So Many Denominations, So Little Time

To be a Christian means your spiritual beliefs are grounded in Jesus Christ as the Son of God. The denominations of the Christian faith are numerous, but they all believe Jesus is the Son of God.  As the saying goes, the devil is in the details; so there are a lot of arguments as to who has got it exactly Right. And any time someone believed enough they had it Right (or someone else had it really really Wrong), a new denomination was formed.

I am non-denominational. In recent years that has come to mean Baptist for Baptists who don’t want to associate with Baptists anymore, so let me clarify: I do not ascribe to one denomination. I am not a member of any church. I attend a church I like a lot.

I thought I’d blog a bit on the different denominations I have sampled and what I got out of it. There won’t be any bashing. There will be sarcasm.

My first church was the Mormon church. Or Church of Latter Day Saints (LDS for short, though I think LDS sounds like some sort of Syndrome).

My Mother was Mormon and so was my Father. They met in Seminary which is what teen-age Mormon’s do before school. There are parents that go around and pick up teens in the morning for religious study before they head to school.

Have you tried waking up teenagers? I have. I find this whole Seminary thing impressive.

My Mother left the church when she and my Father divorced. Rumor has it she was excommunicated. And that is probably true because I know several other people excommunicated. It happens. I probably would have been- had I lasted as a Mormon into my teen years- because I am SO not a morning person and would not have made it through that Seminary thing.

One summer, my grandparents took me on a cross country road trip and we hit all the Mormon highlights: Salt Lake City, Navuoo and Carthage (where the founder of the Mormon faith Joseph Smith was shot by a mob’s attack on the jailhouse where he was incarcerated).

In one of the museum galleries attached to the Temple in Salt Lake City, there were mannequins in various life size dioramas depicting key moments of the Mormon Faith.

One that I will never forget is Joseph Smith (well, a brown haired mannequin of him) kneeling in the woods with sunlight (well done spot lights) pouring through the tree canopy as God spoke to him (he found Golden Tablets in the woods from which he wrote the Book of Mormon).

From that moment on, I believed rays of sunlight streaming through the trees meant God was speaking to someone (not just about golden tablets).

Each time I see this natural phenomena, it reminds of me of God’s presence on earth.

Of His voice in our lives.

Even if the sound of his voice is only the rays of light touching the ground where I walk.