The Weight Lifted When You Give Up Old Traditions

This year is proving to be a change for my family in that we are changing our traditions and it feels like a relief.

My wife and I have changed churches.  This may not mean anything for the non-church-goer, but aside from the actual theology and belief, church membership has a lot of ancillary meaning like identify and belonging. 

We will go to a different church for Christmas Eve. I am not going to light candles or serve communion as a Deacon.  I am not missing the sense of responsibility.

We used to have a pizza party every New Years Eve where we would invite mostly people from the church to drop in and have some food and celebrate.  It was one of the two times a year we would really clean the house.  I would spend most of New Years Eve day making the dough and sous-chef-ing all the ingredients.  It was fulfilling to share and make an attempt to build relationships with people in the church and maintain connections with some of those who left. 

While it gave me joy to make delicious pizza that my friends enjoyed (my Chicago-style usually turned out great) we are not doing that this year and I am not missing it.  I am not sure if we will do it again. 

Traditions are Markers of Our Relationships

There is a lot of identity in being a member of a particular congregation or body of worship and its traditions.   People take pride and have grounding in calling themselves a Catholic, a Baptist, a Presbyterian, a Methodist, a Lutheran, and any other identifying pronoun that goes with a faith. 

Furthermore, when you are part of a congregation you live your life with the same group of people and in your relationships you share memories, pain, sorry and most of all joy.   You watch each other's children grow up and go through the traditions and ceremonies of the church. You have an extra subject or two you can talk about with your fellow or sister church member and you hopefully have more empathy when you talk about your struggles and pain as you have a greater sense of intimacy because you share the same beliefs.

The Significance of Traditions Can Change Because Relationships Change

Since churches are full of imperfect people, they occasionally offend each other.  Some of the acknowledged offenses are overlooked and people move on in their relationships.  Some of the offenses and conflicts are non-negotiables and people draw lines immediately and leave.  For many the list of small problems build up and culminate to a point where you say, it is more painful to stay and to leave.

Often when it is more painful to stay than leave, you may come to a point where you feel that you are not connecting, or others are failing to connect with you as they ignore you or they seem to avoid you.  As relational organizations, churches are also political and the politics drive the decisions and also drive the relationships.  Not everything done in a church is on principle and sound practice because the powers that be want something and thus the traditions can actually become painful points of connection and so continuing to attend is torture.

Furthermore, churches are groups of cliques and if your close connections have left, the other cliques tend to be full or do not make room for you, you are left out.  Sometimes others in their arrogance, guardedness, introversion or self-absorption don't comprehend the necessity of engaging with you in your attempts to connect with them.   (Like the group of old friends sitting at a table at a Wednesday night dinner ignoring you when you take the empty seat.)  In the end, when you leave such a situation you have this double-bind of grief where it hurts to stay but you are also grieving the piece that you left of yourself at that church.

Church aside, there are family traditions that hold memories of pain rather than joy, and some people try to continue them because they feel the need to continue them as part of the family and then wonder why others do not want to take part?  This too is a tough one because there is the double bind of grief and loss.  Not all family members with their different personalities and worldviews are affected the same by grief and loss in the same way and manner and so while some want to carry on a tradition, others want nothing of it out of the pain.

A Painful End can be a Joyful Start of Another 

Our relationships in the here and now are the relationships we have.  Each and every holiday (and everyday for that matter) we have the potential to start new rituals and traditions that connect us over the years.  The traditions are markers of our identity together as family, friends, and church goers.  In and of themselves they have no meaning other than what we give to them. 

It can be a mixed bag to give up traditions when they had meaning but also connected pain. Feelings are not always clear cut but mixtures of emotions connected to the different thoughts and pieces of information--that is why we are often "torn" or have "mixed feelings."  We often have to take some time and "sort out" our feelings, especially getting through the awkwardness of the first time without the tradition.

All Traditions Start as Experiments

 I have decided that traditions actually evolve rather than just mechanically happen. Getting together with others and doing things start and build the traditions. Many traditions start as experiments.  The experiments that have good outcomes become traditions.

