“And I will put enmity between you
and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; He shall bruise you on the
head, and you shall bruise him on the heel.” (Gen 3:15) “And He said, “The one
who sows the good seed is the Son of Man, and the field is the world; and as for the good seed, these are the sons
of the kingdom; and the tares are the sons of the evil one.” (Matt 13:37-38) “So the dragon was enraged with the woman,
and went off to make war with the rest of her children, who keep the
commandments of God and hold to the testimony of Jesus.” (Rev. 12:17)
Lately, I have been focusing my
blog posts on the subject of heresy. I am convinced that American Christians,
for the most part, have completely lost touch with the true nature of heresy.
This is due in no small part to ignorant pastors who, for the last 30 years
have been bellowing from the pulpit that doctrine doesn’t matter. I used to
attend an Independent Baptist Church where the pastor loved to bash those who
took doctrine seriously by characterizing them as people who treated the Bible
like a math book. While that statement can be true in a certain context, it is
not true in the context in which he presented it. In fact, he did more work for
the kingdom of darkness in those moments than he did for the kingdom of God.
That is regrettable and more than a little unfortunate. It was and is
irresponsible for any pastor or elder to belittle Christian doctrine. As I have
always said to men who do this: Christian love never elevates itself at the
expense of Christian truth. Heresy was an immediate threat to the Christian
Church, has been a threat throughout her long and rick history, and remains an
ever-present threat to her today. Christians, elders, and pastors ought to
respond accordingly.
A heretic is one who is unregenerate,
but who resembles, even remarkably at times, and portends to be, one of the
regenerate. He is one that has rejected the faith while pretending to accept
it. He claims to love Jesus, to be loyal to God, and to love the Church, all
the while spreading his false and damnable teachings. That makes me wonder,
whatever happened to damnable doctrines? In modern American Churches, the
incidents of heresy are growing at an alarming rate and it is especially
growing among the young. It is as if the Christian culture must mimic the
worldly culture and where the worldly culture is overthrowing traditional
values because it is the interesting thing to do, many young Christians have
fixed their attention on orthodoxy and her creeds and confessions, see it as
dull and uninteresting, and in the name of carving out their own spot, they
have climbed into the seat of heresy and buckled-up for the excitement it
promises to offer them. The hiss of the serpent can be heard in nearly every
evangelical community. What can I say? A little hyperbole is a good thing now
and then.
It is no small matter to call into
question the sacredness of things like the nature of Sacred Scripture, the
divinity of Christ, and the sacred institution of marriage. But at nearly every
turn, evangelicals find themselves doing precisely that. We are debating things
we are obligated to receive and believe with all humility. And for some strange
reason, we think this behavior is somehow more sophisticated, more expressive
of progress, even more noble than not. Young evangelicals seem to view the
practice of challenging orthodoxy through the lens of updating an outdated
policy manual at work. The casual approach to such things is telling and
reveals a very disturbing trend in many, if not most, evangelical churches. I
believe this trend can be traced to the refusal of the Church to test those who
claim to be believers and teachers and leaders who are not! I believe the trend
is in no small part to be blamed on pastors and churches so interested in
growing their membership and attendance that they have relaxed church
membership requirements to the point that Satan would be a good candidate for
the deaconate in many communities. They have deluded themselves into thinking
that any standards for membership at all are the equivalent of legalism. The
apostles of Christ who gave us the teachings of Christ would have disagreed!
Gonzalez points out that “the
challenge posed by heresy provoked a series of reactions that would have great
consequences for the future life of the church. The creed, the New Testament
canon, and the doctrine of apostolic succession are three of those reactions.”
[Gonzalez, A History of Christian Thought] The church should be no less busy
today contradicting and stopping the mouths of heretics as it was from its
beginning. Instead, many in the church have adopted the tactics and strategies
of the world. They begin by labeling people who are concerned with doctrinal truth
as unkind and mean-spirited and overly critical of others. Perhaps some would
accuse them of being intellectual bullies. This kind of name-calling and
classification is used to manipulate people’s behavior. No one likes to be
called a bully or unloving. Hence, the tactic succeeds in silencing those who
are simply concerned about the well being of the church and it cuts the fence
line so that sheep can wonder out, and wolves may wonder in! Don’t buy into the
weak-minded tactics of these swindlers of God’s flock is my advice.
I hope to take you back in time to
look at some of the ancient heresies with which the church had to contend from
nearly her inception. It is my goal to link those ancient heresies with the
modern ones about which we contend today. Moreover, my purpose is not merely to call out these things, and to help you make these connections. Instead, my purpose is to
influence change. I want the church to begin to excommunicate the heretics, be
they simple members, Sunday school teachers, elders, pastors, theologians, and
scholars. There is no place for the serpent in the church, regardless of the
disguise he may use. When we find the snake in the garden, we cut its head off.
When we discover the heretic in God’s community, we take swift action. We
lovingly confront them, at first giving them the benefit of doubt. We continue
to work with them while managing their influence. In time, if they refuse to
recant, we excommunicate them and let them know they are not welcome in
community until they repent and receive with all humility, that which has been
preserved and handed down to us from the apostles at the beginning.
