The Council of Jerusalem marked a historic moment in the early Church’s attempt to grapple with the tension between divine truth and cultural traditions. The Council addressed a crucial question: can salvation be found outside Jewish law and customs?
As narrated in the Acts of the Apostles, chapter 15, the conflict was not a mere disagreement. It was a profound struggle, a battle of ideologies, revolving around whether non-Jewish Christian converts should adhere to traditional Jewish customs, particularly circumcision.
Those in favor of upholding these customs argued that the way to grace was through the gate of their inherited tradition. This view led to a polarizing debate. Debates about deeply held cultural beliefs vis-a-vis the gospel create no less a slight tension among the best communities of believers anywhere, anytime. History repeats itself.
Cultural Pruning and the Essence of the Gospel
When Jesus speaks of pruning (John 15:1-2), he paints a vivid picture that transcends the seasons of the vine and pierces to the core of Christian identity. Like the gardener’s shears to the vine, the gospel calls for a radical and sometimes painful reevaluation of cultural norms in light of essential truths.
In his teachings, Jesus prioritizes the heart of the law over its external expressions. He challenges the Pharisees and the religious establishment of his time, pointing out the hypocrisy in valuing human tradition over love, mercy, and justice.
The Council of Jerusalem (the First Christian Council), in a way, answered a question that continues to resonate even today among Christians: how do we navigate the boundaries of culture in the context of the boundlessness of the gospel? How do we reconcile our preferred ways of life with the spirit of the gospel?
A Parameter of Faith
The council’s response was not just a decision; it was a liberation. The apostles concluded that faith in Christ does not require the yoke of Mosaic customs. The calling of the gospel was not to bind its followers with cultural traditions but to set them free to bear the fruits of the Spirit — love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. It is to live a life of grace through faith in Christ.
Fast forward to our time, and the Church is packed with cultural practices and norms, some of which have been elevated to religious piety. Every way of life takes on the cloth of devotion in the name of inclusion. We face the same challenge the early apostles faced — to sift through the familiar and the traditional and remain rooted in the unchanging essence of Christ’s teachings.
The Dangers of Dogmatic Tradition
The craft of cultural pruning is the art of discernment, a task burdened by the human propensity to conflate doctrine with dogma, to venerate tradition for its own sake rather than as a conduit for spiritual growth. When we elevate cultural norms to infallibility that they define the parameters of salvation and spiritual worth, we distort the gospel. The gospel’s liberating message becomes a shackle.
The danger lies in the false security we often find in the stability of tradition, a deceptive comfort that hinders the challenging examination of our beliefs. But growth, spiritual or otherwise, does not thrive in comfort zones. Instead, the discomfort of adversity helps us grow. The cross symbolizes pruning. Only through the transformative process of pruning — of letting go of that which does not bear fruit — can we find the space to grow, becoming a more faithful reflection of the divine image we are.
The Path Forward
How do we continue the sacred work of cultural pruning in our modern context? The answer lies in the gospel — the call to radical love, to serve without cultural prejudice. It is an ongoing task, one filled with challenges and resistance. Yet, it is the responsibility of every believer to consistently examine, question, and align their lives with the unadulterated message of Christ.
Our commitment to this work is not a renunciation of tradition. Instead, it is a deeper affirmation of the gospel’s power to transcend cultural barriers. It is an act of faith that we can be more than the sum of our cultural signifiers and that we can wear the mantle of Christian identity without the yoke of prejudice, entitlement, or sloth.
The Immutable Truth
As we find it in Jesus’ teachings, the truth is an uncomfortable and disruptive force. It dismantles the structures of our ego, cultural pride, and ingrained prejudices. It calls us to a higher standard, a purer way of being. The essence of the gospel — life and freedom in Christ — is not an excuse for lawlessness or a rejection of tradition. It is a framework that allows us to distinguish between the signs of fruitfulness and the deadwood of cultural norms.
The gospel’s pruning is a never-ending task. It is a call to continual reformation and transformation. It requires the humility to admit the limitations of our cultural lens and the courage to hold our beliefs up to the unyielding light of Christ’s teachings. In this radical reorientation, the Church can indeed be the vibrant, diverse, and transformative body it is commissioned to be — one that bears the fruit of the gospel.
[Readings: Acts 15:1-6; John 15:1-8]
