When any tradition, no matter how loved and appropriate at some time in the past, hinders worship, belief, and intimacy with the Almighty in the present, that tradition has to go! What traditions am I talking about? I don’t know—you tell me. Perhaps it has to do with style of music or appropriate worship attire or a preferred version of the Bible or how your church practices Holy Communion. It could be anything that, by itself, is not wrong, but if that practice or tradition is now, in all honesty, worshipped or treated as sacred, then it has nullified the Word of God. Traditions are not sacred, only God is! Take a hard look at your traditions, and the traditions of your fellowship. And if you find a sacred cow, it may be time to heat up the barbecue. Be wise, be prayerful, be careful, but enjoy the burnt offering!
The Journey: Matthew 15:6
And so you cancel the word of God for the sake of your own tradition.
Tradition gets a bad rap in Christian circles these days. Much of modern, so-called “seeker-sensitive” spirituality has pretty much done away with anything that smacks of tradition. Yet not all tradition is bad—Holy Communion, to remind us of Christ’s sacrificial death, the living body of Christ, and the return of our Lord; the early creeds of the church to remind us of the great doctrines upon which our faith stands, the recitation of the Lord’s prayer, for obvious reasons; the celebration of special days, like Christmas and Easter, to remind us of his coming and his dying.
However, it is safe to say that the reason modern Christianity is down on tradition in general is that many churches have done exactly what Jesus warned against: they have nullified the authority and power of God’s Word by blind allegiance to these traditions. In other words, the tradition has become the end rather than the means to a greater end—the worship and glorification of Almighty God.
We must be careful at all costs to avoid unthinking and unquestioned loyalty to a tradition. Woodrow Wilson offered a revealing insight about tradition that we really ought to consider here: “To do things today exactly the way you did them yesterday saves thinking.” He was right: blind, uncritical loyalty to a tradition is mental laziness.
We ought to boldly question anything that prevents seekers from experiencing the present reality of a God whose Son broke scores of ridiculous rules and then died to redeem those seekers. We ought to courageously challenge anything that keeps believers from walking more intimately with Jesus Christ. We ought to seriously evaluate anything that might stand in the way God’s presence when he, himself, went out of his way to remove every barrier to his presence. When any tradition, no matter how well loved and appropriate at some time in the past, hinders worship, belief, and intimacy with the Almighty, that tradition has to go!
What traditions am I talking about? I don’t know—you tell me. Perhaps it has to do with style of music or appropriate worship attire or a preferred version of the Bible or how your church practices Holy Communion. It could be anything that, by itself, is not wrong, but if that practice or tradition is now, in all honesty, worshipped or treated as sacred, then it has nullified the Word of God. Traditions are not sacred, only God is!
Take a hard look at your traditions, and the traditions of your fellowship. Identify a tradition that really helps you to experience the presence of God. Then write a paragraph describing why that tradition is important to your faith and honoring to God. If you cannot root it in a “theology” that encourages intimacy, spiritual power, the growth of the fellowship and the evangelization of the lost, then maybe it’s time to fire up the barbecue.
Be wise. Be prayerful. Be careful. And enjoy the burnt offering.
Please note: I reserve the right to delete comments that are offensive or off-topic.