Hunting for Heretics
Sometimes, I pop over to Twitter. Since I’m in the “weird clergy” algorithm, I find myself scrolling through endless tweets of clergyfolk taking potshots at other clergyfolk for being ‘heretical’.
As a fairly recent returnee to the Christian faith, and an aspiring cleric myself, this is intimidating as hell. Heretic hunters seem to have infinite digital silver bullets to dispense towards the theologically untoward on social media. What if they come after me?! I’d better mind my theological p’s and q’s!
I think we’re all prone to heretic hunting. I know I am. Maybe it’s not religion for you. Maybe it’s lifestyle. Diet. Or ideology (after all, ideology is this country’s new major religion).
We all have our own purity circles. We all have lines drawn around “our” people and “those” people. “Right” and “wrong”. “In” and “out”.
Here’s what I’ve found... Heretic hunting robs life of joy. It’s such a heavy burden to carry - sorting out the ‘good’ from the ‘bad’.
I’m so done hunting for heretics. We’d be better off if we could come to see that we’re all heretics in our own ways. Jesus was a heretic (he was killed for it). So was Martin Luther, MLK, Malcolm X, St. Joan of Arc, St. Paul, and everyone else that we talk about decades, centuries, and millennia later.
If the full manuscript of your life and mine were displayed before a court of law - every thought, every word, every action, and inaction - we’d both be justifiably burned at the stake.
Jesus’s main heresy seemed to be this: knowing that we’re all heretics, he took our own personal purity circles and broke them all over his knee. Then he drew one big circle around all of them. I pray that He does the same with mine.
As Ever,
Jonas
I keep coming back to read your words in Thomasian disbelief. A disbelief having to to do with, "Why am I listening to a soon-to-be clergy?". I was married (now a content widow) to one of the best clergy ever. Opppps That is a judgment of another kind. I am a recovering Catholic and hugely aggrieved by the punishing Old Testament God and the patriarchy derived from that and many other historical sources (to be fair). But I digress.... I enjoy your fresh perspective of you and Christianity. it helps me heal those old wounds. I am cheer-leading you all the way to your seminary graduation, deaconship and ordination!
I understand; I earned the "Bad Pastor" nickname years ago. How to avoid being a "heretic hunter": 1. Remember "ALL have sinned and fall short of the glory..." 2. Remember "Judge not, lest ye be judged..." Finally, remember "Love your neighbor as yourself." It gets easier with practice. There's more than one "right" way to do something the majority of the time (Unless it's folding a fitted sheet. There's only one way to do that right.) My GPS gives me multiple options to get from Point A to Point B. Life is usually the same. Ask me why I believe a certain way and I'll tell you without telling you why my way is the only correct way or why you're wrong. To quote the old commercials, "Your mileage may vary." While the heretic hunters still call me "Bad Pastor" (There are still blog posts on WordPress under that name) because I have tattoos and refuse to condemn people from the pulpit, I remind myself that I answer to God, not men, and He's really good at correction. If I'm doing something wrong, He'll address it. The last time I checked, "correction" is in the Holy Spirit's job description, not mine. God bless you, Brother. It's been awesome watching your journey over the last few years. You rock and God and I are both really proud of you!