So I'm slowly settling into my life as a graduate student. I'm still trying to establish a general routine. There are times of great busyness (pouring over books and articles), times of idleness (perusing facebook in the Library, I must confess--hopefully fewer and fewer), and (some) times of loneliness. I do miss my APU friends very much and it's hard being away from them. It's a challenge and struggle to integrate myself into a new community while still maintaining ties to the old. I would covet your continued prayers about that.
The students and faculty in my department are really great. Many of the professors are very friendly and approachable. I'm trying to find my niche among the students (and must guard against tendencies to bury myself in my work, make myself inaccessible, be excessively shy/withdrawn, or otherwise exhibit anti-social tendencies--ha!). Periodically my path will cross students outside the department--a freshman I see regularly on the bus who commutes from L.A. every day to UCR, a senior business major who happened to notice me reading a book on phenomenology and asked me about it. Even those brief interactions are uplifting to my spirit.
Riding the bus is working really well. There's a post office half-a-block away from my apartment. (I love my location! I have everything I need.) My oven seems to work fine; I baked chicken this past week. I'm learning the value of tea for jump-starting one's morning (it's not so easy since I don't have morning classes any more). The weather is fantastic. People in the neighborhood are cordial and friendly. So there is much good for which to be thankful (and don't let me ever forget it) including another completed blog reflection. (I haven't done one of these in a while.)
About a week ago I had a conversation with my friend, Daniel, about traditions. I don't think I did a very good job of defending my basic position so here's a second go at it. Basically I want to defend the value of traditions and encourage their preservation, broadly speaking. We live in an age that is skeptical of old, empty traditions that don't speak to modern people and situations. But I think there is much of value in those traditions and want us to be very careful about choosing to discard them.
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We can find examples in history and probably in our own experience of traditions that have lost significance for their respective practicing communities. Emptied of their substance and purpose, they give way to meaningless ritual and vacuous, sometimes-oppressive legalism.
One of the most famous paradigmatic cases comes straight from the history of Christianity. The rejection of tradition forms an integral part of the origin of Protestantism. Martin Luther reacted to harmful policies and excesses on the part of the church leadership, many of which found their justification in a long-established authoritarian hierarchy. Luther challenged that hierarchy and challenged that tradition.
But how are we to react when we find ourselves participating in empty liturgy (lower-case "l")? When we find people clinging to mere forms and motions? When the practice no longer fulfills its purpose but only perpetuates a kind of ritual tyranny?
I doubt very much that we can hope to formulate or lay down a single, hard, fast principle that will apply in every case and differentiate, with perfect precision, between good traditions and bad. But I hope that, by looking at some exemplary cases, we can come to understand some of what goes into making a tradition, why traditions are important, and how we should think about and approach them. In fact, finding good examples and illustrations has proven rather difficult. So we will begin with a rather mundane, but perhaps slightly-amusing, example, and see where that takes us.
(Illustration 1) If you regularly eat at Japanese or Korean or Chinese or other Asian restaurants, you will frequently see people performing the ritual of rubbing chopsticks together. When the waiter delivers them or they are removed from their paper or plastic wrapping, each "stick" is rubbed against the other. It's a short ritual but very common, and you'll see it performed at most such restaurants. There are a few exceptions, however. And a couple of my friends and I were tickled and amused by the story of a young college student who went to a Chinese restaurant with some of her friends, received a set of plastic chopsticks, and dutifully performed the ritual. Her friends were highly amused as well and were kind enough to explain (for her future reference) that the purpose of rubbing together roughly-made, wooden chopsticks is to remove splinters.
Up until that evening this young woman had performed an exercise without meaning. She didn't understand the purpose of it. She just did it because it was the thing one did at such restaurants. What she gained from her friends was knowledge of the purpose behind that ritual/tradition, with the following two consequences. Firstly, it gave meaning and purpose to the ritual when it was performed; she now had a reason to rub together the wooden chopsticks. Secondly, it allowed her to recognize situations where the ritual need not be performed; if she got plastic chopsticks again, she would know that the ritual was pointless and unnecessary in that context.
These two points also illustrate how knowledge affects tradition in other contexts. Knowledge can give meaning to the forms and motions that characterize standing traditions and rituals. Knowledge also can enlighten us to situations and circumstances in which the ritual serves no purpose and need not (or should not) be practiced.
Notice the central role of knowledge and understanding for evaluating and appraising traditions. This might seem obvious enough, but it is far too easy to take for granted that we understand something as large and complicated as a social, cultural, or religious tradition. Expanding on the second point, about how knowledge can lead us to suspend or eliminate a long-standing tradition, let me point out two key reasons for doing so: (1) the tradition is harmful and negatively affects the people who participate in it and (2) the tradition is failing to effectively accomplish the purpose for which it was created or has otherwise become obsolete.
