11/04/2026, 11:12 AM
A lot of us came out of church tradition because we finally tested it against the text and it didn't hold. Sabbath, the feasts, clean and unclean. We were right to check. So whatever happened to checking? Some of us quit the minute we left. We tested the modern church and then took rabbinic tradition on trust.
Take the Noahide laws. Genesis 9:1-7 gives Noah a few commands: be fruitful, you can eat meat but not the blood, and whoever sheds man's blood answers for it. Go ahead and count them. You won't get to seven. The list comes from the rabbis (Tosefta, then Sanhedrin 56), and one of their derivations pulls all seven out of Genesis 2:16, where God tells Adam he can eat from the trees of the garden. All seven, from a verse about lunch. The same tractate, at 58b, says a gentile who keeps the Sabbath is liable to death. So keeping Torah and adopting the Noahide code at the same time doesn't even work on the rabbis' own terms.
Some of this comes from anger. "They lied to me and they're lying to you." I think the church got real things wrong but wrong and lying aren't the same charge. Most pastors and priests are teaching what they honestly believe is the truth. Paul describes Israel as having a zeal for God that wasn't according to knowledge (Romans 10:2), and says he persecuted the church ignorantly, in unbelief (1 Timothy 1:13). That's sincere and wrong, which is how most of us were before we changed our minds. If I call every sincere person who disagrees with me a liar, I've ended the conversation before it started.
Anger also lets the other side steer. If the modern church is the enemy, it starts deciding what I believe. I accept whatever it rejects and I throw out true things just because it holds them. Either way, the text isn't the test anymore.
Then there's the costume. Tzitzit are commanded (Numbers 15:38-39). A lot of the rest is somebody else's culture worn as if it were obedience. Hebrew words that explain what the text says are worth using. Hebrew sprinkled in to sound like the group is a badge. And it costs us. The church at large sees the costume and the pidgin Hebrew, has a good laugh and never has to deal with the Sabbath or the food laws. We hand them the excuse.
Deuteronomy 4:2 says don't add and don't take away. That cuts both ways. If it was good enough to take down church tradition, it's good enough for whatever we picked up on the way out.
If I'm wrong on any of this, I expect to be told, as long as it comes from the text and not "we've always done it that way."
What's one thing you picked up after leaving church tradition that you've never run back through the text?
Take the Noahide laws. Genesis 9:1-7 gives Noah a few commands: be fruitful, you can eat meat but not the blood, and whoever sheds man's blood answers for it. Go ahead and count them. You won't get to seven. The list comes from the rabbis (Tosefta, then Sanhedrin 56), and one of their derivations pulls all seven out of Genesis 2:16, where God tells Adam he can eat from the trees of the garden. All seven, from a verse about lunch. The same tractate, at 58b, says a gentile who keeps the Sabbath is liable to death. So keeping Torah and adopting the Noahide code at the same time doesn't even work on the rabbis' own terms.
Some of this comes from anger. "They lied to me and they're lying to you." I think the church got real things wrong but wrong and lying aren't the same charge. Most pastors and priests are teaching what they honestly believe is the truth. Paul describes Israel as having a zeal for God that wasn't according to knowledge (Romans 10:2), and says he persecuted the church ignorantly, in unbelief (1 Timothy 1:13). That's sincere and wrong, which is how most of us were before we changed our minds. If I call every sincere person who disagrees with me a liar, I've ended the conversation before it started.
Anger also lets the other side steer. If the modern church is the enemy, it starts deciding what I believe. I accept whatever it rejects and I throw out true things just because it holds them. Either way, the text isn't the test anymore.
Then there's the costume. Tzitzit are commanded (Numbers 15:38-39). A lot of the rest is somebody else's culture worn as if it were obedience. Hebrew words that explain what the text says are worth using. Hebrew sprinkled in to sound like the group is a badge. And it costs us. The church at large sees the costume and the pidgin Hebrew, has a good laugh and never has to deal with the Sabbath or the food laws. We hand them the excuse.
Deuteronomy 4:2 says don't add and don't take away. That cuts both ways. If it was good enough to take down church tradition, it's good enough for whatever we picked up on the way out.
If I'm wrong on any of this, I expect to be told, as long as it comes from the text and not "we've always done it that way."
What's one thing you picked up after leaving church tradition that you've never run back through the text?
I ain't your pastor.