My bleary brain doth seek to utter comment, but fear not should this turn into a jumbled mishmash of mumbling, for the dreaded common cold: yea, it be unpleasant.

Found the remarks from Sarah Blasko in this morning’s SMH about her experience with the church a little sad…

“So often I heard the Anglican church pay out the Pentecostal church and the Pentecostals pay out the Anglicans. There’s no love within the denominations and to me that’s just proof that something’s really wrong.”

I find this sad simply because this appears to be one of the primary lasting impressions following her being an active part of a church – yes, I realise that SMH could possibly have turned an off-the-cuff comment into a big soundbite, but the statement still stands. I don’t know what her experience was – may have been an extreme case, I don’t know – but it strikes a chord with me.

We have the responsibility of being witnesses before men on behalf of God, and this segregation between camps does concern me a good deal. Both sides appear to regard the other with a large dose of suspicion and (however unintentionally) a sense of inferiority – . I’ve seen it too much in many cases on both sides and wonder where on earth the general impression comes from that one of the ’sides’ is God’s special club. There’s never (usually) too much doubt that the ‘other guys’ are part of the kingdom, sure, but they are, of course, definitely “works in progress”.

Why is it so easy to completely lose sight of the one thing that matters to us as a Christian people – our redeemed status in Christ before the one God in Heaven? (OK, I shouldn’t be rush-writing a one sentence summary of Christianity… but you know what I’m trying to say) The rest is a matter of details – we can work that out later. I’m not saying that it doesn’t require a lot of effort to separate oneself from the things in their church’s doctrine that they feel are important, but really I think the key issue in question is humility and a healthy view of our understandings in light of a God that is so much bigger than the hugely inferior abilities we have to comprehend or express His character and work.

Pardon the rant. All the snide remarks and frequent digs (for which I also am guilty by the way, I’m not excluding myself from this criticism): are they going to build up the body?