Traditions: Viva la Powdered wig (Mark 7:9-23)

Let’s get right to the mother of all church issues.  Traditions.  Which ones are of God?  Which ones can we live without?

By looking at the last 100 years of church history and by listening to the questions being asked today, it seems that one primary issue people are trying to determine is this:  How do we tell the commands of God from the traditions of men?  And once we figure that out, how do we handle the division that will arise once somebody steps outside those traditions?

This “tradition” discussion is not new, neither is the solution.

A few hundred years ago, every respectable man wore a powdered wig. What rebels broke against that great idea? Young Jeezy and I agree ... Long live the wowdered pig!

 Look around. Many of the older generations of saints condemn the younger because they will not take up the traditions which have been their  heartfelt, personal identity markers for decades and centuries.  And many of the younger generation looks down on the older because they have too many identity markers they believe are unnecessary and outside of Jesus.

If my reading of church culture is too harsh here, read the Apostle Paul’s explanation of the weak and strong in Romans 14.  This chapter is Paul dealing with controversy over traditions in the church in Rome 2000 years ago. We see this is an age-old problem of God’s people. 

In the church in Rome, one faction believed you could eat and drink everything (the strong) and the other had traditions that strictly forbade some food and wine (the weak).  To the strong it was a matter of preference.  To the weak, it was a sin issue.  Paul’s response?  “Whatever you believe about these things, keep it between yourself and God” (vs 22).  

So what were “these things” Paul talks of.  In vs. 1 he calls them disputable matters … traditions passed down over time that may seem holy and beneficial, but are not outright commands from God.  In other words, these disputable matters are not essential and cannot be expected of people.  They are not covenant issues. They are not actually sin issues, though some may see it that way because of their traditions.

Jesus and the Pharisees
In this case in Mark 7:1-8, the traditions (the disputable matter) have become a tool of exclusion.  The weak ones who lived by the tradition couldn’t accept Jesus and his disciples who did not wash.  It made Jesus angry then, and it makes him angry now when weak saints use their traditions to exclude people from the church. 

In vs. 9-23 Jesus jumps on the Pharisees for actually twisting the intention of the Word of God with their traditions.  My friend says that when people make Bible say what they want it to say, they are “raping the word of God”.

So what do we do?
I think we ought to do as Paul taught in Romans 14.  Whatever we believe about traditions … about disputable matters, we ought to keep it to ourselves.  

THINK:

1. What traditions are you wrestling with, trying to determine if they are Biblical commands or just a weird misunderstanding of a scripture?
2. How do people in the church help turn others from sin if we are supposed to keep our opinions about such things to ourselves?
3. How do we know what sins are real sins and which are actually just breaking against traditions?