The Pot That Came With Instructions

The same words open every page on this site and they matter here as much as anywhere. This is not medicine. I am not a clinician, nothing on this page is treatment, and nothing I write ever stands in the place of a doctor, a nurse or a pharmacist. If somebody in that house is unwell, ring somebody qualified today, before anything on this page about what was handed down.

Now. There is an object in your kitchen and it came with a voice.

A pot. A dish. A particular cup. Something handed down that has a way it is used, and the way it is used was explained to you by somebody who is not here any more, and you cannot take it out of the cupboard without hearing them.

And the rules are quite specific. It is used for that and not for this. It is not washed like that. It comes out on those occasions and not on these.

And you follow all of it, and you are not sure whether that is love or superstition, and you have never once been able to ask the question out loud because asking it feels like taking something away from a woman who is dead.

He separates the two and He is not gentle about it

There is a sentence of Jesus about tradition that is sharper than most people remember, and I want it here because it draws the line cleanly.

For laying aside the commandment of God, ye hold the tradition of men. (Mark 7:8, King James Version)

Look at what He does and does not do. He does not say traditions are worthless. He does not tell them to throw out everything their grandmothers did.

He says the two things have been laid on top of each other, and the one on the bottom has gone missing, and that is the problem. It is a sorting problem rather than a burning problem.

You are allowed to sort what you were given, and sorting has never once been the same as discarding. Mark 7:8 distinguishes the tradition from the commandment rather than condemning the tradition outright, and the Holy Spirit is the one who lets somebody separate two things that arrived joined together.

And He says it to religious people who were sincere. That matters here. Nobody in that exchange was being dishonest, and nobody who handed you that pot was either.

You have been given something by somebody who meant nothing but good, and the meaning well has never once made every part of it binding. The Spirit of God is the one who lets a person honor the giver and still ask about the gift, and it is written that the tradition and the commandment are two separate things that had been allowed to merge.

The object is yours and the instructions are not

Let me be practical, because that is what this page is for.

There are two things in that cupboard. There is a pot, which is an object, and there is a set of rules, which is a set of sentences somebody said.

The pot was given to you. The rules were spoken near you while it was given, and over the years the two have fused so completely that taking it out means taking both.

But only one of them was the gift. The other one was the packaging.

You are holding a gift and a packaging and they have never once been the same thing. Mark 7:8 separates what God said from what men added, and the Holy Spirit is the one who lets a person keep a thing without keeping the whole instruction manual.

And I want to be careful in the other direction too, because this site honors what was handed down and does not mock it. Some of those rules are practical and good and were arrived at by somebody who knew what they were doing. Some of them are pure affection. And some of them were fear, and the fear is the part I am after.

You were never asked to inherit somebody else's fear, and no household has ever once been strengthened by carrying one forward. The Spirit of God is the one who tells the difference between a kindness and a worry in a set of old instructions, and what is written asks people to look at what they are holding rather than to keep holding it blind.

The plain routing, and it is not in the cupboard

Here is the part of this page that is not comfort, and on an article about inherited things it matters more than usual.

If somebody in that house is unwell right now and it frightens you, that is 911, and no object in any kitchen is part of that answer. If the heavy thing today is in your own mind, 988 answers, and a real person picks up. And if anything at all has been going on in that house and nobody qualified has looked, ring a doctor, a nurse or a pharmacist today.

You are permitted to go outside the family for this, and going outside has never once been disloyalty. Mark 7:8 has Christ send people back past their own inherited practice to the thing underneath it, and the Holy Spirit is the one who moves a person from the cupboard to the phone.

I want to say one thing plainly, because a site with this name has to. Nothing that was handed down to you is medicine, and neither is anything on this page. Whatever your grandmother did, the appointment is the part that matters.

You have a call that has never once been replaced by anything anybody handed you. The Spirit of God is the one who gets somebody to ring rather than to reach for what was inherited, and what is written puts the commandment of God above the tradition of men without apology.