The Importance of Being a Heretic
Thinking for yourself demands disagreeing with the temple.
Among the words in the English language I most despise is the word heretic. Partially because I am one; let’s just make that clear upfront. I have many controversial opinions about matters of Christian theology ranging from minor to moderately important. These opinions would prevent me from joining the priesthood of almost every organized denomination on earth. This doesn’t worry me though, because I committed long ago(at least by the standards of a 28-year-old) that I would pursue my questions about God to the end, no matter what information I found or how it contradicted what I already believed. In my mind, it was obvious that if God was real and the story of Jesus’ resurrection from the dead was true, I would be able to answer my doubts. My parents encouraged me, and I read all the best(that I knew) from every tradition(that I knew). These traditions produced many fine people of faith but also made me realize that often one man's heretic was another man’s brilliant reformer. Many men who are held up as pillars of the Christian faith across the world would argue like a high school debate class if you locked them in the same room together.
In my experience, the sort of authentic faith these people demonstrate comes in three varieties. Two of these varieties are true and one is flawed. The first type of faith is found in those who have fought their doubts to the death and won. The majority of those I read were in this category. They had answers to questions about God I hadn’t even thought to ask, but there was not one of them who had emerged from their fight to the death with their doubts with an unscarred worldview. They had ideas that revolutionized the practice of faith, but they also had ideas that offended and challenged the religious orthodoxies of their society. These people often got along very well with people outside their temple. J.R.R. Tolkien was a Catholic and C.S. Lewis was an atheist and later a Protestant Christian, but despite their differences of opinion, they were the finest of friends. Their differences of opinion paired with their love for one another led to many fascinating conversations that became legendary among the community of Oxford University. Eventually, it spawned a full club of writers and intellectuals with similar attitudes known as “The Inklings.” These two disagreed with one another wildly, sometimes even vociferously, but they never doubted the authenticity of the other’s faith. They knew the other person had wrestled with the same questions they had, and they had enough humility and respect for each other to admit that they might not have gotten everything right.
The second type of faithful person is those whose experience of life is so supernatural that there’s hardly any room for doubt. Jesus falls clearly into this category. When you believe yourself to be the unique son of the creator of the universe and you work miraculous signs everywhere you walk, not much is gonna convince you that you don’t hear from God. While Jesus is an extreme example, the same holds true for mystics and prophets across faiths and histories. Ramakrishna, the great Hindu mystic was beholden to no temple, and would always trust his visions over the word of any priest, no matter how long his beard or how funny his hat.
These forms of faith are both an existential threat to corrupt churches or temples, and for the same reason. They directly challenge the credibility of such an institution’s claim to spiritual authority. The first poke holes in a corrupt temple’s lies, showing the man behind the curtain for the frail fool he is. The second shows the obvious difference between the act put on by a corrupt temple and the unfiltered power of God.
The worst modern churches and the most corrupt temples all prefer the third, flawed form of faith. This is the form most commonly referred to as “blind faith”. This is faith that is against reason; faith that sees the doubts creeping in through the cracks in the facade and looks away from them. This makes for docile and well-behaved churchgoers who are easily manipulated to help fund their pastor’s mansion and private jet. You’re in such a temple if they brand anyone who demonstrates the first two kinds of faith a heretic or blasphemer and banishes them from the temple in the absence of unrepentant sin that harms another. They know the example of such faith will illuminate the hypocrisy they work so hard to hide, eventually revealing the full horror of their corruption.
If you are a person of blind faith, know this is not a condemnation. You may be a spiritual titan in other arenas, such as loving others and serving your community. God and I have nothing but love for you, but that love is tinged with pity. Your temple may be perfectly satisfied using fear to keep you in line, but God is calling you into a deeper version of your faith, free from the slavery of fear. Your doubts will wound you, but wounds heal and leave scars that are a testimony of your power to survive and overcome. Do not let fear control you any longer, because you are a victim of a fourth category of so-called “believers.” These are power worshippers; wolves in sheep’s clothing who become religious leaders because they see the power and status that the local temple can grant them. These are the ones most likely to cast out so-called sinners in the name of “protecting” their flocks. God’s harshest judgments are reserved for them. Pray for them. They need Jesus more than any of us.
