Instead of treating Tradition and Scripture completely distinct…I think I should just dive into the issues I know you all want me to dive into…cut to the chase, right?

But before I take the plunge let me again highlight how emphatic I am in saying that Tradition is certainly and without a doubt a source of truth. To say otherwise is pretty outrageous when thought through. To say that fifteen or twenty centuries of Spirit filled, born again…saved…Christians had it all wrong is just…pretentious. God has indeed given us a community, a valuable one, one that should be appreciated and seriously relied upon as we study the Scripture. Whenever we hear some TV preacher or the latest prophet blow into town proclaiming that the message they are about to share is “secret”, “something you’ve never heard before” or a “new revelation” that God showed them at breakfast…watch out! When you read a book or see a trendy looking guy with weird glasses stand there and give a talk about how we should “re-envision” either the mission or the message of the Church…watch out! How does the rest of the body…the contemporary and ancient…those within our denomination and those without…feel about it? How has the Church throughout her above and underground history dealt with that issue? As I will get into during the next edition…the traditions of the Church have not always, I do not believe, always been in harmony with other traditions or ecumenical declarations…and have not always been in harmony with the plain reading of Scripture…yet…do not throw the baby out with the bath water and do not ignore what God is doing and where He is leading and has led His Church.

One last end I’d suggest needs snipped. Luther. Let’s get one thing very straight…like him or not…agree with him or not…regardless at this point if he was mostly right or mostly wrong…Luther did not attempt to “re-envision” anything, period. It was his conviction that the Church had organizationally drifted far from her roots. He, I suppose, believed that it was the organization that had (one way or another) “re-envisioned” the mission and message of the Church. Think about that before you slap “Luther” to your movement as if he would have endorsed and not cursed it. It’s not like Luther bounced on the scene with cool vodcasts featuring him with a Starbucks frappuccino, sitting crossed legged like some weird metro-sexual hippie…asking in a “girlie” voice, “…if we re-envisioned what Church is…what would it look like?” Criminy! Liberals are renowned for re-envisioning history, lol. That was not Luther’s pitch, not at all. Luther’s whole point was to “reform” the Church…not abandon the Church…not “re-envision” the Church…to reform it. Reform it to what? Luther was, right or wrong, attempting to reform the Church and take her…backwards…to bring her back to the most her most primitive, essential and original structure and message.

So attention all girlie-man liberals…stop comparing yourselves to Luther! LUTHER WOULD HAVE CUSSED YOU OUT BY NOW…sending you balling back into your shrinks office to work through more of your childhood rejection issues!

Now…ahhhhh…yes...actually, I do feel better...and that is what is important, right? Feeling better about ones self? lol...


Next time, this week…Lord willing of course…I'll just dive into the issues surrounding “Sola Scriptura”. For now I shall leave you with two quotes from everyone’s favorite wild boar…

“Peace if possible, truth at all costs.”

and

“When I am angry I can pray well and preach well.”