I will take you at your word and accept that you sincerely want to understand the Christian perspective and believe you can help enlighten the hardcore ones. Sorry, I felt a little duped by the title of the thread by the jokes within and LOL's and wanted to be sure of your intent before I responded.
Hardcore Christians such as myself feel that the “church” is the entire group of believers in Christ and is comparable to the body of Christ The divisions or sects within that church serve as different parts of that body. It is not necessary or required that any part of that body have the whole and complete truth or serve the same function. Of course one would feel that the sect they are part of is correct and maybe even that the differences might be critical to entering heaven or one wouldn’t be part of it to start with.
Most of these separations were formed from a person or group's sincere desire to tweak or fine tune their worship of God to the best of their understanding. Rather than stay with the first group and try to persuade them of what they feel is the best way to honor God, they leave and form a new gathering much in the same way that a new thread is started when the conversation gets off topic or more reverently, the way cells divide to form a baby. As long as they are still worshipping God as revealed through Jesus they are still part of his body. These divisions, I believe, do not dismay God but please Him and some may even be caused by Him because faith grows and differing sects accommodate those who are at various stages of revelation and growth.
Because of my beliefs, that the attempt of someone to worship God in sincerity the best they know how at the time by the creation of a new denomination, I consider that process to be reverent and holy and not really something to made light of.
By the way, respect for the sincerity of the beliefs of any person should extent to all people of any faith, even if it is felt they have placed their faith in the wrong concept of God. There is a truth about God and He is more than any of us know and we can only offer an explanation of what proved what we believe to us.
If someone led you to believe that if you didn’t accept their version of the truth then you would be lost from God, it was probably because they sincerely believe it and don’t want you to be lost and was not to condemn you because they know don’t have that power. It's between you and God whether you accept or reject what anyone says about the ultimate fate of your soul.
We don’t have an argument that your having faith in my faith or a belief in a belief system is not the same thing as faith in God. The account of our experiences with God are meant to encourage those who haven’t had or don’t know to seek an experience with God of their own.
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