When it comes to trying to understand what to believe to be the truth, it is somewhat like walking into a football stadium filled with 100,000 screaming fans looking for one in particular. Unless a person had some idea where to look, the best thing to do would be to turn around and give up. The odds of finding a single person in that crowd would be 1 in 100,000, and those are not very good odds.

Within the screaming crowd of Christianity, there are voices everywhere crying out “chose me” as they vie for the distinction of being “the truth”. There are a minimum of 40,000 different denominations within Christianity plus innumerable non-denominations. If each one claims to have tapped into the Holy Grail of “all truth”, you see how it becomes the same as stepping into a stadium full of fans.

On any given Sunday, in church buildings, tents, homes and rented buildings around the world there are thousands upon thousands of Christian groups who gather assuming they are right. If they didn’t think they were right, they would not be getting together (at least not on Sunday morning). Let us assume there are 50,000 different kinds of groups doing this. The million dollar question is; can they all be right?

One group gets together and the preacher launches out on a tirade the minute he/she opens their mouth about how unless a person is sitting in that room at that minute wearing a purple sash and has a big “J” cut into their hair; they are not a Christian. Down the street, another group casually gets together in a room with chairs in a circle and proceeds to just talk about life, politics, addictions, the newest movies and oh yea, a little about Jesus.

A little further up the road, in a 100 year old fortress looking cathedral, a large group dressed in nice suits and dresses sits passively through a long and elaborate service. The Priest, dressed in flowing robes and wearing various jewelry conducts the service complete with what appears to be a magic wand. Meanwhile across the street is a small church with a towering steeple that seems to reach the heavens. Inside are people participating in some “old time religion” complete with fire and brimstone preaching and tongues and healings.

Just down the street is a home where a group of people have gathered and are seated in the living room. They sing songs, pray and someone shares some verses from the Bible. Just down the street, is a typical looking church building and inside are people having a “traditional” church service. Next door, in a similar looking building, people appear to be doing the same thing, but they will have nothing to do with the group next door since they don’t agree on how and when to baptize people.

I could go on for days listing the various and sundry groups which get together on a Sunday morning to worship and fellowship. Many of these groups would gladly welcome a visitor from another group, some would not allow it. Some groups are very formal and others exceedingly casual. Some groups place great emphasis on the Bible and other groups never open it. Some groups follow a rigid format every week while other groups never do the same thing twice.

The question in all this is “who is right?” Is everyone right and it is just a matter of some like vanilla and some like chocolate? Or, is no one right and everyone is wrong? Somewhere in between lays the truth. The unfortunate reality of Christianity is that it has become a splintered and powerless faith due to the incredible disagreements, strife and animosity that has erupted especially within the last century. It is hard to believe that just a little more than 100 years ago, there were not even 2,000 denominations within Christianity. Now there are at least 40,000.

Yes, there are still mega denominations with millions of members, and in the case of the Roman Catholics, billions of members. But, like a tree that branches out and the further out on the tree you go the more branches and twigs there are; so Christianity has become. From the huge dual trunks of Catholics and Protestants have come huge limbs and then branches and so on. If every leaf on the tree represented a denomination or non-denominational group, you would have the picture of our faith.

There is no way to unite Christianity. Those days ended long ago. There is no way to strip off all the leaves of the tree and prune back all the branches and limbs to the trunk and have anything left but a barren and worthless stump. I see people do this with trees after bad ice storms and although the tree grows back, it is never the same. It would have been better to cut the tree down and plant a new one.

Ultimately each believer must decide what he or she believes is the truth and commit to it. Of course we keep an open mind to investigate new things and we maintain the meekness to keep learning. But, we must commit to something or we end up believing nothing. If Christianity becomes nothing but a group of people who believe nothing, it would be worse than the current state of everyone believing something different.

There are no simple answers to what Christianity has become. In fact, there are really no answers. At best, we seek to find areas we agree upon and after that, we smile and move on. If Christians quit trying to convert each other and stopped raiding each other’s churches to beef up the numbers in their own; then maybe we could get along better and project at least a little love and unity of purpose to the unbelievers. But, alas, this has not happened in the past and isn’t about to now.

Every day of the week there are Christians out trying to get other Christians to leave their church and join another. If such effort were put into sharing the love of Christ and the Word of God with those who are NOT Christians, THE CHURCH might grow whether your church does or not.

Christians, we need to first and foremost be concerned about our own lives and fellowship with God. Then we manifest love to other Christians and seek to help them personally with their lives and fellowship with God. Then we reach out to those who do not know Christ and shower them with the love of Christ within us. Finally, we might think about trying to get another Christian to think about joining our particular group. Perhaps if we kept things in the right order we would at least see less division and ugly chasms within our faith.