Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!clyde.concordia.ca!uunet!mailrus!iuvax!rutgers!aramis.rutgers.edu!athos.rutgers.edu!christian From: davidbu@tekigm2.men.tek.com (David Buxton) Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: Re: Why so many kinds of Christians ? Message-ID: Date: 21 Dec 89 04:27:14 GMT Sender: hedrick@athos.rutgers.edu Organization: Tektronix Inc., Beaverton, Or. Lines: 58 Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu {Jonggu asks:} > Why are there so many different Christian Groups on Earth ? > . . . . Here is the story as I see it: By the time this earth's history gets to the time of Christ there is a lot of missunderstanding about God. One very vital reason why Jesus came was to clear this up. Jesus said - if you have seen me you have seen the Father. He was saying that if we know what Jesus is like we know what God is like. Right after Jesus was here on earth the Gospel exploded out throughout the world. But then over the years, just as man came to missunderstand God, so man again lost sight of true Christianity. One big problem was, that for the majority, only the priests could read the scriptures. And most of the priests did not read it much if at all. People were taught that the Bible was only for heretics and to be burned at the stake along with heretics. Religion was more and more built on tradition rather than the Bible. We also read Paul's concern that a falling away was already beginning at his time. Many non scriptural traditions came into the early church along with the inrush of Pagan converts and the desire of the early church to accomodate them. One example is baptism. The earliest Cathedrals have large baptismal tanks. The later Cathedrals opted for sprinkling. Finally history takes us to the printing press and the reformation. Luther, for example, did not allow certain reforms because he feared that if the reformation moved too fast it would be too much for the simple peasants to handle. Some of the reforms reacted to one form of traditional extreme by rushing off to the opposite extreme. Some reformers stood upon the shoulders of previous reformers and other reformers reacted, at least in some areas, detrimentally to previous reforms. Each reformer has had his following that, at least at first, locked in to what each reformer taught. Each is to a greater or lesser degree the product of the reformer(s) that founded each church. Some churches reformed very little from 'the church' of the traditional centuries. Other churches are much closer to scripture, having rejected a much higher percentage of tradition in favor of scripture. Some churches subscribe to very little of the Bible and a few are even basically Agnostic. At the other end of the spectrum are the churches that have little patience with tradition, especially if there is little or no support in terms of Bible texts to support it. Some are so radical about tradition that they have nothing to do with Christmas, for example - which was instituted as the Mass of Christ upon a pagan date. Perhaps there is a message here. If we can each study the scriptures for ourselves to find personally what it teaches; instead of trying to reconcile what the Bible teaches with what a particular church teaches; perhaps we could each really find the truth that the Bible offers. Our objective is to understand what God is trying to communicate to each one of us in His book, the Bible. Dave (David E. Buxton) davidbu@tekigm2.MEN.TEK.COM