Denominationalism

Over the years, I've struggled with the my relationship with religion, especially as it relates to my relationship with God. Considering my background, I've always been at war with religion, as I firmly believe it is the biggest impediment to real spiritual transformation.

That said, I realized as I coming home from church the other day, as much as I hate religion, I hate denominationalism even more. We all have different needs, wants, comfort zones and tastes. It is clear to me that God made us all different for some purpose (what that purpose is, I’m stilly trying to understand). When we congregate or begin to think about spiritual issues, it's natural, even necessary to associate with others of a like mind. I suspect that is just the way human beings are made. I further suspect that this is the byproduct of sin; we seek to find others who will excuse, accept or even encourage our idiosyncratic selfishness.

These idiosyncrasies are what create denominationalism. Mind you, I don’t think peculiarities of thought or action are, in themselves, sinful. It only becomes sinful, when we assume that our way is the right way or when we require others to behave or think the same way we do. Denominationalism is, to me, the artificial distinctions between believers that supposedly our outwardly different traits, attitudes and practices make us more 'Christian' than others. When we take the excesses of our own religious cherry picking too seriously, we become dead to the Spirit. We become nothing more than a clique, despite our best efforts to be 'open', 'honest' or 'spiritual'. As I said before, I have absolutely no problem with differences in the Church in terms of our biases, practices, clothing, word choice, even biblical emphasis; we are all different and those differences need not be eliminated.

The bottom line: if you are a Christian, be yourself, who ever it is you are designed by God to be.