The world today looks at Christianity... and laughs.

We have "backward" thinkers, "illogical" premises, and we can't even get along with each other! One of the major barriers to people of other religions is the numerous divisions among Christians. This does not surprise me. Jesus foresaw this. In John 17:20b-21, he prays to the Father:

"I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me."

The implication of that last statement is that if we are all together, as a community, then the world will know that Jesus is Lord. Conversely, if we do not do so, it will be quite unlikely that the world will see us as the Truth.

Most people who are members of the Church of Christ do not realize the original reason for which the Church of Christ was founded, or rather, reconstructed from the various denominations at the time. The idea was NOT that we needed to get back to the teachings of the Bible since people weren't following things to the letter. The idea was that we should get back to the teachings of the Bible because it would give all of us a foundation to form a Church where people could all worship together, regardless of their traditions. In other words, the Church of Christ was not built on a "You're going to Hell if you don't come with us" mentality, but rather a "let's all unite on our path to Heaven!" mentality.

Somehow, since then, we have evolved into a church that has a reputation of condemning the other God-fearing, Jesus-believing people to Hell based on a few rules in the Bible. I have two contentions with this. First, it is not our place to condemn anyone to Hell, especially because of a few mistakes. Second, we, by becoming entirely rule-based, have become like the Pharisees, who wanted to do everything exactly according to the law. Were the Pharisees necessarily bad people? NO! However, while they were counting grains of wheat and making sure only to walk less than a literal mile on the Sabbath, poor people were dying in the streets, and God became a system of rules. This turns into a fear-based system of worship, rather than a system based on the two greatest commandments: Love God, and love your neighbor.

Imagine, if you will, how powerful a united Church would be; if every Christian on the planet had a singular focus of loving God and loving his or her neighbor, and we did not have "denominations." We could change the world. While this goal is likely impractical, Jesus obviously didn't consider it impossible. I don't think he was joking when he said that he wanted all of us to be united. We, as the Church of Christ, need to shed ourselves of the "You're going to Hell" image, and adopt an image of "let's all worship TOGETHER."

While I doubt that this article will change the entire society of our Church, and I am certain that it will gain ire from several people who read it, I stand by my conviction that in order to change the world, all believers in Christ should be one.