So in the case of the plastic chopsticks, we can see that the "ritual" is not harmful, but it is obsolete (insofar as the its purpose is to eliminate splinters, and plastic chopsticks have no splinters). Understanding the purpose of this ritual is what makes reasonable the decision to suspend it in certain cases.
Now let us turn to a more complicated case.
(Illustration 2) Consider the case of baptism. Baptism is a long-standing tradition in orthodox Christianity. It was practiced by Christians from the very beginning of the Church in the first century. But now, let us stop for a moment and ask ourselves: Why do we baptize? What is the purpose of baptism? (I am laying aside for the moment the fact that Jesus commanded Christians to baptize in the Great Commission. That would certainly be a very good reason to baptize. But for the purpose of our discussion, we are focusing on the reasons for baptism as the justification of baptism.)
One might point to baptism as a kind of public confession of faith. Or as a (re)enactment and participation in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Or as an act of induction into the community of faith. (I've not closely consulted my Bible in laying out these reasons. The discussion of baptism here is illustrative of a point about traditions. If you would actually like to discuss baptism, let me know and we will delve more deeply into the Scriptures.)
But in each of these cases, and in case of other reasons as well, there have been those who questioned whether baptism effectively accomplished these ends. Some have even seen the ritual of baptism as harmful for the church. How do we sort out these questions?
But perhaps that's an especially difficult case. I realize now that I'm not fully equipped to deal with the case of baptism. What I am trying to do here is point out the danger of discarding traditions when we lack a complete and full understanding of them. Let's turn to a different illustration and that may make things clearer.
(Illustration 3) Consider the practice of attending church regularly. Many students that come to Azusa Pacific University choose to not attend and participate in a local church on a regular basis. Many of them reason that the campus Christian community meets the needs and fulfills the role that would otherwise be filled by a local church body. If that is the case, then their conclusion and decision to not attend church is reasonable. But is that the case. Some of the wisest and most respected faculty and staff members of the University specifically encourage students to get involved in local churches and to not treat Chapel or the campus community as a substitute for church. Why?
For one thing, APU as a community of college students lacks the diversity that can be found in a church community with people of different age, experience, and background. The opportunities for building relationships and interacting with fellow Christians are different in a church setting then on a college campus. Failure to integrate with people in the community further isolates one within the college campus bubble. These are just some of the reasons why continuing to attend church is important for students, even on a Christian campus.
But how many young people ignore this advice? How many young people remain unconvinced? How many young people think they know better? And this is the main concern about which I wish to focus in this reflection. In many of my recent blog entries I have turned to questioning whether we (in our society and culture) are able to effectively reason about many of the most important issues in life. One of the greatest obstacles to effective reasoning is inexperience.
I've used the illustration before of the child who would rather play outside than practice piano, who would rather eat cookies than vegetables, who doesn't recognize the value of cleanliness (i.e. picking up one's toys) and maintaining personal hygiene (i.e. taking a bath every night). And many times, even if you try to reason with the child, to impress on him the value of these exercises and practices for positive character formation, he simply won't get the point. In a sense, the child is simply not able to reason effectively about these issues. He (or she) is immature and inexperienced.
But now let's go back to the church attendance example. Are there good reasons for attending church, even when going to school at a Christian college? Are there good reasons for eating vegetables? Are immature or inexperienced people (be they eight-year-olds or eighteen-year-olds) always able to understand or willing to agree with the reasons?
Now there are two kinds of negative reactions, to what I've just said, that I want to immediately address. The first is a general frustration with this being yet another blog on this same theme. My answer: Get used to it (...stated with all appropriate respect and deference). It's an important theme that needs to be reiterated because people have and are so prone to forgetting it. The second is a suspicion that I've conceded everything to the traditionalists, so that whenever anyone objects to one of their traditions, all they have to do is accuse him or her of immaturity and thereby maintain the status quo. My answer: Keep in mind what I did in the second paragraph of the church-attendance illustration--I gave three (inceptive) reasons for attending church. If a tradition truly lacks any solid or substantial foundation, it should be eliminated. But there's a difference between not seeing a foundation because it isn't there and not seeing a foundation because one hasn't matured enough to see it. (And if you can't recognize that distinction, then you probably shouldn't be knocking down traditions.)
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ASIDE: I regularly find myself making reference to the systemic problem of college students and Christian college students who "know just enough about Christianity to be dangerous." They know just enough about Biblical criticism to generate doubts about the reliability of the Bible. They know just enough about sordid events in the history of the Church to shake their confidence in it. They know just enough about sociology to call into question their own presuppositions. And they know just enough to be able to sow seeds of doubt in all their friends (thereby generating questions to which they obviously don't know the answer and perpetuating the mistaken belief that nobody has the answers).
