On the post I referenced earlier, the conversation quickly fell into an typical Protestant/non-Protestant debate. One of the comments said, in part:
I am happy enough where I am because I see behind the green curtain. The ties to RC have taught me there are a lot of wonderful catholic believers, who in many ways live a life far more richly than many baptists. Those same ties have shown me the many RC who are broken by the RC Church, and lead lives of desperation.
Another commenter said:
Do you mean to suggest that Luther should have been burned at the stake. That was God’s (timing)expectation? That is how the Roman Church had planned for Luther to leave the church along with countless other monks, priest and nuns. Do you think that was God’s will?
I found myself wondering if anyone had actually read one of my follow-up posts on that same discussion:
Let me respond to a couple of comments on the “true” Church. Perfection and being the True Church have never been connected. One of Our Lord Jesus’ early warnings was the parable of the wheat and the tares, in which He warned that the Kingdom of God would have a mixture of true and false believers until He returned.
St. John writes in one of his epistles that “they left because they were not of us,” while to the Thessalonians, St. Paul writes to have nothing to do with those who do not follow the traditions.
To point to disagreement within a Church as though that were indicative that they were not the Church is mistaken. To point to disagreement within a Church as though that meant that the Church did not know Truth is mistaken. Given what Our Lord, St. John, and St. Paul said, that type of disagreement is more indicative of wheat and tares than anything else. In fact, one would expect Satan, who goes around as a roaring lion and as an angel of light, to sow confusion in the Church.
Confusion and strife are only indicative of the fact that we are at war and should serve to remind us that the war is not against flesh and blood, “but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.”
There are several components as to what makes a Church but lack of strife and confusion is not one of them.
But, there is an additional danger in citing the weaknesses of another group as some type of “proof” that said group is not truly a church. And, that danger is to one’s self. You see, in order to be able to put forth that argument, one has to engage in a self-deception that, in the long run, can leave one open to self-deception in other areas of one’s life.
What do I mean?
===MORE TO COME===
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