What Christians Do Best, or Worst.

The reader can decide, but I have come to the conclusion that the one thing that Christians do best, or the worst thing that Christians do, is to fight one another over doctrine. The issue came to mind when I was reading an article about the early in-fighting in the Eastern Church.In 449, the leaders of the Christian church met in Ephesus for debate on theological issues. According to Philip Jenkins, who teaches at Penn State, "At a critical moment, a band of monks and soldiers took control f the meeting hall, forcing the bishops to sign a blank paper on which the winning side later filled in its own favored statement.The document targeted the patriarch of Constantinople,Flavian....Yelling 'slaughter him!' a mob of monks attacked Flavian, beating him so badly that he died a few days later." Those who eventually came out on top during that meeting invalidated the whole council, referring to it as Latrocinium, which translates loosely as a Gangster Synod!
It is difficult not to read this account with a mixture of horror, and maybe even a little amusement, as one imagines a group of monkish thugs.But that slight amusement is tempered quickly when one thinks about the current state of the Christian Church. The ill-will and in-fighting has never stopped. On more than one occasion, Catholic students have asked me why there are so many Protestant denominations. I reply quickly, "Because we love to fight." I am only half-joking when I say that. My own experience as a youth was tainted by a rancorous split in my own congregation after we were refused permission to rebuild the church after a fire totally destroyed it. I have served parishes whose members had deep distrust, and even hatred, for one another. On my own campus, students siphon off attendees from my Sunday morning service so that they might attend a "true" church off-campus. What are we to think of this, and is there any solution? I don't know, and can only imagine that nothing will change until the return of Christ himself. In the meantime, I continue to be touched by something that a man who was a member of the first church that I ever served said in a Sunday school class. He was talking about a man for whom he had much dislike and to whom he could not bring himself even to say hello if they met on the street. Yet, he marveled, that when he saw that very same man in church on Sunday, in that very church that I was serving, he admitted that his feelings towards the man softened and he could even extend his hand and say "Good morning." It's not the answer to the problem of nasty Christians, but it is a start.