Matthew 15:3 · World English Bible
Matthew 15:3 Meaning He Answered Them
He answered them, “Why do you also disobey the commandment of God because of your tradition?
What does Matthew 15:3 mean?
The ego is expert at guarding the letter of a rule while betraying its purpose, using an inherited form to feel righteous even as it forgets what the form was for. A mind that clings to tradition in place of love has substituted the outer observance for the inner intent, and calls its own forgetting faithfulness.
From the Christian Psychology reading below.
Matthew 15:3 through 2 lenses
The same verse, read by 2 traditions.
Christian Psychology
Esoteric
CHRISTIAN PSYCHOLOGY
Christian Psychology
The ego is expert at guarding the letter of a rule while betraying its purpose, using an inherited form to feel righteous even as it forgets what the form was for. A mind that clings to tradition in place of love has substituted the outer observance for the inner intent, and calls its own forgetting faithfulness.
To answer such a mind with a question is to turn it back upon itself, to expose that its careful keeping of small ordinances has quietly set aside the one thing asked of it. Every elaborate defense of the form is a way of not doing what love commands. The whole of the law was always a single inner choice, and no amount of ceremony can stand in for the mind's decision to love.
Tradition: the inherited outer form the ego keeps in order to feel righteous while forgetting love. The commandment: the single inner choice for love that every rule was only ever meant to serve.
Christian Psychology lensGo deeper in the app
ESOTERIC
Esoteric
Tradition here is the crust of inherited habit and outward custom that the personality builds up until it overrides the living law written in the being. The commandment of God is the inner order of the awakened life, the true directive that rises from the source within. When ritual and handed-down rule are set above that inner voice, a person breaks the very law while appearing to keep religion. The heavy machinery of custom silences the quiet command that speaks from within.
The outer forms, repeated and defended, come to stand against the inward truth they were meant to carry. Habit hardened into law crowds out the living direction of the spirit.
Tradition: the crust of inherited habit and outward custom that hardens over the being and overrides the living inner law
Esoteric lensGo deeper in the app
Christian Psychology lens
Live Matthew 15:3 today
- Look at one routine you keep today, a habit, a schedule, a way you always do something, and ask what it was originally for. If it has drifted from that, adjust it.
- When you are about to say what the rule is to someone today, a policy, a norm, how things are done here, ask first what the person in front of you actually needs. Then decide which matters more.
- In a meeting or a family debate where everyone is arguing about process, bring it back to the actual purpose out loud. Gently, once.
Which of my rules have I started keeping instead of the thing they were for?
The same truth in other traditions
Zen
The finger pointing at the moon is not the moon. A student who studies the finger has learned nothing, however carefully.
Taoism · Zhuangzi
The fish trap exists for the fish. Once you have the fish, you can forget the trap. People who keep the trap and lose the fish have mistaken the means for the point.
Stoicism · Epictetus
Do not recite the rules of the art as if the reciting were the art. The sheep does not bring the shepherd the grass to show what it ate, it produces wool.
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