My wife, Ernie, and I just returned from a visit to Italy. We’re from the South (in the USA) and traveled with a group of 44 people from Massachusetts. We only knew two of them.
We were amazed by the Italian sights, people, culture, and food. However, we were even more amazed by the warm loving reception and caring friendship that we received from the people we traveled with.
Almost immediately we felt connected heart-to-heart with them. There was a beautiful sense of community and unity among us. It wasn’t a Christian-based tour. It consisted of people from different backgrounds and beliefs, and yet our heart-connection and love for one another was so strong that it overrode divisiveness and created incredible togetherness. Ernie and I felt totally loved, received, and accepted, even though we didn’t hide the fact that we are passionately in love with the risen Jesus.
We saw a lot of ruins from two ancient cultures. The ancient Greeks and Romans demonstrated the deep human need to worship by worshipping many gods. The Romans saw the Christian concept of one God who created all that exists, as a threat to their religion. That’s why they violently persecuted Christ-followers.
Suddenly in the fourth century, Roman Emperor Constatine made Christianity legal throughout his empire and called Christian leaders together to institutionalize it. Shortly afterwards Christianity was made the official religion of Rome and multitudes of pagans joined the officialized form, bringing their belief in many gods with them.
Constantine even gave pagan temples to the institutionalized form of Christianity, and they turned them into churches. This picture is one example of that. In the process of institutionalization Christianity lost much of the Holy Spirit led community that the early Christ-followers experienced daily. In Italy, traveling with a diverse spectrum of people, Ernie and I experienced a fresh taste of that wonderful, Spirit-led community. “O taste and see that God is good.”
Christianity as a personal, Spirit-led relationship with the risen Jesus, began to fade away when human hierarchy took control of it. Throughout the centuries that human hierarchy has evolved into an estimated 40,000+ Christian denominations that all claim that they are following Christ rather than human institutionalism, yet no two of them completely agree with each other. Perhaps it’s time to go beyond religious institutions and return to Spirit-led Christianity.
Thank you to all my new New England friends, family, and “groupo” for sharing your love with Ernie and me! You inspired us beyond measure!
Free Gas For Your Think Tank (A blog to jog your mind and unclog your heart . . .) 