Sacred Pathway #3 Traditionalists
Loving God through ritual and symbols are the traditionals' pathway to God. I grew up in a 'modern' church setting, anything too liturgical was too much religion and not enough relationship. Or so I thought.
But putting aside our evangelical mistrust of religious practices, we see in the OT that God invented and, at times, commanded them. Abraham built altars. And much of Leviticus are elaborate rituals to distinguish the holy and the common. Many NT figures observed rituals as well. Peter and John both observed regular set times for prayer.
As part of my Survey of Church History course last year, we were instructed to attend two worship services and write a reflection piece. Like many of my classmates, I chose to go to St Andrew's Cathedral (interior pictured above) and Cathedral of the Good Shepherd, the seats of the Anglican and Catholic churches in Singapore respectively. Having freshly learnt about the Reformation and liturgy, I was pleasantly surprised that the traditions which I had found distracting and meaningless in my earlier years were now fascinating and meaningful.
Tradition, ritual and symbols connect me with the saints of the old, with the great clouds of witnesses who have gone before. We evangelicals often have such short spiritual memories, that one could think that Christianity began with the Reformation. When I "raise an Ebenezer", I am connected to the OT patriarchs.
I attended a Catholic wedding a few weeks ago and I thoroughly enjoyed the liturgical nature of the service, particularly that it placed the emphasis of the wedding not on the couple but on God. It correctly highlighted that a marriage is a doing of God, meant to reflect the glory of God. (John Piper discusses this at length in This Momentary Marriage which I am also currently reading.) The liturgy also made balanced reference to all Persons of the Trinity, unlike a typical evangelical service which hardly makes mention of the Holy Spirit much less worships Him!
Fasting is another ritual of the traditionalist. One year, I decided I would observe Lent by giving up meat. Oh, that was hard! But it served to remind me throughout those 40 days of the magnitude of the sacrifice Christ paid for me and really, the lack of meat paled in comparison.
There are justified reasons for why evangelicals avoided "religion". One is that it is possible to go through the motions of serving God without really knowing him. Outward signs can also make us prone to be judgmental of others who do not display the same. But we have to remember that no tradition itself is sacred (including Communion and Baptism), only God is. Another temptation is to neglect the social obligations of the faith - service to others, especially the oppressed. Nonetheless, this is too precious a pathway to throw the baby out with the bath water.
This is the fourth in the Sacred Pathways series. The first three are: The Danger of Bible Reading in Daily Devotions & Quiet Times, Naturalists and Sensates.
Picture of St Andrew's Catherdal nave found here.
