In Rob Bell’s video, Everything Is Spiritual, he uses a great analogy: is a marker a circle or a rectangle? It depends how you look at it. It’s both.

I was faithfully reading Volume 3 of my Harvard Classics when I came across the same idea in Francis Bacon’s Essay, “Of Unity in Religion” (you can read the full essay online here).

A man that is of judgment and understanding shall sometimes hear ignorant men differ, and know well within himself that those which so differ mean one thing, and yet they themselves would never agree. And if it come so to pass in that distance of judgment which is between man and man, shall we not think that God above, that knows the heart, doth not discern that frail men in some of their contradictions intend the same thing; and accepteth of both?

I suppose the difficulty lies in trying to figure out which differences in church life are only perceived, and which are genuine.