One of the most clever tactics of the Enemy of God has been the relegation of Christianity to the category of “tradition”.
A tradition is a quaint practice, like our annual December habits of bringing out chestnuts and holly and mistletoe and hot chocolate with marshmallows and eggnog and playing music about snowmen and reindeer and Santa and elves, that brings us a degree of warm and fuzzy sentiment, gives us some excuse to celebrate when the winter gets cold, and helps to keep life from becoming too dull and boring. Traditions make us feel good. They give us a little something that we can pass down to the next generation, for what it’s worth. If the next generation finds the tradition helpful then they can hold onto it. If they don’t find it helpful then they can put it to rest. No harm done. It’s only a tradition, and letting go of it will do no harm to the universe. Casting it aside will do no damage to the cosmic order of things. How did people ever start to use the words “Christianity” and “tradition” in the same sentence? Where did we ever get the idea that Christianity is a tradition that was intended to make us feel good and that can be set aside if it no longer gives us the intended warm fuzzies? People are not persecuted for the sake of maintaining a tradition. The early Christians weren’t thrown to the lions for the sake of preserving a tradition. Christ didn’t die on a cross so that he could start a new tradition. Christianity claims that God became a human being so that human beings could be reconciled to God. It claims that humankind is in a state of rebellion against God and that the only way for the effects of that rebellion to be overcome was for God Himself to come to the earth that He created, as a human being, to pay for the sins that humans committed against Him. God, the Creator of the universe and the righteous judge of all the earth, assesses the earth’s inhabitants and finds us all guilty, but then comes to earth to pay the penalty Himself. A spiritually and morally bankrupt creation is incapable of paying the debt that it owes to its Creator. The Creator must die for the sins of His creation if those sins are to be forgiven, and that is what happened when Jesus died on the cross. He paid that debt. Only He was able to pay it. Christianity claims that God’s radical love for the human race is what motivated Him to take such unspeakably extreme action in order to reconcile us to Himself. God loved us so much that He died so that He could get us back. He’d rather die for us than live without us. Christianity claims that God was so eager to show us who He is and how we can relate to Him that He not only sent us prophets and gave us Scriptures but that He came to us in person. If we want to know what God is like, we look at Jesus. When we look at the life and character of Jesus, we see what God is all about. Christianity claims that the purpose of life has nothing to do with the positions that we attain or the possessions that we obtain. We come into this world naked, and we leave naked. Our possessions and our positions count for nothing, yet we waste all of our energy investing ourselves into pursuits that will not bring us ultimate happiness and that will, in all probability, be forgotten by the next generation. (Most of us don’t even know the names of our great grandparents, let alone what they accomplished). Christianity blows the cover of the lie that has deceived the world for countless generations. It breaks the illusion of the ultimate value of trivial pursuit and it shatters the delusion of success, charm, popularity and accomplishments as a cover-up for spiritual and moral bankruptcy. By showing us who God really is, it exposes us in all of our fragility and human vulnerability. It shows us who we really are so that we can turn to Him who loves us as we are but who loves us too much to leave us as we are. Christianity, following in the footsteps of Judaism, claims that what is important about life is loving God and loving people. It’s about forgiving our enemies. It’s about treating others with compassion and respect and dignity, not because of their status or accomplishments or utility in society or what they can do for us, but simply because they are human beings created in the image of God. It’s about loving those who are unloveable, unfriendly, and perhaps, at times, downright nasty. It’s about putting the needs of others before our own needs. It’s about “doing good unto others”, no matter what the cost, because that’s what God did when He allowed humans to strip him naked and nail him to a cross. It’s about loving as God loves. Christianity is about looking into the casket of a loved one and knowing that, because Christ has conquered sin and death, that person will live again, and will one day be reunited to his or her loved ones, because that is what Jesus accomplished when he arose from the dead. It’s about marching into a world that is filled with war and terror and famine and homelessness and violence and human rights violations and oppression and injustice and nuclear weapons and crooked politicians and racism and people with big egos making big decisions that affect multitudes, and confidently and joyously declaring hope. It’s about being light in a dark place. It’s about a confident expectation that one day all the wrongs of the world will be set right, and that this change begins here and now as we walk in the footsteps of Jesus, following His example, guided by his Scriptures, empowered by His Spirit, sharing life together as His Church, living as He lived and loving as He loved, and, if called upon, being willing to die as He died. If what the Christian faith proclaims is really true, then the acceptance or rejection of this truth will have herculean consequences in the cosmic order of things. Its acceptance puts us into proper relationship with our Creator and with all that He has created. Its rejection is the exchange of the truth for a lie, and the abandonment of the only hope of the universe. What is the world going to do with Christianity? It appears to me that we have only two options. We can embrace it with everything that we have and with everything that we are, and spend the rest of our lives in hot pursuit of the God who is in hot pursuit of us, or we can spend the rest of our lives trying to expose Christianity as the biggest farce ever to hit humankind. We can’t take Christianity and wrap it in pretty paper and place it under a tree and call it a tradition. Its claims are too serious to trivialize, and the consequences are too huge. Either Jesus Christ stands at the center of the cosmic order of things, conquering sin and death and reconciling us to God and showing us how our Creator intended for us to live and to die with dignity and meaning and purpose, with the promise of a world that will one day be made right, or it’s a sad joke, and all Christians have been brainwashed by it. We can embrace it or we can hate it, but we dare not insult it by calling it a tradition. Jesus did not live and die for a tradition. Only the Enemy of God, who is also the Enemy of our souls, could have come up with such a notion.
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