Life is really confusing. And Christianity even more so.
The plain truth of Christianity becomes easily obscured by the chatter of the various “Christianities” and especially the chaos of easily falsified interpretations that have become the norm online. If you find yourself engaging in this chaos, repent, this is not truth-seeking, and it is certainly not Christ that you are participating in.
The very existence of the different denominations, all the way back to the great schism, is heartbreaking, tragic beyond measure, that our pride (east and west and every reformer) our own egos and political ambitions, became more important than Christ who is in our midst. If we want iron to sharpen iron, it must begin with humility to Christ.
In His mercy God allows these harmful schisms (harmful to us), a divine patience that is impossible for me to understand.
Like with the parable of the prodigal son, neither brother was “right”, the older brother was rebuked, and only through profound humility did the younger find his way back to the loving embrace of his father. And when I see sincere Christians misrepresent or ridicule other Christians, assured their interpretation is “right” and all other denominations are wrong or that you just need a Bible (or inversely, pretending they’re all right), we may need to stop and reflect that we are *all* wrong (all of us), for if truth was on our side who could be against us? There wouldn’t be schisms if truth was what we were seeking.
All lies die. Only truth remains in the end.
Only through profound humility can one even find truth.
You cannot debate or ridicule or coerce or deceive your way to truth (those just put more beams in your eyes). And yet how often do we faithfully acknowledge or even understand truthfully other denominations? How often do we misrepresent other interpretations, or criticize them while being blind to the faults in our own?
All it takes is ONE passage in scripture to falsify your interpretation, yet people will cherry pick only what serves their interpretation, their ego as judge of Christ and His message.
Obviously the schisms continue to exist because of this— truly it is a way to humility.
Let yourself be proven wrong, whether your non-denominational or reformed or Baptist or Catholic or Orthodox — let yourself *be* wrong, because you are not God, for only Christ is *right*, and to the degree you are actually right, you are at best the older brother to the prodigal son, and at worst lost in outer darkness.
