If someone or something provides for you in some way, must you then accept all that they offer?
If I am given something of value, must I then accept everything from that source? I have thought it's either all or nothing. Again. In many areas of my life I struggle with "all or nothing" thinking, which could potentially be a beneficial thing when it comes to being "all in" and really making a commitment. On the other hand, I now have a more complex view of reality where I'm realizing I have been given many things of value from conflicting worldviews.
I love my community of upbringing and the unexchangeable treasures I received from individuals and the practices of a Wesleyan way of life. I cannot imagine growing up any other way. I would not want to go through life without knowing both the ideology and the lived experience of passionate spiritual commitment to Truth and the four pillars (apparently described, but not identified in this way until the 1960s) of the Wesleyan Quadrilateral: Reason Experience Scripture Tradition. I would not want to grow up without knowing each and every one of those terms both in essence and in a lived, material reality.
I have been given more than I can ever repay or live up to, and I feel daily a shame for not becoming a heroic saint or a great benevolent worldly success with these treasures I've been given. In fact, I ache to relive years eaten by the locust (me), over and over so that I can do life better. I ache to participate in the kind of real and loving small societies of people seeking to support one another in the quest for a humble and vibrant life of worship and to experience the kind of intimate mutual knowledge and love that overcomes our flaws - all gifts available in a genuinely Wesleyan tradition of constant connection and passionate worship.
The "thorn in my reason" is that I've heard that in the Romanian Orthodox monastery, Fr. Roman (http://orthochristian.com/79004.html) once told a friend of mine that you cannot just pick and choose what gifts to accept from the historical church, and if you got the Bible from the church, you have to keep it intact. If I understand correctly, he also believed you must take the whole tradition that came along with it and brought it forth.
As a person who struggles with participating in a culture that dismisses and even enthusiastically disposes of tradition, I long for reverence of tradition. But what tradition? Where do we get the tradition? Whose tradition is it really? And if I owe everything to my tradition because it gave me good things, how can I also fully accept the tradition that gave IT the good things? Especially where those two traditions disagree?