Tradition

Again...more teaching to the test...I thought I finished suffering through this inductive strategy in high school...though again I find that even in graduate programs, one is still learning more for socioeconomic prestige, rather than for perhaps authentic personal and communal growth as a human being. In fact, there are times when I feel otherworldly as a human being and more and more like an enculturated zombie. Test-taking skills I'm sure are wonderful skills to have if only to achieve 'success' as is defined by popular culture, by our government, by western culture in general...though for me, as one studying, searching for what is transcendent, worldly success seems very little indeed on the hierarchy of priorities -- not that I'm completely trying to dissassociate myself from the culture, or trying to zealously reform it, but I am trying to 'see' beyond myself as it were, beyond my own needs, beyond what my conditioned and conditioning environment conveys to me.

My wife and I had a conversation the other day and were both left a little uncomfortable with some of our discussion topics. To name one, we both could not help but notice the structural inconsistencies in society, the structured evil as it were. In order to tame chaos, one must set laws and rules we both understand...

...but what about patriarchal elements in a culture where women and men are seeking equality, in a culture that structurally prevents women from achieving a fair status in the socioeconomic sphere and in the mindsets of westerners? Why are women required to take on the last names of their husbands, when the very incorporation of such identity symbolically attacks a woman's identity and worth? Tradition is generally the way we tend to refute or to defend the way things are done. And though I find tradition to be helpful in remembrance and in eschatological expectation, the culture in which we experience the world and the transcendent is vastly different from cultures past. Hanging on to traditions, perhaps outdated, may seem comfortable to human beings, where living is not in itself a comfortable task. To live is to evolve in identity as rational human beings.

For me, God did not just set things in motion as the divine clockmaker, but still creates in and through the lives of human beings, perhaps by means of the Scripturally ambiguous 3rd part of the godhead: the 'Spirit.' For the church particularly, change comes very slow over the ages due to the fear that tradition, or rather the precepts and tenets of early Christianity will be lost in the secular or the profane...for a religion that faithfully attests to the movement of the Spirit within humanity, there is a lack of faith in the power of that Spirit to move within the secularized world. In other words, instead of embodying our faith as true believers, we institutionalize it, excluding others' sacred claimes so that it will not escape us, the 'true believers.' Perhaps Christians should be flogged for their lack of faith in their omnipotent God.

...back to what I was saying before, Amy and I refuse to contribute to structured evil by taking each others' last names. Hyphenation seems a more suitable fit for our embodied values, otherwise we would be living a lie imposed upon us by our culture. For Amy and I, Christ transcends his culture -- in fact one reason he had to die was necessitated by his representation of the divine culture radically different from the one in which he lived on earth. He lived under Jewish laws and Roman laws, and was judged by them, recognizing the need for human governance, though revealed the culture's misplaced virtues and values. Again, I am working through a personal interpretation of Scripture based upon study and in conversation with others, and I could cite Scriptural references, but the ambiguity of Scripture allows for any interpretations one deems fit...in other words, you could argue with me citing evidence for an opposite point of view...the question then becomes, who is more Spirit-filled? 'I am' of course you ponder...your experience, your study, your prayer -- it all confirms this does it not? Perhaps the Spirit, like Scripture, is a bit more ambiguous than people give Her credit...

I know what you may be thinking, a symbol may not hold sway, may not make much of a difference if it is changed...but I disagree. Symbols play a large part in our society, representing our hopes, our fears, our expectations, our perceptions. When symbols become out-of-wack with human experience, with tradition, with our corporate and personal values, then perhaps the particular symbol should be critiqued as to its function, its meaning, and its significance in society. Again, this is not to be taken as perhaps replacing the Crucifix with an iconic 'Buddy Christ,' because here those valuable tenets to Roman Catholics would be violated and replaced with a cultural symbol devoid of the religion's significant values.

Along these same lines, it is a theologically held belief (by some) that spatiotemporal events should be interpreted in light of the 'cross.' 'But what does this mean' ask the nominal Christians who think for their individual selves and in terms of their own salvation...Salvation is not what the cross signifies, first and foremost...somehow this has become a major tenet in Christianity. The cross is first and foremost an act of grace -- an attribute of the divine character to and for the glory of God -- it is Her will that we commune with him. 'Being saved' is our way of understanding what it means to be judged...when we perhaps lack what it means to judge, accepting a redacted form of Hammurabi's code or other casuistic laws of sorts. It is the only way to make sense of our own sacreds, the only way to retain the specialized feeling of an elect (the same feeling Darwin was perceived to threaten). Again, I'm going to bring up Scripture here -- Scripture uses metaphoric and analogic language in terms of casuistic laws, perhaps an influence from Hammurabi's code. There are the ten commandments and other Holy laws outlined and expounded upon in Leviticus...the point is that these regulations, these if/then or shall/shall not laws are the only linguistic ways in which Scriptural writers can convey the will of God. These linguistic barriers, however, are limits in and of themselves (only perceived and interpreted correctly with aid from the Spirit as most Christians understand it). Thus, explicitly stating that God judges in terms of these sorts of laws seems a bit limiting on the part of God. Judging for God may be the result of a gracious act so powerful, that Christ died for all of humanity so that we all may commune with God...very reminescent of Karl Barth's doctrine of universal atonement (which he never straightforwardly admitted to). Christians hate to think in terms such as this because it threatens their own egos, which yearn for their enemies to get their 'just' rewards. Perhaps this deeply embedded, sickly comforting subconscious element in the human psyche is one of humanity's most dividing and disturbing sins...

It seems very funny to me that the ways in which we institutionalize our perception of the sacred as Christians paradoxically institutionalizes our selves into imitation, rather than into creative human beings who understand tradition as a way of remembering so that we might live in jubilant expectation for the same Jesus who died on the cross to come again...