HUMAN TRADITIONS VERSUS CHRISTIAN TRADITIONS

The radicalism of Christianity is its power… and without it, it is just another humanist creed – Part One

If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple. Luk 14:26  

Something like a crisis of faith is what grips any new convert to the Christian religion…and the pull between the new traditions and one’s old traditions may sometimes grow so large as to resemble Jacob’s wrestling with God on River Jabbok…

But nevertheless Abraham’s unwavering type of faith is what God calls his followers to imitate… Abraham’s obedience was immediate and a complete severing with all his past. Abraham never again went back to his roots. And neither do we find him wistfully reminiscing about his old traditional life…

Rather we find an Abraham who is animated with a newfound hunger and longing… and almost gripped by a beatific vision for a new life which was far removed from that of his father’s traditional life… and so it is written,’By faith Abraham, when he was called to go out into a place which he should after receive for an inheritance, obeyed; and he went out, not knowing whither he went. By faith he sojourned in the land of promise, as in a strange country, dwelling in tabernacles with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise: For he looked for a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God’ (Heb 11:8-10).  

The radicalism of Christianity is what gives it power… and it is what makes it unique… And so Abraham’s life (and of every believer) becomes like a movement which begins in a low note (in Egypt) but which rises eventually to a crescendo in the Promised Land…and where one wave of faith sweeps all unbelief to oblivion, and where one glimpse of glory shines a light into a thousand possibilities….

Abraham lived fully the New Testament life before we got here: ‘Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new’ (2Co 5:17). And ‘The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth…’ (Joh 3:8). Abraham was never (at any time) left in doubt that a higher Being had acted…had spoken…and had chosen him. Have you felt anything like that lately? Then by God’s grace act! Go! The voice can’t be seen…but it can’t be doubted? That is God. Obey him instantly! Many have felt something like that before…like being on the cusp of a mighty change…but they let it fall to the ground; the music floated in the air ever so sweetly, but it got carried off by the wind… ‘It was a vision’ we say, or ‘I had a close call’, or ‘I felt something, so sweet, so urgent… but I feared I was about to lose my mind! I dismissed it…what if it showed in real life as a fact?’ The vision may go… but the conflict never does. It only surfaces again slowly in small pockets of remembrances…

I believe the climax of all unbelief will show itself eventually --- it is especially heightened just before one’s death and when it is particularly strident… I have seen a patient throw a blanket over their heads and bury themselves under it, screaming…and why? Because it is the resurfacing of that vision again, and because it is where madness and reality intersect in a whirlwind of mental maelstrom…but God forbid that we should ever reach there!

And so Abraham believed, and Abraham let the wind carry him because he was certain it was from God and that is why it was counted to him for righteousness… Or else he should never have gone anywhere if he had not acted or obeyed (his first instincts) first! So what are you afraid of? Start moving! Pray to him for courage and the one who says ‘and him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out’ will answer you in due time.