Comments on: Hairy tics riding on serpents hiding in fog

By: lane

lane — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 22:40:42 +0000

Interesting- heretic isn’t found in the Bible- but the words for ‘false prophet’ is pseudoprophetes- and ‘false teacher’ is pseudodidaskalos- both times a ‘pseudo’ type of person. Perhaps we should call them ‘pseudo-teachers’ or something. Either way, it seems that if Paul were around today, he’s be spending at least some time surfing the blogs looking for neo-orthodoxy and ‘doctrines of demons’.

By: Ashley Buckner

Ashley Buckner — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 17:18:06 +0000

Yeah, so that is some very good food for the thought….hmmmm…

By: Greg Stier

Greg Stier — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 15:18:39 +0000

Oh no Steve! I’m emergent and didn’t know it!! Next thing you know I’ll be lighting candles, burning incense and doing free screenings of An Inconvenient Truth (while drinking free trade coffee of course

On a serious note, yes, I agree we need to do most of our “standing for truth” where we are, impacting those we can look in the eye. But the world is getting smaller and everyone seems to have a bigger voice…so I think we should take advantage of the opportunity as we can.

Also, please be assured that the last thing in the world I want is a bunch of angry, witch hunting, heretic hunters. Nobody likes hanging out with Pharisees (except other pharisees I suppose.) Instead we are called to speak the truth in love and influence those we can, primarily in our primary sphere of influence. I’m totally with you on the pop-psych get-rich-for-Jesus garbage and I’m glad that the emergent brothers and sisters you hang with line up with traditional orthodoxy. May their tribe increase! Keep keeping on brother! Pop into Starbuck’s sometime and say hello.

By: Steve

Steve — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 15:04:24 +0000

Greg-
I was going to leave you a comment on your past few posts about Halo because you had said that Halo can be used to start a conversation. I think this is funny because it makes you sound “emergent.” Welcome to the club.

Here’s my two cents with this post. While, yes, the words of the writers of the NT are true for us today, they were being written to churches regarding people within their congregation. What I see going on today is people standing up and blowing whistles on people across the country. I realize that we have the ability to do this via the internet, but is that what we should be doing? Should I be involved with what a church is doing in Florida? Or, is it better for me to pour my time and energy into what is going on in Arvada, Denver, and Colorado. I realize that you are in a different place, seeing as you travel all over the country.

I am an emerging Christian, and the other emergers that I know line ourselves up with traditional Christian orthodoxy. But when I see the “heresy” (I with Ed on that word, too) it’s often the pop-psychology that is prevalent in the pulpit and the “God wants you to be rich” garbage that is a distortion of the Cross.

So what do we do? Stand against what is close or far away?

By: Greg Stier

Greg Stier — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 12:09:37 +0000

Hey Heather, Keep praying for GOSPEL Journey Maui. We still have almost half of the money to raise but we have a bunch of asks out there (including two foundations). Pray they say “YES!”

By: Becky

Becky — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 04:29:41 +0000

Very interesting thought.

By: Heather

Heather — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 02:52:43 +0000

Oh wait, nevermind on that question to Ed. Now double spacing creates new paragraphs. Why didn’t it before? I don’t know. Whatever.

By: Heather

Heather — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 02:51:33 +0000

To Ed: amazing pun there at the end! And hey, would you eradicate a small portion of my ignorance and tell me how you separate your paragraphs?

To Greg: How’s Gospel Journey Maui coming? I’m excited to see what comes of it. I’m also very excited for Survive D2S. We watched the ‘full promo’ in Sunday School today. Oh and by the way: you met my youth pastor at a youth leader conference last week. His name is Chris, and he had a picture taken on his cell phone of the two of you giving the thumbs up. It was a great picture.

Anyway, we’re praying for you, your family, and the ministry God’s using you for! Have a happy week!

By: Ed

Ed — Sun, 21 Oct 2007 22:54:18 +0000

I’m not sure that the word “heretic” is a particularly helpful one any more. It calls up images of the 13th century, and the advent of the persecuting society. It’s an old-fashioned word that has lost its moral force, and people only ever use it to lampoon Christians and to make them seem intolerant. Maybe we should invent another word, or word phrase which has the full moral force of the term, and remove the unhelpful association, so that churches can become serious about the problem of deliberate and stubborn dilution of the truth in the face of scriptural authority. Churches already resound with adequated language*. I’m not sure we need to rescue this term.

*Examples of words which you either only find in church, or which have a different meaning in a church context -

Fellowship, communion, believers, God’s word, scripture, doctrine, hymn, pew, eucharist, sacrament, baptismal, offertory, uplift, sermon, mission, crusade, anthem, eschatology (if you don’t know what that is, it’s not the end of the world) etc etc etc.