October 31 is both Halloween and Reformation Day. I have many FB friends who celebrate either or both holidays. Some don’t celebrate Halloween because some of the Halloween traditions were originally rooted in medieval or early colonial superstition. They would probably give other reasons, based on poor knowledge and a lack of understanding of real history which they have been fed through years of bad propaganda sermons, but reality is what it is. Due to their misconceptions, some are even afraid of Halloween.
As a Protestant I am not supposed to say this, but I am far less disturbed by old superstitions about ghosts and goblins than I am by the Body of Christ being violently torn asunder by a carnal monk and a carnal pope settling their differences over important spiritual matters in the most carnal fashion possible with no regard for the Lord’s body or the unity and love of God.
We are aghast at zombie and slasher flicks but don’t bat an eye at the Lord’s Body constantly lopping off parts of itself and casting them aside like a decaying corpse or
victim in one of those movies. In the past 501 years we have gone from one Body to two bodies and now to thousands of bodies, all because we are the hand that constantly says to the foot “I don’t need you”, and we follow the Reformation pattern of carnal schism is rather than mature dialogue and a commitment to relationship and unity.
I pray that someday we actually begin to care about the expressed desire and prayer of Jesus that His Body would be one, even as He and the Father are one. But hey, it’s not like the desires of Jesus should be a guiding concern for the Church that claims Him as their Lord or anything right?
While I am a Protestant by theology, I can’t help but to look back at the Reformation as one of the darkest periods in the history of the Church, and not as the great event we still proudly celebrate 501 years later. While I laud much of the doctrine of the Reformers, I view the Reformation itself as a mistake and an event that both Protestants and Catholics should be ashamed of. The more I study the Reformation the stronger this conviction grows in me. Nothing was actually reformed by the Reformation, it was merely a glorified schism. Not a single one of the crowning doctrines of the Reformation was actually new, but they had all already been being debated within the existing Church at the time. All the Reformation did was remove the voices, of all those who stood for those beliefs, from the existing church so that when the Catholic Church was finally ready to truly examine those ideas, the Protestant Voice was no longer there to be heard. I can’t help but imagine what the Church might look like today if Luther weren’t such a prickly divisive jerk, and if the Pope hadn’t been so determined to make sure the Papacy didn’t re-lose its degree of supreme value and authority, that it had only just recently wrestled back away from the conciliar movement, that he was blinded by and driven by the struggle for earthly power. What if they had decided to handle the entire situation with spiritual maturity and a heart of love for their Christian brother instead? What if, instead of a worldly power struggle, they followed the teaching and direction of God, and maybe even been more concerned with God’s kingdom than they were with their own? As a Protestant, I focus much of my thought and rebuke towards those on my side of the schism. That is not because I feel the bulk of the blame is all on the Reformers or that the Catholics of that day do not also share greatly in the blame, but merely because I feel the more Biblical approach is always to let judgment and correction come to your own house first before it reaches out to others.
I don’t know how we will ever find unity again, or what it will look like when we find it. I’m certain it will not come in the form of either the Protestants nor the Catholics suddenly recanting and submitting to the other’s authority, nor do I think that it should happen that way. Both groups need each other and both have truths of the Kingdom and a representation of God on this Earth that the other needs if we ever hope to attain to the fullness of Christ. But I do know that until we at least acknowledge the problem and begin to work in that direction we have no hope of ever getting there. A journey cannot begin until you start taking your first steps.
