There are subtle theological points behind the different sects,
but mostly there's a lot of politics and history. It's said that
these non-religious-factors can't be overcome but I have to disagree.
In fact, I think the whole premise of Christianity is that love and faith
can and does overcome any and every other circumstance. It's not easy.
It's often brutal. It's not something any one individual can accomplish
alone. And it involves the entire body of the faithful. Not even Jesus, the
alleged fully divine and fully human Son of God managed to do anything alone.
Change water into wine? Sure, but first get me this, that and the other.
Dinner for 5,000? Okay, but I'll need some baskets, 5 loaves of bread and 2 fish.
Forgiveness of sins, life everlasting and heaven on earth? Well . . . I can get myself
crucified and my Dad will raise me up from the dead, but after that it's up to you
and this Holy Spirit thing to figure out the rest. Oh, and by the way there'll be
a lot of persecution and martyrdom. Hope that's okay.
Only love has the power to bind Christianity in a single body. Jesus literally
told us how to do it when he said to love the Lord you God with all your heart,
soul, mind and strength; and your neighbor as yourself. We're all too eager to be
the recipients of love. Any kind of love we can get. Unfortunately for all of us living
in these me-centered times, the love Jesus was referring to is the self-sacrificing
love he professed in dying on the cross. There's no way we can cobble together a single
Christian church. Nor should we. Singularity is not unity, but harmony is.
So let's go back to the apostles right after his alleged ascension into heaven.
Peter had one idea of how the faith should be, James another then John got on some
funky trip delving into Neoplatonism. And then there's Saul cum Paul claiming to have
had an illuminating encounter with the Jesus who resided in heaven. All had slightly
different takes on Christianity yet were somehow harmonized into a unified body by the
love of the Holy Spirit while being tempered by the cultures they were immersed in.
Tempering agents abound in these times. Climate change, war, environmental disaster,
with resolving any of these issues any more than the earliest Christians could come to terms
and address the different ideas of what following Jesus entailed after his departure from earth.
What we can do is quit grasping at our extremely limited and inept human fumblings and fall back
to the love of the Holy Spirit as our guide and gauge. Which implies that we need a
better understanding
of the Holy Spirit than the one that was developed for and through the Nicene Creed centuries ago.