Old Time Religion

The sign out front says “Old time religion taught here daily.” Past experience with that same church sign reminds me that for them “old time” is somewhere around AD 1611 because that same sign once said, “KJV Only Read Here.” But then when I observe students in their academy outside playing soft ball – I think “old time” must mean mid-to-late 1800s, because one would think that “Little House on the Prairie” was being filmed on their playground because the students are dressed in ways that remind me the Engels’ kids!

That’s the problem with “old time” – it depends upon whose definition of “old time” one adopts. For the folks with the church sign – “old time” seems to refer to what is perceived to be a much simpler age where we perceive it would have been easier to be a Christian because women’s skirts were ankle length and men’s shirts were long-sleeved.

That’s a pretty easy target – but certainly not the only opportunity for reflection on our life and witness as Christians. For some people I know, “old time” is purely and simply mid-1960s worship styles and for others it’s The Book of Common Prayer. Others would cite third and fourth century church fathers. As I passed by a packed church building one Saturday morning, my guess was that for them, “old time” is rooted in Leviticus.

That’s the problem with imposing “time lines” on a timeless God and the Christian gospel which is to be proclaimed until “the ends of the ages” and “unto the ends of the earth.” Even for those of us who wish somehow to “restore the ancient order of things” – there is still the great question of what that “ancient order” must look like some twenty centuries later. For a Facebook page I occasionally look at that is populated with “independent Christian Church ministers,” “old time” appears to be that moment in the past when the Restoration Movement actually “restored the church.”

It is the temptation to regulate the Christian gospel in ways that make us feel comfortable that often gets us into the dangerous territory of distorting the gospel. In part, that seems to be the reasoning behind the writing of Colossians. “If with Christ you died to the elemental spirits of the universe, why do you live as if you still belonged to the world? Why do you submit to regulations, ‘Do not handle, Do not taste, Do not touch?’ All these regulations refer to things that perish with use; they are simply human commands and teachings. These have indeed an appearance of wisdom in promoting self-imposed piety, humility, and severe treatment of the body, but they are of no value in checking self-indulgence.” (Colossians 2:20-23, NRSV)

Whatever my “old time” preferences might be, the moment I allow them to become normative approach to life for others I stand in conflict with this text! Learning how to appreciate our preferences without making them prescriptive for other believers may be among the hardest things we Christians are called to do. But we at least ought to try.