In the past few weeks a lot of Protestants have been up in arms about what the Pope said about other denominations. Frankly, I don’t see what all the fuss is about.

The Roman Catholic Church has been saying that their church is the only true church since the beginning. In fact, up until the reformation, the Roman catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church were really the only two ‘Christian” churches in the world. Then came the reformation, which caused a wide variety of divisions and splits among Christianity all of which claimed that they were right.

Yet, even before that, yes since the beginning of the Christian church, there have been divisions and disagreements. Acts and the Epistles are full of accounts of disagreements between Judaizers and those who would not have Christians follow the Jewish way of thinking. There were disagreements about the Lord’s Supper, about Baptism, as well as many other things.

To think that we all can agree on everything is ludicrous. We will never agree on everything on this side of heaven. We will never come to an agreement about how we should baptize, when we should baptize, or even what baptism does for us. We will never agree on whether the whole Bible is true or just parts of it. In connection with that, we will never agree on how to interpret Scripture either. We are so close and yet so far apart.

Now, I am not saying that this is all right. I wish for and long for the day when we can all agree on every matter of faith. It would be the most awesome thing in the world if we could all come together as one in theology and in practice. Still, as long as there are human beings in these church and a part of these churches, I am afraid that this will not happen.

Even within our own church bodies, from Lutherans, to Roman Catholics, to Presbyterians, to Methodists there are constant struggles and disagreements. The LCMS (Lutheran Church Missouri Synod) of which I am a member, just had a convention. Not one of the motions that were voted on received a 100% vote. While this may seem like a terrible thing, it really isn’t. It just shows that we all come from different places and times, have different views on things, and will never agree on everything. I’m not saying that it is good that we can’t ever agree or that it is ideal, but it is just the way it is among sinful human beings.

This shows another reason for the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ as Savior of the world. If we were all perfect, which we aren’t, we would all agree on everything, because we would all have the same mind, the mind of Almighty God. Since none of us is perfect, and since we are all fallible human beings, we will always disagree.

At the same time, getting back to the beginning point, we do have different belief systems based on our best understanding of things. The Lutheran Church Missouri Synod bases its beliefs solely on the Scriptures as they have been set out for us in the 66 books of the Old and New Testament. We also believe that Scripture interprets Scripture, which means that if we don’t understand something in Scripture the only way to figure it out is to read the rest of Scripture to come up with the answer.

The Roman Catholic Church has as its authority the Scriptures and church tradition which includes an infallible Pope. In other words, if they don’t understand Scripture they go to the Pope for the answers.

They believe they’re right. We believe we’re right. And you believe you’re right. If this weren’t the case we wouldn’t need all of these different churches now would we? We would all be one big happy Christian church.

While we long for this and continue to work toward this, the likelihood of this happening is very slim on this side of paradise. Therefore we eagerly await our full adoption as true sons and daughters of the king into our heavenly inheritance that is heaven where there will be no more divisions, wars, famine, plague, or any other consequence of sin. Come quickly Lord Jesus! Come quickly!! Amen!