Sermon 5 - Heretics
Job 13: 5 - 10
Oh, that you would keep silent, and it would be your wisdom!
Hear now my reasoning, and listen to the pleading of my lips.
Will you speak falsely for God, and speak deceitfully for him?
Will you show partiality toward him, will you plead the case for God?
Will it be well with you when he searches you out? Or can you deceive him, as one deceives a man?
He will surely rebuke you if in secret you show partiality. - RSV
Ecclesiasticus 19:10
Have you heard something? Let it die with you. Courage! It will not burst you!
Romans 14:1-4
Welcome those who are weak in faith, but not for the purpose of quarreling overe opinions. Some believe in eating anything, while the weak eat only vegetables. Those who eat must not despise those who abstain, and those who abstain must not pass judgment on those who eat; for God has welcomed them. Who are you to pass judgment on servants of another? It is before their own Lord that they stand or fail. And they will be upheld, for the Lord is able to make them stand.
1 Corinthians 3
Brothers and sisters, I could not address you as people who live by the Spirit but as people who are still worldly—mere infants in Christ. 2 I gave you milk, not solid food, for you were not yet ready for it. Indeed, you are still not ready. 3 You are still worldly. For since there is jealousy and quarreling among you, are you not worldly? Are you not acting like mere humans? 4 For when one says, “I follow Paul,” and another, “I follow Apollos,” are you not mere human beings?
5 What, after all, is Apollos? And what is Paul? Only servants, through whom you came to believe—as the Lord has assigned to each his task. 6 I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God has been making it grow. 7 So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow. 8 The one who plants and the one who waters have one purpose, and they will each be rewarded according to their own labor. 9 For we are co-workers in God’s service; you are God’s field, God’s building.
10 By the grace God has given me, I laid a foundation as a wise builder, and someone else is building on it. But each one should build with care. 11 For no one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ. 12 If anyone builds on this foundation using gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay or straw, 13 their work will be shown for what it is, because the Day will bring it to light. It will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test the quality of each person’s work. 14 If what has been built survives, the builder will receive a reward. 15 If it is burned up, the builder will suffer loss but yet will be saved—even though only as one escaping through the flames.
16 Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in your midst? 17 If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy that person; for God’s temple is sacred, and you together are that temple.
18 Do not deceive yourselves. If any of you think you are wise by the standards of this age, you should become “fools” so that you may become wise. 19 For the wisdom of this world is foolishness in God’s sight. As it is written: “He catches the wise in their craftiness”[a]; 20 and again, “The Lord knows that the thoughts of the wise are futile.”[b] 21 So then, no more boasting about human leaders! All things are yours, 22 whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas[c] or the world or life or death or the present or the future—all are yours, 23 and you are of Christ, and Christ is of God.
H. G. Wells said, "No passion in the world, no love or hate, is equal to the passion to alter someone else’s draft." Of course, he was wrong, and we have to alter his quote. No passion is equal to the passion of proving that we are right, and someone else is wrong. There. We have now corrected H. G. Wells' erroneous statement so that it is right.
We are willing to defend the fact that we are right, even at the expense of our salvation. Isn't that the point of our doctrine of salvation by grace? We keep trying to do it right, to prove that we are worthy of salvation, and it's not until we finally admit that we are, in fact, wrong, and that God is right, and should be in control of our lives, that He can, in fact, save us.
I am a stranger and sojourner in a strange land. Which is to say, I'm new here. I am trying to find a church. I am church shopping, which involves going to a number of churches, attending services, meeting new people, talking to members of the congregation, and even helping out, whenever and wherever I can, since working with people you learn much more about them than just simply talking with them over coffee after service.
It's not an easy task. It takes a lot of work. It takes a lot of effort, and a lot of what might be termed social energy. But it has to be done. There is no point in expecting that a church will find you.
