Telephone, Tradition, or Truth

Jilian Brown
Nov 7, 2021
11 min read

Now this is the commandment--the statutes and the ordinances--that the LORD your God charged me to teach you to observe in the land that you are about to cross into and occupy,

so that you and your children and your children's children, may fear the LORD your God all the days of your life, and keep all his decrees and his commandments that I am commanding you, so that your days may be long.

Hear therefore, O Israel, and observe them diligently, so that it may go well with you, and so that you may multiply greatly in a land flowing with milk and honey, as the LORD, the God of your ancestors, has promised you.

Hear, O Israel: The LORD is our God, the LORD alone.

You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.

Keep these words that I am commanding you today in your heart.

Recite them to your children and talk about them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you rise.

Bind them as a sign on your hand, fix them as an emblem on your forehead,

and write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.

-Deuteronomy 6:1-9

My seminary classes have weekly forums because it is a way in online education to have class discussion. In one class I am taking, we discussed “speaking the truth in love” this week. Part of my response was to remember when giving counsel that “what is plain to me may not be clear to someone else.” I realize that I have lived most of my life under the very false assumption that other people think like I do and have had similar experiences as me. It is a falsehood which has kept me from writing or speaking about my life to some degree because I have always assumed I had nothing new or insightful to share with others. However, over the past few years, I have come to realize that most people do not think exactly the way I do because we each have a very particular set of life experiences, relationships, and training that are not identical to anybody else's. For instance, living in the Bible belt my entire life led me to believe that everybody around me had heard the Gospel. I know that sounds ridiculous, but when you go to coffee shops where I live, most people have a Bible out in front of them. Many people seem to identify as a Christian in some way, shape, or form. I realize from traveling and listening to leaders in churches from other areas that this is not the case in many other parts of the country. My experiences led me to make assumptions that all people know what I know, or worse yet, that I know what they know. However, it is abundantly clear to me as I engage with more and more people that we are more different than we are alike and what a gift that is. I need to be done with assumptions because I am usually wrong about them and they prevent me from truly knowing and learning from others.

When it comes to the legacy we leave for the generations behind us, I think we need to be careful about assumptions. One of the delights of my life is working with teenagers, both in the music studio and in the church. They are so full of life and energy and are far more insightful than adults usually give them credit for. However, sometimes I catch myself assuming that the students I teach or even my own children know what I know and vice versa. These kids know A LOT. They are growing up in a very different world than I did a few decades ago. Information is free flowing around them all the time, but not all of it is accurate or good. I remember having to actually go to the library to research for papers and projects and that is often not even necessary now (sadly) with so much available online. It is tempting to blame the information age for all of the "misinformation" out there, but apparently the same problem occurred thousands of years ago long before the internet.

When God delivered the Israelites out of Egypt, He gave them very clear instructions regarding how they were to live to be a people who love and serve Him only and reflect His character. The environments of Egypt and Canaan were different, but both cultures were marked by the worship of other gods. God knew that surrounding them in the waiting Promised Land would be all manner of idol worship and He wanted to keep them focused on the truth. The Shema, beginning with Deuteronomy 6, is perhaps the most well-known and oft-repeated part of the Torah in the Jewish faith. In Hebrew, "shema" means to hear. And not just to hear, but to listen attentively. If you watch "The Chosen," the Shema is what Jesus asked the children to recite in this episode of the first season. This prayer recited morning and night by faithful Jews is a tether to who they are and who their God is. I think we could all benefit from such a tether. It is far too easy to wade through the masses of information on the Internet and get lost in a sea of opinions—not facts.

Here is what God commands the Israelites:

1) Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and might.

2) Keep the commands in your heart.

3) Teach them to your children.

Loving God with our entire being is the long, slow process of progressive sanctification--becoming more and more like Christ day by day. It does not just happen because we wish it would. We do not move from "one degree of glory to another" (2 Cor. 3:18) by rarely opening our Bibles, or occasionally attending church, or associating our Christianity with our political beliefs. This is simply not how we were created to live. The abundant life is found in the active pursuit of holiness and righteousness. The parameters God gives us in life are for our good, not our punishment (Psalm 16:5-6). Loving God with our entire heart, soul, mind, and strength is when every single facet of our day becomes an act of worship to the Creator who gave us our body, breath, and being.

Keeping the commands over a lifetime is also challenging. I have been studying a lot about pride and how it is potentially the root of all sin. We want our own way and we want to believe that we know best even though any person who believes in an omnipotent, omnipresent, and omniscient God cannot feasibly make that case. Even as we strive for Christlikeness, we are like Paul in falling prey to pride when we do what we know we ought not in pursuing our own desires above God’s good plan (Rom. 7:15). Remaining tethered to the Truth in community with others is the key. However, it is not these first two points of the Shema on which I want to focus today, but rather the third point which I see as a current problem in our culture and the one which led me to go to seminary in the first place.

Teach them to your children:

The game of telephone is one we all know well from childhood. Somebody was given a word or they thought up a word and then whispered it to a line or a circle of children sitting on the floor. The hilarious outcome was to see just how far off the last person was from the original word, phrase, or statement. That child's success depended on the listening AND accurate understanding of all those who came before him. Though telephone is a fun childhood game, it is dangerous to play this game with our faith.

