Opus 2024-407: Heresy Is Overvalued

I often make jocular comments about being a heretic.  Being a true heretic is not a laughing matter.  In areas of faith, being a real heretic can influence your eternal destiny.  A real heretic will be rejected by God, mainly because he has rejected God.  The key concept there is “by God.”

Heresy is usually defined by people with a specific theological perspective.  Thus Calvin would consider Wesley a heretic if he were speaking honestly.  And the same would go the other way.  As a Calvinist I once had a great conversation with said to me, “There is only one truth, and we both can’t be right.”  He meant it in a very loving way.  He was truly regretful that I was on my way to hell because I did not agree with his theology.  I can live with that.

The big question is what does God consider heresy.  I think God has a lot more leeway than we want to acknowledge.  One point that keeps coming up in my mind is how Christians define the word, “grace” and how, having read the apostle Paul, they reject any kind of effort on the part of human beings.  Personally, I think they are the ones who are being heretical, because they reject so much of what the Bible teaches.  The entire Old Testament is loaded with a sense of responsibility placed on individuals to be righteous instead of wicked.

At the same time the Old Testament does not say that your salvation is earned by your efforts.  It is loaded with the knowledge that God is the ultimate source of salvation, and He is the one who awards salvation.  The Old Testament is full of terms like faith, trust, loving kindness, mercy, and does not even begin to say you earn your own salvation.

And yet people reject the concept of law.  In so doing, they risk the dangers of what is called antinomianism.  Antinomianism rejects any kind of standard behavior that is expected of believers.  Antinomianism says that you can go out and live in blatant sin just as long as you are one of the elect, and it makes no difference.  They will say that’s not what they say, but it certainly sounds like it to me.

At the same time most of them tend to live very righteous lives.  I’ve never figured out why.  But I accept it.  I think in their hearts they agree with me even if they can’t admit it in public.

They don’t want to be called heretics.

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