That fact and condition, in and of itself, is actually not a problem. The problem arises when they stop there. Convinced, by their partial knowledge, that Christianity is bankrupt, they give up on the quest to find the whole truth. After fifteen weeks of class sessions and homework (amounting to a grand total of probably no more than 135 hours*), they are convinced that they have shown the lie to the faith to which men and women throughout history have dedicated their lives (a whole heck of a lot more than 135 hours).
Let me reiterate that I am not dismissing every person who doubts or ever doubted Christianity as an immature block-head. If a person has questions about the reliability of Scripture, about the sordid history of the Church, about other religions and cultures--by all means, let us sit down and talk about them and I will do my best to give well-reasoned, rational answers to his/her questions. But I am concerned (and I do not think that my concern is ill-founded or naive) that the pervasive intellectual climate and current cultural milieu are predisposed to skepticism and cynicism and doubt about Christianity and the transcendent generally.
What I said in those first two paragraphs of the aside was stated abstractly, apart from particular examples and cases. But the general skepticism and cynicism and doubt that I worry about are also articulated abstractly, apart from particular examples and cases. And so long as we are speaking abstractly, I think it would be wise and most beneficial to grant the benefit of the doubt. (END ASIDE)
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Hopefully we can begin to appreciate, when considering any particular tradition, that the reasons for it may be complicated and multi-faceted. If we think we have a full understanding when we only have a partial understanding, that can lead us to mistakenly dismiss a tradition to our detriment. Here's another example--it's also rather mundane, even perhaps-fantastical, but it may illustrate the point.
(Illustration 4) Imagine a young boy who has been taught, since he was very small, that he ought to apologize and ask for forgiveness when he does something wrong. So when he is disobedient to his mother, or forgets to do something that she has asked him to do, or commits wrong in some other way, he dutifully goes to her, apologizes, and asks for forgiveness. And like any loving and caring mother, she is always ready to forgive him. This might be the routine for many years, until one day he is thinking to himself and reasons as follows: "Whenever I do anything wrong, I ask my mother to forgive me. And without fail, she does forgive me. In fact, it is reasonable to suppose that she will always readily forgive me. So since I already know that she will forgive me, I can conclude that it is actually unnecessary for me to ask her to forgive me."
You may think this a bit far-fetched, but I could imagine some youth, entering into his or her early precocious years, coming to this conclusion; and not necessarily out of malice or spite either. But notice what has happened: he has recognized a ritual, a tradition. The purpose of this tradition is to acquire forgiveness. But he also understands that forgiveness is always readily available, thus there is no reason to go through the ritual to acquire it.
Of course, I am aware that there is some fishiness to this reasoning that might be excusable for a young boy but certainly not for a budding philosopher. After all having forgiveness "readily available" is not the same as "acquiring it". Granted, but I would like to focus on a still more glaring omission in the reasoning of this hypothetical youth. He correctly recognizes one of the purposes of this "ritual"--to acquire forgiveness. But he completely misses out on another purpose--to demonstrate or express remorse. He is focusing on what "asking for forgiveness" gets from his mother, but neglects to take into consideration what "asking for forgiveness" gets from him.
If he were to carry out this plan, he might very well continue to receive his mother's undying love and affection and forgiveness. But because he would no longer go through the exercise of contrition, very likely, he would soon become contemptuous of his mother's forgiveness. He would no longer take seriously the hurt that he causes to his mother by his disobedience and would no longer know the joy of reconciliation.
There is an illustration/example, less-mundane and more serious, along these same lines that we might consider, (Illustration 5) the practice of confession within the Church. For the most part we've lost that tradition and practice in Protestantism. After all, our sins are between God and us; no priest or church official can truly absolve me of my sin; confession would just lead me to dwell needlessly on my wrongdoing. Meanwhile, some Christians wonder if it is not the loss of just this kind of practice and tradition that has led to churches full of people (hypocrites) who pretend to be perfect and never tolerate anyone with real problems.
It is especially true of Church traditions that we need to ask ourselves whether there is more to them than meets the eye--more of the spiritual and divine mystery in them then we are readily able to perceive. Again, I'm not trying to lead into obfuscation, but the fact is we are not just physio-psychological beings. We have a spirit too. And the average American understands precious little about that so-fundamental part of us. What do contrition and confession do for the soul? What effect does baptism have on the soul? What effect does sex have on the soul? Maybe we'll turn to that one next.
(Illustration 6) Marriage ceremonies. I won't say much on this--seeing as I've never been married (and this blog entry is getting long). What is a marriage ceremony? A formal binding agreement? A legal contract? A public commitment? Some might be tempted to point out that there can be no substitute for the commitment that the couple share, and nothing can enhance it. We've seen that legal contracts don't guarantee that people will stay together. Certainly the commitment being made publicly doesn't guarantee that it will last. Just because it happens in a church doesn't ensure anything. So why not just throw out the whole idea of a "ceremony"? It's extraneous. It's an unnecessary expense. Or is it?
