If you grew up in the protestant church you probably learned that tradition is bad since the pharisees got repremanded on their vain traditions and also to making the word of God to no effect by their traditions. But very little of the time people read this verse.

II Thessalonians 2:15
Therefore, brethren, stand fast and hold the traditions which you were taught, whether by word or our epistle.

Some translations change “traditions” to teaching, but that is incorrect since it is the very same greek word that Jesus used with the pharisees and other places in the new testament.

So what does this mean? It means we all have some sort of tradition, we westerners sometines imagine ourselves to be “free” from tradition. Tradition just means “the transmission of customs or beliefs from generation to generation. We all have this in one way or another. Whether you just go to church, just read bible or pray by yourself. Those are traditions. We have traditions of the world as well.

The real question is, are the traditions we keep pointing to Christ? Are they cultivating relationship, purity and the love of God in our lives? We need to decide that before we will be ready to dig into what traditions Paul was talking about here since not all of them were written in the epistles, but that is a whole other conversation.