Some will try to argue that it is less about personal conviction and more about adhering to some Biblical or creedal standard. The underlying assumption is that the personal conviction and beliefs are paramount, that those are what should drive what denomination a local church should be. We hear that we should follow our convictions and that we ought to be able to let those who believe differently a gracious exit. We hear this in the way the Church is talking about if some should leave or stay. The current splintering of the United Methodist Church is an example of the Church failing to understand our tendency to make Church reflect us and not Christ. I am old enough to know that I am no better than anyone else. And if I did establish another, it would be my Church, not the Church of Christ. And besides, where would I go? Would I establish another? I would not be able to establish it without the same faults, for they are the same faults I carry in me. No, I cannot free myself from you, because I am you, though not completely. How often I have wanted to shut the doors of my soul in your face, and how often I have prayed to die in the safety of your arms. I have seen nothing in the world more devoted to obscurity, more compromised, more false, and yet I have touched nothing more pure, more generous, more beautiful. You have given me so much scandal and yet you have made me understand what sanctity is. How baffling you are, oh Church, and yet how I love you! How you have made me suffer, and yet how much I owe you! I would like to see you destroyed, and yet I need your presence. It distracts from the larger human tradition captured in the following lines from In all Carlo Carretto’s book, The God Who Comes. This argument is boring and tiresome, but more, it distracts. So for as many examples we can point to that splitting is God’s desire, there are just as many examples we can point to which suggests that unity is God’s desire. Additionally, Jesus prayed in John that those who follow him might be made one. But it is also true the United Methodist Church is also a church that was birth at the union of at least two churches (the Methodist Church and the Evangelical United Brethren). I understand the human tradition of splitting. It is not lost on me that the current United Methodist Church is a break away from the Church of England which itself is a break away from the Catholic Church which was a split with the Eastern Church which split from the Jerusalem Council. We've assassinated a Medger Evers, and a Malcolm X, two Kennedys and King.Some may argue that the fracturing, splintering and breaking up of the church is as old as civilization and therefore is some sort of proof that those who uphold unity as misguided at best. That's why this jungle can kill and this jungle has assassinated several people in this generation in very few years, some four or five years. In this jungle there's always danger and the better you live the more dangerous it is. In this jungle there's no regard for one's character or for one's devotion and compassion. And in this jungle, anybody can get hurt. This jungle is full of dope addicts, and hustlers and hippies, harlots and hoodlums, pimps and punks, cranks and crooks, clowns, freaks and phonies, villers and killers, conmen and lewd and shrewd, and every conceivable brand of animal is in this jungle. There are many types of strange animals in this jungle. There's discipline that we need in the jungle. Turn the tables we flipped (Nah nah nah, nah) What's a vision if it's driven to imprison? The mother of their affectionate cover-up Sticks and Stones / Danger in the Jungle (Live) by Kings Kaleidoscope on The Beauty Between (2017) Part 1: "Does It Feel Like Real Love Yet?"
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