There is one church that I have visited on my rounds. I have been warned away from it, by two different people, from two other churches. One person gave me a specific reason why he felt that this church was populated by heretics. The other person did not give a specific reason, and was quite coy about it, but was obviously very disappointed when I noted that I had seen no evidence of heresy and nothing to upset me theologically.
There's an old song. It's at least fifty years old, now, and I haven't been able to find a copy, and I don't even know who wrote and sang it. It was called "My Brother's Faults," and it pointed out the dangers of Christian gossip: telling all the world my brother's faults. It even gave the reason that we use to justify gossip: "I only wanted you to know/So you could pray for so-and-so." But that is not the way that scripture tells us to deal with faults. With good reason: gossip about individuals is dangerous. It is contrary to what we are commanded to do in Matthew 18:15: If they brother trespass against thee, go and tell him his fault between thee and him alone. And, indeed, that requirement goes right back to Leviticus 19:17: you must openly tell [...] your neighbour of his offence.
But gossip about churches or groups is even more dangerous, and *that* goes back to Leviticus 19:16: you must not slander your own people.
We do it so easily. And I have to admit, to my shame, that I am guilty of it. I recall, not that long ago, in my search for a church, one person mentioned a particular church, and I made a cheap joke, based on a stereotype and prejudice. About a church that I had never been to, and people who I had never met: a situation I knew nothing at all about. For the sake of a cheap joke, I may have slandered a church and congregation.
We have to be holy. We have to be righteous. We have to be perfect, as our Father in heaven is perfect. The trouble is that we're not. We are not perfect, and we are not holy. We are not righteous, no not one. We are saved, but that is by the work of God in Jesus Christ. God accepts us as holy and righteous, because of it. But we are sadly mistaken if we assume that this in any way makes us actually righteous and perfect.
We should try, of course. We are *commanded* to love God, we should love God for all that God has done for us, and if we love God we should try and do what he wants. Not only that: if we do do what he wants, it is the best for us. God created us. God knows what is best for us. God *wants* what is best for us. And if we do what God wants it is the best for us.
But, we are weak. We are sinful. We sin. And we are mistaken. We have mistaken beliefs about God. At the very least, we do not, and we cannot, know God fully. Our minds are merely human: they are limited, they are restricted by the playpen which God created for us, which we call the universe. Any idea that we have of God, no matter how large, is not comprehensive. It will always recall to mind the title of Jim Packer's book: "Your God is Too Small."
To return to the people who warned me about this particular church: One did give a reason. And the reason has a point. There are definite indications in Scripture that support this person's position but, it is hard to say that that position is absolute. It's also hard to know the reason for the position that scripture takes. The mentions in scripture, under various rationales, may allow for some leeway, at least in terms of the issue that this person seemed to find troublesome.
As noted, the other person did not give a reason. But his very coyness in not providing a reason, makes me suspect the issue that he is finding troublesome. Again, this is an issue where scripture does give us some, limited, support for his position. But, again, there may be cultural factors at play in the scripture reference, and it's also possible that there are larger issues at stake which override the specific point that he finds most difficult.
We are given instructions, commands, and directions from scripture. We would do well to heed them. But we would do well to heed *all* of them. If we fixate on a particular issue, we may find that we are, in fact, forgetting things that God has told us to do.
For example, pretty much none of us separate our kitchens, and utensils, into those for meat, and those for dairy, anymore. We do not follow the dietary food laws. We eat shellfish. We eat pork. Very few churches actually kill people who break the Sabbath. We find that these are not important in the Christian Life. These are commands that are written in Scripture, but pretty much all of us have decided that they are not vital commandments anymore.
We are trying to follow the commandments. And we find some of the issues to be primary importance. For example, the greatest commandment: we are to love God. And the second commandment is like unto it: we are to love our neighbors. We have the Golden Rule: do unto others as you would have others do unto you. It's just an extension or reformulation of our second commandment.
So there are commandments that we consider important, and there are commandments which we consider unimportant, or of a lesser importance. And in a number of situations, when we accuse other churches, or other people, of heresy, we should be very careful that we are not majoring on the minors.
