What is a 'heresy', anyway?...

I'm glad you asked! The word "heresy" comes from the Greek hairetikos, "able to choose". If you think about that for a minute, you might ask yourself something like, "so what's wrong with making a choice?".

I'm glad you asked! What's wrong with making a choice? Apparently everything, if you think you and your group are the UAORAW (Undisputed Arbiters of Right and Wrong). If you belong to a group that considers itself to be Right in a way that makes everyone else Wrong, then anyone who chooses to believe something you don't approve of is a heretic, and their disapproved beliefs are heresy.

Wikipedia says that Iraeneus back in the second century (this has been going on a long time...) was the first guy to really promote the idea that his beliefs were "orthodox" and anyone else's were "heresy". He even wrote a book he titled Adversus Haereses (that's right: "Against Heresies") just to straighten everyone out.

Maybe it's just me, but this seems to be an exercise in name calling. As in a shooting war, where the enemy has to be depersonalized through some kind of derogatory nickname, calling someone a 'heretic' seems to be right in there with 'son of a bitch', just a way to be offensive, to put down someone you disagree with, to give yourself permission to hate, and to stereotype the individual to the point where the individual ceases to be a real person. Jesus would love it.

There's one other thing: Notice that the guy who entertains a completely different set of religious beliefs from yours is not called a heretic. That name is reserved for people who claim to follow your own religion, but aren't doing it right ("right" in this context meaning "the way you do it"). In this regard, claims of orthodoxy and heresy look suspiciously like an exercise in branding. Maybe someone should trademark words like "Christian" or "Presbyterian", so they'd have legal rights that they can enforce against anyone who presumes to use those words without their approval.

The conundrum is the sheer number of groups out there that all think they're right and everyone else is wrong. Ten or twelve years ago I read that there were at the time something like 22,000 separate Christian denominations on the planet. Who is "orthodox" now? Not who claims to be orthodox--that's just about everyone, and not just the ones with the word "orthodox" in their brand. I mean who really gets to adjudicate what's the One True Way against which all others are measured? (And how funny is it to watch all these different groups judging each other as if it mattered to anyone else what they think?)

The lawyers might ask, quo warranto? (that is, by what warrant, or by what authority do you do this?). Jesus and his apostles had a lot to say about factions, divisiveness, the traditions of men, religious exclusion, and persecution. They had a lot to say about love, unity, brotherhood, bearing each other's burdens, praying for each other, and taking care of the needy. They did not have a lot to say about creedal conformity. They had a lot to say about Right Action and Right Motive; not so much to say about Right Doctrine. Whatever authority causes some people to think they're the Church Police, the UAORAW, it's not the teachings of Jesus or the apostles.

Bottom line is: I'm not worried about being called a heretic. Everyone's a heretic in someone else's eyes, so if you take any position at all, someone's not going to like it. And at it's etymological root, "heretic" is just another name for "free thinker", someone who is "able to choose", someone who doesn't have to be told what to think, who to vote for, what to believe.

I'm okay with that.