I grew up in Waukesha, Wisconsin, population around 20,000. I attended First Methodist Church from 1st grade until I left to finish my bachelor’s degree in Madison at the university. So from 1941 until 1957, my religious tradition was that of the Sunday School, choir, youth fellowship, and church services at First Methodist, visiting other churches with my friends on occasion (Catholic, Presbyterian,Episcopal, Baptist, Congregational, Reformed, and Lutheran).
Every church as well as mine seemed to have the same basic traditional teaching: God is love, the Golden Rule, and the Two-fold Commandment. All straight from the Bible, all beyond our ability to be perfect about, but all something we were to strive for. And we knew that was possible because so many of the adults we knew were way better at them than we as kids were.
There were differences especially with the Catholics who had their own school and confession and unmarried priests but outside of that, you could hardly tell the difference among us.
From first grade, we all were taught Jesus’ parables. We all knew the parable of the Good Samaritan. By the time I was of confirmation age, I was aware that the parable arose out of a typical argument among rabbis who were searching for the key to their own religion. For Jews, it was “Which is the greatest law?” For Jesus it was the Two-fold Commandment, “Love God and love your neighbor as yourself.”
Like the one who questioned Jesus about it, I too wondered if I could love all of my neighbors. That was pretty easy. I knew the folks who lived on our street, and around the corners off both ends of its one block length. I knew all the kids in my Sunday School class and most of their parents. I knew the kids in my class at school and some of their parents too. We had Jewish, Mexican, African American, and Italian classmates. We got along.
There were two kids I avoided. One had a funny shaped head and talked a little funny. He turned out to be a really sharp and friendly guy, I found out after thinking about him as a neighbor. The other kid was a bully and I finally decided to walk home from school with him one day in sixth grade and met his mother. He and I never became friends but I discovered he was human.
That is my religious tradition. No one was really not my neighbor. Some I just had to get around some mental obstacles in myself.
Jesus had a way of changing the question. His rabbi challenger asked “Who is my neighbor?” almost as if he could exclude some people like foreigners, people of other religions, particularly that mixed breed known as Samaritans. Jesus turned it all around. He told the story of the Good Samaritan. And then he put in the zinger, “Who was neighbor to the man struck down by thieves?” Jesus wanted all of us to be neighbors to anyone around us. We were to be neighborly toward, to love as God does, everyone who is nearby.
That is my understanding of Christianity. It goes back in my lifetime to 1941 when I first remember encountering the nature and purpose of being a Christian.
It seemed to me that all my friends and neighbors, Jewish, Mexican, whatever, were on the same page. Growing up meant getting better at treating one another with respect and offering help in time of need.
That was and is and always will be my understanding of Christian tradition.
So if someone demands I follow their tradition which excludes others and allows mistreating them, that really bothers me. It is one thing to be trying to figure out what is the best way to treat murderers and other people who harm anyone. It is another to make it lawful to set up a segment of people for discrimination, for exclusion from being treated with respect and being given help in time of need. I don’t care if some part of the Bible is quoted to allow that discrimination. What makes the Bible the Word of God for me is that part which Jesus said was the most important, Good Samaritan and all. Everything else in the Bible must then be understood in light of that, as we have done with left-handed people, people who eat crustaceous seafood, slaves, those who blend cloth, and those who have divorced.
That is traditional Christianity to me. All this stuff that has been harped on since 1972 somehow does not fit my understanding of Christianity. I have no trouble living and working with those who think that 1972 stuff is terribly important. There are so many things going on that differences of opinion on what is Christian tradition usually doesn’t matter. We’re being neighbors to one another on everything else that is really important.
In Christian tradition, it is out of mutual respect that we exchange views on differences of opinion and try to find a better way to deal with them. I’d tend to think in terms of “live and let live” unless somebody was suffering harm because of the behavior in question. Where there is harm, we had better relieve it rather than perpetuate it or initiate it.
So, if someone thinks my tradition causes harm, tell me what that harm is. And if I perceive a harm being done by someone with a different Christian tradition, I will do my best to point it out respectfully. And if we can’t alleviate the harm being done, then maybe we have to go back to Jesus and ask once again, perhaps in more modern terms, “What is the best basis for Christian tradition?”
