Christians should be Christians
Dear friends,
One day i was talking to someone, and we touched on the topic of Christianity (somehow) and he was asking me: "Are Catholics Christians?"
"Of course they are. We all worship Christ."
"But [unnamed] is a catholic and he says that he isn't a christian"
What a shock.
I'm not sure whether that is the right stand for a catholic to take, but i just feel it's so sad that there are such divisions in the religion.
In fact, one of the question that bug me the most is this: why is Christianity the most split apart faith there ever was? Is it one of the teachings? Is there a religious reason why there are so many different denominations in the world?
The answer to that is a very complex one, and I'll try to explain it, but i will not profess that it is the ONLY answer. OR that it's the RIGHT answer. It's just A answer okay? so cut me some slack here.
As we all know, the first church that was every established was the Holy Roman Church, which was the Roman Catholic Church. That was way back from when the 12 apostles started the underground church operation, up to when it became the official religion of Rome at the death bed of emperor Constantine, through the times when Roman Catholic Church was the one unifying factor over the different regions in Europe, through the splitting of power to different regions and princes..
To the point when Martin Luther King headed the reformation and established the Protestant while John Calvin established the Calvinist, and along the way Lutheran church came about, and then the Puritans left Europe and established their colony in America[not just puritans] and somewhere later along the lines Pentecostals emerged and Charismatics evolved.
And that's not even all of the different denominations there were.
I suppose that the fact that the denominations can be named and described to great detail shows that there is order in the separations, but still, separation is separation. And the wildest thing is that each denomination holds on to their own beliefs, even if the foundation of the truth is still the same. Kinda makes me wonder where long the line did we go wrong?
A few blog entries before i mentioned that we should all be careful especially when we try to interpret the word of God. We may think it's divine revelation, but sometimes it's just us with a wrong tangent. That's what i believe happened. Somewhere along the line, someone came up with a wild idea, and everyone hopped on the boat and split apart from the rest. It's become so ugly that now, no one knows which is the true faith anymore. And that should not be the case.
This was exactly what the early church fathers were afraid of, and from that fear came the persecution of the witch hunts and heresy trials. And the stark irony of it is that all that bloodshed didn't even avoid this catastrophe that we are in now.
I really applaud and appreciate churchs that have a no-denomination stand, that they accept everyone from different background, and that they try to tread the line where teachings go, but eventually they will still go back to some background and those who came from elsewhere will feel betrayed.
What i really wish would happen is that God would do something drastic and show us which one is the real faith. Like a movement that seeks to reconciliate all the denominations under one CHRISTIAN faith, and unite all the churches in the world into one huge conglomerate MNC that would rule the world..haha..maybe not rule the world..But i believe it will help give Christians an identity, and make it a whole lot easier to help the world as well.
Take for example in Detroit, there are no lack of church. While i was there, what struck me was that there was a church almost every other street; but each congregation was stuck with low numbers and mundane problems, like where to get funding from with the small church population, how to get their utilities going, windows fixed..the kind of things that would be fixed if they were a part of a bigger organization that funded them, so they can focus on working on the important stuff.
Imagine a huge Christian organization where the money is centralised and went out to help people and ministries where it is needed. I'm not talking about contributions, but about freakin funding and powering the ministry! If just any christian organization can 'boast' about some charitable deed, imagine if the organization was a whole lot larger; how much good we can do?!
Christians around the world have a huge untapped potential; it's not about us not wanting to help, it's not about there not being enough of us who wants to make a difference in the world. It's about us trying to do so from a million different directions to different ends. It's just plain ridiculous how so much goodwill is wasted.
Maybe we should all stop thinking about how different we are, and start thinking about how similar we are.
Just my wish for the world.
Cheers
Brian
One day i was talking to someone, and we touched on the topic of Christianity (somehow) and he was asking me: "Are Catholics Christians?"
"Of course they are. We all worship Christ."
"But [unnamed] is a catholic and he says that he isn't a christian"
What a shock.
I'm not sure whether that is the right stand for a catholic to take, but i just feel it's so sad that there are such divisions in the religion.
In fact, one of the question that bug me the most is this: why is Christianity the most split apart faith there ever was? Is it one of the teachings? Is there a religious reason why there are so many different denominations in the world?
The answer to that is a very complex one, and I'll try to explain it, but i will not profess that it is the ONLY answer. OR that it's the RIGHT answer. It's just A answer okay? so cut me some slack here.
As we all know, the first church that was every established was the Holy Roman Church, which was the Roman Catholic Church. That was way back from when the 12 apostles started the underground church operation, up to when it became the official religion of Rome at the death bed of emperor Constantine, through the times when Roman Catholic Church was the one unifying factor over the different regions in Europe, through the splitting of power to different regions and princes..
To the point when Martin Luther King headed the reformation and established the Protestant while John Calvin established the Calvinist, and along the way Lutheran church came about, and then the Puritans left Europe and established their colony in America[not just puritans] and somewhere later along the lines Pentecostals emerged and Charismatics evolved.
And that's not even all of the different denominations there were.
I suppose that the fact that the denominations can be named and described to great detail shows that there is order in the separations, but still, separation is separation. And the wildest thing is that each denomination holds on to their own beliefs, even if the foundation of the truth is still the same. Kinda makes me wonder where long the line did we go wrong?
A few blog entries before i mentioned that we should all be careful especially when we try to interpret the word of God. We may think it's divine revelation, but sometimes it's just us with a wrong tangent. That's what i believe happened. Somewhere along the line, someone came up with a wild idea, and everyone hopped on the boat and split apart from the rest. It's become so ugly that now, no one knows which is the true faith anymore. And that should not be the case.
This was exactly what the early church fathers were afraid of, and from that fear came the persecution of the witch hunts and heresy trials. And the stark irony of it is that all that bloodshed didn't even avoid this catastrophe that we are in now.
I really applaud and appreciate churchs that have a no-denomination stand, that they accept everyone from different background, and that they try to tread the line where teachings go, but eventually they will still go back to some background and those who came from elsewhere will feel betrayed.
What i really wish would happen is that God would do something drastic and show us which one is the real faith. Like a movement that seeks to reconciliate all the denominations under one CHRISTIAN faith, and unite all the churches in the world into one huge conglomerate MNC that would rule the world..haha..maybe not rule the world..But i believe it will help give Christians an identity, and make it a whole lot easier to help the world as well.
Take for example in Detroit, there are no lack of church. While i was there, what struck me was that there was a church almost every other street; but each congregation was stuck with low numbers and mundane problems, like where to get funding from with the small church population, how to get their utilities going, windows fixed..the kind of things that would be fixed if they were a part of a bigger organization that funded them, so they can focus on working on the important stuff.
Imagine a huge Christian organization where the money is centralised and went out to help people and ministries where it is needed. I'm not talking about contributions, but about freakin funding and powering the ministry! If just any christian organization can 'boast' about some charitable deed, imagine if the organization was a whole lot larger; how much good we can do?!
Christians around the world have a huge untapped potential; it's not about us not wanting to help, it's not about there not being enough of us who wants to make a difference in the world. It's about us trying to do so from a million different directions to different ends. It's just plain ridiculous how so much goodwill is wasted.
Maybe we should all stop thinking about how different we are, and start thinking about how similar we are.
Just my wish for the world.
Cheers
Brian
posted by B-Rok | 11:30 PM
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