Friday, October 2, 2009

Denominational damage

I sometimes visit a hunting forum to talk about hunting and outdoor activities with other outdoorsy types. On the forum there is a place designated to discussions and debates of spiritual topics. One thing I like about this forum is the wide variety of denominational and spiritual points of view that are brought to the table.

Earlier this week one of the members of this forum posted a question about the scriptures and whether they were complete and how the Bible came to be as it is today. As we talked about this he was repeatedly attacked by otherwise well meaning Christians as an unbeliever who "would one day find out how wrong he is..." Yes, the hell card. The nuclear weapon of the evangelical church.

I asked him if, in his opinion, we had enough of the scriptures to know about God and His plan for us. Here is his answer-
"I don't know. When I see all the division among the different sects or faiths within the Christian ''families'',it gives me cause to try to find answers. The easiest answer so far has come from looking at the origins of the bible itself. I have not read the deleted books and have only skimmed the apocrypha. Could there be some thing there to unify or clear up the differences ? Again I don't know. And won't until I do the research. For me there is enough in the English bibles for me to make the decision to look else where for my spiritual needs. I would think that Christians would want to know, or have done the research to be able to say '''Such and such a book was deleted because...XYZ.'' But instead most either claim that the bible has held forth for thousands and thousands of years, or attack the person asking , or say What I have
is enough for me.
At best some are condescending and at worst ,just plain ignorant.


What piqued my interest was the fact that this man who is searching for truth in scripture has observed the following, "When I see all the division among the different sects or faiths within the Christian ''families'',it gives me cause to try to find answers. The easiest answer so far has come from looking at the origins of the bible itself. I have not read the deleted books and have only skimmed the apocrypha. Could there be some thing there to unify or clear up the differences?"

My question is, is this how the bride of Christ is supposed to look? Divided? And over what, how we take communion? music styles? teaching styles? how we baptise...sprinkle? dunk? One thing is certain, at least in the eyes of this man, he may not know if the bible is complete or missing certain intended books...but he does know that what he does see in the church is NOT enough to make him satisfied that the Bible is a complete source of truth.

Is this short coming a product of the American church? I'm not sure. In Islam we see the same kinds of divisions. Sunni's, Ahmadiyya, Shi'ite's and Sufism are basically denominations of Islam...and Muslims are killing each other over their differences. When it comes to Muslims it's easy for the Christian to draw the conclusion that these people are just crazy radicals. And it's true that Christians aren't killing one another over denominational differences, but I do see our faith and the word of God cheapened by our petty disagreements.

How did we get here and what do we as followers of Christ do to restore unity in the body of Christ?

4 comments:

Alan Knox said...

Wow... when you jump back into blogging, you jump in with both feet! Excellent post!

-Alan

Brandon said...

Thanks Alan!

I needed a break... I'm hoping to do much more blogging now.

Lew A said...

Brandon,

Welcome back :)

You said, "And it's true that Christians aren't killing one another over denominational differences"

You may want to add... "currently". It has happened in the past :).

Lew

Brandon said...

I thought about saying physically, because we do kill one another with our words concerning "lesser" believers who don't believe what we believe.

Thanks for the welcome back. :)