As if that wasn't enough . . .

As I reviewed my words about the major political parties, and their sameness, it occurred to me that if I made those comments to one of my politically active Republican friends, I'd have an argument on my hands. He sees vast differences between his party and the Democratic party. I don't. He focuses on the big government vs. small government thing or the pro-life vs. pro-choice thing. Meanwhile, I see the special interest groups making huge financial contributions in equal amounts to both parties, the power structures in one party mirrored exactly in the other party, and the way that regardless of whether there's a Democrat or a Republican in the White House, the polling data is the primary dictator of what gets said in press conferences.

The reason I mention this a second time is not to be redundant. Actually, it's because it occurs to me that if you took my arguments about the sameness of the political parties and applied it to the church, you'd have a pretty good match. Now, I as someone in vocational ministry might get all fired up about the vast differences between my denomination and "the other guys" or even more so about the differences between Protestants and Catholics or Christians and Jews. But what would an outsider (a true outsider) think? I can talk all day about eternal security, the authority of scripture, the priesthood of the believer, and Jesus Christ as the Messiah. But would the outsider see anything beyond the belief in a God, the use of texts considered sacred, and a belief in the transcendent life? Hmmm . . .

I could apply this same thought process to racial differences, economic differences, automobile differnces, entertainment differences, etc. We humans are a lot more similar than we are different. We just seem to have this need to categorize and systematize everything. Hopefully that's one of the interesting changes that postmodernism is bringing about.

That's all