Fighting Between Denominations is Stupid - Don't we have enough to worry about?

 Imagine a world in which morality is no longer considered a good thing, and the most righteous, high minded approach to debate is to scream, attack and insult anyone who suggests otherwise.  Imagine a world where some pretty vile, nasty and dark things are now held up as examples of nobility.  Got that image in your mind?  Good.  Now imagine what different groups of moral and religious people would do in such a world.  You might imagine they'd start banding together to push back the darkness and to try and preserve a sense of morality, at least in the things they have in common.  Especially different groups within a larger umbrella of a belief system. 

You'd be wrong to think that, but I get why you do.  I did as well.  You'd think people of good conscience would put aside differences in order to preserve as much as they can from an all-out assault on things once considered universally right and just.

I've lost that hope, and that's sad.  It is what it is I guess.  

See, I'm a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.  Yeah, the Mormons.  No, not the Jehovah's Witnesses.  They're a different group.  

I wasn't always LDS.  I was actually born and raised Catholic, having grown up in suburban Maryland.  I converted when I was 24 to LDS and that's been my spiritual home ever since.  Maybe in a future blog post I'll post my conversion story, but probably not.  I am usually careful about who I share it with because it's very precious to me and I really don't need to deal with hearing people pick at it.

And that's what I want to write about.  People of different denominations picking at each other.  Specifically, I'm going to share my own experience with that because... well because it's my blog and that's what I feel like writing about,.

Since I was a child, I have known what it's like to have other people giving me crap for my religion.  The earliest incident I can recall at the moment happened back in 1983 or 1984.  I was a kid having moved into a residential neighborhood of small 2-story houses in the suburbs of Washington, DC.  I was outside playing with some toys (a Garfield and Smurf plushie, in case you're curious) and minding my own business.  

That's when a guy, a neatly dressed young man came up to me.  He wasn't a creep or anything, just some kind of missionary.  I believe it was some flavor of Protestant.  He started asking me about whether I went to church.  I answered honestly because why not?  (Imagine in present day somebody walking up to your kid and grilling them about their church.)  Well as soon as this young man realized I was Catholic, he started badgering me about how Catholics worship Mary and pray to Saints and all that stuff Protestants don't do.  Imagine also my confusion because until that moment I didn't even realize there WAS more than one flavor of Christian church out there.  That really threw me for a loop.

So that's also when I first realized there was some hostility between denominations as well.  I mean, I guess I should have realized it sooner.  I'd been to Protestant activities with friends before, but I guess I just didn't process that things were different from how they were in my church.  I mean, there wasn't all the ceremony, robes, incense and stuff, but I always just figured it was people hanging out and talking about the same stuff Catholics did.  (Which they sort of do, sort of don't.)

To be continued in part II...