In contrast to them, we have Jesus. Another day I may write more about how Jesus preached, but today I feel it necessary to say only that he never sent an honest questioner away and rarely sent a dishonest questioner away. As much as he typified the second form of faith, he also clearly had a strong grasp on the first. He was renowned for speaking to anyone and everyone, even people that the high society of the day shunned. It didn’t matter what strain of Judaism you practiced, or what pagan deity was your patron, Jesus was happy to field your questions. He spoke with tax collectors, pagans, gentiles, and even *gasp* women! Considering the shocking nature of what he preached, the only way his message was going to gain any traction was if he was willing to answer his detractors in open discussion. How did his example spawn a church that is today so concerned with circling its wagons in the name of preserving the purity of its doctrine? Where is the spirit of God that leaves the 99 for the sake of the one in the church today?
The sad answer is it is among the outcasts, far away from the walls of the temple, as Jesus himself usually was. The thing that makes outcasts outcasts, at least in the US where we don’t have castes, is that they have ideas that don’t fit in anywhere. They have issues that nobody has been able or willing to help them with that have driven them from their places of comfortable conformity to uncharted depths.
The church of our era is failing these people utterly. Many of today’s churches are far more likely to cast supposed heretics out for disagreeing with the party line like Stalin’s Russia than to calmly discuss differences of opinion about doctrine in the open. I can only assume they fear this process will reveal their leaders for the brood of vipers they are.
This would not have even been possible in the early church. “The followers of The Way,” as they called themselves in that day were a highly heretical offshoot of a religion that was mysterious and mostly closed off to outsiders at the best of times. When this upstart cult started preaching about their crucified messiah to everyone, the people of the day would have quite reasonably assumed that these people were full of it if they’d sent people with thoughtful questions away. They didn’t have the space to cast out heretics for thinking wrong things. Thank God they had the boldness and faith to answer their doubters.
Why is the church today in the business of turning up its nose at testimonies of Jesus the risen son of God? Why does every other denomination in the United States think half or more of their fellow Christ followers are definitely going to hell for the sin of wrongthink? What disagreement about theology could possibly damn one who has confessed with their mouth that Jesus is Lord and believed in their heart that God raised him from the dead?
I do believe in heresy, to be clear, but only one. If you call yourself a Christian and do not believe Jesus to have risen from the dead, you are no brother or sister of mine. Neighbor maybe, but nothing more. The kingdom of God is for those who have faith in God’s son to rule both themselves and the world.
To those who may believe such, this is not an angry condemnation. I just ask how you can possibly take a hopeful message from the story of Jesus if the result of his wisdom, courage, and kindness was to die a brutal and humiliating death and to rot away like any other corpse. The only coherent interpretation I can take away from such a story is that no good deed goes unpunished, and the only power we can put any faith in is the force of arms. You are wise to admire Jesus, but admit you are nothing more than an atheist or agnostic with a love of the Christian story. Continue going to your church if you have one…but if you fear the consequences of admitting your true beliefs, I gotta question what kind of church you go to. You should too.
If you can make that leap of faith that says he rose from the dead though, you can join me in the joyous, world-shaking truth that the truth cannot be silenced, stopped, or suppressed. Even if the religious and political authorities conspire to silence the truth, even if the truth is abandoned by everyone who ever loved it, the truth will win in the end because the truth is that there is a power that the powers of this world cannot touch.
That’s why Paul wrote that if Christ was not raised from the dead, we who proclaim his name are most to be pitied. That’s the only heresy that matters. Everything else can be a difference of opinion we hash out as brothers and sisters in Christ.