Opus 2025-478: The Prejudice of Tradition

While contemplating the Sunday sermon, one of the things I kept running into was the way in which the pastor would use his traditional understanding in a way which did not go well with the verse he was looking at.  It came up several times.  He was going down the road of eschatology, which is rather risky when you have people around you who have read their Bible.  He was talking about the rapture and looking at Paul’s writings.

1 Thessalonians 4:13 (KJV) But I would not have you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning them which are asleep, that ye sorrow not, even as others which have no hope.

He was explaining that the word sleep here means dead.  No problem with that but somewhere on the talking points he got off on something called “soul sleep”.  I’ve heard of this before and I recognize it is one of the two theories on what happens between death and resurrection.  Some placees in scripture seem to imply that you go directly to be in the presence of Jesus.  Other places, and this is one of them, seem to imply that we are asleep until the resurrection.  Both are legitimate ways to understand it, but he started off on talking about how this was totally wrong.  My memory might be faulty, but I think he even used the word heresy.

So this morning, I was reflecting on how our traditions often get in the way of reading the Bible.  We have the ability to read something that makes a very clear statement and then speak tradition instead of scripture.  I like to think I’m above it, but I’m not convinced of that.  I’m at least aware of the problem and seek overcome.

So this morning, as I was thinking about this, the Lord brought this to mind,

Psalm 119:105 (KJV) NUN. Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path.

And as I contemplated that, I got to thinking about how the scripture is there to give us direction, to show us where to put our feet, to give us an insight and do which path to follow.  That’s all good standard stuff.

Then I realized that although the lamp will tell us where to put our feet, it might not tell us what the landscape around us looks like  . We’re so used to powerful flashlights that put out thousands of lumens.  Put yourself back in the day of flickering oil lamps.  You didn’t even have the glass chimneys to keep the flame steady.  If you heard a rustling in a dark corner of the room at home, you might have to get up and walk over to see what it was even if you had a lamp.

It occurred to me as we go through life that God will show us what our next step will be.  He will show us which is the right direction, the path. that does not mean that He’s going to light up the distant hills on our left and our right.  It doesn’t mean He’s going to make us able to penetrate the forest that is grown up next to the road.  What He does is guarantee to help us know truth or falsehood as we head straight and narrow.

Our problem usually is not that we don’t have light, but that we don’t use the light we have.

homo unius libri