The Danger of Conventions
My daughter recently said to me, “Dad, you’re old because you use punctuation.” At first I felt proud to be thought of as a good punctuator, but then I realised that I was just confirming her point. We come from very different generations. When I type a text message, I use a capital letter to start, I use commas where necessary, I spell words correctly, and I end with a full stop. She wouldn’t do any of that. For her generation, punctuation is unnecessary. Messaging is not about following conventions. It’s about communication. And if the communication is clear, even with all the strange words added by the auto-correct function, why waste time with all the rest.
I wonder if this isn’t why Jesus faced so much opposition in his own day. He was speaking to a society bound up with religious conventions. When he ignored those conventions, his society fought back. Jesus’ priority was clear communication. His task was to communicate a clear picture of God. The bible says that Jesus is, “the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being…” (Hebrews 1:3). Many people in his day, however, were convinced that God only communicated through their particular set of religious conventions and were so focused on preserving them that they actually obscured the reality of God.
I belong to a particular Christian denomination, the Anglican Church, which is known for its traditions and ceremonial practices. I like those traditions and they have brought a lot of comfort to many people down through the years, but there is a danger that we can fall into the same trap. We must be on guard against getting so caught up in doing things the right way, the way they have always been done, that we obscure the clear picture of himself that God has revealed to this world in Jesus. How do we protect ourselves? By asking the question of everything we do, “Is Jesus clearly visible in this and is he honoured by what we are doing?”
Neil Percival
I wonder if this isn’t why Jesus faced so much opposition in his own day. He was speaking to a society bound up with religious conventions. When he ignored those conventions, his society fought back. Jesus’ priority was clear communication. His task was to communicate a clear picture of God. The bible says that Jesus is, “the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being…” (Hebrews 1:3). Many people in his day, however, were convinced that God only communicated through their particular set of religious conventions and were so focused on preserving them that they actually obscured the reality of God.
I belong to a particular Christian denomination, the Anglican Church, which is known for its traditions and ceremonial practices. I like those traditions and they have brought a lot of comfort to many people down through the years, but there is a danger that we can fall into the same trap. We must be on guard against getting so caught up in doing things the right way, the way they have always been done, that we obscure the clear picture of himself that God has revealed to this world in Jesus. How do we protect ourselves? By asking the question of everything we do, “Is Jesus clearly visible in this and is he honoured by what we are doing?”
Neil Percival