I'm a reader. I wasn't always but thanks to a man named Chris Sonksen, one of my life's great mentors, now I am constantly reading. Now, I devour the pages of a book like a Catholic at a BBQ the day before Lent begins. If you're not into reading books, do yourself a favor and start. Force yourself to do it if you have to. It'll just take one book that really grabs you to get you hooked. Start now and don't stop.
Nothing comes without some degree of disappointment though. I read a lot from the different philosophies of Christianity. The Main-liners, the Evangelicals, the Fundamentalists, the Emergents, the Emergings, the Traditionalists, the Ecumenicals and even those who claim to have no attachment to any label. There is so much information and wisdom to be found in each of these points of view that it would be ludicrous for me to pigeonhole myself to only one school of thought. That's one of the advantages in being 2000 years removed from Jesus. It means we have 2000 years of study and wisdom to glean from. Unfortunately it also means we have 2000 years of opinions and personal agendas to sift through. Not an easy task.
In reading various books by various authors representing the various groups of Christianity, I have come to the conclusion that each of these groups share two things in common. First, they all love God and are just trying to point people to Him the best way they know how. Whether it's loving acts of kindness, friendship evangelism, fire and brimstone preaching, tent revivals, stadium crusades, street corner preaching or even telling people they're going to go to hell, all of these people have the same motive; getting others closer to Jesus then they are right now. These techniques are all flawed and no single technique has a 100% success rate. And while I have my own opinions about the constructiveness of each of these, I do believe that they all aim to point people to God in their own way; and that is a comforting thought.
The second thing these groups have in common is that there is inevitably some people within them who can't wait to tell you how right their group is and criticize the others. All of them. Not one single group is void of this type of mentality. Don't believe me? Go to youtube.com and type in a name of a Christian leader and you will inevitably find a video of another Christian leader telling us how ridiculous the first leader is. The Emergants hate the Evangelicals, the Main-liners hate the Fundamentalists, the Traditionalists hate the Emergings and everybody hates the Ecumenicals. It's sad really. The Army of the Kingdom of God is the only army that shoots it's own soldiers on purpose. It's like we have to watch out for "Unfriendly Friendly Fire."
It's funny that this happened in the book of Acts too. Different groups of Christians arguing over the superiority of their particular philosophy. Paul and Peter calling each other out in public. Paul even went as far as to say he wished that some "agitators" in the other group would just cut off a certain body part. Brutal!
And here we are, with the benefit of 2000 years of study and wisdom and "growth" and we're doing the same thing. Why? Why can't we move beyond our petty need to be right? Jesus said that people would know that we are His disciples by the way we showed each other love. Are we any good at that? It's no wonder that church attendance in the USA is dropping even during a time where interest in the spiritual and supernatural is growing. Who wants to be part of a splintered and combative faith? Don't we have enough conflict in our lives already?
I don't what to do about it really. I mean, I have my own struggles with being critical and needing to be right all of the time. It's a daily challenge for me and love doesn't always come out on top. I just wish that we were better at showing ourselves at Jesus' disciples by loving each other. I wish I was better. What can we do? Any ideas?
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