Today's "thought" comes from a lady who grew up in the church as a child, and then (in her own words) "set it aside as folly" as she entered her 20's. It wasn't until she reached her mid-thirties the she felt the need to "reclaim it." It was process that was not always easy, and made her feel (at times) like she was being moved in a direction contrary to that which she would have willed to go -- though always for her good.
Her name is Kathleen Norris and her book is entitled "Amazing Grace, A Vocabulary of Faith." This selection I share comes from her chapter on Heresy/Apostasy -- things she herself had ventured into. And having been there, she addresses the topic from the informed place of personal experience. I found her take on it interesting, and as one who also wandered far from the church for a time, before being drawn back, true to my experience as well. I offer it to others who may have strayed as well. Enjoy.
"The Christian church has always co-existed with heresy, and with any luck it always will. Contending with heresy is what helps keep orthodoxy alive. But good will and sanity are essential, as Christian history is full of evidence that the vigorous rooting out of heretics is a cure worse than the disease. The times, blessedly few of them considering the church’s two-thousand-year span, when the inquisitorial types have gotten the upper hand have proved irredeemably shameful and sometime horrific.
If
heresy might be seen as slipping toward one extreme or another on a Christian
continuum, apostasy is another matter altogether. The word comes from the
Greek for “to revolt,” “to defect,” and signifies a break with the
family. The American Heritage Dictionary defines apostasy as the “abandonment
of one’s religious faith, a political party, one’s principles, or a
cause.” There is a certain pride inherent in apostasy, which often
manifests itself as a remarkable faith in oneself, as in “I alone know what is
right for me.” Teachers, traditions, the family stories, and the beliefs
of the common herd are all suspect; suspicion rather than trust is what defines
the apostate. And it defines our age. The individual stands alone,
a church of one, convinced that he or she is free of the tyranny of any creed
or dogma.
But
the use of one’s own experience as the measure of the world contains the seed
of another kind of tyranny. The accomplished gadfly Wendy Kaminer, in a
perceptive essay entitled “The Latest Fashion in Irrationality,” examines the
way in which much contemporary spirituality (which from a Christian frame of
reference is apostasy) offers a closed belief system in which “the possibility
of error is never considered,” as one’s feelings are always right. But as
Kaminer points out, these trendy belief systems – she is examining some recent
best-sellers that address alien abductions, personal angels, and the ability to
will oneself into a supernaturally evolved state – usually fail to deal
adequately with the evil in this world. And they encourage a disastrous
self-absorption, allowing people to believe that they are part of a spiritual
elite. “Like extremist political movements,” she writes, “they shine with
moral vanity.” If I had to come up with a synonym for apostasy, that
would be it: it is simple vanity.
But
it is my own vanity that I am condemning, my own arrogance, my own apostasy,
which surfaces whenever I break away from my community of faith. It comes
when I am so angry, or despairing, or simply exhausted, that I forget that I
don’t go to church for myself. Church is the Christian community, and it
exists in order to worship God and to live out the commandment given by Jesus
Christ, to love God and to love your neighbor as yourself. The part of
this equation that the apostate in me tends to scorn, is that
worshipping God means loving my neighbor. Mark 6:30-34 describes
Jesus and his disciples trying to get away from people for a rest, but finding
that people follow them, needing a word of encouragement; needing to be tended,
fed, and cared for. A Presbyterian pastor one reminded me, in an
inventive take on this gospel passage, that we “go to church for other
people. Because,” he added, “someone may need you there.” I stopped
doodling on my bulletin and began to pay attention, apostate no longer but
fully present “Someone may need you there.” And I may also
need to admit that I need them.
Wretched
as I am, it may do someone good just to see my face, or share a conversation
over coffee before the worship service; wretched as we all are, in the private
hells we dwell in, all too often inflicting on those who are closest to us the
bitter residue of their flames Church is a place we can go to stop the
madness, because every time we pray the Lord’s Prayer, we are petitioning for
forgiveness not only from God but from each other. Forgive me, Lord, as I
forgive. These are words that a true apostate cannot pray."
Kathleen
is right. In terms of the years of my own "apostasy" I can say, "Yes,
it was bred in vanity." For vanity often produces the need
to be novel, and as she says, think that we alone see things as they really are
and we alone know what is right for us. Likewise, apostasy (at least in
my case) was the result of a rebellion against what I knew deep down inside to
be true; it was not driven by a compulsion to pursue truth. Also, it was
fueled by a tendency to embrace one small part of what was true, focus on that
one small part as the whole truth, and thereby create a system of thought that
was unbalanced or not counterbalanced by other necessary truths, and thus ended
up being untrue (heretical).
J.
I. Packer was right when he suggested that: "A half-truth
masquerading as the whole truth becomes a complete untruth." Heresy usually exists
in the unbalanced extremes of limited thinking. It is not the result of seeing
more than others see, but refusing to see all there is to see. Truth is
comprehensive, but heresy latches on to one small aspect of the truth without
considering the complexity and completeness of the full truth that would
balance it off. So, my coming to the faith, after a time of straying
(apostasy) was simply coming to see in full (and acknowledge) truths I had
selectively chosen to reject. Those who have (like she and I) wandered into the
two states of heresy and apostasy will understand what she and I mean -- which
is probably more than a few of those who have read this post!
With
Prayers for You on the Journey, Pastor Jeff
