Mammamel
08-03-2008, 08:21 AM
I was talking to 2 dear friends recently. One is Catholic, one is Baptist. Both tried to help me understand points of their doctrine. I came to the conclusion that denominationalism is hard, while the Bible is straight forward and easy. I guess I should explain. I am a Christian. That is all. I am not a protestant Christian or a Catholic Christian. I am a plain Christian with no other title or trapping. I can worship in a Bap building or a Cath building, or any other building. I wear no other label but follower of Christ.
Now yes, I was taught to read my Bible under the name “church of Christ”. That now is also a denomination. However, in my reading of 1 Corinthians 1, I have come to the conclusion that adding a name to my Faith, other than Christian is a bad idea. It is NOT wrong to follow man made traditions, and anything not in the Bible is man made, but it is wrong to place those things above the Bible.
For instance, we discussed baptism. Baptism is a Bible ordained command. Yes it is commanded; no it will not save you so do not even go there.
My Catholic sister believes in baptizing infants. She has been taught this and can explain it well. The explanation took a while. My Baptist sister explained their belief on baptism to me as well. This involved an acronym, and she told me to research “Calvinism”.
Then I went to my Bible, I love my Bible. It is clear and concise. No other research is needed to follow Christ than my Bible. It says, in more than one place that to claim Christ’s sacrifice you must, hear the word, believe the word, confess Christ before men, repent of your past and be baptized. No long explanation of what baptism does, just do it. Like Nike. It doesn’t say baptism saves us, it says God through Christ does that. Simple.
I wonder why man had to make up extra stories to take this simple thing, this simple acceptance of the greatest gift man kind has ever or will ever receive and make it so hard to handle. I mean folks actually fight over this, and turn their back on sisters because “they are____” fill in the label. It’s like in high school where the Calvin Klein jeans kids wouldn’t hang with the Penney’s plain pocket kids.
My theory is man kind likes rules. God knows this. At first God gave 1 rule. Man did not even follow that. Later God gave more rules, and man kind did not follow them either. Instead they added more rules to make it harder on folks. God was not pleased, and so He sent His Son to fulfill once and for all those many rules. Then man, seeing this perfect person (because even though He was God He became fully human so He could experience life as we do for that time) couldn’t handle being shown how far wrong they had gone, and they killed Him.
Then you come to today. God gave us concise simple ways to follow Him. Claim His Son, and the door opens. What does man kind do? It adds a bunch of ceremony and rules to the simple thing God set up. THEN to make it worse, they begin to argue over whose rules are better and whose rules will get them in to heaven. I mean there have been wars fought over this, all because God gave us a simple way, and we as humans have to make it difficult. Just like Naaman. Remember him? He had leprosy.. Then a little servant girl, some Bibles say slave, it doesn’t matter, told him about her God and the great prophet among her people that could talk to Him and tell Naaman what he should do to be healed. Naaman got all excited and set out at once to see the prophet. However when he heard what the prophet told him to do, he decided it was too simple a thing and he would not waste his time. Until his servants said, “Master, if he had told you to do a great thing, would you not do it?” Naaman apparently said yes. “Then” said the servant, “why not do this simple thing, and live”. Now of course this is a paraphrase, the real story is found in 1 Kings 5, and it is even better than my version. I have to say, no one will be granted entrance into heaven by saying, I followed Calvin, I followed Luther, or I followed Pope so and so. Nope the only way into heaven is a simple, I followed Christ. Paul even says in the 1 Cor. Scripture above, that claiming you follow Paul (and he is my favorite apostle) will not get you in. None of these men were perfect; none can remove our stain of sin. Only Christ.
A Christian can be in any building. It is not their body that counts; it is the hidden man of the heart that God sees, that is what He will judge. Hatred for others, rudeness, belligerence, two facedness, pride, all these things are sin. Yet I see on Christian blogs and Christian sites these things abounding. Sister, before you declare some one who follows different traditions than you, ****ed to hell, stop and think. God says HE is the judge. Not us. (Thankfully!) Do not condemn yourself in your attempt to convict others. All Christians are to do is share what the Bible has to say. Not brow beat others, not condemn others. Give the Bible truth, then move on, letting them decide for themselves to accept it or not, and letting them decide what traditions they want to follow.
God is the only judge. It is not our building or our traditions He will judge us by. It is how we treated His Son in our heart and in our life.
An experiment. This is the scripture above, with the new leaders added
10I appeal to you, brothers, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree with one another so that there may be no divisions among you and that you may be perfectly united in mind and thought. 11My brothers, some from Chloe's household have informed me that there are quarrels among you. 12What I mean is this: One of you says, "I follow Calvin"; another, "I follow Luther"; another, "I follow the Pope". still another, "I follow Christ." 13Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Were you baptized into the name of Paul? 14I am thankful that I did not baptize any of you except Crispus and Gaius, 15so no one can say that you were baptized into my name. 16(Yes, I also baptized the household of Stephanas; beyond that, I don't remember if I baptized anyone else.) 17For Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel—not with words of human wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power.
