A Brief Letter from a Friend: Everday Heresies

Hmmm...where to start...

1. The ideas that salvation is a matter of "accepting Jesus Christ as my personal Savior," that it hinges on a discrete moment in time, and that salvation is synonymous with "going to heaven when I die." I assume I, thinky and verbose Lutheran that I am, don't have space here to unpack all of that, but...there you go.

2. As a corrolary to #1, overemphasis on justification and underemphasis on sanctification -- as one of my campus pastors put it, "Everyone cares about peole being 'saved,' but no one asks the question, 'Saved for WHAT?'" I'd add, too, that this is as true in my faith tradition as in the Evangelical/"free" traditions.

3. Neo-Gnosticism -- the idea that the spiritual realm is all that matters; that the created world is at worst icky and corrupt, and at best just an intesting backdrop to the human drama or, worse yet, to individuals' private "salvation stories"; the idea that Real Christianity[tm] is a matter of possessing special knowledge or understanding.

3. The privitization of the Christian experience, and the idea that it's not only okay but somehow more noble and meritorious to work out one's Christian faith outside the context of a faith community; an attitude that my pastor refers to as "Me 'n' Jesus under a blanket with a flashlight."

4. The related idea that churches as faith communities must be pure and without blemish or else they're not genuine faith communities -- a ridiculous idea, since churches are made up of sinful human beings; as Bonhoeffer noted, this idea of an idealized church where everything and everyone is beautiful all the time is a "wish dream" that is actually destructive to true Christian community.

5. The idea that the Bible is like a Magic 8-Ball with facile prooftext answers for every question.

6. The all-or-nothing "applecart" idea that if one element within Scripture isn't historically or scientifically factual, then "the whole Bible isn't true." Ridiculous.

7. The idea that Christian discipleship is equivalent to following the ideology of a particular political party.

8. Nationalism "baptized" with Christianity.

9. Dominionism.

I probably have 90 more line items here;-), but I'll quit now.

LutheranChik, may I have your permission to cut and paste your list?

This whole conversation has me thinking about just how subversive heresy can be. It seems to creep in to our faith communities almost imperceptibly, even though so many of the "everyday heresies" or "near-heretical-assumptions" proffered here work to undermine our unity and hinder the missional effectiveness of the church.

Gee, guys...I am not worthy.;-)

I don't think that orthodoxy/orthopraxis is a matter of "policing" our faith communities as much as it is constantly inviting folks into a fuller understanding of our faith. That's how I understand the historic creeds as well...invitations into a way of thinking about God and about the story of God's saving action in history that's stood the test of time.