to help those around us who are in need. My view is that we are not absolved from our responsibility to help others just because we have already given our portion to God via our tithes and offerings to our local church. I think similarly if a person is gay, a druggie, a gangster or a prostitute, we cannot exclude them from the people we are reaching out to just because they don’t fit into our usual profile of a churchgoer. We must always remember that God’s heart is always for those marginalised by society. In fact Jesus came and died for everyone, including and especially those who are weak and downtrodden. I thus think that while we cannot avoid human traditions, we must not allow such traditions to hinder or prevent us from fulfilling God’s desire and intent to reach out to everyone around us.