I’m wrapping up my thoughts on the most frustrating conversations I experience in Christian circles. Today, I want to deal with the idea that we will know they are Christians by their denomination.
There is nothing anyone can say to justify thinking that any particular denomination has it right, while all others have it wrong. There is no way to defend the belief that one branch of Christianity is superior to all others. Similarly, there is nothing I could say or do that would change the mind of someone who believes he or she knows the mind of God and the heart of another.
No matter how many times I hear the message that a particular kind of Christian is “unsaved” because of denomination or doctrine, I simply cannot swallow that line. When we have to box God in, when we narrowly define His standards for salvation, we unknowingly box ourselves in, too. I’ve seen this happen. We start to think we can’t have friendships without strings. Every relationship is based on whether we think a given person is “saved” in the manner we deem appropriate or acceptable. Every conversation produces another chance to evaluate the beliefs of another or a way to sneak in our version of Jesus. We simply must see every person we meet as someone who is potentially going to Hell unless we intervene. Sadly, this includes the majority of people of certain types of church. (In my circles, it’s usually the Catholic church that gets the heat, although Orthodoxy gets its share. Occasionally, it extends to certain Protestant denominations, but that is rare. It seems as though the going assumption is that Protestant churches all teach the “correct” path to salvation.)
I would rather that my relationships be lower pressure. When I stopped feeling like I had to convert everyone, I began to really enjoy my non-Christian family and friends much more. I also found they were more interested in my faith when it didn’t feel like a sales pitch. I also enjoy many of my Christian friends more, because we no longer feel the need to compare notes or compete for the most (as one friend put it) “notches in the side of our ‘Saved’ trucks.” Instead, we can focus on being the kind of people Jesus would want us to be.
