heresy, redefined. (something to mull over.)

{First, a quick side note. This week is a big week for me. It is Final Edit Week. I’m submitting Passions Trilogy to the printer this Friday: Friday the 13th. Hm. And yikes! (I think the Yikes! is more about the final-final-must-be-perfect edits than the superstition of the day. Also, incidentally, why is it that self-imposed deadlines feel so much more complicated(?) or imposing(?) – or something? – than deadlines handed down to you by someone else? Maybe it’s just me. Anyway, a deadline is a deadline and I’m going to make it, people. Here goes nothing.)}

So, just to stay in touch with you this week, here is a little thought, a little note, a little commentary on something I read a few months ago that I’ve been mulling over ever since. Maybe you’d like to mull, too. 🙂

It was from an old, not very well known book by Eugene Peterson, Traveling Light: Reflections on the Free Life. It was, for me, a redefinition of heresy. Eugene said:

The word heresy comes from the Greek word meaning “choose.” The heretic is a person who chooses a single item out of the entire body of truth and, ignoring or denying the rest of it, makes that privately preferred and chosen truth the only truth, and teaches others to do the same. Heresy is the choice of a fraction instead of the integer. Insofar as the heretic gets others to see only that fragment and ignore the rest, he blocks access to the organic fullness of all reality, of God. There is simplification in that choice (that is the attraction), but there is also immense impoverishment. The heretic solves our problems by reducing our lives.

Here’s what I’ve been mulling over, my restatement of what Eugene said. Not that he needs my help.

Heresy is not so much exactly wrong belief, like I always thought it was. Heresy is wrongful emphasis or prioritization of belief. It is taking one belief (right or wrong) and isolating it from its proper landscape of all Belief, all Truth. It is deciding arbitrarily that one belief (right or wrong) is more important than all other beliefs. I say ‘arbitrarily’ because if any human (no matter what their spiritual or ecclesiastical or organizational credentials) is doing the deciding, it must be arbitrary! – because no human is God, the Judge and Truth-maker. All of us do this every time we take one Bible verse or one particular phrase and give it supreme reign, worshipping the belief itself and our conviction that we’ve got it right instead of allowing the belief and our convictions about it to live within their proper place alongside all other verses and phrases under God, who we worship.

I’ve also been mulling over these self-reflective questions, looking for heresy in my life, finding it everywhere: What beliefs/practices are most important to me? Why? What if those beliefs/practices, while not unimportant, are not actually the most important beliefs/practices to God? Do I have the kind of willing heart that will let God level out my beliefs/practices, matching them with his own? What fractions am I choosing over the integer? What gorgeous integers am I missing out on? How am I being a heretic by oversimplifying the beautiful, messy, mysterious, complex life that is the Way, Truth, and Life of Jesus?

Happy mulling. (What a great word for this autumnal time of year, right? Mulled cider. Mulled wine. And what a great word for what God’s work often looks like in us — or at least in me. It takes me awhile to see and to understand and to change. I usually need time to mull.)


Comments

2 responses to “heresy, redefined. (something to mull over.)”

  1. Mull…ponder…such great words. I’m mulling. Thanks, Joc. I love how you mull!

  2. Richard Edgerly, M.D. Avatar
    Richard Edgerly, M.D.

    Mind if I just mull that over a while. I think I’m a heretic!