As an evangelical/fundamentalist, I think we have much more in common with faithful Catholics than either Catholics or Protestants seem willing to acknowledge and the divisiveness I see (coming from both camps) saddens me.
I’d agree completely. There’s a lot of hurdles though. One of them is the “meaning” attaching to labels such as ‘fundamentalist’. The secular media sometimes use religious terms with a complete lack of precision. That doesn’t help.
And ‘divisiveness’ - surprisingly - can sometimes be of value. It can take us out of our comfort zone and force us re-examine more intently what it is we believe in, and why we believe it. And more importantly, sometimes we have to go beyond ‘professing’ a belief, and demonstrate before both God and man that we really do
mean what our mouths say we do.
A good case in point is the fracture in the American Episcopalian church over the issue of the appointment of a gay bishop and the blessing of same-sex marriages by the Canada church
IPope Benedicts has made it quite clear before both God and man where he personally stands on this issue. .
I know where the Episcopalian bishops who have taken their dioceses into African and South American churches stand
I know where the 300 bishops who have announced the formation
of a new movement for Anglicans who adhere to traditional Bible teaching stand on the issue .
I’m not at all clear where the current Archbishop of Canterbury stands personally on this issue. Its clear he’s deeply upset, but he is reported as using phrases like “traditional” and “not so traditional” to distinguish the two factions, and talks of the need to continue ‘dialogue’.
And I guess further down the track, it will become clear where individual lay members each personally stand on the issue.
So this group of people are all being forced to come clean on precisely what it is that they
really believe in on this particular issue. Its crunch time.
Is that such a bad thing?
What I’m saying here is that while some Catholics might point gleefully to this as yet further ‘evidence’ of how this just ‘proves’ everything they are saying about Protestants not being in the ‘truth’ , I as a Protestant, see it more as a bit of sheep versus goat separation going on by the Lord because of these scriptures here:
Jeremias 17:verse 9 - 10 puts it this way: (Douay-Rheims)
9 The heart is perverse above all things, and unsearchable, who can know it?
10 I am the Lord who search the heart and prove the reins: who give to every one according to his way, and according to the fruit of his devices.
The King James expresses it much the same way.
9The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?
10I the LORD search the heart, I try the reins, even to give every man according to his ways, and according to the fruit of his doings. :
hmmm… God’s pretty creative. Who knows whether He’ll come up to-morrow with some completely new way to ‘try our reins’ that no human could possibly think of. Jesus was completely “scriptural”, but he still hit the Pharisees with the theological equivalent of a hydrogen bomb. Pretty divisive too, depending on your perception.
Blessings
