A Ramble About Useless Debates

I keep thinking about my recent clash with someone I didn't know on a friend's posting on Facebook. I'm not obsessing over it, but it keeps coming back into my mind on occasion like there's something else I need to look at. Without going into all the details, somehow it became a debate about law vs. grace when I was trying to post about the need to maintain our relationship with the Lord. My last attempt at reconciling with this person was a private message to which I didn't receive a response.



I keep thinking, what a grand distraction and waste it was. Instead of building each other up in Christ, somehow we got into this argument about doctrines and theologies which did the exact opposite, and did nothing to demonstrate compassion and love as Jesus taught. Instead of accepting each other's differing points of view and looking for points of agreement, we tried to beat each other into submission to our own.



How can we honestly profess to follow Jesus Christ if we're willing to sacrifice what He taught instead of sacrificing ourselves as He taught? How can we call ourselves His disciples if we see the need for everyone else to believe exactly as we do as more important than the need to show mercy and take people where they are at? How can we say that we're doing His work, when we refuse to accept our brothers and sisters as such because they see things a little differently?



One of the things I learned a long time ago is that, if you really look carefully at the major doctrinal differences between Protestant and Catholic Christianity, it's mostly a matter of semantics and viewpoints. The truth is that we disagree a lot less than most think we do, but we say things in such different ways, and put emphases in such different places, that it's almost like speaking a different language. It doesn't help that both sides more often than not go into the conversation looking to convert the other from their "heathen" ways. I know I can be accused of doing so on both sides having been both an Evangelical Protestant and a Catholic Christian at different stages of my life. The truth is that both sides speak two different dialects of "Christianese" and they seem to be unwilling to translate or really listen to what the other is saying.



The truth is that our only hope for unity is our focus on Jesus Christ Himself, and not on what we teach about Him. I am a Catholic Christian. I follow the teachings of the ancient Church. I am not a papist. I am not a Marianist, although I respect Mary greatly. But I am a Catholic Christian. I have friends who are Evangelical Protestant. I will likely never convince them to be otherwise, nor they me, and we really shouldn't necessarily be trying either. God has placed each of us in the Church tradition at the moment where He thinks His goal with each of us will be best accomplished. We need to respect that as much as we may disagree with each other on certain issues. I can honestly say that I have learned more and drawn closer to God through Jesus Christ in the Catholic/Orthodox tradition than I ever could otherwise. I know of people who are the exact opposite, who had to leave the Catholic Church in order to draw closer to Him.



This tells me that it's not the minute structure of our theologies which matter to God. He knows we don't really understand Him anyway and He doesn't ask us to. He knows we don't really understand the mechanics of salvation anyway, and He doesn't really ask us to do that either. The one thing He asks us to do is to draw closer to Him in love through Jesus Christ. If a Catholic theological framework accomplishes that goal, great. If a Protestant one does, just as good. And if we can somehow learn from both, that's even better. In the end, He's not going to give us a pop quiz on the intricacies of spiritual mechanics. His question is do we know Him?



Our efforts towards each other should be geared to fostering the achievement of this one goal He has for our lives, not winning arguments that don't matter.