Devotionals with an Edge: What does that mean?

Greetings and welcome to devotionals with an edge. Or edgy devotionals, if you prefer.

The first question is what are edgy devotionals? Some type of devotionals intended to offend people? Not really. I mean, I don't intend to offend anyone. That said, some people will likely be offended. Just the nature of things. And I guess if anything, edgy devotionals means they will be devotionals that speak the truth about current, hot topics.

But then that merely begs the question, doesn't it? I mean, whose truth will I be proclaiming? Well, if you say "God's", then which version of God's truth? Which interpretation of biblical passages are we going to adhere to? Or to put it another way, whose tradition are we going to follow? Luther's? Calvin's? Wesley's? Zwingli's? The Pope's?

I can hear someone say now, "But I don't follow any tradition. I follow God's"

But whose version of God? Yours? Are you suggesting that you are unique, that you have insight no one else has had on the mind of God?

It's like when a couple of Mormons kept coming to our house while I was gone. My wife kept telling them that they needed to talk to me. So finally they showed up one day when I was home. They gave their presentation about how their leader received a revelation from God that made his heart "burn" and that's how he knew it to be God's truth. And strangely enough, God had problems with how He'd done things previously.

Oh, I'm not saying that's how they would have framed it. But that is in essence what they were saying. Because they claimed that the "Church" got it wrong from the beginning. That specifically, the gates of Hell had prevailed against the Church for nearly 1800 years before Joseph Smith came along. In direct contradiction of Scripture.

"And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it." Matt 16:18 (KJV)

So I asked them one simple question. A question I believe falls at the heart of theirs, and everyone else's to one degree or another that make the claim in one form or fashion that The Church veered off the path early on, and now 400 years later, 800 years later, 1000 years later, 1500 years later, 1800 years later, etc., etc., etc., so-and-so received a new or (in their words) more authoritative revelation that re-establishes the Church and sets things right, the way God really, really intended them to be. What was that question?

If I can't trust the Holy Spirit to get it right the first time, why should I trust Him to get it right with you guys?

And that is where I'm at with any tradition of man. Because I don't care who you are, you will have a tradition. If not of someone else's, you are making up your own. It isn't a matter of having or not having one. It is a matter of whose tradition you will have?

Some time ago on Facebook, I made a claim to speak the truth. Someone else said, in essence, that I was being arrogant. If I made that claim based upon my own reasoning and interpretation of Scripture, I would be arrogant to say such a thing. But I wasn't saying that in arrogance at all, because I wasn't relying upon my own understanding, but those down through Christian history, from the beginning, inspired by the Holy Spirit as much as any person alive today or in recent history could have been.

IOW, if I can't trust the Holy Spirit to have lead people in the first, second, third, and so on, centuries, then why  should I trust you? Or me? Or any one person, whoever they may be? In short, I can't. And if I accept your "untraditional" view of things, then I've lost the faith. Because I don't accept that the Holy Spirit could have gotten things so wrong at the beginning to require a major reset centuries later. If He did, then there is no longer any basis for trusting Him. A premise I can't agree to, unless, of course, it's true! Which I currently don't believe it is.

That is where I get what is true from: A tradition that is consistent with all that has been universally believed from the Apostles on. 

Yes, I'm an Orthodox Christian. Yes, we have traditions. Many of them are "traditions of man." More on that next time.