Interesting HS Moment

I was reading Mike’s blog on some Catholic tradition thing, which as usual I found mostly uninteresting (the article not your thoughts on it Mike, I like what you say about that stuff) because it failed to actually address any of my actual concerns in a quality way. I could elaborate one why I find this style of debate mostly worthless, but none of that is the point right now.

Anyway, Mike said some stuff that was interesting and well thought out as usual, and I decided to take a quick look at a link. (I’m out of productive personal lunch-time things to do, plus my bracket is tanking, and I can’t change it anymore which makes me lose interest) While reading it I had one of those thoughts go through my head to the effect of “man, this kind of ‘Catholics got it right from the beginning’ crap just makes them sound so arrogant and closed-minded.” And then I had a thought jump through my head to the effect of “Well, you are just like that so shut the hell up.”

I’m pretty sure that was a Holy Spirit moment, because I generally don’t think about myself in a highly negative way (it goes bad places as those who are prone to depression can tell you). Plus I’m getting a little better at filtering me from the HS talking in my head lately, and I’m thinking this is a HS moment.

Well, then a bunch of the times I’ve defended Catholicism to more extreme protestants popped into my head, and then a bunch of the times I’ve criticized the Methodist or Catholic church along with many of the older denominations popped in there as well. And it kinda made me sad all at once in an odd way.

So, now for my soap-box moment.

Why can’t we just see that God moves in more than one place at a time. Why can’t we see that sometimes we got things wrong in history….All of us, Catholic, Protestant, Charisimatic, Thrid-Wave, whatever. We all screwed it up at some point, and it got ingrained in our doctorine. Accept that, move on, and realize that your new denomination will do it just the same as the old ones. God is soooo big. To think that the Pope is more important than a local pastor is only a good thing if it focuses you more on God and his awesomeness. To think that God can’t be working through tradition and history in people is small-minded, even if he doesn’t work in you that way. Ribbons and flags can be a very expressive form of worship for some, and for others it is a total distraction. Some think fasting and silent meditation is the best form of worship, and they thrive on it. But different strokes for different folks I suppose. God loves you even if you don’t love him, he just loves you a little more if you are actively seeking and worshiping him. So why bother wasting time arguing, or being annoyed w/ people who are just trying to love God as much as they can? I suppose gross doctorinal errors like the crusades or not speaking against the Nazi’s we can criticize (that’s a bad german church…bad!), but besides those kind of things I think your wasting your breath.

Sorry, that was preachy, but I just started to break the thought that “I know better” than some people, as well as break the thought that “I’m not like those closed-minded Christians.” And then my hippy-dippy side popped out and wanted to write a little pro-eccumenical deal. So, take it for what it’s worth.