38,000 Ways, 1 God?

Listening to a talk by Jeff Cavins yesterday brought back some memories of some of my B.C. (before Catholic) years.  I remember in high school talking to a friend of mine at the time who was a Jehovah's Witness.  We were talking briefly about our faiths, and I was struck by how different our beliefs in who we thought was the same God were, though we both believed in Jesus.  This is the earliest I can remember of wondering why there are so many different belief systems among Christians.

One statistic I recently found says there are 38,000* Christian denominations.  Wow!  38,000!  Now, as a Protestant, I generally tried to take the stance that they are the spiritual body of Christ.  The Holy Spirit must be the one guiding all these groups of Christians.  Because after all Sacred Scripture tells us that there is One Faith, and we know that Christ established one Church not 38,000.  So, in order to make sense of this the Holy Spirit was the answer.  And this satisfied me for about another 10 years.

A few years post-college the Lord slowly helped me out of my comfort zone when needing to find a new church to attend.  Then questions of denominations and their differences started to rise up again.  I wanted to find not only the church that I was most comfortable at but the one that was most in line with the truth as I knew it.  Now I had to ask myself, "Which is the true Church?" and "Which Church is right?"  Those turned out to be dangerous questions.

Can all 38,000 denominations be right?  They all claimed to be inspired by the Holy Spirit, yet they taught different and sometimes opposing ideas or doctrines.  Now, I'm not a great theologian or anything, but I knew that God can't contradict himself.  I think God has given us all enough reason to understand that.  God IS the Truth (as Christ said).  So there is one Truth.  And if so, then the Holy Spirit can not inspire two opposing truths.  Conclusion: some, if not most, denominations must be wrong.  Honestly, I did not like my own conclusion on this matter because that raised the potential that my own denomination was wrong on some things or at least didn't teach the fullness of the truth.

So, which denomination is teaching the truth actually inspired by the Holy Spirit?  If there is supposed to still be one truth, then it must have come from Christ.  This led me to history (dangerous territory for Protestants) and to Christ himself.

Which Church did Christ start?  "And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the powers of death shall not prevail against it." (Matt. 16:18)

* http://christianity.about.com/od/denominations/p/christiantoday.htm