My recent post Protestant Traditions Not Found In The Bible received one of the highest site visit counts I've ever had. I'm wondering the reason. Is it because so many people are interested in the topics of church and tradition? Is it because I also happened to leave a higher than usual number of comments on other large readership blogs and gained clickthroughs from my comments? Probably a bit of both.
In any case, I created the list to make a few observations. One, Protestantism has its traditions, too. I often hear criticisms from Protestants about the traditions of Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy. Many of these criticisms are not necessarily about the specific traditions themselves, but that RC and EO have them at all. We should be careful about criticising others who hold to traditions if we ourselves do as well. Some of the Protestant traditions I listed are rock solid foundations of some people's faith, and to question them is to suggest one's own apostasy.
Another observation is that some of these traditions not found in the bible are so central to church that things that are found in Scripture aren't observed parts of those traditions. For example, I recently added "going to church" as a tradition (thank you, Judy). Hebrews 10:24-25 is so heavily relied upon as a command to go to church (funny, it isn't even in the imperative) that the other traditions like the Sunday meeting being a "worship service" crowd out what the passage actually says about what we're supposed to be doing in church, if in fact we take not forsaking the assembling together meaning we need to go to church. Where is stimulating one another to love and good deeds and encouraging one another as mentioned found in our worship services?
I don't have a problem with tradition as long as it neither contradicts Scripture, nor crowds out things that Scripture says we must do.
It is also interesting to note, in reference to the Hebrews 10:24-25 passage, the context references persecution. That is why they were afraid to meet together. The context has nothing to do with people skipping church and hardly fits with the reasons people don't go to church in modern-day American society.
ReplyDeleteYa riled up my pastor son. He took me to task for reposting your post. It was great. We need to ask questions nobody's asking all the time.
ReplyDeleteYou do, thanks