Friday, March 6, 2009

Live Free, Live Liturgically.

Col. 2:16-23 (ESV)
Therefore let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food and drink, or with regard to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath. [17] These are a shadow of the things to come, but the substance belongs to Christ. [18] Let no one disqualify you, insisting on asceticism and worship of angels, going on in detail about visions, puffed up without reason by his sensuous mind, [19] and not holding fast to the Head, from whom the whole body, nourished and knit together through its joints and ligaments, grows with a growth that is from God.
[20] If with Christ you died to the elemental spirits of the world, why, as if you were still alive in the world, do you submit to regulations— [21] "Do not handle, Do not taste, Do not touch" [22] (referring to things that all perish as they are used)—according to human precepts and teachings? [23] These have indeed an appearance of wisdom in promoting self-made religion and asceticism and severity to the body, but they are of no value in stopping the indulgence of the flesh.

Let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food and drink, or with regard to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath. This goes for Seventh day Adventists, and JWs as they run around telling you that you have to worship on Saturday and what not else. We worship on Sunday, that is the day Christ rose from the dead, and we find that something worth celebrating. But we could just as well worship on Thursday, and though that day was dedicated to Thor by our ancient pagan ancestors (hence it’s name) we would no more be worshiping Thor on that day, then we are celebrating Samhain when we go trick or treating on Halloween, or the sun God by celebrating Christmas on the 25th of December. We are free to celebrate what we want when we want.
We are also free to eat what we want and drink what we want. Christianity is not the practice of asceticism. I say this in the middle of lent, when I have imposed on myself quite the ascetic fast. A fast can be a good thing to take on. But it ought not be imposed on anyone. Nor should it be a point of pride for anyone. Our growth comes from God, through Christ our head. We have no need to submit to worldly regulations. We can do so in Christian freedom, but we don’t need to, and sometimes we should think twice about doing so. We are free to take the liturgical calendar and our church has found it helpful. So we do.
What I find funny though, is often this is used by people to shun the liturgical calendar, and the very same people ignore what it says almost completely. Rather than living and letting live they begin to condemn people for the food they eat, the drink they drink, and for having the audacity of dressing their kid up like Winne the Pooh for Halloween. It gets rather ridiculous.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Whutch you got aginst Winne the Pooh?

You make it sound as though we really are free!

You make it sound as though, we do things because they are edifying and because they are helpful to our faith in Jesus, as opposed to some sort of religious ritual.

Wouldn't it just be a lot easier to throw out everything that smacks of traditional worship and traditional church and just worship in a shed with a rock band and all get cool tattoos?

Nancy said...

The guy you describe in the last paragraph there Steve...went down to Florida, and it didn't turn out well...

Nancy said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Anonymous said...

Nancy,

We've got a lot of them operating around here (So. Cal) and they seem to be doing quite well.

If you call pandering to the culture and packing in a bunch of people that want to redefine the church...'doing well'.

Anonymous said...

Bror and Steve,

This reminds me of just this last year when I was trying to free a family member stuck in their “Halloween is the devil’s night” “Christianity” – we let our kids get candy dressed up as Wizard of Oz characters. Anyway, during the course of the conversation passages like this one were used to show why we shouldn’t do for example “Halloween”. After about four exchanges or so I turned to my wife and said, “Do you see how much religious fear and thus bondage this person is in – they’ve practically spiritually boarded up their windows with them inside holding a gun in a shaky hand, cowering in the floor and jumping at every little creak of the house.”

Larry