Tradition for its own sake

A while back someone accused me of saying that I hated tradition. That person was incorrect. She also had a serious case of selective hearing and numerous other problems with me, but this is neither the time nor the place to talk about that.

What I actually said was,"I hate tradition for tradition's sake."

We Southern Baptists are bad about this. We tend to think apostolic Christianity is whatever our grannies did. Who else would call something "contemporary" when it came from the 1970s, as opposed to "traditional", which is how they did it in the 1950s.

We have a seriously skewed view of time.

But we're here to talk about tradition.

I'm not against having traditions. I'm thankful for those who came before me, and I'm glad to have giants on whose shoulders to stand. We should build on the foundation we have, but not be bound by it.

Too often, though, we think our job as Christians is to pass along the way we were taught. It's not. I doubt many of our traditions are in Scriptrure. That means at some point, someone made them up. If they don't work anymore, someone can stop them.

But that takes courage.