A Trip to the Grocery Store

Spring TimeJan sent me to the grocery store the other day to buy apples. That seems like a simple, straight forward task, but when I arrived at the produce isle, I was confronted with a chaotic world swirling with choices. First, did I want organic or regular apples? Did I need red or golden delicious; gala, jazz, pink lady, honey crisp? Domestic or imported? In despair, I fled to the potato chip aisle, but that was even worse! Kettle, ridges, Pringles, sea salt, cracked pepper, salt and vinegar … I backed into the cereal aisle and had a complete meltdown. “Clean up on aisle 13!”

Why can’t life be simple? On the night that Jesus was betrayed, he prayed, may my disciples “be one as we are one,” (John 17:13). Sadly, the number of different varieties of Christian denominations is now measured in the tens of thousands. There are more flavors of Christians than there are flavors of ice cream! Why can’t we all be one as Jesus wanted?

“Well John, it’s not as easy as it sounds,” the Rev. Blowhard announces. “You see theology and dogma are complicated subjects full of subtle nuances.”

Suzy Simpleheart suggests, “Let’s just get everyone together and sort it out! We could have a worldwide conference and reform our faith until we all agreed.” But, it made international news a few years ago when the Roman Catholic pope crossed himself according to the Greek Orthodox practice in the interests of unity. That didn’t last long. Now imagine the stir that would follow asking the Calvinists to drop a letter out of their famous acronym, TULIP.

“What if we asked God to reveal which church is the true church in a blinding light?” asked Mike Moroni.

The answer is, God already has revealed the answer. He gave us the Bible. Why not just follow it, instead of being this flavor or that? Why not just be “Christians”?

A wise man, over two hundred years ago, set a slim denominational creed book beside a Bible and noted, “If it’s smaller than the Bible, they must have left something out.” And then he set the Bible beside an encyclopedic set of theological books and observed, “If it’s bigger than the Bible, they must have added something to it.” He then asked, “Why not just follow the Bible?”

Perhaps that’s too simple, but why don’t we give it a try? Let’s just be Christians and just follow the Bible.

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