Throughout history, many of the customs of the early church were lost or replaced, beginning with the destruction of the temple and continuing to entrench themselves in the church over its first 300 years to today. Many factors influenced the transformation it underwent. At Nicea, nearly 300 years after the coming of the Messiah, in the quest for unity among the different existing Christian groups, Christianity was stripped of its practices related to Judaism, even though these had been endorsed by Jesus (Yeshua) himself and taught by his disciples. Thus, the congregation of believers in the incarnate Savior was left stripped of many customs born from the desire to keep the commandments He had given at Sinai.

This stripping away of its customs caused the church over time to begin incorporating or adapting customs from other peoples, and even those that remained were distorted. Because it is impossible for a community to progress over time without practices and customs that characterize it. So when those customs are eliminated, new ones must necessarily be invented. This resulted in a church with many customs that the early Christians never actually celebrated, and in most cases, they would never have accepted celebrating them either. This includes Jesus and the apostles. One only needs to analyze what is celebrated today in most churches and under what circumstances these traditions arose. Traditions such as Christmas, Easter, Halloween, and others, even the liturgy of worship services today.

It is sad to see how the vast majority of Christians today view these new customs as something good or important, without realizing how far removed they are from those customs and traditions given by God to His people, which ultimately are for our well-being in life. Claiming that these are old, that they no longer have validity simply because they do not know, or rather knowing, but in a twisted way due to the influence of what we know as “gnosis.” One cannot turn away from facts such as those at the Council of Nicea, where it was shown how in those first three centuries Christianity was already different among different groups and thus needed a conclave to resolve differences. For example, at Nicea, many of those Christian groups not only did not join in what was agreed there, but they did not even attend. Centuries later, the testimony of that “Romanized” Christianity, as it was settled to resolve all differences, fell into disrepute for having lost much more than what it “had gained.” With known events like the Crusades, among others, which diametrically oppose the teachings and practices of the early Christians, it can be concluded that the Christianity we have today “Romanized” is far from the Christianity of the early days. Therefore, prejudices must be set aside to understand more about the history of the church, because there are many things we do not know that, due to this ignorance, lead us to conclusions that are not well-founded, becoming a challenge for those of us who wish to reclaim those traditions and incorporate them into our daily lives. Those of us who desire to resemble the church of the apostolic times must acknowledge that we still have much to travel and learn to begin to embody that divine design.

Author: Mr. Mesac Martinez Mora