Parts is Parts - A Metaphor I will Attempt to Beat to Death

Probably most of you don't remember the title here.  It sums an ad campaign that once attacked McDonald's Chicken McNuggets.  The idea of the ad was that our nuggets are made only from chicken breasts and McD's are made from almost anything, probably even including both chicken lips and toes.

Apparently McDonald's had it right, much to to the chagrin of chickens that value their parts.  Small kids still beg for Happy Meals with Nuggets and I can't even remember who ran the original ad.

Apparently, parts really are parts after all and all of them are apparently good together...at least in the world of Happy Meals.

I do wish our churchianity could approach the ecumenical nature of a McNugget, rather than assume the mantle of, "we only use the VERY best."   (i.e."Churchianity" is my shorthand for all things associated with Sunday-go-to-meetin'.)  It seems to me we really like the "my idea/doctrine/approach" is better than yours.  Unfortunately, when we run to buy that product, we wind up with something that will soon be forgotten and maybe never existed at all.

Oh, and back to nuggets for a minute, note that all nuggets eventually get boiled in oil of some kind.  The actual health benefit of any particular kind of nugget becomes rather obscure or even non-existent when you bread it and boil it in oil.  So, in the end it becomes a rather thin matter of taste and to a large degree perception, whether we prefer one offering or another. 

Some things do constitute substantive differences.  If I want Nuggets of any kind, I sure don't want to be served a salad.  (Is anyone praying for my dietary tendencies yet?)  Identity and identification matter.  Differences of form, do not.

Let's switch from diet to religion for a minute.  There are a lot of things that aren't Christianity and that have over time, proven themselves to be direct and stark attacks on the core of Christianity.  Identifying differences at this level are pretty easy; there are in fact, an embarrassment of riches.  My two favorites are: 

1. Does the religion in question accept that Jesus is who he said he is?
2. Does it have at it's core the value of love expressed in both concept and behavior?

If you've got those two, you have something pretty Christian. 

But then on the greater than eighth day of creation came the 'isms...And that's everything from Catholicism to Methodism to Calvinism; all these and many many more leading in turn to the big ISM namely, schism.  I have to say, I think most of these were created in our image rather than God's.

In response, I want to propose another ism.  Namely:  "I-don't-know-yet-ism"  I won't lay out the doctrine for this because, happily, there isn't any.  Instead, let me give a bit of example.  Suppose someone says, "Everyone was predestined from before time as to whether they'd go to heaven or hell."  The proper IDKY-ism response is:  "Huh.  There seem to be biblical teachings going both ways on that.  "I don't know yet" which might be correct. 

In case you missed it, we will eventually know with absolute certainty the answer to this and all other questions.  This might come at any time but will with certainty happen at the point when we cease to "see through a glass darkly."  Then I think, we will be stunned at the irrelevance of both theses sorts of questions and of their necessarily limited answers.