An African Tribesman Speaks

Because I believe that our Lord will not return until  sometime after there is a redeemed representative from ". . . every nation, and people and tribe and tongue." (Rev. 5:9 et al), I give monthly to the Wycliffe Translators (one of only a handful of organizations who are trying to reach the unreached languages). Consequently, I get their monthly newsletter, Frontline. In a recent edition there was a story about a Lutos tribesman in the Republic of Chad, who had come to Christ, but still was practicing some of the rituals and customs of the native religions, in addition to practicing Christianity. Then he finally got a Bible in his own language, and his life began to change. He was quoted as saying:

 

               "I was serving two masters; the Word of God and our traditional practices. I was still very devoted to the traditional religious rites of my people."

The article went on to relate that this man continued to move away from his native religious traditions and to embrace Christian practices as he learned then from the Bible.

As I reflected on this story, I thought to myself how very much this man was like so many of us in this country! We too follow our traditions rather than Biblical teaching. A major difference, however is that he previously had no Bible to follow. We have the Bible. We have had it for longer than our nation has been in existence, and we have it in numerous translations, from the literal translations to the so-called "dynamic equivalence" paraphrases.  We simply don't bother to read them.

There are many in our nation that consider our common Christian practices to be biblical simply because we are a "Christian nation", all the while not realizing that many of our national cultural practices and extrabiblical to say the least, and sometimes downright anti-Christian.

Our cultural practices and religious traditions have become so entwined with our religious beliefs and practices that we scarcely recognize the difference. Even though "Protestantism", which is commonly held to be a "back to the Bible" movement has in every one of its denominational groups a set of extrabiblical traditions that are not faithful to Biblical revelation.

I am not going to single out any particular things that fit this category, but I simply mean to point out that we are frequently more committed to our individual traditions because we refuse to read the Bible for ourselves. We become so committed to our traditional practices that the way of the Bible is strange to us. We are like the  people God spoke to through the prophet, Hosea:

"Were I to write for [them] my laws by the ten-thousands they would be regarded as a strange thing." Hosea 8:12 ESV

Indeed God's ways seem strange to us, largely because we are ignorant of them. We need to be like that African tribesman from Chad and read the Word, and let it change us. We need to let it move us away from our cultural traditions, and toward the way of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Thanks for sharing this moment with me today.