We All Teach Heresy, But Be Intellectually Honest About It

In one of my classes I teach epistemology, the science of knowledge. My challenge is “how to do you know what you know and how do you know what you know is right?” I then give the students an epistemological quiz (20 questions) to test their theological consistencies. A sampling of the quiz, adapted from Paul Hiebert, true or false:

1. Muslim believers in Jesus cannot continue to pray at the mosque.
2. Slavery is permissible if slaves are treated well.
3. Polygamy is adultery, therefore a sin.
4. Forbid teaching from the Koran or other holy books.
5. A Christian should not engage in any Hindu or Muslim festivals.

At some point I recount the story of my old hermeneutics professor who said at the end of the term, “Gentlemen, recognize that in your ministry all of you will teach some heresy.”

“Great.” I thought, “I’ve spent a semester learning how to properly interpret the text, and he concludes telling us we are going to teach heresy!”

Nearly 40 years since those college days and nearly the same period of time in ministry, I have come to the conclusion that the old professor was right. We all gain our knowledge through a prism defined by culture, our time and what information we will allow into our minds. Do we read secular philosophy or the writings of other religious scholars? For the first twenty-five years of my ministry I never read anything but evangelical material. Up to that time I had never visited a Catholic Church, read anything by Marx or had any idea what a Hindu believed. Why? FEAR.

The greatest threat to intellectual or spiritual growth is the fear that somehow, if we expose ourselves to anything that is not within the framework of what we believe is truth, we will become an apostate, end up a drunken atheist. While I understand the dangers of false teaching, error is often the result of limited or filtered knowledge. Paul stated that we see (understand) through a glass darkly, i.e. have an obscure or imperfect vision of reality. Heresy is indeed a result of faulty hermeneutics and part of our flawed interpretation is due to self-induced bias.

But of course, heresy is not just an evangelical Christian problem. Every religious zealot in the world holds to a belief system born more out of cultural conditioning than in an honest pursuit of truth. Even science, which for some is the final answer to everything, is bound by parallaxes of vision. In the movie, EXPELLED: No Intelligence Allowed, it is interesting that Darwinism, which itself is always evolving, is bigoted in their opinion and have no tolerance for intellectual debate.



As a postmodernist follower of Christ, who holds to his absolutes absolutely, I realize that the search for truth is part of my working out my own salvation. In the process, I hope I am and not teaching heresy, but know that I probably am (and so are you).

A Day of Grace to Say Thanks

I have no statistics on this, but I’m guessing that Thanksgiving Day is the second most popular American holiday, Christmas being number one. Personally, I have always favored this holiday as it is the one day where we, as a nation, collectively and individually, pause long enough to give thanks to our Creator for His goodness. In some ways it should be called Grace Day, as it is only through God’s grace that we have anything to be thankful for.

91% of Americans will eat Turkey this year, the official bird of Thanksgiving and the fowl Benjamin Franklin wanted as our national symbol. Interesting, Columbus thought the turkey was like a peacock and therefore called the bird “tuka,” which is Tamil, the language in one of the southern sates of India. The average household food bill for this one meal will be $44.61, as our well-fed nation will consume 46 million birds, dressing and pumpkin pie. Thanksgiving Day is family time, and in a country where increasingly our individualistic society is ever more disconnected, there is that pull to bring families together, if not to give thanks, at least to watch football.


As my nation leads up to this grandest of all holidays the emphasis, as seems to be case with everything in the U.S., will be on the economy. The focus for Wall Street is not on Thursday but the day after, known as Black Friday. Consumerism is the god of goodness, the deity of prosperity. More attention will be given this year to Black Friday, which is the unofficial beginning of Christmas shopping, than on the God who allows us the freedom, health and wealth to buy the junk we import from China and other developing countries. We’ve come a long way since that first Thanksgiving where our Pilgrim father’s shared a meal with the Wampanoag Indians at Plymouth Rock.

The forecast for Thanksgiving in my part of the world is partly cloudy and that pretty much sums up my feelings. The tension will always be to look at the dark side of things, but the setting aside a day to say thanks allows us to see the world is only partly cloudy and we have a lot to be thankful for. Thursday I probably will be asked to say grace over the meal, as I am the official prayer giver at my in-laws house. I can perform this ritual, which is meaningless to some in the family, not through rote liturgy, but because I know it’s God’s grace that allows me the privilege to say thanks.

Shame and Social Control

The class lecture was on social control. In this class I present the different mechanisms of control and how those mechanisms make us conform into the image of our cultural environment. Formal controls are rules and laws passed by society on what is proper/improper behavior (e.g. speed limits, paying taxes, age limit for consensual sex). Informal mechanisms of control are set by family, interest groups and religion (endogamy for marriage within defined ethnicity; Weight Watchers using shame techniques for dieters and fear of the supernatural to control devotees of faith). The media is big on shame manipulation and social control. In every election people are called “idiots” if they vote for one candidate, while others are sophisticated if they vote for the other person the media has anointed worthy of office. Social control can be subtle or overt, but it’s a phenomenon that takes place constantly.

While the class discussion continued, a young lady from northeast India told her story. She recounted that the reason she was in seminary was because of the expectations of her family. At a young age she was “consecrated” by her parents for God’s service. Though she insisted that she indeed wanted to serve Christ and enrolling in this school was her choice, she said she never thought much about doing anything else because of the expectations of her family. She then went on to say, choking back emotion that would lead to tears, that her pastor told her that if she did not fulfill the consecration of her family that she would be cursed and perhaps that curse would even fall on her parents.

