Creation and inheritance are the reasons why mankind continues to progress.
Humans know how to create and turn something that does not exist into a fact. Humans have created crafts and made many things that make life easier for people. Humans have created musical instruments and music, which have brought much joy and peace to mankind. Humans created language and writing, accumulated and improved knowledge, and pushed human civilization upwards.
Humans not only know how to create, but also know the importance of inheritance. If a creation is not passed on, it will be lost for nothing and won’t benefit the people. Therefore, human beings know how to pass down their creations to the next generation or record their creations so that they can be passed down and improved for the benefit of the people.
However, there are several reasons why many creations have not been passed on: Today I would like to share with you the “selfishness of the individual”.
In ancient times, many creations were only passed on to the next generation and not to outsiders, mainly because they did not want outsiders to benefit from them. This prevented many good creations from being improved. If one comes across a suitable as well as intelligent next generation, then the creation can be passed on better. If not, then the generation may not be as good as the next, and even the creation may eventually disappear from the world. Many culinary techniques, medical techniques, and handicraft techniques have been lost in this way.
In addition, there is a Chinese saying that “after teaching the disciple, the master will starve to death”. Therefore, for many ancestral recipes or skills, the master has left a handful of them, so that the disciple will not surpass the master and steal the master’s rice bowl or fame. Encouragement of “disciple surpass the master” is very rare in this society. Imagine every master keeping a handful of skills, the ones passed down will surely be eliminated very soon.
The purpose of discipleship is to pass on Christianity in a better and greater way. It must be a better quality that we pass on. The purpose of discipleship is the transformation of the lives of the members, their active participation in ministry, and their intellectual preparedness. We don’t want the church to passing on one generation weaker than another one.
Too often churches focus on worship, prayer and service, but not on teaching and training. The Pharisees focused on worship, prayer and service, yet they were scolded by Jesus. It was because they focused on external rituals and not on inner life change. They were pious on the outside, but evil on the inside. Their legacy was “the blind leading the blind” and their way was to perish.
What are we passing on in the church? What are we passing on to the next generation?
To pass it on better, we must have better discipleship mechanisms. We must not only have a philosophy of discipleship, but we must also have a method of discipleship. It is only when the philosophy is coupled with the method that we can do a better job of discipleship.