Let's Talk about Heresy
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Today, I waffled back and forth for a while about what I wanted to talk about. With all the events of recent weeks there were many things that I thought could use some touching on, but in the end, I am happy with where I ended up.
For today, I want to shift gears rather dramatically, to explore a topic that will, on the surface, seem pretty high-minded, but my hope is that after a bit of digging we will come to see just how much this subject impacts us in the church today.
What is this topic, you ask? Well today, I want to talk about heresy.
Christianity has been around an awfully long time. Over 2000 years. Some of the scripture that is an integral part of the Christian faith, has been around for millennia more than that. So in that time, it should surprise no one, that there have been a fair amount of religious movements that in hindsight, the church came to consider heretical. Marcionism, Gnosticism, Montanism, Adoptionism, Docetism, and a thousand more -isms have risen and passed on in their time. And while we need to try our best to fend off the heresies of the faith, the unfortunate truth is that there is a reason they always seem to crop up: they, for the most part, start with a kernel of something true.
An interesting read on this subject is the book Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics by Catholic contemporary historian and Conservative NY Times columnist Ross Douthat. While there are a number of points that his book tries to make, not all being things everyone may agree with, one thing I personally found of great value is how Douthat comes to classify heresies; by grouping them into three different broad categories.
Heresies that are due to the appropriation of Christian thought is one example. In this category falls the heresies where culture presents something as factual, to which the Bible is proof texted in order to support that point of view. Another of the categories would be the para-Christian heresies. Here would fit a lot of the heresies that center around “new revelations” of what God wants from us now, even if what is put forward flies in the face of what the Bible actually teaches. But while there are many fascinating examples of different destructive blasphemies that fall into both of these camps, it is the third category that I want to deal with for the rest of my post today, because it is in this third category where there rests one particular heretical teaching of the modern church that really must be addressed as soon as possible, lest our witness be damaged any further.
And what this third category is, are heresies of blowing things out of proportion. Unsurprisingly, it is this category that has caused the largest number of issues over the history of the Church, the reason for which is simple. All the heresies in this category, are on some level, true and good doctrine. It is only when either their importance is made to be greater than it should be, or teachings that would hold them in check are ignored that the heresy arises.
A good example of a heresy that falls in this category, and the example that Douthat goes within his book, are some of the extreme teachings surrounding health and wealth in the church. Now if you are not familiar with these problem Health and Wealth teachings, they sound something like the following. ‘God loves you and wants what is best for you. If you pray, everything you could ever want will be given to you. Your health will be good all the days of your life, you will know riches, all as a blessing from God.’
Now to everything I just said, there is a kernel of truth attested to in scripture. In the Bible, we learn that God does very much so love us (John 3:16) and wants us to be filled with Joy (Ecclesiastes 9:7). More than that even, God frequently asks us to pray for our needs, which he tells us will be provided (John 16:24). So, from passages such as these and many more, it is not hard to arrive at a reading of the Bible that supports a teaching of health and wealth like the one I laid out before.
Where the heresy in this line of teaching comes up, though, is that also required to arrive at this understanding of what the Bible teaches about health and wealth, is for me to ignore countless other passages that say pretty much the opposite. For every one of the passages in the Bible about how God wants us to be happy and will bless us with wealth, prosperity and health if we pray, there are another ten that talk about how life in a fallen world is hard, and about how following after Christ is a life of struggle and turmoil. It is not that these two veins of teachings cancel one another out, or that the truth of the matter is life sucks and that is the end of it, but instead just by ignoring all of the passages that talk of struggle in order to paint a rosy picture, what you end up with as something that is runs against what scripture actually teaches while at the same time saying it is the ‘right biblical perspective.’ It is heresy.
And, so, with this example given of what I mean when I talk about “heresies of blowing things out of proportion,” let’s talk about a different example, one that has swept through the Church, has damaged our witness, as well as it has impaired how we think of God as well as one another, all without us likely even realizing it was happening. Let’s talk about the heresies associated with a faulty understanding of the doctrine of Total Depravity.
Now if that sounds long and boring, don’t worry because it is actually pretty straight forward. What the doctrine of Total Depravity is, in a very small nutshell, is the belief that as a result of the fall of humanity, sin has become shot through all creation. There is no corner of our lives or of all the universe that has not felt sin’s ravages in some way and as such, there is no part of creation that has not to some extent experienced the corruption that sin imparts. And as far as doctrines with good Biblical support go, this is an idea with a lot of it. It is hard to make a good case from a Christian perspective that the teaching of Total Depravity is not to at least some level true, albeit the full extent is something debated by pastors and theologians the world over.
