Who Decided This Was Normal

Old Does Not Automatically Mean Holy

We often assume that if a tradition is old it must be true, mistaking age for authority. But traditions can carry wisdom and error alike, and time alone cannot sanctify a lie. Christ himself challenged venerable traditions when they buried the love of God, teaching us to honor the past without worshiping it, and to test every inherited thing against truth and love rather than against the calendar.

Consider a question that unsettles both the progressive and the traditionalist. Does something become true simply by lasting a long time? We often act as if it does. An old practice feels weighty, an ancient saying feels wise, and a long lineage feels like proof. But cruelty can be ancient, and error can be venerable. Age tells you a thing endured; it does not tell you the thing is good.

We treat antiquity as a kind of credential. If our ancestors did it, if a custom is centuries deep, we grant it the benefit of the doubt and feel impious questioning it. Much of this reflex is healthy; it guards us against the arrogance of assuming our own moment knows best. But it can curdle into a rule that whatever is old is therefore holy, and whatever is old must never be examined.

The instinct has real roots. For most of history, survival depended on inherited knowledge, and the customs that had lasted were often the ones that worked, so trusting the old was frequently wise. Tradition is accumulated experience, and to sneer at all of it is foolish. But the same reverence that preserves hard-won wisdom can also preserve injustice, simply because it has always been done, and can silence the question of whether it was ever right.

The cost is that error hides inside age. Practices that harm people get defended because they are traditional, as if longevity were a moral argument. The person who asks whether an old custom is actually good is treated as a betrayer of heritage. Communities can spend generations protecting a mistake because no one is permitted to test it against anything but its own antiquity. Reverence, unexamined, becomes a shield for whatever the past got wrong.

Christ models a better posture. He deeply honored the Scriptures and the covenant, yet he confronted certain human traditions of his day when they had come to smother the very mercy of God they claimed to serve. He asked what a practice was actually for, and whether it loved God and neighbor or merely preserved itself. The Christian task is not to discard the old (that is its own arrogance) but to test it, keeping what is true and holy and releasing what only claimed holiness by being old.

The better way holds two things at once. Honor tradition as a gift, a deposit of wisdom you did not earn and should not casually throw away. And refuse to let age be your final judge, testing every inherited thing against truth, Scripture, and love. Then you become neither the reckless despiser of the past nor its uncritical worshiper, but a faithful steward who can tell the difference between an old treasure and an old mistake.

Sorting the treasure from the mistake in what we have inherited is hard to do alone, and it is easy to swing into either reckless rejection or blind reverence. Living Bread and a thoughtful church community can help you weigh tradition wisely, honoring the deep wells of Christian wisdom while testing everything against Christ. Consider joining others who take both Scripture and history seriously, and who welcome honest questions.