Heresies of the Heart

Un-Christ-like attitudes, not doctrinal creativity, make up the heresies gnawing at the heart of the Church today. In order to avoid complete cardiac collapse, we must address this heart disease and work to eradicate it.

In this complex, open-ended, multiple-choice age we rarely dwell on the established doctrinal foundations of our faith. Even less do we seriously entertain the notion of genuinely heretical views undermining the sanctity of those foundations. In its past the Church has been inflamed by "heretical" doctrines that challenged proscribed ways of thinking about God and God's relationship to humanity. Today those who lost the historical battle with the majority are only thought to generally illustrate righthearted believers with wrongheaded ideas. A heresy, we are convinced, is just an out-dated concept representing out-of-step believers.

But heresies have begun springing up like dandelions in congregations all over the country. The heretical notions entertained by these weeds in faith's field no longer wrap themselves in a protective casing of intellectualized doctrinal debates. The heresies that most threaten the church and her mission today are heresies of the heart. Attitudes like...