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FEATURE ARTICLE
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Monday, June 25, 2018 |
[email protected] Toronto, Ontario, Canada |
�So the Pharisees and teachers of religious law asked him, �Why don�t your disciples follow our age-old tradition? They eat without first performing the hand-washing ceremony.� Mark 7:5
The issue today is how relevant and helpful is your tradition? Jesus replied:�You hypocrites! Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you, for he wrote, �These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. 7 Their worship is a farce, for they teach man-made ideas as commands from God.� 8 For you ignore God�s law and substitute your own tradition.� 9 Then he said, �You skillfully sidestep God�s law in order to hold on to your own tradition. �Mark 7:6-8. Jesus reply implied their tradition is skewed against God. Their tradition is hypocritical . You want to ask yourself �is the tradition I am following helping my destiny or am I just being dogmatic.� I grew up in the Western part of Nigeria. Masquerades were one of the traditions. They will come up in different colourful dresses with various scary masks. My grandparents and parents who were Christians would lock us up in the house it was a taboo to participate in such pagan tradition as a Christian! The masquerades have long whips to beat people . We were told they were from �heaven.� Last December we had International Gathering of Eagles Conference in Uyo capital Akwa- Ibom, State in Nigeria we saw masquerades but this time they were no more with whips , they approached our wound-up air conditioned cars banging on the glasses and were demanding for money, they will not allow us pass until our hosts came to rescue us. I had to ask � do masquerades now spend money in heaven?�
This is not a critique of people�s beliefs, anybody is free to believe and worship whatever they desire ;but the question is what is the motive of that tradition ; is it hypocritical ? Is it deceitful? Jesus was not querying the hygiene of hand washing but the religious connotation behind it, the ritual associated with it. What rituals are you performing that are no longer adding value to your life? What has become your life style or your family tradition that is no more helpful? We were in India, we saw fat cows roaming the street, one American Pastor said - they worship what they should use as barbecue! God has given me grace to become born again and be ordained as a Pastor. As part of my clerical duties I have been called upon to name children . I always refer to the tradition of our parents how they name children in their days. They usually come up with many items to pray for them : such items include , walnut , kola- nut, groundnut, coconut and I always say if all they gather to pray for the children are �nuts� there is tendency the children will grow up to be nuts or naughty! That it is unnecessary to bring any of those items now , we only name now in the name of Jesus. I was born in a mission house and named in a church and the tradition of naming me with the name of Jesus has helped my life and destiny. This is what the Holy Spirit is teaching us today, check the tradition before becoming a victim of it For example in some parts of Nigeria they put marks on faces of children, as we were told to identify their root should war break out. You don�t need to deface anybody anymore. Read Matthew 5 you will see many reforms Jesus brought to his generation. Some of traditional changes Jesus alluded to are:
Shalom
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