|
Truthfulness in faith: avoiding heresy
By Heather Lamson
Assistant Features Editor
FILE PHOTO
Bill Hybels: portrait of a heretic?
|
At the end of Stanley Hauerwas’ lecture my ears perked up. “We need to start coming out and really calling Willow Creek heresy!” he said.
What?
“I mean that’s truthful. I mean Bill Hybels has been quoted saying why he doesn’t have a cross in the church is it gets in the way of the gospel. Give us a break! What is Calvin doing?” said Hauerwas.
What?
“I saw in one of the papers that you allowed Bill Hybels to advertise in the Chimes. Why? Surely you’re for censorship against those kinds of false and idolatrous forms of Christianity.”
Excuse me?
Perhaps it was a spark of vanity that caused me to catch the Chimes reference. But he had also unabashedly used two very loaded words right in a row: heresy and censorship. Aren’t we supposed to be against censorship of any kind? Isn’t that a bad word? And wasn’t it fanatical Catholics and Protestants burning each other at stakes who tossed around the word heresy? It’s nearly taboo to call anything heresy anymore; I would certainly opt for “misrepresentation” or “lie” before I drop the h-bomb.
Hauerwas’ statements were made at the end of the controversial question and answer period of the lecture, in which his animation and conviction picked up. Left to simply respond to the audience, he quickly moved from our roots as a slave nation to the “clear ideological perversion” of how American history is taught in schools, to the sin of national pride, to the heresy of “church growth.”
In my brief 22 years of experience on this planet, I have already wrestled with truth, and the laborious task of making the truth I know congruent with the things I think, feel and do. So little was expanded upon in Hauerwas’ rapid-fire list of grievances that it would be difficult for me to support or refute any of them without first reading the long list of books now on my “to read” list. However, I already resonate with his passion that truth be upheld.
I recall being led into group prayer with the introductory phrase, “Father God, we know that none of us is here by accident; we are all here for a reason.” My eyes pop back open and I glare uncontrollably at the speaker. Are those our two options? Accident or divine purpose? What if I could have been several places that night and still have been in God’s will? Don’t speak for me and put lies in my mouth. I do not believe in creating a false sense of holiness and expectation when true holiness is already there.
The sentences I have written here require that I refer to God as he. The level of offence taken when someone suggests that God is both masculine and feminine is amazing. Isn't this true? Is not God a caretaker, a nurturer, his image borne equally by men and women? Why is this truth disdained?
Finally, may I tread on horribly marred ground and discuss church music for a moment? In the popular song “I Could Sing of Your Love Forever,” there is a bridge that says “Oh, I feel like dancing, it’s foolishness, I know. But when the world has seen the light, they will dance with joy like we’re dancing now.” My friend so aptly pointed out that she has never been in a service where any dancing was actually taking place at this point. The lie is even greater because we rarely associate the physical expression of joy with God. In fact, when do we ever even attempt to express joy physically?
There are also songs that express this sentiment: “You’re all I want, you’re all I need, you’re everything.” I don’t believe that this statement is true, and I’m not convinced that it should be. Does God want us to seek him above all things? Yes. “Seek ye first the kingdom of God and it’s righteousness,” Christ says in Matthew 6:33. But he finishes the statement with a promise: “And all these things will be added unto you.” Should I feel guilty singing this song when I know that I also want to get married some day, that I want to be an artist, or eat a sandwich for lunch that afternoon? Did God not put these desires in me? I do not believe that these songs are true and I will not sing them.
It is also a lie to suggest in a worship song that God is “entering,” “coming down” or being invited in. It perpetuates a frame of mind that says God isn’t already present in every space, every moment. I go through my life seeing God in the blue light on the snow against the orange light of my apartment, in the qualities I love in my friends, in the tirades of a man not willing to tolerate heresy wherever he finds it, be it the largest church in America.
A final lie I would like to address is the phraseology we use when we discuss our prayer life. I have never heard God’s voice. I find it a very unusual experience for someone to hear an audible voice in response to his or her prayers. Why do we use that phrase? Why do we fall back on descriptions of religious experience that do not describe reality? In his lecture, Hauerwas described the discrepancy between our expectations of pre-med students and seminary students:
"Someone who comes to seminary today is usually someone that has already failed in another line of work before they get there and they say something like, 'Gee, I’m just not really into Christology this year, I’m really into relating' and we say 'Right, go take some more CPE, you know, wounded healer, blah blah blah blah blah.' A kid can go to medical school and say, 'Gee, I’m just not really interested in anatomy this year, I’m really interested relating, I’d like to take some more psychiatry' and they say, 'Well who in the hell are you, kid? We’re not interested in what you’re interested in. Take anatomy or ship out.' Now that’s real moral education. What accounts for the fact that medical education is so much more serious than theological education today is very simple. No one believes that an inadequately trained priest may damage their salvation, but people do believe that an inadequately trained doctor can hurt them."
Our insistence on using clichणs that speak lies about our experience of God is damaging to our salvation. I personally spent nearly a year refusing to pray because I was tired of not being “answered.” I think my communion with God was more genuine and important during this time than it had ever been before. We are weakening each other’s faith by speaking these lies. I now remember times in my life when I realized truth, or was able to communicate truth to someone who needed to hear it, and my dim understanding cannot be credited with these insights. That is the true nature of my relationship with God.
Suppose a seminar titled "How to Hear God's Voice" were to come to Calvin. If I refuse to censor ads that would further spread this thoughtless lie, I would be partially responsible for the damage it would cause. If I participate in prayers and songs that demand that I lie about my relationship with God, I share responsibility in the disillusionment it causes my peers. And I am guilty of betraying the faithfulness of God, by causing people to expect him to behave in the ways we would prefer, rather than according to his own divine wisdom. I would then be a heretic.
|