When we fail to do the work of hearing AND understanding THE WORD, we can not accurately pass on the truth of God to others. Furthermore, if we just want to add more people to the game without giving them a full understanding, we have missed the full call toward growing the Kingdom. When we only focus on creating converts to Christianity and not true disciples of Christ we are not truly teaching people the way of Jesus. This kind of "sharing" is unlikely to stick. We must be actively showing the way of Jesus by living the way of Jesus and teaching the way of Jesus to adequately create disciples who love and serve Him with their whole hearts, souls, minds, and strength. We cannot simply hope that by sharing a few verses here and there (particularly when they are out of context) that we will establish the foundation that is needed for a lifetime of following Christ. We must be people immersed in the Word of God, praying daily to the Maker of our Souls, and looking around with delight, wonder, and curiosity at all of those who are His image bearers--which is every single person on the earth--to introduce others to the glorious Kingdom of God and the abundant life experienced there.

Traditions play a big role in the church. Evangelicals like to pride ourselves on "sola scriptura" and tend to deny an affinity for traditions. However, there are plenty of evangelical traditions that have evolved over time. Most positions in the modern church are not found in the Bible. That is not to say that they are wrong, but they are traditions that arose out of growth needs or the dreams of God's people. Most meetings, committees, and ministries are based in tradition. When they are fruitful and build up the church, these traditions are a great asset to the community. I do believe, though, that we need to consistently re-evaluate our traditions, their value, and relevance in the present time. When traditions go unchallenged and continue to be handed down, the people have no framework for where they came from. Some simply accept them as absolutes equating them with the weight of scripture, or some reject them altogether and in the process, throw out all parts of their faith. (I will save my arguments for the role of women in church for another blog post, but this is just one area of church life that is heavily based in tradition--American tradition, at that--and not as heavily based in a purely hermeneutical scripture interpretation). Traditions can be lovely as long as we call them what they are. The liturgical calendar on which I base this blog is a tradition which I love. I love creeds and catechisms. There is nothing wrong with passing down traditions, but they can not be elevated to the place of pure truth nor do they have the transformative power of knowing Christ personally.

Truth is singular. Truth is The Word, a person--Jesus Himself. Truth can not be plural. It is simply not possible. There can not be your truth and my truth, but only THE truth. There can be your life experience and my life experience and differing opinions, beliefs, and preferences, but there can not be multiple truths. The very nature of truth is that it is singular. Our interpretations of scripture will vary, and there is room for that. There are some things that will be mysteries to us until the day we die, but that does not mean we stop striving to understand. That is the work of theology, or as Anselm of Canterbury called it,"faith seeking understanding." The Illuminate Ministries tagline is: Truth. Clarity. Freedom. I have been hungry for and valued truth from as young an age as I can remember. I recounted to my husband this week an instance from kindergarten where I took the Polar Express bell I received "from Santa" to school to show the boy picking on me that Santa was real. I am now embarrassed, but five-year-old me shook that little bell in his face with absolute assurance that I knew the truth. I was certain. I was wrong. I have gotten it wrong many times since then and when I do, I have to repent of my pride. If I am unsure of something, or even if feel certain, I beg God to convict me where I am wrong. However, it will be my lifelong pursuit to seek the truth and proclaim it.

So, when it comes to leaving a legacy of faith, what are we doing with the generations behind us? Are we playing telephone and just hoping that they pick up on a slogan or a phrase or our interpretation of something as we continue on in our busy lives? Are we passing on beloved traditions without clarifying them to others or even understanding them ourselves? Or are we seekers and portrayers of absolute truth? Do we bind truth to our hands and write it on our foreheads as the Shema says? Are we telling our kids what we are learning and also asking them what they are learning? Truth-sharing is not one-way. I have learned many things from the faith of my boys. My teenage students have taught me more about boldness, courage, and conviction than I likely ever taught them. Are we speaking truth wherever we go? After all, how will they know if they don’t hear (Rom. 10:14)?

The Shema is all about attentive listening. Telephone is sharing what we think we hear while distracted by all that is going on around us. Tradition is trusting what is historically passed down rather than taking ownership of our faith for ourselves, reading the scriptures for ourselves, and understanding for ourselves. Truth is hard work. It takes diligence. It takes getting it wrong and saying sorry and trying again. Seeking and portraying truth is not a perfect straight line, but it is a life worth living and passing on. If our young people are leaving the church in droves--which they are--are we asking what it is we’ve been offering them? It is my experience that once people taste living water, they do not walk away from it to return to tap water. Are we showing them where and how to access it? Once the Woman at the Well understood the truth, she told everyone what she learned. They all sought out the source of the truth for themselves and my favorite part is what they said once they did:

They said to the woman, “We no longer believe just because of what you said; now we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this man really is the Savior of the world.” ~John 4:42

Jesus clarified His message to her until He knew she understood. As soon as she did, she told everyone she knew and was perhaps the first missionary. Is it possible that we are too busy going about our day--maybe even our good ministry work--to stop and point people to the well? I am guilty of rushing through my life in all of my “important” tasks and missing those around me—those given to me—to show them truth. Disciple-making is slow work, but oh so gratifying. To make sure that the truth is being heard AND understood and not make assumptions is the task set before all of us, not just those on pastoral staff at our churches. Studies performed by the Barna Group found that the staying-power in church communities is found in multigenerational settings. I know how much I benefit from the wisdom of those more mature than me in the faith and I am eternally grateful for all the people of varying ages who pour into my kids.

When Jesus was asked by a scribe in Mark 12 which commandment he believed to be the greatest, Jesus quoted the Shema:

'Hear O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is one; You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.' The second is this, 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no other commandment greater than these.

These are not mutually exclusive commands. If we truly love God, we love people. ALL people. Full stop. And if we have any shot at loving people well, we must know the person who is love Himself. I cannot think of anything more loving than to tell the truth and clarify it because as Jesus said, “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” (John 8:31-32). Telephone can be fun and traditions can be enriching, but freedom is found in seeking, finding, and proclaiming truth.

Truth. Clarity. Freedom.