Since I’ve been talking about the need to question everything, arrive at a personal theology that we’ve tested in the streets of our lives, become willing to be called heretic for our trouble, one of our members commented that I must have been called a heretic at some point and asked if I saw that as a badge of honor. 

Called heretic at some point? I’ve lost count. Along with being told I was going to hell and taking anyone along who’d listen to me, I wouldn’t call it a badge of honor. Surprising and painful at first, it now functions more as a grim validation of the process of spiritual formation. Always a cue to reevaluate, but without fear anymore. I know my God will never damn me for a wrong thought in my head, and constant questioning keeps me humbly aware that the quality of my relationships is always more important than abstract positions, just as Jesus taught.

Someone once called me a “functional heretic.” Not sure what he meant, but I took it to mean pushing the envelope just short of too far. I love that. Still functioning within the biggest Christian tent, but following Jesus as I’ve come to know him as first priority. With that definition, we should all be functional heretics, willing to question established systems and beliefs—our own or those around us—if they no longer reflect the life to which we are convinced Jesus is calling.

Heresy literally means to choose for oneself, even if it means departing from accepted doctrine. It’s only a negative for those invested in status quo, threatened by dissent. So, checking our motives to make sure we’re not chasing egoic desire for attention or gratification, we accept the responsibility of making our own choices. Just following orders, living off received beliefs, is never a mark of spiritual maturity.

When conscience bangs against doctrine that no longer makes spiritual or common sense, making our own choice also means accepting any punishment from orthodox power. But what’s the alternative? To never explore this life is not to live at all. Jesus may not have relished disruption, but he never shied from being called heretic. We can do no better.

Unashamed Heretic

Dave Brisbin 9.20.20
Still talking about presence as the foundation of Jesus’ Way and the contemplative prayer that will take us there. When Moses came down off the mountain with God, his face was shining, and when contemplatives and mystics come back from their experience of presence, they say strange things to try to express themselves: “Run from what’s comfortable. Forget safety. Live where you fear to live. Destroy your reputation. Be notorious. I have tried prudent planning long enough. From now on I’ll be mad.” (Rumi) What are we to make of such words? When Jesus says unless we hate our fathers and mothers, children and even our own lives, we can’t follow him, what are we to make of that? Truth is, trying to understand the words of those who come back from the experience of presence is like trying to understand the equations on Einstein’s blackboard—a dense wall of numbers and symbols that stops you in your tracks with its sheer incomprehensibility. It’s not until there’s enough of a change in our minds to allow the beginning of a change of habit, habitual action in the direction of the practice of presence, that we’ll get our first inklings of what Jesus, the contemplatives and mystics, and perhaps even Einstein are trying to express.

Einstein's Blackboard

Audio podcasts delivered at theeffect church in San Clemente, CA. theeffect is a community of imperfect people working together to find the emotional recovery and spiritual transformation that is theeffect of God’s love by unlearning limiting perceptions, beliefs, and compulsions, and engaging a first century Jesus in a non-religious and transforming way. See more at theeffect.org.

Unashamed Heretic

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