As I listened to her story I was both incensed and saddened. Saddened because this truly sincere but confused young woman was serving Christ, partly because of personal choice, but strongly influenced by social control. Incensed because a pastor dared to use the fear of the supernatural to shame this person to conform to the wishes of her parents and even the church. For too many religious leaders, be they Christian, Muslim or Hindu, theology is a form of quality control and they set themselves up as one who speaks for God to pass judgment. Not only is that theological heresy, when it comes to manipulating the emotions of others it borders on the criminal of physiological abuse.

All of humanity is pushed, pulled and jerked around by the opinions of family, peers, religion and the constant barrage of influence that comes our way through music and the film industry. Paul admonished the followers of Jesus not be conformed to the things of this world but be transformed into the image of Christ. While the battle for control continues, our Creator is trying to break through to show us His love, mercy and patience. And He does that without heaping on us guilt and shame…that’s the work of the enemy.

Is There A Doctor In The House?

In Thailand the Mission Commission of the World Evangelical Alliance celebrated its 11th Global Consultation with the attendance of 250 mission and church leaders from over 50 nations.

The MC convenes a global consultation every two or three years for mutual encouragement, fellowship and building of relationships, growth in the understanding of the missional enterprise around the globe, dealing with global issues and challenges, and planning the joint work and strategies, in order to become better equipped for the work.


This time the MC consultation focused primarily the missiological issues of Contextualization, Mission and Spirituality, and Mission in the Context of Suffering, Violence, Persecution and Martyrdom. The general reflection of all participants and the specific missiological teams generated the core content for a new series of three missiological books based on the work done by the Global Missiology Task Force. These books will be published during the next three years.


In a hall knee-deep in PhD’s and scholars, I didn’t see one nametag that reflected their educational accomplishments. Mission practioners are more focused on the task and solving crucial problems rather than impressing others with their credentials. The consultation provided intellectual and spiritual thought without the need to ask if there was a doctor in the house.

Wal-Mart and Zolfresh

The journey isn’t complete until your body and mind merge into the same time zone. After 30 hours of travel, 18 of them in an airplane and the balance in airports, my journey to Asia and back is nearly complete. Eight weeks and 40,000 miles of travel are over, but one cannot quite say they are home until they can sleep right through the night and can stay awake throughout the day.

For me, jetlag is a part of the job, so I am forever trying to learn new ways to make the transition less painful. Staying awake all day without so much as a power nap is nearly impossible. When the body tells you it’s 3 a.m. in Bangalore yet you jut finished lunch in Arkansas, there is no way to convince the sleep sensors of the brain differently. I fight to stay awake until 9 p.m., but succumb to the lure of the mattress and pillow before 8, convinced that I will not wake again for at least three days. Four hours later my eyes pop open, I feel refreshed, but why is it still dark outside? And, by the way, where am I? Stumbling for the light in a room that I vaguely remember, I discover that it’s 1 a.m. Now what do I do until the light of day?

Two options at the beginning of closing the journey is Wal-Mart or zolfresh.

For my non-Western friends, Wal-Mart is the largest retailer in the U.S., with annual revenue of over $300 billion. Most of their stores are open 24/7, selling everything from eggs to tractor parts -- if Wal-Mart doesn’t have it you probably don’t need it. The superstores are nearly 10 acres of clothes, house wares, electronics, food and even a full service pharmacy where you take your own blood pressure. When your body doesn’t know you should be prone rather than upright, nothing is more interesting than walking the aisles of Wal-Mart and observing who else can’t sleep.

The other option is chemically telling your body that you’ve had it and YOU WILL GO TO SLEEP! Taking 10 mg of this little pill is forcing the body into submission, but it still doesn’t help the drowsies in the afternoon, so you end up at Wal-Mart anyway.

When I asked a flight attendant what she did to beat international jetlag she shrugged and said matter-of-factly, “Not much. I just brace myself to feel like crap for three days.” Not exactly the answer I was looking for, but reality is a harsh teacher.

Faces Of Culture

This clip was shown at a recent conference. Great reminder of God's many faces of culture.

The Gods We Worship

There is an anthropological axiom that states, “People become like the gods they worship.” I’ve been thinking about that a great deal since coming to Pattya last week for a WEA Missions Commission Consultation.

Seven out of ten men who come to Thailand as tourist do so for sex. While walking the beach last night I saw several men in their ‘60’s walking with prostitutes not too many years older than my granddaughter. As I observed another European staggering to his hotel and another old guy with a male prostitute, I wondered what it says about the gods they serve.

I am no expert in Buddhism, which the primary religion of Thailand. I understand that one of the roles of girls is to provide for their parents economically. Many of the girls, who are dedicated to the spirits and gods when they were babies, are apart of the billion-dollar sex industry. From the northeast, they come with as little as sixth grade education. The boys are expected to enter a Buddhist monastary for at least a few months to prepare their parents for their next life. Fatalistic, with no sense of a personal God, the Thai people, especially, though not exclusively, the poor and uneducated, are left with a faith that is reflected through myth and tradition.

The gods of the clients are equally fatalistic. Hedonistic, the rule is life is for the moment so eat, drink and be merry, for in the end we all die and if there is a God, He will sort it out later. Since all humanity is flawed, actions that are non-violent are merely a natural state not to be judged.

If people become like the gods they worship, what does this mean to the Christian? We obviously have a different set of rules based on a different concept of the One who created us. But if we are not careful, we can be transformed into the image of the world around us, instead of being transformed into the image of Christ.