Recently I was asked by a young man aged 4 1/2 (the 1/2 is very important at that age) why I didn’t go to his church…. or at least he didn’t see me there. This young man enjoys his children’s church and Sunday school and ‘Kids Count’ club. His question was not said accusatory, he was genuinely curious.
Quite honestly, I gave what I consider to be a non-answer because I really didn’t want to get into the ‘theology’ of my reasons. He nodded in that way children do when they really don’t believe what you just said and went off to do whatever it was he was wanting to do. His question, however, stayed with me since it’s one I’ve thought about often.
Why so many denominations? Obviously these are man made, not God made and, I suspect, God tolerated. So often Christian ‘wars’ were fought over interpretation of scripture and those that believed one way gathered together and those that believed another view did the same – but too often these different approaches became the basis for what I call a religious racism. In the 21st Century most of these groups have gained some form of social acceptance but there still are those groups on the fringe.
So why do we place such a value on what man has determined, admittedly primarily through study (often of a writer with a similar persuasion), rather than on the simple truth of what the scripture says? We are told in scripture that we see through a glass darkly so why is our vision so much clearer than the next person’s? Shouldn’t we, rather, discuss together our different approaches and as steel sharpens steel, see if together we come closer to the meaning?
One of the biggest obstacles is our personalizing our discussion. And, I don’t see how to avoid that. With a subject as important as this one, why would we proclaim a position we don’t believe? Obviously we need to make certain our window is clean and we see as clearly as we can. We also need to be open to looking through the other person’s window.
