Thus you deprive the word of God of its authority by your tradition…Mark 7:13
Religious tradition has handed down to us many leavened teachings. Any and all of these teachings which are contrary (or even minor to the faith) to scripture are at best ‘windy’ teachings which will blow us about. If a teaching is a healthy teaching then it will have the result and response in a believer of increasing their love for, and personal experience of, the living Person of Christ. If not, then it is mere dead-letter knowledge which puffs up and doesn’t build up.
Let me us a simple example to expose a very common religious traditional understanding.
How many wise men were at the manger (at Jesus’ birth)?
The common tradition is usually 3.
The actual scriptural fact is that NONE of the wise men were at the manger, and scripture NEVER says how many wise men there actually were. There were 3 gifts.
“Then Herod, secretly calling the magi, …Go and find out accurately about the CHILD…And they came into the HOUSE and saw the CHILD…he did away with all the BOYS…from TWO years old and under. (Matthew 2:7-16)
…cutting straight the word of the truth. (2 Tim. 2:15)
How is it possible for believers to be divided by winds of teaching, even incorrect teachings?
But a soulish man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him and he is not able to know them because they are discerned spiritually.
(1 Cor. 2:14)
…may your SPIRIT and SOUL and BODY…(1 Thess. 5:23)
…piercing even to the dividing of SOUL and SPIRIT…(Heb. 4:12)
…that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. (John 3:6)
…the mind set on the spirit…(Rom. 8:6)
The revelation of Jesus Christ…(Rev. 1:1)
I was in spirit…and heard…(Rev. 1:10)
Immediately I was in spirit: and behold…(Rev. 4:2)And he carried me away in spirit…and I saw…(Rev. 17:3)
And he carried me away in spirit…and showed me…(Rev. 21:10)
If anyone, even zealous, regenerated believers, tries to understand the Bible with only their natural, created abilities which they had before their re-birth; they will be unable to receive the word as revealed truth but will only gain dead letter knowledge, which puffs up and divides- rather than nourishes and builds.