I'll leave you to puzzle out this one. What would it mean to eliminate, or treat as essentially unnecessary, wedding ceremonies? How would individuals and couples and society be affected?
Another point to consider: when traditions lose their meaning and significance, that's not usually the fault of the tradition but of the people who practice it and have failed to preserve it fully intact. When traditions lose their meaning, that's not a sign that they should be thrown out, but that they need to be recovered and rehabilitated. Usually that recovery and rehabilitation involves looking into the past--into history. It's naive to think that an empty tradition always was empty or that by virtue of its being empty, it has no more value for this generation, this time, or this people.
(Illustration 7) Prohibition on alcohol. Yet again, I'm bringing up alcohol and I'll reiterate (yet again) that drinking alcohol is not wrong in and of itself. Now there are certain church traditions that have held that Christians should abstain from any and all consumption of alcohol. Needless to say, this is an unpopular view in some circles (and among many circles of young Christian college students). They very quickly recognize that drinking alcohol is not wrong in and of itself; they very readily point to the fact that Jesus turned water into wine in the gospel of Mark. So they freely (sometimes recklessly) imbibe; and I'm led to wonder whether they might not be really better off abstaining altogether from alcohol. They claim this "right" in the name of Freedom-in-Christ, and yet I wonder if they truly are free or just more subtly enslaved. Maybe there's something to that tradition too.
(Illustration 8) Patriotic celebrations and 9-11 observances. On the sixth anniversary of the September 11th attack, some people were asking whether it was not finally time to tone down the fervor that surrounds the remembrance of that day and those events. (I think one news commentator pointed out that beginning with the first anniversary, certain people have always been asking whether it was not finally time to tone down the fervor.) And what is the point of memorial services? What is the point of Fourth-of-July fireworks displays? What is the point of Memorial Day and Veterans Day and taking time out of my busy schedule to visit a monument and public ceremony? These services and events are superfluous, right? I can remember and value and appreciate and support my country and the military without all of these things, right?
Or are we, yet again, too easily susceptible to the dulling and numbing effects of time? Do we not really want to forget?
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Hopefully by going through these illustrative exercises (hopefully) we can see how easy it is to mistakenly misconstrue and dismiss traditions that may still have value. But as I review what I've written, there's still one lingering question that needs to be addressed. How ought we to behave when we are faced with a tradition that seems empty and void of meaning? Certainly we should try to gain knowledge and understanding of it, but what if we try and, despite our efforts, just can't seem to motivate it. Should we practice it anyway?
That's a hard one. In some cases their is virtue to be derived from the practice and repetition that cannot be fully accounted for in any way besides rigorous practice and repetition. Understanding why music practice helps improve playing does not make the road to mastering the instrument any shorter. And even if you don't understand why practice is important, if you put in the time, the results are still fairly reliable. But in other cases, practicing a seemingly-empty tradition can just reinforce negative patterns and associations, driving them more and more indelibly into our minds. That would actually work against our coming to appreciate the tradition in question.
Probably the only thing I can say in this context (where we are speaking generally and not about a particular case) is that we should be mindful of our dispositions. Even if we don't understand, we can still place confidence and trust in wise friends or good leaders. Much of the benefit that we will derive (or fail to derive) actually depends most heavily on our disposition toward the activity. So be mindful of your heart and mind. Become familiar with the shape and contours of your own character. A healthy character will draw genuine good out of even the meanest of circumstances. A sickly character will derive no benefit even from the most ideal of situations.
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Judging and evaluating ceremonial exercises, rituals, and traditions is a complicated business. There are no easy formulas and we must be ever vigilant, guarding against the possibility of mere ignorance clouding our judgments. We must be mindful of a bias, prevalent in our age, that naturally opposes long-standing and sometimes-empty traditions. We should seek to understand and, where wise men and women disagree with our view, be willing to defer to those with greater experience and erudition. Of course, where there are legitimate concerns and objections, those should be taken seriously. But we must ever endeavor to exercise good and sound faith in these matters as well.
Well, I'm writing this on Saturday night (even though it won't get posted until Monday when I can access the Internet at the UCR Library). It's already past eleven and I'm visiting a new church tomorrow morning so I should probably go to bed.
God bless,
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*135 hours: three one-hour-class-sessions per week over fifteen weeks equals forty-five hours. If the student does two hours of homework for each class session, which amounts to six hours per week, then the number of combined class and homework hours totals at 135.
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God is in this place,
and that reality, seen and understood by the grace of God in Christ Jesus through the work of the Holy Spirit, makes all the difference in the world.
