"Forgive, sounds good. Forget, I’m not sure I could. They say, time heals everything… but I’m still waiting.
"I’m not ready to make nice
I’m not ready to back down
I’m still mad as hell and
I don’t have time to go round and round and round
It’s too late to make it right
I probably wouldn’t if I could
‘Cause I’m mad as hell
Can’t bring myself to do what it is you think I should.."
==> Dixie Chicks
Gives you the power to be angry for your conviction. Amazing…
For thousands of years, Christianity and everything it represents has been the catalysts for countless misunderstandings, debates, and wars. Believers and non-believers alike have raised innumerable questions that either produced a multitude of answers or no answers at all. Every small faction had their own accepted belief and each belief was always a little different from those held by other factions. Christianity has been a never-ending question. It is perhaps the greatest and most widely debated topic in the history of the living world.
The varying discussions about Christianity have come to such a peak that it is impossible to ignore it. Many of us do have the kind of faith that may be called undying and true, but it has never been the faith that was in question, but the object of that faith.
Most people know that there are three branches of Christianity: the Roman Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox Church, and the Protestant Churches. By the message of love and unity that Jesus preached in His time, this division may already be a form of disobedience.
In our country, the two most widely known branches are the Roman Catholic and the Protestant. The Roman Catholic Church is perhaps more solid in its doctrines and dogmas than the Protestant, but it isn’t free from the barrage of counter-arguments that the scientific world has heaped upon it. It has come to such a period that some Catholics have begun to question the very source of all doctrine: The Holy Bible.
The situation is perhaps worse among Protestants. They now have several churches that claim different versions of one truth. Among themselves they fight and disagree. The division among them comes from within. Perhaps one reason may be because each of their churches has interpreted the word of God according to their specific purposes.
But this dissent was clearly never what the Son of God intended. Wasn’t He the one who encouraged His disciples to preach the Word to the Gentiles so that they may believe in the salvation of the One Almighty God? Wasn’t His message meant for the entire human race?
Jesus is the greatest and the only divine leader ever truly accepted by the majority of humanity. In His time, He was a man who brought forth unquestionable miracles. He spoke of uniting the world under the Name of God. He was the messenger who declared love as the unequaled power that can save even the most evil from a contemptible fate. He was Love. He is Love. He is Love forever.
But humans that we are, we have continued to doubt. Perhaps we lack the divine understanding that heaven has bestowed upon the holy and the saintly. Or perhaps the Devil’s hand influences every human weakness. But we must find a way to unite our faith and all our beliefs so that we can obey the command that Jesus Christ has repeatedly tried to tell us.
Yet, in all the confusion of Christianity, it is perhaps impossible to find the one answer that all men would believe and accept.
There is an answer to this however. In a song in Walt Disney’s Prince of Egypt, the Midian Priest Jethro, father of Moses’ wife Zipporah, sang these words: "A single thread in a tapestry, though its color brightly shine can never see its purpose in the pattern of the Grand Design… So how can you see what your life is worth or where your value lies? You can never see through the eyes of man. You must look at your life… through heaven’s eyes."
Thus it all returns to one certain truth. In every faction that bears the Christian cross, there is a single belief that each holds true. Every child knows what it is. Every son and daughter has been taught and every Christian knows its power. It is called prayer.
It is perhaps only through prayer that man can communicate with the Almighty Father and thus learn a small part of how each of us were formed for a purpose that we may not completely understand.
Divided though we may be, we must learn to discern how we are united. Prayer may sound extremely clichéd or common, but isn’t the answer often in plain sight?
The great division of Christianity can still be closed. The breach among so many churches can still be cured. What we only need is an unwavering faith and the simple power of prayer.
Let us now begin.
