A Ramble About "Fiddler on the Roof"

Several years ago when we were in college up in Canada and still dating, a large part of the group of friends we hung out with were theater majors. As a result, the videos we often watched together as a group were often either stage musicals or movie musicals adapted from stage. One such movie I remember watching with our theater friends was "Fiddler on the Roof".



The truth is, I don't remember the names of any of the characters which is a shame. But I do remember clearly some lines from the opening scene spoken by the main character as he describes his very Jewish village in Russia. He starts describing the tassels that they wear on their clothes, the prayers shawls, and then he says, "why do we do it? No one knows. It's tradition." And that pretty much sums up the religious observance of the town. They no longer knew, understood, or cared why they did what they did, or any spiritual reasons behind it. They just kept doing it because it had always been done that way, and because it was their tradition.



I've come to realize that most of the Church is the same way. There are certain practices which have been permitted, and certain practices which have been forbidden by the Church since the very beginning. I have written about homosexuality, for example, in my last Ramble. This practice was forbidden along with every other kind of sexual contact outside of marriage. But does anyone remember the real reason why? No. Not really. It's been two thousand years, and by this time, no one really cares. This is the way it is. There are many other things as well such as involvement in politics, involvement in the military, being against abortion, obedience to one's pastors and clergy, voluntary poverty, and other things.



As a result, either the practices continue much like our friend from the Jewish village in Russia, or they get dropped as meaningless traditions. When he didn't actually know the reasons for things, or what the Scriptures said, he made things up off the top of his head, and what he came up with was as good a reason as any to him.



Many churches today just simply call those restrictions and practices of the ancient Church "legalism", and take the view that they were somehow trying to earn their salvation through self-abuse. They don't take the time to actually go back and study what they wrote and left behind to find out why they did what they did.



The truth is that all of those restrictions were self-imposed for very good reasons. They had one goal in mind, and that goal was Jesus Christ. They didn't want any distractions or anything in their lives which could drag them backwards. When they labeled something as sinful, they weren't necessarily assigning a moral value to it, they were saying "look, if I do this I know I'm catering to my own self based interests. I know that if I go to the theater and see this play, it will arouse certain feelings in me which will distract me and blind me from my goal and I don't want that to happen." St. Paul expresses this kind of sentiment eloquently in Philippians chapter 3 where he says he counts everything in his life as trash in comparison with the knowledge of Christ Jesus his Lord.



The problem is that somewhere along the way, down through the centuries, we stopped actually focusing on the reason why we do these things, and started focusing on the things being done. Instead of saying "I'm doing this to draw closer to God by removing the distractions and pitfalls in my life." We began saying, "I'm doing this because if I don't do it I'm going to be in sin." Or "I'm going to hell if I do/don't do this thing." In other words, we lost our Way when we lost our focus on Jesus Christ and started focusing on the things being done.



Somewhere along the way, the Church forgot the reason why it does what it does, and it was then picked up only by a few every so often as they searched hard for it. We honor these people as Saints, but we don't understand why or how they did what they did. We began to believe that the calling to union with God through Jesus Christ was to only the very few, and the rest of us had to just make do and hope we do enough of the right things to make it into heaven. What a magnificent lie that is.



The calling to deification, union with God through Jesus Christ, is the spiritual heritage of every baptized Christian. It is our inheritance and prize, and it is the reason for the self-discipline which changes our whole lives and turns them upside down and doing things which seem to be anything but freedom to those watching from the outside. The austerities and self-sacrifices do not bring it about, but they do assist in helping facilitate it. They do not cause our salvation, but they do assist in moving away from our selves and moving towards Jesus Christ. The ancient Church knew that.



If there is to be any true hope for the Church, then we must reclaim the one goal for ourselves. We must understand the one reason why we place the restrictions on ourselves that we do, and we must place it above everything else in our lives. Jesus Christ is the beginning, the means, and the goal of our lives as we walk His path. If we lose sight of Him, then everything we do becomes pointless.