A Mountain of Traditions

From the time that God gave the Law through Moses on Mount Sinai until the time when Jesus the Messiah came approximately 1,500 years passed. By the time Jesus came they had taken the clear and straightforward Law of God and constructed a massive religion filled with traditions and superstitions, some of which directly contradicted the original message. When Jesus came their religious leaders not only didn't recognise Him, but hated Him, persecuted Him, and eventually had Him tortured and murdered at the hands of the Romans. Since the preaching of Jesus until now approximately 2,000 years have passed, and it seems we have also become the recipients of a mountain of traditions accumulated over the years. In order to prepare the way for the return of Jesus, it seems wise to dismantle these stumbling blocks as quickly and thoroughly as possible.

The mountain of Christian traditions consists not only of visible and external practices — the form and function of religious buildings, the concept of a masses or church services and the way they are performed, the roles, titles, clothing, and responsibilities of the religious leaders, and the many commercial products and services made available to adherents – but also the way the Scripture is interpreted and taught. These invisible traditions are more dangerous than the visible ones since they condition people to think something other than the apparent meaning when they read or hear passages in Scripture. One example is this: “seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.” I have never heard anyone preach that Jesus means we should actually try to enter the kingdom of God, but rather that we should start our day early with prayer and Scripture reading, or that we should seek the will of God when we make decisions and trust Him with the results. The danger with this kind of traditional interpretation is that it is actually good advice. But if Jesus literally meant that we should strive to enter the kingdom now before we worry about anything else in life, then teaching people it merely means a morning devotional habit or praying over big decisions is lying to them, opposing Jesus' intention, and keeping them out of the kingdom of God. The trouble is that those of us who have been in churches for any amount of time have been exposed to dramatically more of these traditional interpretations than we realise, and the effects throughout Christianity are devastating. We desperately need to ask God to take off the blinders and let us see His words with fresh new eyes and the guidance of the Holy Spirit.

Perhaps the most dangerous tradition in modern Christianity is its answer to the question, “what must I do to be saved?” When you look at the teachings of Jesus, the answer seems to be very consistently unconditional surrender. To the rich man He said, “sell everything you have, give the money to the poor, you will have treasure in Heaven, and then come follow Me.” At other times He said that in order to enter the kingdom we need to keep the Law, be perfect as God is perfect, and do the will of God. These are impossible requirements, hence the need for surrender. But in churches the requirements vary from raising your hand to repeating a specific prayer to checking a box on a response card to being baptised. We are commanded to be baptised in the name of Jesus, but this follows a deep personal admission of guilt, request for forgiveness, and decision to follow Jesus. Another dangerous tradition is telling everybody that we are all children of God when Jesus clearly said that there are wheat and tares, sheep and goats, and He even said that Judas was a devil. When the Pharisees said God is their father Jesus said that actually the devil is their father because that is whose will they were doing. Without the total regeneration of the Holy Sprit we are destined for hell no matter how many religious hoops we jump through, how clean or holy our life appears, or how much we try to discipline or reform our own will. This is difficult to accept.

Over the centuries the Gospel seems to have deteriorated from the total surrender to the will of God taught by Jesus by which we are transferred out of the kingdom of the devil into the kingdom of God into a grace-for-granted, check-the-box-and-you're-in false religion that is merely named after Jesus but has little if anything to do with what He actually taught. True faith (obedience) has been substituted with the fairytale magic thinking where if you imagine something hard enough it will become reality. And so the only sin becomes not believing you are a child of God or thinking someone else might not be. Being made righteous before God through the blood of Jesus and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit degrades into simply ignoring sin. And love is replaced with putting on a big smile and saying “God bless you” while escorting a homeless person out of your church. It is an impossible standard that Jesus has set, and it requires total, eternal, unconditional surrender to the will of God in the name of Jesus through the Holy Spirit. Anything less is a false religion, and although it might be enough to convince our neighbors we are saved, it is not enough to save us.