Rant Revisited

I was getting my hair cut this weekend by my mother in law and I brought up the topic of the homosexual man that wanted to become a member of his church from Friday's post. She disagreed with me and went on to say that she didn't think that a gay person should have the same rights as a "card carrying" member of the church. I told her I thought the Nazi party were card carrying and that the European community thought they were neato at first because they destroyed pornographic and other types of unacceptable literature. You see where that lead. Yes, that might have been a bit harsh but it made me think. It's not really the fact that he was being shut out as much as this set of rules and regulations set up by denominations. "Card carrying" as my mother in law puts it.
I used to go to this church that had a long list of bylaws. One of the most amusing, and tragic I guess, was that they had two different levels of membership. A "Community member" could smoke and stuff, but you were kind of the B team in christian politics. Then we had the "Covenant member". That was the good stuff. You were in like flint on that one. This was about five years ago. What's interesting is that they were receiving complaints and losing membership because of this deliniation so over a period of a year they quietly eliminated the "community member" option.
The Holy Bible tells us not to go beyond the Word, and Paul said in 1Cor. 1:11-13 that some people were saying they were following Apollos, others Paul, while others followed Peter. Paul asks a very important question. "Has Christ been divided?"
It's my opinion that denominations are a form of legalism and while being a member of a Baptist, Wesleyan, Methodist or whatever shouldn't keep anyone out of Heaven(I hope), I do think they have gone beyond His Holy Word and seperate and keep people out.
Therefore, this is my new monicker. It's a long one, so bear with me. I am a child of God, a follower and joint heir with Jesus and my rule book is only one- The Holy Bible. That's the only membership you need.
P.S. Mr. Webster's definition of Denomination is: A religious sect.