Now yes, I was taught to read my Bible under the name “church of Christ”. That now is also a denomination. However, in my reading of 1 Corinthians 1, I have come to the conclusion that adding a name to my Faith, other than Christian is a bad idea. It is NOT wrong to follow man made traditions, and anything not in the Bible is man made, but it is wrong to place those things above the Bible.
For instance, we discussed baptism. Baptism is a Bible ordained command. Yes it is commanded; no it will not save you so do not even go there.
My Catholic sister believes in baptizing infants. She has been taught this and can explain it well. The explanation took a while. My Baptist sister explained their belief on baptism to me as well. This involved an acronym, and she told me to research “Calvinism”.
Then I went to my Bible, I love my Bible. It is clear and concise. No other research is needed to follow Christ than my Bible. It says, in more than one place that to claim Christ’s sacrifice you must, hear the word, believe the word, confess Christ before men, repent of your past and be baptized. No long explanation of what baptism does, just do it. Like Nike. It doesn’t say baptism saves us, it says God through Christ does that. Simple.
I wonder why man had to make up extra stories to take this simple thing, this simple acceptance of the greatest gift man kind has ever or will ever receive and make it so hard to handle. I mean folks actually fight over this, and turn their back on sisters because “they are____” fill in the label. It’s like in high school where the Calvin Klein jeans kids wouldn’t hang with the Penney’s plain pocket kids.
My theory is man kind likes rules. God knows this. At first God gave 1 rule. Man did not even follow that. Later God gave more rules, and man kind did not follow them either. Instead they added more rules to make it harder on folks. God was not pleased, and so He sent His Son to fulfill once and for all those many rules. Then man, seeing this perfect person (because even though He was God He became fully human so He could experience life as we do for that time) couldn’t handle being shown how far wrong they had gone, and they killed Him.
Then you come to today. God gave us concise simple ways to follow Him. Claim His Son, and the door opens. What does man kind do? It adds a bunch of ceremony and rules to the simple thing God set up. THEN to make it worse, they begin to argue over whose rules are better and whose rules will get them in to heaven. I mean there have been wars fought over this, all because God gave us a simple way, and we as humans have to make it difficult. Just like Naaman. Remember him? He had leprosy.. Then a little servant girl, some Bibles say slave, it doesn’t matter, told him about her God and the great prophet among her people that could talk to Him and tell Naaman what he should do to be healed. Naaman got all excited and set out at once to see the prophet. However when he heard what the prophet told him to do, he decided it was too simple a thing and he would not waste his time. Until his servants said, “Master, if he had told you to do a great thing, would you not do it?” Naaman apparently said yes. “Then” said the servant, “why not do this simple thing, and live”. Now of course this is a paraphrase, the real story is found in 1 Kings 5, and it is even better than my version. I have to say, no one will be granted entrance into heaven by saying, I followed Calvin, I followed Luther, or I followed Pope so and so. Nope the only way into heaven is a simple, I followed Christ. Paul even says in the 1 Cor. Scripture above, that claiming you follow Paul (and he is my favorite apostle) will not get you in. None of these men were perfect; none can remove our stain of sin. Only Christ.
A Christian can be in any building. It is not their body that counts; it is the hidden man of the heart that God sees, that is what He will judge. Hatred for others, rudeness, belligerence, two facedness, pride, all these things are sin. Yet I see on Christian blogs and Christian sites these things abounding. Sister, before you declare some one who follows different traditions than you, ****ed to hell, stop and think. God says HE is the judge. Not us. (Thankfully!) Do not condemn yourself in your attempt to convict others. All Christians are to do is share what the Bible has to say. Not brow beat others, not condemn others. Give the Bible truth, then move on, letting them decide for themselves to accept it or not, and letting them decide what traditions they want to follow.
God is the only judge. It is not our building or our traditions He will judge us by. It is how we treated His Son in our heart and in our life.
An experiment. This is the scripture above, with the new leaders added
10I appeal to you, brothers, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree with one another so that there may be no divisions among you and that you may be perfectly united in mind and thought. 11My brothers, some from Chloe's household have informed me that there are quarrels among you. 12What I mean is this: One of you says, "I follow Calvin"; another, "I follow Luther"; another, "I follow the Pope". still another, "I follow Christ." 13Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Were you baptized into the name of Paul? 14I am thankful that I did not baptize any of you except Crispus and Gaius, 15so no one can say that you were baptized into my name. 16(Yes, I also baptized the household of Stephanas; beyond that, I don't remember if I baptized anyone else.) 17For Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel—not with words of human wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power.