Do you like tradition? Are they important to you? Do you follow tradition to a T? Do you put tradition above all other things? Are you willing to set aside tradition for something far more important? Will you set them aside for emergencies? Will set them aside to follow Jesus?
We have a lot of traditions. There are cookouts for summer holidays. There are traditions for birthdays. We have family traditions that have been going on for years or decades. Those traditions are hard to break, even if we see the need to set them aside.
We have church, or religious, traditions as well. Most of them are good and based on solid reasoning. However, far too many of our church members do not know what the reasoning is. They simply know that they have always followed them. What are we to do? Stop following the traditions? Let’s think about it.
There are at least three options. One is to stop them. But that seems a bit drastic. The second thing we can do is read our Bibles and purposely look for Scripture passages that point to one of our traditions. The third option, and likely the best, is to both read Scripture and research the traditions to discover their origins.
But the ultimate question we all must wrestle with is, are we willing to give up the tradition, no matter what the reasoning, to follow Jesus? The religious Jews of Jesus’ day followed well founded traditions, but they put them ahead of God. Even if our traditions are good, we cannot allow ourselves to put tradition ahead of following Jesus.
I pray we all seek to understand our traditions. I pray we read Scripture and research traditions. I pray each one of us are willing to give up tradition to follow Jesus as He has called us. Understand traditions. Read your Bible. Give up tradition, if necessary. Follow Jesus no matter what.
Mark 7:6-8 He said to them, “Isaiah prophesied rightly about you hypocrites, as it is written,
‘This people honors me with their lips,
but their hearts are far from me;
in vain do they worship me,
teaching human precepts as doctrines.’
You abandon the commandment of God and hold to human tradition.”
Marty Pressey 