It has been said that “Civilization is a slow process of adopting the ideas of minorities” (unknown). If this be true, then somewhere along the line our Western culture adopted the ideas of those who would have us think that only that which is new has any value. Therefore we as a culture have severed all ties with our past, cut loose any connections to our history, and have declared out of the midst of our arrogance that we alone have a monopoly on truth. What results is a loss of objective reality as we know it, and all the we have ever known to be true falls under the scrutiny of subjective experience and relativity.

Sadly, the Western Church seems to have adopted this exact same mentality along with our culture. Instead of being the ekklesia, the “called-out ones,” we have by and large become a simple reflection of our own culture – obsessed with entertainment, blown to and fro by the latest trend and fad, and have forsaken our roots and our sacred traditions. This new paradigm of thought influences every facet of the Christian church as we know it, from our liturgy, to our worship style, to our appearance and behavior, even to our theology.

G.K. Chesterton once wrote about a time in his life when he sought to create his own new “orthodoxy.” But what he found came to him as a surprise. He says, “I have discovered, not that [these things] were truths, but simply that they were not mine. When I fancied that I stood alone I was really in the ridiculous position of being backed up by all of Christendom. It may be, Heaven forgive me, that I did try to be original; but I only succeeded in inventing all by myself an inferior copy of the existing traditions of civilized religion.” (Orthodoxy, page 5). In Chesterton’s attempt at arriving at a place of solid biblical faith and practice he found himself smack dab in the middle of true Christian tradition. The beliefs that he had discovered to be that which were truest and most real were the very beliefs that constituted the single thread of salvation that have been passed down for almost 2,000 years.

Let us not blindly forsake our past in search for a new “orthodoxy” of faith and practice simply because that is what our culture seeks to do. What results will always be a destructive schizophrenia, a suicidal identity crisis. Let us hold firmly to truth and align ourselves with our goodly Christian heritage of faith and practice.