Examine Your Traditions

So the Pharisees and teachers of religious law asked him, “Why don’t your disciples follow our age-old tradition? They eat without first performing the hand-washing ceremony.” Mark 7:5

There’s an old story about a cage full of monkeys who are blasted with ice water every time one of them reaches for a banana. The monkeys are replaced one by one, and the cold-water spray eventually stops, but the monkeys still refuse to reach for the fruit.

If monkeys could talk, they couldn’t tell you why the bananas were off-limits, but they would know that reaching for one was something you just didn’t do.

The Pharisees were not bad guys. They were following the rules—the way they’d always done it—but they had lost track of the reasons behind their traditions and had gotten their priorities out of whack.

Jesus didn’t criticize the Pharisees for following the rules, but for making the rules their highest goal. They got into trouble because the way they’d always done it had become their priority.

What ways you’ve always done it have become stuck-in-the-mud traditions? Is it time for a change?