Exponential Education, Denominational Prejudice and Christian History
It’s interesting to me that the more you learn the more you become aware of, and you start learning even more. It seems learning is, to some extent exponential. Example the more I learn about and sympathize with Catholicism the more I notice the prejudices many protestants have against them. A simple but revealing example is one of the people Justin and I work with in our internship always lists catholics as a different religion. He’ll say for example “first the Hindus came in, then the muslims, then the catholics and then the christians came in.”
This subtle prejudice really bothers me, this man has essentially condemned all catholics to hell. fail. What bothers me even more, is that if we extrapolate this idea a little further we realize that he must think that there were no christians for 1500 years. The protestant tradition is quite young. about 500 years old. The best estimates I’ve heard say jesus was crucified in (33AD give or take) and the reformation happened ~1507 (it was a process not an event) so if there weren’t any christians until the reformation, why the Hell did Jesus die 1500 years earlier? you think he would have waited a bit. Or maybe popped in a time or two to yell at people to start doing things right.
But what do I know?
In short, if you’re a Christian, educate thyself, foo. Learn Christian history and basic Christin doctrine. For realsies. Know what and why you believe what you believe . Christian history often gets overlooked, in the protestant realm at least. I can;t help but wonder if we don’t do the for the same reason that Germany and japan just brush past WWII. I think that that needs to change. I for one value intellectual I honesty, I don’t want to hide the truth or hide from the trth for convience sake.
