Visiting the Baptist church for the first time since Confirmation wasn’t as weird as I thought it would be. That includes chatting with the pastor, who’s been trying to track me down to have a heart-to-heart to figure out why I left. (I did return his phone call, honest. We just keep on missing each other.) It’s the church I grew up in, so everyone knows me, but I don’t know who knows. No one asked what church I’m going to, not even when it was revealed that the guest preacher resides close to my new home. And I certainly wasn’t going to share the news during a Sunday morning service.
Looking back, I’d spent a lot of time being angry at the Baptist church. I was mad that they ignored obviously Catholic teachings in the Bible, despite it being the one-and-only authority they follow. I was mad that they convinced me I was nothing without a husband and children. I was mad that they teach certain principles so central to their beliefs that aren’t in the Bible at all (I’m looking at you, rapture). Truthfully, I even started this post with a two-paragraph vent about all their wrongs, but I deleted it. Because I forgive them, and I still love them.
I sat in the pew with my Baptist mother and made jokes about our differences. They’re silly things. In the Baptist church, they take time between hymns to greet each other. We’re talking, like, five minutes just to walk around and say hi to people. Mom admitted that they seriously need to stop doing this, and I said I’m already used to just turning around to shake a hand and being done with it. She laughed. It was okay.
But one thing is not okay, a detail that nagged at me years ago when I first considered maybe the Baptist church isn’t for me: They elevate themselves by belittling others.
They’re not intentionally looking down on their Christian bothers and sisters. But they try to prove their own worth by claiming to be unlike the others. Years ago, my mom told me how much she dislikes this. Not because she disagrees with it, but because this is no way to convert people. You’re not going to reach a Catholic by telling her that everything she knows is wrong. That Catholic is going to hear the message, feel personally attacked, and never go back to that church.
Honestly, I was waiting for it during that service. It was just a little side comment about prayer: How prayer should be genuine and not repetitive. How you don’t just recite the “Our Father” word for word like “the others” do.
Catholicism wasn’t even mentioned by name. But that jab at the Our Father—the one prayer that Jesus Christ himself taught us—physically hurt. He thought he was saying something against the Church, but he wasn’t just criticizing an earthly institution. I can almost deal when non-Christians do it. They don’t know any better. But I expect more from my fellow children.
Pastor still wants that conversation with me. I know he’ll share plenty of reasons why the Catholic Church is “wrong,” but I’m not interested in this debate. I wonder if they’ve actually done research on Catholic teachings, or if they’re simply regurgitating what other Baptists have told them. Because it took me all of a week to understand what the Church really says about the major anti-Catholic arguments. And that was enough for me to consider converting.
We’re not the enemy. There’s only one enemy, and I guarantee he’s not part of the Catholic Church. Stop spending so much time trying to prove the “others” wrong. It’s exhausting. And it’s unnecessary.
