The Best of Men Are Men at Best

Yesterday I visited a very nice Presbyterian church (myself being a Baptist). I've only visited two Presbyterian churches in my life (that I can recall) and I always love it. If it weren't for the paedo baptism issue I probably would have joined a Presbyterian church by now (since I visited one before I visited my current church whom I love).

One interesting thing about Presbyterian churches is the way they follow their tradition. Whereas some more litergical denominations hold to traditions in their form of worship and others (like my denomination) hold to traditions as they evolve over time, Presbyterians refer back to certain documents written by some of the wisest men of biblical history. That is why it was interesting to me when the pastor brought up a glaring weakness in the go-to document (outside of Scripture) for reformed Christians- especially Presbyterians, the Westminster Shorter Catechism.

In the question #4 of the Catechism we read:

4. What is God?

A. God is a Spirit, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable, in his being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth.

The glaring weakness in this is not what it says, these are all true things. But it is the attribute that is left out, namely, love. I have written several posts on the love of God in the past, as have my friends here on the Grace and Peace blog, so instead of addressing that topic I want to look at what I learned simply from the ethos of the pastor.

How much do we love our traditions more than we love the truth? Or to put it another way, how much do we treat tradition as equal to the truth? This issue can take many forms. Sometimes it comes in the form of "I don't know where but I know somewhere the Bible says..." and instead of knowing the Scripture and applying it to our lives we usurp its authority in order to say what we think. Other times it can come in the form of gripping our views tightly in the face of what we see taught in Scripture. Still other times we think it's wrong to question the great men of the faith for whom we have great respect. We might say "if that's what Spurgeon taught, who am I to question it?"

We must remember that "All Scripture is breathed out by God" (2 Tim. 3:16) and any tradition that doesn't root itself in that Scripture will be flawed in some way. Does that mean that no tradition is good? Can we learn anything outside of the Bible? Of course we can. But we must be willing to critique our traditions according to Scripture. If we don't do that we will never be able to correct the blindspots in our doctrine or in our lives.

Grace and Peace,
Stephen