The way it's always been...

Back in the 1980s, a friend of mine was part of a missionary community seeking to reach out to a large city in Europe. More than 150 people lived in the mission building (a former hotel) and her bedroom was in an annexe leading off from an area with a large lounge. An early bedder, this meant that she was sometimes kept awake at night by the chatting and laughing of other missionaries and the guests that they were reaching out to. So she took a sheet of paper and a marker pen, and in her best handwriting she made a sign saying, "Please keep this sliding door closed after 9 pm. Thank you."

More than 25 years later, this lady was back in Europe and went to visit the community where she had once lived. Imagine her surprise when she went into the lounge and spotted the sign that said, "Please keep this door closed after 9 pm." It was no longer in her handwriting; someone had typed it up, laminated the paper and stuck it neatly on the glass panel of the door. It seemed a little strange, because her former bedroom was now used as an office, and no one was there after 9 pm. So she found one of the missionaries that lived in the community and asked him, "Excuse me, can you tell me why this door needs to be kept closed at night?"
The young man looked a little baffled. "I don't think I know the reason," he said, "but that's the way it's always been." In his desire to be helpful, he searched around a little in his imagination. "Maybe it's to keep the heat in," he suggested.

Well, my friend knew that this explanation made no sense at all, as there was a warm radiator in that corridor, just the same as in the staff lounge. But human traditions can be slow to die out. Often we accept them without question, because it's "the way things have always been," and when someone questions that or happens to believe or act differently, we search around in our minds to find a reason, a justification for the things that we've become so used to. In Christian circles, there's even a danger that we equate "the way it's always been" with the Biblical way, without stopping to examine and evaluate our beliefs and ways of doing things.

I was thinking about this just a couple of days ago, as I sat in our church service here in Spain and heard an announcement about the 10th Anniversary celebrations coming up next month. I looked around the church and thought about how the congregation had changed over the ten years since we planted it. Many new people have come in, some because they moved into the area, and others because they've come to know the Lord for the first time in their lives.

There was a time in church history, in some nations of Europe at least, where church was mainly for the rich and the middle class. The poor people were unable to go or were unwelcome there if they tried. As a result, this meant that the people who attended church were well-dressed in expensive clothes. As the gospel spread to others, and working class people were able to be part of church congregations, this tradition of "dressing up" for church somehow got passed on and accepted by all. The phrase" Sunday best" came into the English language, because people had one set of clothes that they wore to work in the factory or in the fields all week, and another set of clothes that they wore to go to church on a Sunday. As recently as the 1970s, I remember speaking to an elderly lady who told me that she had never been able to go to church as a child because she "didn't own a hat and coat."

This is a prime example of a human tradition whose origins have been forgotten, but whose practice persists in some circles until today. There's nothing even slightly Biblical about it; in fact, in the book of James, the believers are reproached for having a different standard in the way they treated a well-dressed rich person and a poor person dressed in rags. From earliest times in Jewish history (the Old Testament Hebrews in the desert) to the birth of the Christian church (the early believers in the book of Acts), the Biblical way was to "come as you are" - the only prerequisite being that you should seek to come with "clean hands and a pure heart." (See Psalm 15)

However did we reach a place in Christian history where coming to church with nice clothes was more important than coming to church with a pure, unselfish, uncritical and forgiving heart?

Like the young man who searched for an explanation for the tradition of keeping the door closed, we can probably think up all kinds of good reasons: it's because it's a celebration; it's because it's a sign of respect for God; it's because Sunday is a special day of the week.... But no matter how many explanations we think up, we can't escape the fact that we've enshrined a practice that had its roots in the unjust class system of previous generations, rather than in the eternal truth of the Word of God. 

As I looked around our church on Sunday and saw what a mixed bunch we were - some in their finery and others casual in their jeans - I couldn't help realising that some of them, especially the new believers, probably wouldn't be there if wearing fine and formal clothes had been a prerequisite for their acceptance into the family of God.

I'm not saying that we should turn up to church in our pyjamas or in our paint-splattered overalls (although I've seen both of those in an African setting where someone came straight from work and someone brought their kids ready for bed.) In fact, clothing isn't really the issue here; there are plenty of other human traditions that have become part of how we "do church." Like sitting in rows, instead of eating food around the table. Or having one person pray from up front, instead of everyone being involved in praying and worshipping the Lord...

I'm simply remembering that the people Jesus criticised most were the Pharisees, who revered the traditions of man while ignoring the things that were most important to God. It's a sad day when we get more concerned about someone coming into church with a cup of coffee than someone coming into church with pride in their heart or greed in their life.