Stop! Don’t Throw Away Half the Ham

Earlier this month I traveled to my home-country to attend the 94th biennial convention of the Church of God of Prophecy in The Bahamas. While I have traveled home fairly often the past seven years, to attend funerals and weddings, this particular visit got me thinking about traditions. We use traditions to pass on beliefs and values from generation to generation. Why do we hold on to certain traditions? How are we using our traditions to connect with people of different generations?

I remember a “parable” I once heard Dr. Myles Munroe tell about a poor family that received a leg ham every Christmas. The mother would cut the ham in half, throw away one half and cook the other. She did this every Christmas, just like her mother had done when she was a child. In time the daughter got married and moved into her own house, and at Christmastime she bought a leg ham. She cut the ham in half, threw away one half and cooked the other. When her shocked husband asked her why she threw away half of a perfectly good ham, she said simply that’s what her mother always did.

She was following a tradition passed down by her mother; but that tradition no longer had value, and what she did was wasteful. The daughter did not realize that her mother threw away half of the ham because she had no refrigerator or freezer to store the uncooked portion. Now that the daughter had a refrigerator, she did not have to throw away half of her ham. The mother may have thought her daughter understood that she threw away a perfectly good piece of ham to avoid rot and odor in the house. She was not aware that she had taught her daughter to be wasteful.

Parents may be insisting their children to keep traditions without teaching them the values those traditions are supposed to represent.  This might be one of the reasons there is a disconnect between parents and children. Tradition is like a basket: what’s in the basket is more important than the basket itself. One of my family’s traditions is regular church attendance on Sunday. In fact, I sometimes boast to my children that when I was a boy I had to go to church four times on a Sunday: morning Sunday school, morning divine worship, afternoon Sunday school, evening divine worship. I was in church all day on a Sunday; they only have to go once! My parents wanted to ensure that my siblings and I learn about God and the importance of worshiping Him. But the question today for me, and other parents, is, should I be content that my children go to church every Sunday morning? Since they are keeping up the tradition, can I now expect that my children, and their children, will grow up to love and honor God and live Christian lives? Maybe not. Many young people are rejecting their parents’ values despite having grown up with their parents’ traditions. Like the mother with the ham, we might be passing on traditions without also passing on their meaning.

How can we ensure that we pass on meaning-full traditions? This is one of the questions we will answer at the International Leadership Conference (ILC 2017) of Connecting the Generations International, from June 30 to July 2, 2017, in Toronto, Canada. If you are a leader in your church, home, school, workplace, community, nation, and you want to see your people live in peace and harmony, you should attend this conference. Come and hear Professor Hector Rodriquez of Gordon-Conwell Seminary dissect the characteristics of each generation and show how shared values can bridge generational divides and transform relationships in the home, church, community, and nation.

Register today at www.connectingthegenerationsintl.com

I’m looking forward to seeing you at ILC 2017 in Toronto!