When did I first realize that our Bible study group was composed of representative heretics from throughout church history?
     Oh, it must have been last year, when I had a meeting with ... let's just call him "Mike."
     Mike is an oil geologist, a pillar of our community – which means he has a real, actual job. Before we could get to the subject of our meeting, he began relating how much understanding he had received lately about spiritual things, how his health had never been better, how well his marriage relationship was going, how some of his oil wells had recently come in and how his professional career was taking off.
     "God has really been blessing me," he beamed.
     I hit the ceiling.
     "Do you realize that by your statement you've just dismissed the suffering of your fellow believers who are jobless, homeless, their relationships shredded, struggling to understand the gospel and maybe suffering from chronic pain or dibilitating disease? You sound like a #!2@%^& televangelist!" I yelled.
     He was stunned, and so was I, but for different reasons. It's not that we hadn't been talking about this very thing for years. I knew he hadn't been asleep all that time. So what was up?
     Then I remembered Paul's statement in I Corinthinans 11:19: "For there must be also heresies among you..."
     There is a constant tendency within all of us to drift toward heresy.
     The word means "schism" or "separation." And the separation begins in our own minds. In fact, the description in the book of Jude makes it sound like Anychurch, USA: "... murmurers and fault finders. These are they who separate themselves."
     We begin to feel separate from God for many reasons – guilt, fear, whatever. So we come up with some idea or another to hide behind, like Adam and Eve in the garden cowering in the shrubbery. That separation and its consequences leads to our feeling separate from our brethren and, ultimately, if allowed to continue, results in a schism within the church and possibly a split in the congregation.
     I started thinking about the different members of our group, including myself, and the various ways we keep getting off track. The pattern seems to mimick all the ancient Christian heresies. And it usually involves our Christology – how we think about Jesus Christ.
     For instance, one person gets ensnared by some "great idea" or dream, then he "keeps pumping the energy" until it becomes a reality, or – more likely – it fails.
     It is reminiscent of the Montanists of the second century A.D., with their charismatic-like emotionally charged feelings guiding them instead of scripture. As one commentator describes the group, they "considered their own dreaming of more importance than the written word." They forget that Christ said "It is finished" on the cross. Anything we have to energize can't be of God.
     Another person on our block sets a series of tasks and goals in front of himself and then wonders why he feels buried "under the circumstances" and a blizzard of Post-it® notes. The cycle of guilt, effort and attempted self-redemption through trying to do the "right thing" reminds me of the Judaizers that Paul warns against. In addition to grace, they add any number of hoops to jump through before you can finally relax. But they forget Jesus said, "My yoke is easy and my burden is light."
     As that other heretic Bertrand Russell once said, "One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important."
     One sage in our group likes to give his own spin of what is now called Stewart's Law of Retroaction: "It's easier to get forgiveness than permission." The gnostics, who often completely separated things done in the body from the spiritual realm, pushed their own version of this saying during the earliest years of the church. They wouldn't acknowledge the crisis of sin that makes forgiveness necessary, or the cost of the sacrifice that made it available.
     Unforgiveness is a common and tragic drain on the life of a body of believers. And taken to its logical extension, it becomes a policy, and thus a heresy. That's what happened in the Donatist schism after the severe persecution of Emperor Diocletian. Those who had surrendered copies of the scripture or had denied the faith were excommunicated, whether they repented or not.
     Others in our group are struggling with trying to figure out the gospel with their minds. The gnostics (again) hoped that finding special mystic knowledge that would set them apart from the uninitiated, to get the magic key that would unlock the secret. That heresy refused to believe that the gospel mystery apprehends you, you don't apprehend it.
     In fact John Chrysostom wrote a polemic against the heretic Eunomians in the fourth century A.D. on that very subject called The Incomprehensible Nature of God. (I tried to read it, and couldn't make heads or tails of the thing.)
     Most heresies originate in our response to that phrase in I John – "Jesus Christ is come in the flesh." Many can agree he came in the past, many can say he will come in the future. But few are able to say he is present in our flesh right now.
     Some in our group are continually feeling victimized by God and complaining about how they're suffering. But the complaining is a heresy. The Adoptionists of the third century A.D. said Christ only came and rested on Jesus for a while until his crucifixion. Because the true Christ would never be able to suffer, they claim he left Jesus to do it by himself.
     The flip side is the view of the Eutychian heresy of 444 A.D. They said Jesus and Christ shared one body, but it wasn't like our human body. In both cases, suffering didn't fit into their theology.
     To believe the incarnation is to lose your right to complain forever.
     Some heresies are rare on our block. For instance, we don't see much Pelagianism because our people have experienced lives so morally disasterous and out of control that the belief in the power of free will and social responsibility are a very hard sell.
     But no doubt these heresies will continue to show up, for the reason that Paul gives: "that they which are approved may be made manifest among you." In fact, the only non-heretic among us is Jesus Christ himself.
     Heresies, it seems, are the contrast we provide to put his truth into sharp relief.