As a believer in Christ, I would get much offended whenever I’d see any person do something in the name of fulfilling cultural requirements.
Those were the days that I had just got introduced to Christian faith.
Truth be told, many Christians take an offence whenever there is a cultural rite that should be observed. I was also in those same shoes. Later on, I came to know that I was way off the mark as far as cultural requirement is concerned. Why? The answer to that question is right in the Bible. The Bible, and particularly the Old Testament, is based on Jews culture.
Actually, Jesus Christ Himself was birthed and brought up in Jews culture – since His parents, and even grandparents, were of Jews lineage.
The ordinances that God gave to Moses, at Mount Moriah, were all domiciled in Jews traditions. It was therefore an obligation for any Jew to adhere to what The Lord had dictated, since they were in harmony with Jews cultural requirements.
For instance, the rite of passage (circumcision) – from childhood to adulthood – was a practice that originated in Hebrew community, having been brought about by God Himself during His covenant with Abraham.
Of course, there are so many ordinances that God ordered to be observed by the Jews community, so that they may stay clean before Him. (Remember that the Jews were God’s people, by choice). So, anything that He commanded them to observe, was meant to put them in line with whatever He required of them, including any cultural requirements.
Other communities, the gentiles, who’d come later, also had their ordinances and cultural requirements. Some of these ordinances by the gentiles were copied from the Israeli community – like the circumcision one, among others.
However, there were problems when other tribes across the world decided to introduce their laws and ordinances – cultural requirements which could not settle down well with what God had wanted.
Example of what God did not want on people was the manner with which gentiles practiced wife-inheritance. To some extent, wife-inheritance was being practiced by the Jews community, but the gentiles decided to add on things that would finally provoke God to anger. That is where the tug-of-war between Christian faith, and man’s beliefs, started.
Men who had confessed Christian faith saw that wife-inheritance was an abomination before God (because of its culturally-inclined way of practice). It was considered an abomination before God – because men had started to bring in doctrines that were not consistent with Israeli’s cultural requirements, and what God had ordered Israelites through Moses in Mt. Moriah.
However, the culture of wife-inheritance wasn’t anything that’d provoke God to anger had it been done in line with the dictates of the scripture. The same can as well be said of the rite of passage, circumcision.
