Relating between generations - VF1
Submitted by weston on August 8, 2008 - 11:39am.
Generation gap… One of the first remembrances I have of being in church was when I was about 4.. We would sing songs like “The Lord Liveth”, “ Majestic sweetness sits enthroned”, “There is a fountain filled with blood”, and “The blood washed throng”…just to name a few.
We used to sing these kinds of songs over and over again and no one ever really knew what they meant. I was (and still sometimes am) unsure why we would speak, sing, and communicate in Old English when we walked through the doors of a church and then when we left the church setting, we reverted back to regular everyday English. Why do we do that? Didn’t Jesus primarily speak Aramaic? If we truly and completely, want to hold to tradition, which seems to be the case in many faith communities, wouldn’t it be more logical to sing, speak, and communicate in Aramaic when we are in church? Wouldn’t that epitomize “traditional church speech”? Anyway I am starting to veer in an unattended direction with this entry.
My point simply is this: We, as humans, seem to hold on to traditions much longer than the reasoning or understanding of the tradition exists. In other words, it seems as though traditions get passed down through generations but there is neglect in passing down the meanings, reason behind, and the history that influenced the creation of specific traditions and customs. We start thinking tradition is truth when in fact, tradition is just a way to display truth. Also, rather importantly, creators of traditions in my opinion, often fail in presenting cultural relevance and significance. How important is it that traditions are relevant? Should people have a reasonable understanding of “the process”? Maybe many of the things that have turned into traditions should have just been treated as a ‘trend of the times‘. A process by which people of a certain time period learned and grew. Consider this, if we believe in Jesus as the one true way to God, then we have to believe that God’s truth is absolute. We have to believe that God is love even when we aren’t or don’t feel loved. We have to believe that God holds our future even when the future looks crapy ahead. Jesus is absolute but the way we share him isn’t always consistent or displayed the same…in other words, the communication of our story isn’t always absolute. The story I would tell my grandma about my life with Jesus would look a lot different than the story I would tell a new friend I just met on Venice Beach. The story would change but the principles would stay the same. I would adjust my story to be culturally relevant. God’s apparent love for me and impact on my life would remain consistent in the communication of each story. I personally believe, even though a lot of good gets done on the mission field, that missionaries sabotage themselves when they overlook this principle.
Back to the songs I started out with…Just because our ancestors found relevance in hymns doesn’t mean that hymns are an exclusive way to communicate, praise, thank, or worship God. However, the truths conveyed in many hymns are absolute truths and we should model the heart of the hymn writers and use the examples they have given us in the way we worship today. In the world we live in, cultural relevance with God’s truth should be a top priority when we discover Gods plan for us and others. If we neglect this in our communication, we run the risk of isolating an entire emerging generation. Today’s culture needs relevance to survive... they will get it from somewhere.
A very similar situation
A very similar situation with my background, Weston, and it gives me this opportunity to share once again. I grew up in a very religious home. All of my family came from Greece. The Greek Orthodox faith was instilled in me from the time I was a baby, baptized into the faith, Sunday School and Altar boy from the time I was 10 till I was 18. Everything was in Greek. The services on Sunday followed the exact same pattern. The liturgy was identical from week to week. I think that the recovering Catholics out there could really relate. We sang the hymns (in Greek) we listened to the readings from the bible in both Greek and English, we as altar boys marched in our robes and candle sticks in almost a military fashion, always being reverent, always being straight faced and with out emotion, but nobody ever explained to us what it meant? I mean, all those years nobody could explain to me why? Why we marched a certain way, what the translation was for this hymn, and that lamentation. Never showing us how to talk to God and have a relationship with him. It seemed more about the pomp and circumstance than the relationship itself. As I got older and had children and a wife, they would ask me questions I couldn't answer. And going to the priest almost was a no no.... they were the "Reverent Figurehead" that you didn't dare approach. My children didn't understand it, so they didn't want to go..... quite frankly, neither did I. My wife never felt comfortable because since we were not married in the church, and she was not baptized and did not go the rigors of becoming an Orthodox Christian, it seemed as if she was looked upon as an outsider.... I know I am digressing outside of the topic at hand a bit, but I think my point is this. Mainstream Catholicism and Orthodoxy really miss the boat in terms of relating to your average parishioner. Taking the time to explain how and why things are the way they are. Taking the time to show their youth how to have a relationship with God instead of making candles and Icons in Sunday School. Communicating with the parishioners and talking... Just talking in plain language that we can all understand. Like Dave :) Don't get me wrong, I take all the values that I have learned from the faith, all the memories that I have from the church and its parishioners, all the things that I was taught, very seriously. I hold all that near and dear to my heart and I still participate in their festivals and other events. But when it comes down to religion or a relationship with god, I will take the latter of the two any day of the week.... Like Dave said at the gathering a few weeks back in our last series, that I completely agreed with, Its about the relationship, not the religion...