There are many things that our society seems to consider important, and we have let those, sometimes, bleed into our faith and practice. For example, anything that has to do with sex tends to be very, very important. Infidelity is important. And it is. But that tends also to extend to other issues. Some of which may have reasons in our difficult and complex society. Such as divorce. Sexual activity outside of marriage. Any departure from traditional marriages. All of these will get you pretty much barred from any church. Oh, but if you murdered somebody? And you served your time and you repent? Oh, that's all right! That's just a nice example of a repentant sinner.
I could rhyme off quite a list of topics for which you might be prepared to call another person, or another church, heretics. There can be all kinds of issues over which we disagree. I won't attempt to provide such a list here. But I'll give you a moment to think of one particular topic that you think warrants sending a particular church into outer darkness, in terms of the Christian community.
***
Okay, have you picked your hot topic? Have you thought of some issue for which you are prepared to say that any church which supports it, or opposes your particular view, can't consider itself Christian?
Bear that topic in mind. Fix it in your mind. Keep it in the front of your mind as I continue here. This is an issue that you are prepared to say means that another person, or another church, cannot be considered Christian. They are to be excommunicated. They cannot be part of our communion, and should not be.
Now, I won't ask you why. You have good and valid reasons. They are probably supported by scripture. I'm not going to argue that point, because I don't even know what your topic is. But now I want to ask you: is that issue, is that topic, is that activity more important than loving God? More directly to the point, is that issue so important that you cannot accept the fact that God loves that other person? God loves that other church. God loves the people in that other church, that hold to the opinion that is contrary to yours. And God has commanded you to love those other people. Is your topic so important that you are prepared to disobey that which God commands?
But wait, as they say in the infomercials, there's more. And, for the more, we turn to my field. For almost forty years, I have been researching, and working in, information security. And I get to talk to people in related communities, like the intelligence community. Those are the spies. And the counterspies. And we talk about things like disinformation.
Now there's misinformation, which is just when you make a mistake, and you believe something that's wrong. That's bad enough. But disinformation is when somebody deliberately tells you a lie, designed so that you will believe it. This has been happening for as long as people have been fighting, and that goes back an awfully long way. As a matter of fact, possibly we can go right back to Cain and Abel. God comes to Cain and says, where is your brother? And Cain tries to tell a lie, without even telling a lie. He just says, am I my brother's keeper? But God, of course, sees through this and it doesn't work.
Now, when you are dealing with human beings, and not God, it works a little better. So, someone tells you a lie. And they tell the lie that they know you are going to believe. Because it's a lie about someone you don't like. And the person who tells you this lie, knows that you are going to believe it, because you are willing to believe the worst about the person that you don't like. So, you believe that lie. And you repeat that lie. You tell that lie to other people, because, of course, you want to cause trouble for the person that you don't like. Or, at the very least, you want to warn other people about the person that you don't like.
So, you have now become a liar. Oh, maybe you will object that you don't know that it's a lie, but you're repeating a lie anyway. So, in fact, you are a liar. And you know what else you are? You are now a weapon. You are the weapon of the person who told you the lie in the first place. That's what disinformation does. It weaponizes lies, and it weaponizes people. And if you believe, and repeat those lies, you become the weapon. You become evil, or at least a part of evil. You are working for evil.
Now, one of my other fields is emergency management. We deal with disasters. And one of the things that we know about disasters, is the disasters bring out both the best, and the worst, in people. There are going to be people who try to help during a disaster. And then there are those who are going to try and take advantage of the situation.