However, even this doctrine that is so well attested to in scripture, is not beyond a heretical understanding. And where the problems arise with Total Depravity, just as they do with health and wealth, is when the doctrine is taught and focused on to the exclusion of the wider picture the Bible paints about humanity and creation.
Because the thing is, that right from the beginning of the Bible, the picture of humanity that we see is one that defies easy categorization, as either fully good or fully sinful. In Genesis one, on literally the first page of the Bible, we read of God creating humanity in his image as well as all the rest of creation, and saying that it is “good.” Then a few chapters later when sin enters the world, where we would expect that God would regard us as a lost cause, something to be discarded so that he could start from scratch, we find ourselves surprised when that isn’t what happens. Instead, God doubles down on his creation, working to address this sin and heal it. And from then on, in passage after passage, we are confronted with God’s love for his creation, a sign that he sees us as something that has innate value.
Throughout the stories of the Bible, that God loves us, cares for us, and thinks of us as worthwhile is attested to just as much, and then even more, than are the descriptions supporting Total Depravity. Enough so that these two sides of Christian teaching pretty much come to hold each other in check, together working to tell those that would read scripture a more complete story than either side would on its on; a story that says that while the world is fallen, and sin is shot through everything, that doesn’t change the fact that God still loves us and thinks we are valuable, and as such is still working to set things right, a task he would love for his followers to join him in.
This is how the doctrine of Total Depravity should be understood, as something clearly attested to in scripture, but that also is held in check by other teachings of human value, and God’s love for us. This is how Total Depravity should be understood because it is only in tension with these other teachings that it makes sense with what the Bible actually teaches.
But all too often, this is not how Total Depravity is taught, at all. All too often the teaching remains purely focused on the sin and corruption shot through all things, and God’s love, care and the value we have as his creations are not brought into the conversation to balance things out. And it is when this happens, this incomplete and one-sided teaching of an otherwise true doctrine of the church, that what we are left with is utter heresy.
And while this may all seem like pie in the sky thinking that doesn’t impact the average Christian on the ground serving God, I hate to say it, but it absolutely does. It does because this particular heretical issue causes some very big problems when it comes to how we relate to the world. Let’s take a hypothetical situation. Say, for instance, the country you live in has a minority population that your church is within a stone’s throw from a minority population who just so happen to have a history of persecution going back hundreds of years and continuing on in some way shape or form even to this very day. Now I ask you, if your thinking about all people and creation is one solely influenced by this bad understanding of Total Depravity, an understanding that holds that everything is purely sinful and corrupt with no redeeming value whatsoever, how do you think that understanding would impact how you would relate to this group of people? Do you think this outlook would make you more or less likely to try to help this group with the problems they encounter?
But if you instead balance this view of humanity’s sin with what all else the Bible also teaches about the nature of human beings, that all creation innately has value because God made it and says that it does and that all humanity is worth working to reach out to and building up because God loves and cares for us and as such we as his followers should strive to act in that way as well, then I ask you, how would that change in perspective cause you to act toward this group of people instead?
Now, a caveat, what I am not trying to say in this post is that all the issues facing the Church today in regards to race relations boil down to this exact problem. There are problems that are multitude on that front, more for one post to possibly tackle, but at the same time, I think it is fair to say, that some of those problems, as well as a number of others that center around human worth, certainly do trace their origin back to this exact issue. Heresies of blowing things out of proportion are important to notice as quickly as possible, because they, in a very real way, impact how the church does its job of reaching out to the peoples of the world. This particular heresy, of focusing purely on the sinfulness of humanity without remembering God’s love, caring and his placing of value on us, is particularly insidious in how it impacts our witness because it causes us to wonder why we would even bother to reach out, as everything is worthless anyway. A position that from a wider biblical perspective is simply not true.
But thankfully for us, as we identify and face this heresy now, we Christians can always remember that we have a long history of weeding exactly these kinds of problems out. We just need to, crack open our Bibles, and read widely. If we try to get the whole picture of things, and when we come across tension, not be afraid to wrestle with it to get the bigger picture, then we will probably move past even this problem just find.
