Election Day and A Our Tattered Nation

"Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation; and every city or house divided against itself will not stand." Matthew 12:25

Yesterday was Election Tuesday in the United States.  I found it a telling consequence as I was preying the Daily Rosary we pray The Sorrowful Mysteries as we chose our leaders and make national decisions.  Does the mean God sad about the state of America?

Enough about that, I have made my feelings about where we are as a country in other places.

What does concern me here is the state of the more important nation, the one that lives on forever, the Kingdom of God.

I am by no means an expert on Church history or other religions.  But I am trying to learn.

I will focus on the monotheistic religions, as I do put value in the First Commandment and what Jesus later rephrased and called the Greatest Commandment.  Simply it puts says we should worship God above all.  There is no mention of there being more than one God.

This may be somewhat oversimplified but at the time of Jesus that means we focus on the Jewish and Muslim religions.  Then Jesus crested his church, Christianity.  St. Ingantius of Antioch used the term Catholic Church (meaning universal in Greek) to describe the Christianity around 110 AD.

Things continued as until the time of the schisms that spit The Catholic Church started shortly after 1000 AD.  The disputes ranged from the political, the theological, the liturgical and geographical.  Over the next 500 years factions formed in the Christian Church.  Many people left to different forms of Protestantism.

I don't even pretend to know the differences in the many sects of the Christian Churches.  I think we differ on how we feel about the sacraments of Baptism and the Eucharist.  We differ on how we honor Virgin Mary.  We tend to view parts of the Bible with a different set of eyes.  There are definite differences in how tied we are to some traditions of Church (see any social network site for examples).  

Even though we do have our differences, we are all Christians and believe in the sacrifice of Jesus for our sins and his resurrection three days later.  We do coexist mostly peacefully today.  Maybe we can find a way to remember our similarities and reunify in the future.  It will be difficult because our differences seem to have so nasty (again, social network is the bast source for examples).

If we can reunify the Christians in some way we can then turn our visions to the long lasting division between the 3 monotheistic religions.  There are basic foundational differences between Muslimism, Judaism and Christianity.  In this case it might be more reasonable to look to becoming more knowledgeable and respectful of people with other views.  I used to think this was impossible until I visited Jerusalem.  Standing in a single spot you can see some of the most holy places in the world.  Somehow Jews can worship at the Western Wall, Christians can line up to worship at the Church of the Holy Sepulture where the Crucifixion happened, all under the shadow of the Dome of the Rock where Muslims believed Mohammad journeyed to heaven.  For the most part they area able to peacefully exist despite their large ideological differences.

Maybe this shows some hope for the Christian Churches to reunify someday.  Our differences are nothing compared to what goes on in this couple of miles in Jerusalem.  I pray for understanding and tolerance, so that maybe we Christians can reunify under the one True Church.  As Jesus stated if we remain divided against ourself we cannot stand.