But the pandemic has been different. For me, personally, the pandemic has been very disappointing. The pandemic seems to have given everyone permission to be their very worst. To misbehave, although misbehavior is far too weak a term for what we have seen during the pandemic. The pandemic has given everyone permission to be racist. To consider anyone who believes in a different political party or stance to be evil. To allow people to engage in violence on the streets because they don't like another person's skin color, or facial characteristics, or the political symbol that they put on the back of their car, or they don't like the fact that somebody has an "I got vaccinated" sticker on their shirt, or they don't like the fact that somebody has a "vaccines kill" bumper sticker on the back of their car. And everybody just seems to think that because you don't agree with me, I have the right to beat you up or run into your car, or post lies about you. Oh yes, we're dealing with the lies here.
We'll come back to the lies in a bit here.
As I've said I've been very disappointed during the course of the pandemic by the way that people have been misbehaving. And I expressed this to a friend and she said, well, it's because they're all grieving.
Now, of course, one of the other things that I am is a grieving widower. And I have been studying grief. And I have been studying the ways that people behave when they are grieving. And suddenly, because of what she said, everything came into focus. Yes, people have been grieving.
Grief is about loss. And, during the pandemic, everybody has lost something. Maybe it wasn't a close friend or family member who died. Maybe you lost a job. Maybe you just lost an opportunity. Maybe you just lost the ability to go down to the pub anytime you wanted for a beer. But everybody has lost *something*.
Those who are grieving experience a range of emotions. But one of the most common is anger. We are angry about our loss. But, as human beings, we are not particularly good at identifying why we are feeling anger, or indeed any good at identifying any strong emotion that we are feeling and what it actually is. Our brain tries to find a reason for the strong emotion that we are feeling. The reason that it generates doesn't have to be correct. It doesn't even have to make sense. It's just a presentation that our brain makes to us about why we are feeling some strong emotion. So, very often, we feel that we are angry at God. Or at the universe. (Or even the person who died, which makes no sense at all.) Or at that person who has skin of a different color. Or at that person who holds a different political view. It's their fault. Whatever "it" is.
Thus, we have a whole bunch of people who feel very very strongly that those people over there are responsible for my pain. They are angry. Whether they have any valid reasons or not, they are angry. And they are taking it out on those people over there. Maybe they won't actually perpetrate physical violence against them. But they are certainly willing to believe anything bad about them. And to repeat any lie that they hear about them, as long as it paints them in a bad light.
There's another thing about grief: desperately intense loneliness. If you are grieving, you are not just grieving the loss of relationship with one particular person. You seem to be grieving the loss of relationship in general. And, therefore, it's almost a cliche that when mom dies, dad, all too soon, falls for some inappropriate female, and forms an inappropriate attachment.
And so what have we seen during the pandemic? We have seen all kinds of people, joining all kinds of groups, groups espousing all kinds of weird conspiracy theories, just so that they can belong. To anything. With anyone.
And so we come back to the lies. Because of the anger, people are willing to tell lies. They're willing to believe lies. Because of the loneliness, they're willing to join with other people who believe lies.
And how does all this fit together?
Well, like I told you, some of my friends are spies. And they have been noticing, that during the pandemic, the campaigns, by various foreign governments, to try and make trouble for those of us who live in democracies, have stepped up the disinformation campaigns. Because, right now, with everybody angry, and everybody joining with cults and conspiracy theories, everybody is willing to spread lies. There are all kinds of people who are willing to become weapons of disinformation campaigns. It's become so prevalent that the intelligence community has a name for it: they call it discord attacks. People who are our enemies are sowing lies knowing that a large number of us will believe the lies, and spread the lies, and even amplify the lies. Thus making disinformation campaigns very much more successful recently than they ever have been in the past.
All right, you say, but this is politics. We are in church listening to a sermon. Why are you talking about politics?
Okay, it's not foreign governments who are attacking the church. But we do have an enemy who is always attacking the church. And who specializes in lies. In fact, he's called the father of lies. And, what earthly governments are doing, probably not terribly well, he is undoubtedly an expert at. I'm sure that he is well practiced in coming up with lies that he knows that we will believe. About other churches. About other Christians. And if we believe the lies, and we spread the lies, we are being used as his weapons against God's Church.
Do you want to be his weapon?
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