CRASH: A Rant...

This weekend I watched a movie called "Crash." You may have heard of it...it's fairly new and has several well-known actors in it. Anyway, the entire movie is about racism and the stupid things people and think and do and the pain that is caused as a result of it. The movie was engaging but I found myself frustrated through much of it for two reasons: Ignorance and Injustice...two of my pet peeves.

I can't stand to see people treated poorly simply because of another person's stupidity. I'm not going to go into the whole racial thing because that's a deeper subject than I care to dabble in at this current moment, and besides, in my line of work I see another type of stupidity more often than I see racism.

Religious Ignorance. I wouldn't classify myself as being devoted to any particular "denomination" per se. I've grown up in and worked in a variety of churches from Baptist to Presbyterian to Assembly of God to Church of God to Christian Church to Vineyard, etc... I don't hold any allegiance to any one over another. I agree and disagree with different points of the represented theologies, but big deal, what do I know anyway.

What makes me absolutely insane is when I hear things like this: "Oh she isn't Christian, she's Presbyterian." I'm sorry, did I hear that correctly? Because last I checked, we were all under the same "religion." Now, if you would have said, "Oh she isn't Christian, she's Buddhist." Well, ok then. Different God, different religion, got it. But SERIOUSLY!!

A while back someone told me that the Baptists don't put enough emphasis on baptism. The BAPTISTS don't put enough emphasis on BAPTISM. Is this what our theological seminaries are teaching nowadays?

By the way, don't bother trying to reach out and love people who don't yet love and follow Christ. No, it'd be better to send an outreach team to reach the Methodists instead.

I hope you hear the sarcasm in my voice.

OK, here's my point... I thought this whole thing (Christianity) was about loving Jesus and loving the people around us. At what point did that turn into condemning our fellow brothers and sisters in Christ for understanding things differently than we do? [And yes I'm aware that technically that is what I'm doing right now...]

Do you ever think that maybe...just maybe...we are human and none of us can fully understand the fullness of God's Word? Isn't that the point when it tells us that we can only know "in part." So maybe you've got it wrong and the Pentecostals have it right. Who really knows!

The point is that we all love the same Jesus and we all serve the same God and we all seek the same purpose...helping others know and love Jesus too. So instead of pointing fingers and acting like a bunch of ignorant people who can't see past our own egocentric view of life, maybe we could just love God and people and leave the theology up to Someone who really gets it.

NOTE: Before you leave me a comment questioning my faith, let me end by saying, I'm not suggesting that you don't hold tight to what you believe to be true. I'm not saying you should assume that truth is relative and everyone's ideas of things are ok. What am I saying is that within the Christian religion there are a variety of understandings regarding certain theological ideas. When someone loves and follows Jesus, don't condemn them for disagreeing with you. Like you, they are attempting to understand and follow a book that was written thousands of years ago in a culture unlike our own with writing styles that vary from todays and is filled with incredibly strange stories. With sincerity they are trusting God to give them understanding...again like you. Let God make the heaven vs. hell decisions In the end it's not up to us anyway.