Man Made Traditions

"Traditions" have taken on a negative connotation in religious circles for some time now. Say, within the last couple of hundred years. Nowadays, if you start talking about traditions in the church, you're likely to get the following verse thrown into your face:

Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ. (Colossians 2:8, KJV)

Of course, this is a verse generally taken out of context and applied to most any tradition of man. St. Paul was addressing this to the church at Colosse in relation to the Judaizers. The Judaizers had lots and lots of traditions of men that sought to reverse the gains they had made with the Gospel of Christ.

To fully understand this, we must first understand what a tradition is.

At its core, a tradition is any practice or teaching that has an established precedent set. As it relates to the Church, it involves two broad areas.

1. A tradition of teaching and interpreting the scriptures.

This is a key and important tradition. This is what St. Paul was primarily referring to in the above verse. Now, this "tradition of men" contrasts sharply with what St. Paul had taught them that Christ had given them, which he clearly states in the verse preceding the one above:

As ye have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in him:
Rooted and built up in him, and stablished in the faith, as ye have been taught, abounding therein with thanksgiving. (Colossians 2:6-7, KJV)

This faith that they had been established in through teaching, is key. They had  been taught what Christ and the Apostles taught. Remember, at this point they didn't have the New Testament as we know it today. It was still being written in letters like this one.

So the "tradition of man" was in contrast to the "tradition of Christ" in this context. In short, any tradition that doesn't start with Christ's teachings, is a tradition of man. It is an alternate teaching of the Gospel, sourced not from Christ, though they all claim to be in one fashion or another, but the source of the teaching can be traced back to a single individual.

Ironically, that single individual will almost always claim some type of authority to pull the faith from ashes of man-made traditions, when in reality they are either starting a new tradition that has never been known before, or picking up an old tradition, otherwise known as a heresy, or a teaching which deviates from the tradition of Christ.

It is this which I referred to in the last devotional that if the Holy Spirit lead the Church off into the woods, only to restore it when this or that man came along centuries later, how can I trust Him to get it right with a new tradition? No, for a tradition to be of Christ, He must be the source of the tradition and be such from the beginnng. And how do we know that?

The Bible? Yes, and no. One, it does record for us the teachings of Christ. However, two, it has been used to support all sorts of contradictory interpretations, or traditions of men. They way you know if a teaching is sourced from Christ or not is if it has been taught from the Apostles on to us today, down though history. That is a tradition of Christ.

Any claim to have "reclaimed" the faith through a man is the beginning of a tradition of man or the continuation of one.

2. A tradition of living out that teaching in a particular cultural context.

The teachings of Christ, that tradition, has to be lived out in a life. Each culture will have its own traditions. And aside from a few exceptions, these will almost always be traditions of man. But it is not whether a man started them or not that is the problem, but how well and faithfully they reflect the tradition of the Church's teaching that is the dividing line between good traditions and bad.

For instance, some traditions are prescribed by Christ Himself. Baptism in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as the accepted way for people to enter the Church is one such example. It isn't that such a ritual saves a person in and of itself (there are instances of people being saved without it, like the thief on the cross), but generally if it can be done at all, one is not considered as having accepted Christ if they then reject baptism when available.

Then there are certain traditions of man that have become so attached to a teaching that to ditch the tradition would be paramount to ditching the teaching. An example of this type of tradition is this coming celebration of the Nativity of Christ, or Christmas as it is more commonly known. Most of us know we are not celebrating Jesus's actual birthday on December 25th, rather we are recognizing the importance of the incarnation of Christ as it relates to our salvation, and we celebrate it by not only giving of ourselves to others, but also by holding special worship services at this time of year.

But has Christmas always been celebrated on December 25th in the Church? No. At first, it was tied with the celebration of Epiphany, or Theophany in the Eastern Churches, on January 6th. It wasn't until a few hundred years after Christ that it was separated from that feast and celebrated on the day we now have. But can any of us imagine tossing that tradition and maintaining the truth and teaching of the Incarnation of Christ? It has become so culturally attached to that teaching that ditching it would in fact be to ditch the importance of the Incarnation for our salvation.

Then there are other traditions which can change from culture to culture. These are all man-made traditions, some more universally accepted than others, some more local customs and practices.  These might be the various individual customs around Christmas, for instance. Like in my family, traditionally on Christmas morning, I'll get up and make hot cocoa and my wife will make breakfast pizza. We'll then eat breakfast and begin opening presents in a particular fashion. All that is governed by our family tradition. It doesn't mean everyone else is doing it wrong, but within the community of our family, they take on a significance and importance to us.

Likewise, in the Church, there are such traditions that are peculiar to a whole culture, like the Russian culture, that you won't find anywhere else. As the faith spreads to other cultures, some of those traditions will be adopted, some may be translated into that culture to be a new tradition expressing the tradition of the Faith that Christ gave us.

In such a way the faith becomes more than doctrine and teaching, but a lived out reality in our lives. Without the "traditions of man," those teachings of Christ remain as just a teaching. That is exactly why Christ didn't come to just give us a new philosophy, or a new teaching, but a way of life. Rather than write a book, he wrote an expression of the Faith lived out in our daily lives. A method of our healing.

As I said before, it isn't a matter of whether or not you'll have a tradition of teaching or as a way to live out those teachings in your life. The question is whose tradition will you follow? Because you will follow one, either God's or a man's or your own. Too many of us depend on the third option way too often.

What tradition do you follow?