This people honors me with their lips,
but their hearts are far from me;
in vain do they worship me,
teaching as doctrines human precepts.
We honor God with our lips, and this as we should, but are our hearts far from him? This may require some introspection on our part to discern accurately. The Pharisees had certainly convinced themselves that their supplemental rules and traditions were meant to be a more extreme way to prove their hearts were close to God.
You disregard God’s commandment but cling to human tradition.”
He went on to say,
“How well you have set aside the commandment of God
in order to uphold your tradition!
Much of the way we live out our faith is neither from the Scriptures nor the Apostolic Tradition but rather from our own human tradition. We have come to insist on a variety of practices and a way of self-presentation that are meant to be pious and devout. So too in politics we have ways of participating that may have started off noble, even designed to avoid objective evil, but which have devolved into merely tribal.
An example will help us to see how we can get carried away with merely human traditions. If someone experiences the power of God through a renewal movement this is certainly a good thing. Trying to share that experience and that movement with others is also good. But insisting that it is the only way, and passing judgment on those who don't choose that particular path, assuming we have a spirituality that is somehow superior, is wrong. Parallel examples of a more traditional sort could also be easily identified.
Human traditions must be judged on their fruit. Are they actually bringing hearts closer to God? Are they actually freeing us to love one another? Or have they become distractions from the weightier matters of justice and mercy (see Matthew 23:23)? Have they become excuses that prevent us from being challenged to love others in ways that may have a cost for us?
Yet you say,
‘If someone says to father or mother,
“Any support you might have had from me is qorban”’
(meaning, dedicated to God),
you allow him to do nothing more for his father or mother.
We were made in the image and likeness of God. But our traditions, if we are not careful, try to remake God in our image and likeness. They provide an entry point for us at first because they contain something that is connatural to us and our temperament. Then, if we are not careful, we insist on that for everyone, and judge anyone who will not take the same path. This is a tendency against which we must be on guard. Without grace we will tend to shift the priority to our preferences rather than God's will. When this happens, good things are changed from entry points to occasions of judging others and excuses to remain unchanged ourselves.
The image of God within us was obscured by sin. But the renewal of the image that Jesus made possible is a gift he gave us in baptism. Yet, having received it, we still need to live it, to let it bear fruit.
Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind (see Romans 12:2)
put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness (see Ephesians 4:22-23)
On our own we tend to fall back toward the chaos before creation. But God who makes all things new can renew us as well. Let us live so as to depend on it.
You have made him little less than the angels,
and crowned him with glory and honor.
You have given him rule over the works of your hands,
putting all things under his feet.
Steven Curtis Chapman - All Things New (a different one)
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