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Catholics and Protestants “When you have reached your own room, be kind to those who have chosen different doors and to those who are still in the hall. If they are wrong they need your prayers all the more; and if they are your enemies, then you are under orders to pray for them. That is one of the rules common to the whole house.” Every Christian should read the preface to C. S. Lewis’ masterpiece Mere Christianity. (You’d do well to read the whole book.) In it he beautifully illustrates the need for Christians to stick together and quit bashing each other over theological differences. When Christians fight against each other; they damage Christianity as a whole and make it harder for non-Christians to join our ranks. Christianity is under assault, both from abroad and from within our shores. Islamic fascists want to terrorize us into conversion and liberals mock and hinder us at every turn. Jesus foretold this, of course, (Luke 6:22). Still, it’s high time for Christians to “love one another” (John 15:12) as He commanded and quit throwing stones. (John 8:7) Recently, we’ve made important strides. The Right to Life issue has united Evangelicals and Catholics like nothing ever has. Yet it truly saddens me that Christians still rail on each other, especially about who-is and who-isn’t going to heaven. Again, C. S. Lewis explains this beautifully: “We see only the results which a man's choices make out of his raw material. But God does not judge him on the raw material at all, but on what he has done with it. Most of the man's psychological makeup is probably due to his body: when his body dies all that will fall off him, and the real central man. The thing that chose, that made the best or the worst out of this material, will stand naked. All sorts of nice things which we thought our own, but which were really due to a good digestion, will fall off some of us: all sorts of nasty things which were due to complexes or bad health will fall off others. We shall then, for the first time, see every one as he really was. There will be surprises. The author continues: “That explains what always used to puzzle me about Christian writers; they seem to be so very strict at one moment and so very free and easy at another. They talk about mere sins of thought as if they were immensely important: and then they talk about the most frightful murders and treacheries as if you had only got to repent and all would be forgiven. But I have come to see that they are right. “What they are always thinking of is the mark which the action leaves on that tiny central self which no one sees in this life but which each of us will have to endure—or enjoy—for ever. One man may be so placed that his anger sheds the blood of thousands, and another so placed that however angry he gets he will only be laughed at. But the little mark on the soul may be much the same in both. Each has done something to himself which, unless he repents, will make it harder for him to keep out of the rage next time he is tempted, and will make the rage worse when he does fall into it. Each of them, if he seriously turns to God, can have that twist in the central man straightened out again: each is, in the long run, doomed if he will not. The bigness or smallness of the thing, seen from the outside, is not what really matters. In my opinion, it is the height of arrogance for anyone to judge the measure of a man, much less decide where he shall spend eternity. Yes, I do believe Jesus when He says, “I am the way, the truth, and the life; no man comes unto the Father but by me.” (John 14:6) But please don’t suppose that you know exactly how the mechanism of salvation works anymore than you know why the nucleus of an atom doesn’t fly apart. The parable of the sheep and the goats (Mathew 25:33) is clear - there will be a day when Son of Man will judge all men. But please – let’s let Jesus do the judging, and quit foolishly doing it for Him. St. Augustine, the greatest theological thinker of his day (and the progenitor of most of Protestant thought) called for “unity in the essentials, diversity in the nonessentials, and charity in all things.” Charity – love – that’s a word that Christians should be rallying around. One final point. Protestants love to bash Catholics about our sins of the past. And there’s no question, over the two thousand years of history, the Catholic Church has had some really bad actors. But for 1400 of those years, every Christian was Catholic. Everything Protestants believe came from the Catholic Church in form or another. The biggest difference between the two faiths is that Protestants decided their differences were so great that they had to split away from the church and form another, while the Catholics decided that the One Church was more important than any given disagreement. One thing’s for sure – when we die and go to heaven, there will be only One Church. |
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