I am not sure what experiments we will do this year as part of our changes, but I think the time together will be good anyway (especially if I can pull my 17-year-old away from his screens).

I hope that if you are experimenting with new traditions, you will find some joy in at least the fact you tried something new.

Joy to the Depraved and Dark World of Social Media

Social Media has proven to have re-enacted the fall of humanity, in light of the emotional health of many, it is the original depravity and the curse all over.

The Original Story of Depravity

As we read in Genesis 3, the serpent sold Adam and Eve on the idea that eating the forbidden fruit would make them like God because they would then know both good and evil.

 After persistent persuasion, they both bit and became subject to depravity which meant

• Realization they were naked
• Getting kicked out of paradise
• Relegated to hard labor for life
• Being doomed to die physically and
• Spiritual separation from God.

From the perspective of the Bible, Adam and Eve are blamed for why we have bad things in this world.  Because they took the bite we have the reality of wars, arguments over stupid matters, famines, sickness, natural tragedies,  dysfunctional families, cute puppies and kittens dying, and itching from mosquito bites.

In reading through the Old Testament, which can be looked as one big case study on what sin did to humanity, we see repeated examples that humans are depraved.  In the story of Noah and the Ark God destroyed humanity through an epic flood except one faithful man and his family because everyone was wicked and then he started over.  God then showed his attempt to reach out to one group of people by creating a covenant with them.  This was the chosen nation that became Israel where he would have a relationship with them.  Even with God's reaching out to them, the people of Israel did not stop being depraved as they were cruel towards each other and they turned their backs on God to the extent of the occasional report that some of the kings of Israel actually engaged in the barbaric act of cremating their live children in the name of idol worship.

Israel was eventually punished in the eyes of God for their centuries of repeated failure to obey God.  The nation was divided after Solomon's reign  and Israel was eventually dissolved by Assyria and Babylon.  God was patient to the extent that he gave about 100 years warning through the prophet Habakkuk that the Babylonians were going to do his sovereign punishment.


Social Media Shows that it is Still a Dark World

In the 21st century Social Media shows us that we are not living in paradise; we are still living in a world as dark as Habakkuk's time and that human beings are no better.  Being connected to each other has shown our angry and hateful sides.   Furthermore, it is stressful to receive a constant, intense, online information stream that consists of conflict, drama and inflammatory messages.   Some have disconnected from social media and realized that their mood states have improved.  Being intimately connected through the computer and phone screens has been like being around that controlling mother-in-law or that verbally abusive drunk uncle 24-7 and it has emotionally scarred us

What is more tragic is the that opportunities to make us argue, insult and offend each other are actually leveraged by politicians and special interest groups in an effort to influence trends on social media to gain some kind of profit. 

It appears for the foreseeable future that social media will be with us because it is a tool of commerce and official communication. While it has been promoted as a tool for good things, it has clearly been manipulated and exploited in ways that disturb us, depress us, and overwhelm us.   There is economic competition to see who can get us mad or scared enough so as to be motivated to retweet, share, or do something non-digital to protest, contribute or buy and overall just pass on the pain and misery like it were a virus or bacteria.

The People Walking in Darkness have seen a Great Light? 

There is no peace on earth to be gained from social media itself.  It is just not going to happen.

Furthermore, underneath all of the embellishment of incorporated pagan symbols, Santa Claus, and happy, secular music  Christmas still hints that the world is still a dark place, and human beings are incapable of fixing the world let alone themselves, and that there is a great light shining that you can try to ignore by singing another verse of Jingle Bells but you cannot.

The baby came for a reason beyond just to be laid in a manager.  The reason he came still befuddles people and challenges their intellectualism and rationalism.  It still shines a light on the fact that people are still under a curse due to Adam and Eve's sin.  It still illuminates that there is an emptiness and lost-ness that the baby remedied when he grew up to be a 33-year-old man in his earthly life.  Christmas shines a light on our emotional and spiritual bankruptcy that social media has only seemed to magnify. 

Joy to the world, even the dark, depressing world of social media.  A light is here if you really want to look at it before you go back to arguing and trolling each other.