Saints of YouTube


We will get nowhere with this business of unity until we love one another more than we love our separated churches and their denominational opinions. I was lately browsing around on YouTube. There I happened upon Protestants giving deeply felt reasons why we ought not invoke the saints in our prayers. Just to check, I looked further and, yes indeed, over to the right, just a click away, we find Catholics who are at least as sure that we should.

Some on both sides are well respected thinkers in their own churches, pastors and teachers, proclaiming one Lord, yet miles apart on this and other matters. Is it even possible for them to see one another as more important than a centuries-old divide in reasoning? I am not talking about anything so ambitious as full communion among all Christians, at least not right away. But even to progress in that direction, we have to greet and value one another as brothers and fellow laborers in one vineyard, rather than enduring one another while under our breaths saying those others are heretics, spiritually misguided or even something worse.

That, it seems to me, is exactly the problem we need to solve even to make the early baby steps toward being one church. I have never pretended to know what the path is to full unity, but I know the path begins with love and respect. Beyond that I would encourage all these people on YouTube to leave their denomination-specific doctrines and dogmas inside their churches. To the unsaved world outside the churches, preach only the Lord, and show by your treatment of one another that you have at least some idea of what he said. Our public squabbling leaves a bad impression with unbelievers, as if we are confused, divided, always at cross purposes and at times none too congenial.

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