"Religion divides more than it unites"

[MarcoPolo]

I recently heard a comment from someone saying “Sunday mornings is the most segregated time in America. All religion it does is divide.”

If people did divide themselves based on religious beliefs, what would that prove about anything? It doesn’t tell you anything about whether any religion has truth or not. I don’t see the point of the “accusation”.

 

[jwinch2]

This claim is a common one and in reality, it is accurate, but not for the reasons that many think. As Fr. Barron is fond of noting, Christ is a much more controversial figure than many wish to recognize. Christ is the only religious religious figure in history who actually claimed to be God. Now, what you think about that is important, but one thing is for sure, it compels us to make a choice. Choices, by their nature divide people from others who make a different choice, particularly in an area such as this.

Archbishop Sheen has a great talk on the diabolical. In it, he makes the statement that the word diabolic comes from a word which means to ‘tear apart’. The Devil wants us to be divided, he wants people to reject Christ, and he wants people to view the Church in the manner that many do today. All of those things serve his purpose.

There are those people of course who think that Christ was a good guy who had some nice teachings but don’t take it further than that. They aren’t paying attention. Then, there are those people who claim to believe that Christ is God, but like to pick and choose which of his teachings they follow. They aren’t paying attention either. Again, here we have a man who claimed to be God. Either he is who he says he is, in which case we ought to listen to everything he said and follow all of his teachings rather than just the ones we like or happen to agree with; or, he is not who he says he is, in which case he is a very dangerous person who is mentally unbalanced and we should follow none of his teachings. There truly is no middle ground to be had.

It is for this reason that Christ did not ask Peter an the Apostles what people thought of his teachings. In fact, when people found his teachings hard, Christ simply allowed them to leave and really didn’t bother much trying to convince them or change their mind. Instead, he asked them what people thought of him. “Who do people say that I am?”

Can you imagine someone today claiming to be God? How would they be viewed? Your average first century Jew or Roman would probably response pretty much the same about Christ. Again, Christ’s claim of divinity is one that demands we make a choice. Those who freely choose to reject Christ and his Church will, by the nature of that choice, experience a separation from the body of Christ. The only way around this is for those who have chosen rejection to experience a conversion and come to Christ’s body, the Church. Obviously, as Christians we can facilitate this through our efforts towards evangelization but we cannot make the choice for them, nor can we choose to go their direction and “meet them half way” as so many wish us to do. The only way that can happen, is if we reject Christ also. Of course then we will still experience a division. Only this time it will not be from each other as people, it will be from Christ and his mystical body.

Thus, we cannot force unity and will, in all likelihood, experience division surrounding Christ and his Church until our Blessed Lord comes again in glory.