Fiddling on the roof: does a common christian tradition help us find our footing?

When I was a kid one of the tapes that i would listen to was my Dad's copy of the musical 'Fiddler on the roof.'  In the musical the opening song is called 'tradition' in which traditon is a force for stability, order and status quo.  No one quite knows how it started but they accept without it the price of instability would be high.

Traditionalism fatigue

The church environment I grew up in was very much in the same way - there were traditions for everything and often the traditionalism became part of the faith, the way we did christian things - to alter the tradition was to somehow lessen our faith.  It seems crazy to think that an event like the communion table being moved back a few feet could almost cause a church to kick out their pastor but that is what almost happened. 

Tradition for me became a bad word - it meant being stuck in the past - i equated it with being traditonal - with hymn sandwiches, arguements about organ music and lesser matters such as doctrinal positions - all being lumped together into who was saved/christian/heaven bound. 

The attraction then of moving away from anything traditional was a strong one - hanging around with christians in new forms of church, with no old school denomination ties to weigh me down was great.  God became about experience, about seeking the new thing - we were free of tradition and therrefore able to once again connect with Jesus the way we were meant to.

Creating new traditions

Funnily enough although we didn't have explicitly say we had traditions looking back i can see that we did.  I have hung out in the Vineyard for 13 yrs and it is clear to me that we have our set of traditions:

• our services always have the same worship/teaching/prayer ministry components
• we love our intimate experiential soft rock worship songs
• we tell stories about the conferences we've been too
• we even pray in pretty generic ways "more holy spirit" and talk about 'blessing what the Spirit is doing'

Being without "traditon" was great in the sense that it meant life felt a lot free-er but over time it also seemed to be a lot more unstable as well - the quest for the new began to get tiring - especially when experience did not help much with questions like why does God feel far away and the answer invariably was along the lines of trying harder in some way to manufacturer that encounter - longer worship times, more praying, another conference etc... 

Rediscovering traditions in a more helpful way?

It makes me wonder if there is something in between - not just an unquestioned traditionalism or a  rejection of tradition/recreation of new traditions.  Is there some things that are christians have taken as part of their traditonal beliefs that have provided stability across time and traditions? For me that is one of the exciting things about the deep church conversation, the desire to explore the common christian tradition but also be open to the new things of God as well.

This post from Dan Kimball on core/non-core beliefs recently caught my eye as he was looking at something similar, albeit in the context of trying to find a better term/metaphore.  He had two pictures to illustrate...

1. Core beliefs

2. non-core beliefs

I find this helpful in seperating out how we do things/interpret things away from the core belief - for example i believe God created the earth and that we are charged to tend and serve it - some days and in some ways i believe the 6 day creation as a useful way of understanding aspects of that story and in other ways i believe it has taken a lot lot lot longer...

You may agree/disagree with what Dan included in his core slide - for instance i think the virgin birth is not as important as the idea of the humanity/divinity of Jesus and i'm pretty sure other would have Apple computers on the core list ;).

More so it also makes me wonder what we are encountering/learning/understanding/experiencing now that will inform the christian tradition - perhaps there will be nothing particulalry new but merely matters of emphasis/relative importance - so our view on the trinity may stay doctrinally very similar but our understanding and practice of other centred sacrificial living may grow in terms of modelling our lives/faith communities around this particular idea...

How does this help impact and reorder our realities around God's?

Maybe even more so is not just what we believe about God and whether we rank it as core/non-core  but what it means to believe in Jesus - how does that effect the ordering/priority/actions of our lives?  How does the tradition help us to not only believe right things but also to do good?  How does it impact on our reality?

Which seems to me to ask the further question, as well a core beliefs that christians have traditionally found helpful in changing/challenging their reality are there core practices too which help us in that transition?

What do you think?

• how helpful/unhelpful have you found tradition/traditionalism?
• what for you are the core beliefs/ practices of the christian faith?
• How does what you believe/practice as a christian affect your reality/being/life?

Comments

[Ken Allen]

Mostly the core vs. non-core items make sense to me as outlined... but you mention the divinity/humanity of Christ being more imporant that virgin birth. I agree to keep in proper balance that is key, but when you read the account of the conception, to move away from virgin birth takes away the whole power of the miricle God performed there. The birth of Jesus Christ was a divine invasion upon a sadly sinful group of human beings.

[Ken Allen]

Mostly the core vs. non-core items make sense to me as outlined... but you mention the divinity/humanity of Christ being more imporant that virgin birth. I agree to keep in proper balance that is key, but when you read the account of the conception, to move away from virgin birth takes away the whole power of the miricle God performed there. The birth of Jesus Christ was a divine invasion upon a sadly sinful group of human beings.

[fernando]

In a lot of way I find the question of core practices more fascinating than the question of core beliefs. I'm pretty happy to accept a creedally basic definition where most of the core was settled over a millenia ago.

But, the question of what that essentialy means for mission/ethics/apologetics/politics is a lot more challenging and seems to be where we really get stuck.

On that point I find tradition really helpful but traditionalism really stifling. To me, traditionalism is an outworking of conservatisim and localism. But, the answer is not to reject tradition, which to me always seems a very self-aggrandising move.

I think tradition keeps us honest and humble by forcing us to consider the received wisdom and experience of the church.

[Paul]

Thanks Ken, personally i agree with you and believe that the virgin birth happened. I was thinking maybe of the ripple effect of belief in terms of our belief in Jesus and the reodering of our lives around his kingdom rather than our own is the central event. The virgin birth is a ripple that comes out of that or maybe towards that...

[Paul]

Thanks Fernando, I think you are right, mostly across the orthodox christian community we pick at matters of emphasis rather than doctrines.

How we practice our faith rather than just what we think about is of course i guess the 'fruit test' - what does it look/feel/act/do/be/mean to be a christian and how do we practice that?