“On the other hand” (Tevye)
The musical Fiddler on the Roof takes place in the Russian village of Anatavke in 1905. The main character’s name is Tevye. He is a poor milkman with five daughters. The primary plot revolves around the engagement and marriages of his daughters. Tevye is proud of the traditions that shape his life and belief system, but he is also aware how much these traditions are rooted in not much more than tradition. His devotion to his traditions is challenges as each one of his eldest daughters becomes engaged. The tradition of the time was for a matchmaker to find a bride for a husband. However, the oldest daughter is in love with a childhood friend. When she finds that she has been promised to the town butcher, an older widower, she is mortified. Her young love goes to Tevye and asks for permission to act as his own matchmaker and asks for permission to marry his daughter. Tevye struggles because he knows he would be breaking the tradition but sees how much his daughter loves the young man and allows it. Later on, his next daughter and her love approach Tevye and announce their engagement to him. The young man is Jewish, but is not from the village and is a Marxist revolutionary. Tevye again struggles with allowing the engagement but allows it because he sees how much his daughter loves him. With this breaking of the traditions it went even further than the first time. This time the two didn’t ask for permission for marriage, only a blessing. Additionally, the young man was not as devout and not from the community. The third daughter then approaches her father about becoming engaged to her love. This time Tevye would even hear it. This young man isn’t even Jewish. They decide to get married anyway and Tevye disowns her for it. In one of the last scenes, after being forced out of their village and risking never seeing this daughter again, reluctantly shows that his love for his daughter was even greater than the breaking of his fundamental beliefs.
Tevye is faced with betraying the traditions he finds so much of his identity in and his beliefs that give him such comfort for the sake of honoring the love he has for his daughters. He strives for integrity in that he doesn’t want to simply betray his beliefs, but considers them to see if they are truth or nothing more than the way things are. At first it was easy. The matchmaker tradition was obviously not biblical, but did meet a cultural need. With the second challenge he was able to see that marrying outside of the community and to someone of radical ideas challenged his ideas about what community meant, but that it too was not unbiblical. With the third challenge, his daughter’s engagement to a Christian, it rocked his beliefs to the core. He couldn’t ever justify this. He only knew, eventually, that it was the right thing to do.
I feel that I have faced a similar challenge over the past few years. The evangelical paradigm I grew up with obviously caused me a lot of distress, but it was what I knew and loved. When I first began this journey that I am currently on toward a new paradigm, it involved issues that were relatively uncomplicated (while still volatile to many) such as my problems with tithing and use of church resources. Later it became more difficult to reconcile with my views on such things as homosexuality and what is truly meant by Christian perfection. Now I feel like Tevye being told that his daughter is marrying a Christian. I am reluctantly and cautiously embracing an image of God that is radically different than anything I have ever considered to be in the sphere of Christianity. However, if I am ever to ever embrace a narrative of God that I now understand to be much more real I have to let go of some of those beliefs. It isn’t that I am adopting new beliefs, but that beliefs are having to come second to relationship. Even though some of my beliefs about what is and is not true are changing (similar to Tevye and his dealing with the news of his first two daughters), my spiritual journey is facing its greatest challenge in the giving up of seeing my beliefs as what defines me as a Christian. Like Tevye, if I intend to experience the event the way I desire to experience it I will have to betray what I believe in order to discover what I know.
The musical Fiddler on the Roof takes place in the Russian village of Anatavke in 1905. The main character’s name is Tevye. He is a poor milkman with five daughters. The primary plot revolves around the engagement and marriages of his daughters. Tevye is proud of the traditions that shape his life and belief system, but he is also aware how much these traditions are rooted in not much more than tradition. His devotion to his traditions is challenges as each one of his eldest daughters becomes engaged. The tradition of the time was for a matchmaker to find a bride for a husband. However, the oldest daughter is in love with a childhood friend. When she finds that she has been promised to the town butcher, an older widower, she is mortified. Her young love goes to Tevye and asks for permission to act as his own matchmaker and asks for permission to marry his daughter. Tevye struggles because he knows he would be breaking the tradition but sees how much his daughter loves the young man and allows it. Later on, his next daughter and her love approach Tevye and announce their engagement to him. The young man is Jewish, but is not from the village and is a Marxist revolutionary. Tevye again struggles with allowing the engagement but allows it because he sees how much his daughter loves him. With this breaking of the traditions it went even further than the first time. This time the two didn’t ask for permission for marriage, only a blessing. Additionally, the young man was not as devout and not from the community. The third daughter then approaches her father about becoming engaged to her love. This time Tevye would even hear it. This young man isn’t even Jewish. They decide to get married anyway and Tevye disowns her for it. In one of the last scenes, after being forced out of their village and risking never seeing this daughter again, reluctantly shows that his love for his daughter was even greater than the breaking of his fundamental beliefs.
Tevye is faced with betraying the traditions he finds so much of his identity in and his beliefs that give him such comfort for the sake of honoring the love he has for his daughters. He strives for integrity in that he doesn’t want to simply betray his beliefs, but considers them to see if they are truth or nothing more than the way things are. At first it was easy. The matchmaker tradition was obviously not biblical, but did meet a cultural need. With the second challenge he was able to see that marrying outside of the community and to someone of radical ideas challenged his ideas about what community meant, but that it too was not unbiblical. With the third challenge, his daughter’s engagement to a Christian, it rocked his beliefs to the core. He couldn’t ever justify this. He only knew, eventually, that it was the right thing to do.
I feel that I have faced a similar challenge over the past few years. The evangelical paradigm I grew up with obviously caused me a lot of distress, but it was what I knew and loved. When I first began this journey that I am currently on toward a new paradigm, it involved issues that were relatively uncomplicated (while still volatile to many) such as my problems with tithing and use of church resources. Later it became more difficult to reconcile with my views on such things as homosexuality and what is truly meant by Christian perfection. Now I feel like Tevye being told that his daughter is marrying a Christian. I am reluctantly and cautiously embracing an image of God that is radically different than anything I have ever considered to be in the sphere of Christianity. However, if I am ever to ever embrace a narrative of God that I now understand to be much more real I have to let go of some of those beliefs. It isn’t that I am adopting new beliefs, but that beliefs are having to come second to relationship. Even though some of my beliefs about what is and is not true are changing (similar to Tevye and his dealing with the news of his first two daughters), my spiritual journey is facing its greatest challenge in the giving up of seeing my beliefs as what defines me as a Christian. Like Tevye, if I intend to experience the event the way I desire to experience it I will have to betray what I believe in order to discover what I know.
Amen!!!!!
ReplyDeleteWe are walking a very similar path my friend.
Check out my last blog entry about Child Sacrifice, Euchre and God :)
I loved your last line in that Peter.
ReplyDeleteI think that hardest part is that people automatically think that your "beliefs" somehow separate you from them.