Pathways to a Healthier Faith Culture: It’s about more than right or wrong. How can you envision a healthy learning culture in a community?
Why think about “heresy”?
Heresy is just a word. However, the word causes suffering, uncertainty, disorientation. Those who condemn others are part of a culture of segregation and exclusion. People who experience this are not infrequently traumatized for years to come, especially if it involves the attitude of a community from which one is excluded. Thinking about “heresy” makes it possible to rethink the underlying culture of faith. That’s what happens in this short, two-part series. The focus is on these two main topics:
Part 1: Is there such a thing as “heresy” in the New Testament?
Part 2: What does it take for a healthier faith culture?
Those who want to rethink faith or certain religious assumptions must also deal with typical terms that shape this view. The word “heresy” is one of them. It belongs to an understanding of faith that lives on demarcation. Is there another way? We live in a time of upheaval. A discussion on the topic of “heresy” belongs to a much larger theme: how can we consciously shape, perhaps even rethink, Christian identity today?
The culture of heresy
The denunciation of other people is an expression of a certain attitude of faith, but also of a certain culture of faith. Not everyone heresies other people. Those who do have a basic attitude of superiority and self-righteousness. This is the personal attitude of faith.
Such an attitude may also have an external reason. In some communities, one is expected to heresy others (“the unbelievers,” “the lost,” “the false teachers,” “the apostates,” “the liberals”). Whoever wants to belong to the community must join this heresy of others in order not to fall from grace himself. Such a faith attitude of heresy leads nowhere.
If we see people being heretical in our communities, we can remember that Paul did not exclude people because of other views. According to New Testament reports, church discipline existed only in cases of questionable conduct, and only in very exceptional situations. Not what one “thought” but what one “did” could lead to consequences. Read more in part 1.
Think alternatives
Of course, there are alternatives to heresy. Just saying that, however, can cause discomfort, even fear. Those who can imagine an alternative to heresy have merely discovered that conversations or encounters need not take place in the tension of “right or wrong.” This would be a typical characteristic of sectarianism. The priority can also be in a different location. Surprisingly, you don’t give up truth or clarity in the process. It’s not about “right teaching” or “wrong teaching” at all, but rather a little more humanity. We can also say that it should be a little more about God’s grace, because heresy is merciless by its very nature.
Heresy is merciless by its very nature.
You can’t love and heresy at the same time. Whoever speaks of God’s love for sinners, but does not live out this love himself, persists in a contradiction. If one were to live out the love of God and the riches of His grace, the attitude of heresy would have to change. It is especially easy to see when parents value love for their children over condemnation from the community about what the young people may have done. It is more important to love than to condemn.
It is more important to love than to condemn.
The need for a learning culture
In a healthy culture of faith, each person stands first in his own faith, which he has before God alone (Rom 14:22). This foundation should be the goal of all teaching. In a healthy community, people are bound to God, who meets us in Christ, sets us free, reconciles us. One does so because one has recognized that God looks at us “in Christ.” That is where our life is (Col 3:3; 2 Cor 5:17).
When I have internalized this, I can live soberly in this world because I am no longer dependent on this world. One becomes free “for God”, so to speak, “through Christ” and likewise one is free “from oneself” and “from the world” in which one stands. This is not detached, but it is free in the best sense of the word.
The consequence of this freedom may express itself in a new culture of faith. New here means “different”. Different here means that it’s not just about what you believe. Aliveness is sought, which means that contents of faith are not only defined to “have to be believed”, but one searches, listens, considers how one may live and believe.
Such a search requires a learning culture, in which we search together for better answers than we have found so far. In the process, faith is not thrown overboard, but virtually invited to present itself once again. Where is the enthusiasm and why? How do you share this enthusiasm and how can it be anchored in life today?
Farewell to the heresy
It is about the attitude of faith. It is not a matter of giving up one’s integrity, one’s recognized truth, or one’s current understanding. Rather, it’s about maintaining integrity. Here I mean both one’s own integrity and that of the other person. However, preserving one’s integrity is not achieved by belittling the other person. Those who can recognize that we are all included in a process of faith need not remain in “absolute” positions. It’s not about positions, but rather, as Paul describes it, building one another up:
“But if we are true, we should make everything grow in love, into Him who is the Head, Christ, from whom the whole body (joined together and united by each incorporation of the offered according to the efficacy according to the measure of each part) accomplishes the growth of the body, for its own edification in love.”
Eph 4:15-16
Instead of “You’re wrong,” you could also say “I can’t do anything with this view.” Instead of “You are a heretic”, you could also say “I don’t understand this and can’t do anything with it”. In other words, I-messages are more important than you-messages when we are advocating a mutually open conversation. Those who have so far thought only in terms of absolute values (right or wrong) may find this hardly acceptable. Exactly there one should look then and ask the question, why it goes in the togetherness. Instead of “This is my opinion,” you could ask the other person questions like, “What does this understanding mean to you?” or “I would like to understand what positive change this insight has made in your life.” With such questions one leaves the dogmatic and ideological heresy of others.
Why does it work in togetherness?
By no means do you have to agree with the other person’s understanding. Among believers, it is not a matter of being homogeneous in thinking. This is not necessarily easy. It’s a real shift in thinking when you come from an understanding of faith where it was always about right and wrong.
When is demarcation appropriate? Well, some contemporaries behave in an encroaching manner. Those who want to impose their opinions on others are encroaching. Those who denounce others exclude themselves above all. Heresy and encroachment are close to each other. Both are unhealthy.
Those who can rest in their own faith before God have no need for the heresy of others. He knows that God is greater than all human incomprehension, including his own inadequacy. Those who recognize the richness and can freely share it with others need not be heretical or encroaching. This one knows that God comes to the goal, with you, as with the neighbor who sits opposite you.
It is the attitude of faith that matters. In community, one may promote a liberated attitude of faith through the Gospel. This creates a learning culture. If this does not succeed, then there is something wrong with the proclamation.
