“So, Pam, you’ve been called a heretic, is that right?” asked the pro­gram host of OPB’s Think Out Loud radio show. “Yes,” I chuck­led, “I have.”

Her ques­tion sur­prised me. Some­one did there research! I can­not even remem­ber if I ever blogged about that, about Ken Silva, the cel­e­brated heresy hunter of Appris­ing Min­istries,
out­ing me at his blog. It’s been about a year since Silva posted a crit­i­cism on his blog about an arti­cle I wrote for Off the Map:

I found out that Jesus loves pagans. He’s not offended by their beliefs of many deities or their out­right rejec­tion of him as the Son of God. But that’s the whole point, isn’t it, of the Gospel, to rec­on­cile peo­ple to friend­ship with God? (Online source)

At least so says Pam Hodgeweide and other man-​​centered semi-​​pelagians in the emerg­ing church. If the Lord allows I’ll get to Hodgewide another time, but for now I point out that she hap­pens to a con­tribut­ing writer for the very appro­pri­ately named Off The Map (OTM) whose co-​​founder and Exec­u­tive Direc­tor is Jim Hen­der­son:

(well, the heresy here is not what I wrote for OTM about pagans, but that Silva spelled my name wrong!)

Later, when a(blog­ger Mike Mor­rel was “outed” by Silva, I left this comment:

…it cracks me up. in some cir­cles to be labeled the H word would inspire fear and trem­bling. but in other cir­cles, peo­ple prac­ti­cally erupt with applause and whoo-hoo’s. It’s like a badge of merit. “Oh, someone’s call­ing me a heretic? Yes! This means I’m finally mak­ing waves!”

I saw some­one at my local library wear­ing a t-​​shirt that said “Embrace your inner heretic.” The shirt was cov­ered with names of peo­ple who’ve been accused of heresy over the cen­turies, like Joan of Arc, Jesus, Galileo, Mar­tin Luther, etc…

Ok. Clearly the H word does not bother me or many oth­ers in the least. Espe­cially since the prac­tice of burn­ing heretics at the stake was aban­doned long ago. Thank God.

Silva has stopped by my blog and OTM’s blog a time or two. And though we obvi­ously are far from agree­ing with one another about doc­trine and Chris­t­ian prac­tices, he has always con­ducted him­self respect­fully. He has, what I call, good blog man­ners. So with that in mind, I was dis­mayed to learn that his blog was pulled by his server due to a com­plaint by some­one Silva crit­i­cized sev­eral years ago. The server demanded that Silva remove the arti­cle from his blog or else the whole blog would be shut down. Silva, refus­ing to be cen­sored, began scram­bling for a new server and refused to com­ply. Good for him. His voice is an impor­tant voice in the blo­gos­phere and to shut him down just because one per­son felt defamed…which really, if you’re going to write books and such as the “defamed” per­son does then ya gotta expect some pub­lic crit­i­cisms of your message.

Ore­gon writer and blog­ger, Sally Stu­art, rightly observes when she blogged:

There are seri­ous impli­ca­tions here for all blog­gers, regard­less of what sort of blog they pub­lish. Any­one who has a com­plaint about your views can claim that you have engaged in slan­der and the ISP Terms of Ser­vice usu­ally allow for the com­pa­nies to remove your web­site if you don’t take the mate­r­ial in ques­tion down. The First Amend­ment means noth­ing in these cases. ISP’s can­not and will not explore the claims of slan­der and sim­ply notify blog­gers to remove what­ever is caus­ing the prob­lem. This opens the door for any­one to cen­sor what a blog­ger writes online.

(you can read all about the mess at Silva’s new and uncen­sored site HERE)

Heretic. What is a heretic? Why does this word carry so much power? Dic​tio​nary​.com defines heretic as this:

a pro­fessed believer who main­tains reli­gious opin­ions con­trary to those accepted by his or her church or rejects doc­trines pre­scribed by that church; any­one who does not con­form to an estab­lished atti­tude, doc­trine, or principle.

Yep. That pretty much nails me and a whole lotta peo­ple I know. I think we have more heretics among us than we real­ize. They’re hid­ing in the closet, like smok­ing Chris­tians who hide their cig­a­rettes when cer­tain peo­ple around, many Chris­tians hide some of their beliefs behind closed closet doors.

I had a con­ver­sa­tion sev­eral months ago with a man who believes in uni­ver­sal rec­on­cil­i­a­tion (that all shall ulti­mately be saved and none shall spend eter­nity damned to hell). In our con­ver­sa­tion he told me that dur­ing his time at sem­i­nary he began his study of this per­spec­tive and wrote a paper about it. He con­sulted with sev­eral the­ol­ogy pro­fes­sors at his con­ser­v­a­tive sem­i­nary and was sur­prised to learn that some of them were also rec­on­cil­i­a­tion­ists. These the­olo­gians did not pub­licly teach this posi­tion out of neces­sity : they didn’t want to lose their jobs. And why would this put their livli­hood in jea­pordy? Because in many the­o­log­i­cal cir­cles it is con­sid­ered hereti­cal to embrace uni­ver­sal reconciliation.

In con­trast, I am a happy heretic. I freely blog and speak about what I believe and put my hope in. (such as the fact that I am an unapolo­getic hope­ful rec­on­cil­i­a­tion­ist). I am not clos­eted up with my beliefs in the shad­ows. This blog is proof of that.

I am not a the­olo­gian. I am not a teacher. But I am a writer, a blog­ger, a thinker who likes to go off the grid into once for­bid­den places of Chris­t­ian thought and spir­i­tu­al­ity. That’s what I do. There is no risk for me. No voca­tion that could be threat­ened by such adven­tures in faith.

For me, doc­tri­nal error is not nearly as impor­tant as how I treat peo­ple and how I honor God in my life. Jesus summed up all the law, in other words, all doc­trine, when he taught, Love the Lord with every­thing you’ve got, and love your neigh­bor as well as your­self. Love, is the sum of the law. Love, is the sum of doc­trine. There is no room for cast­ing stones at peo­ple I am in dis­agree­ment with over doc­trine. I can­not fault the heresy hunters who feel that it would be less than lov­ing of them to sound the alarm, and for that, I gotta love them and see past their inflam­ma­tory rhetoric.

For me, the great­est heresy is to lead oth­ers away from friend­ship with God in the way that I live my life or treat oth­ers. If by my actions or words I inspire oth­ers to a decrease in faith in the good­ness of the Lord, this, my friends, is what would break my heart and flood me with remorse.
But if by my words and my life I help oth­ers on their jour­ney towards their father in heaven, well, heretic or not, I think I’m on the right track.

Heresy. I’d love to see the new here­sies of the 21^st cen­tury be more about prac­tice rather than belief.