Why We Are Heretics
The Church has always had to deal with heresies, theological doctrines that are at odds with the orthodox teachings of Christianity.
One of the earliest heresies was called Gnosticism. The title comes from the Greek root word gnosis, which means simply “knowledge.” There were many varieties of Gnosticism, but the basic idea was that Jesus passed along secret teachings to his disciples and they key to salvation was simply to know these secret teachings. People could achieve salvation simply because they knew something that others didn’t.
I think the church is still filled with Gnostics, and we don’t even realize it.
For so many of us, salvation has been reduced to praying a prayer and believing that Jesus was the Son of God and rose from the dead. If you pray the prayer and believe the right things, you’re in.
We may not admit it, but we don’t think that Jesus actually meant much of what he said. His point was to set the bar so high that we could never do it. So why bother? We recognize that we fall short, so we don’t try. And being a Christian becomes all about intellectually assenting to the correct doctrine.
You can achieve salvation by knowing the right things. This subtle but dangerous brand to Gnosticism has seeped into the church. A lot Christians today have impeccably orthodox doctrine, but seem to shy away from the difficult demands of being a committed disciple of Jesus. We may follow Jesus with our heads, but not with our hands and feet.
We have become heretics.
