I belong to (fill in your group here)

The sense of belonging to some group has been instilled into many of us since we came into the world. The concept of belonging is something many of us embrace, accept, and work with everyday. Webster's Dictionary defines the word belong as (1): to have a proper or suitable place. (2): to be a part of, related to, connected to. (3): to be a member with. Every one of us at some point of our life has belonged to some people group that share either a common bloodline, a common bond, or a common interest. For many, the sense and feeling of belonging started in the prenatal stages of your mother's pregnancy when she told your father that she was pregnant with their child. From that point in many of our lives, special pre-natal care taken by the mother via the visits to the doctor, change in diet, etc. was the first steps of establishing that the child soon to see the light of the world belonged to the marital covenant turned into a family. The father, to add to the sense of belonging also showed that you belonged by doing such things as earning a little extra income, rearranging and redecorating the guest room into a nursery, doing physical tasks to make the load on the wife slightly easier, etc. The parents, together, showed their desire to make you feel welcome and belonged by changing their lifestyles to accommodate you through such things as quitting the weekly movie, deciding what to name you, speaking to you while in the womb, going to LaMaz classes to learn more on how to deliver you into the world, and recognizing the fact that you kicked inside of the womb.

From the moment you entered the world, many of you were still showed that sense of belonging by your parents into the family. From the constant changing of diapers, to keeping you warm in the winter, feeding you, being spoiled by the grandparents, placing you in the car seat, etc. the addressing of the baby's physical needs along with providing the baby with love showed the child an identity to which he or she related to. We see the sense of belonging to a family when a baby crawls to the warmth and security of mommy and daddy as a infant to running to mommy or daddy when the infant now toddler is placed in a preschool daycare for the first time with other kids he is not accustomed to. The parent(s) the child relates to and now trust instills the confidence into the child that the preschool will be all right and the child will not get hurt. After the child enacts his trust and believes the parent, the child them begins to assimilate with the other likeminded children and a second sense of belonging is instilled into the child. The child belongs to his nuclear and extended family but now belongs to a group of children called a school class.

From the school class throughout childhood and eventually throughout life, the person also begins to assimilate into sub-groups within the collective group the child is placed into. From playing with other children of the same sex at recess to hanging out with fellow adolescents of similar interests, the idea of 'family' is parallel from the parent-child relationship to the friend-individual relationship. As common blood brought the parent to the child, common age brought the children into an educational setting, common sex of the child brought 'bonding', and common interests brought teenagers together as friends to pursue the common interest, we learn that within each and every one of us is a sense of wanting to be loved and belonged at the expense of willingness to or refusal to 'conform or be cast out'. Even as adults, we look for family via college fraternaties / sorrorites, honor societies, extracurricular activity clubs, and some go as demonically far as to look for family within sinful secret societies such as the Freemasons. We desired to be loved, accepted and belonged in all areas from a circle of friends, our fellow workers, our family, our church, our culture, our nation, the clubs we belong to, and in many cases, belong to Jesus. The common theme of belonging to something of the common ground permeates within each and every one of us.

In many cases, belonging is a good thing for any human being because this encourages and develops interpersonal skills of communication, respect for other people's culture, a sense that there are others who share a particular hobby, etc. However, this sense of belonging can go haywire when the sense of belonging to one's color, culture, language, race, interests, religion, etc. turns from a common interest of respect, remembering the past, etc. into a now common anthem that decides that their theme turned anthem must be the only ways and means we express ourselves. From separatists (Klu Klux Klan / Nation of Islam) because of race, separatists (Adolf Hitler) because of nationality, to separatists (certain denominations) because of theology differences within Christianity, the eliteness of a personal interest turned conquest dispels a noxious odor within the human community. From high school athletes who reject and beat up the class nerd to the teenage gangs who kill innocent grandmothers, children, and others who stand up to them to the teenagers who reject an individual because of being 'from the wrong side of the tracks', the stigmata of an identity that the individual's parents reared to the child as environment, pride, and acceptance now becomes the lines that divide, segregate, and establish the 'norms' within our 'norm'. These gangs, tribes, families, etc. need to have the hate stopped not only for the good of all cultures and for the good of all society.

It is when differences in opinion, culture, language, race, etc. become the platform to suppress others that the common theme from a collective group turns into the common conquest. As this has happened within our society today, this has also happened within the Christian church today. Denominations are formed out of church splits when two sub-groups within a group of a common interest discover that the interest is no longer common on Jesus, but uncommon on the interpretation of the words of Jesus. One can study the history of the Pentecostal / Charismatic / Word of Faith / and off splinter movements to easily see that this move has been filled with, fueled by, and forthcoming in differences in theology. Yes hundreds of years ago Protestants split from Catholics and Protestants split up within Protestant sects but when compared to the total scope of what we define as Protestantism, no other group of believers has experienced split after split and denomination after denomination than the Pentecostals. What has amazed me psychologically is that when a Pentecostal denomination has split into two smaller denominations, each split calls the other 'heretic', 'deceived', etc. While all this time, people from both sides of the split can praise and worship, speak in tongues, and have their interpreters of tongues and prophets tell them that their side of the split is God's move and the other side of the split is going down in damnation and hellfire in the name of 'Thus Saith The Lord'. However, years later, both sides are prospering, growing and therefore believing that their side was right and God's impartation is on them while still holding on to a 'prophecy' that the other side is going down. The question here is not who was right and who was wrong but why did we let this uncommon ideology break up a common theme of obeying God's word?

Click here for part two of this article.