Heresy and Reformation

Yep - that's EXACTLY how all heresy gets started. It's also how all reformations get started...

It starts with the idea that maybe we've got it wrong somehow. Something isn't lining up with what the Bible really says.

You know, the beginning of Romans talks about how we'll be judged by how much of God has been revealed to us. That's not to say that all roads lead to God - but that those who have never heard of Jesus will be judged differently than those of us who have. God loves us enough to give us the choice to choose to love him - but he is so just that he will not penalize those who have never heard.

I went to a Presbyterian seminary and I remember mocking the Presbyterians for their "predestination" stance that can be twisted to say, "why evangelize? If God chose 'em, they're in."

And, to take your argument further - why do it at all if people will be judged differently if they've never heard? In other words, why put them on the spot to even take the chance of rejecting Jesus and thus separating themselves from God (on this, search YouTube for the blasphemy challenge)?

Because God isn't in the business of "getting us to heaven" God's in the business of "bringing heaven to us." The whole Kingdom of God thing in the Gospels seems to me to be how we need to relate to each other here and now. How if we would really take the Commandments to Love God and Love People seriously, we'd be living in just the kind of world that Jesus says is coming in Revelation - where tears are wiped away and where need is cared for. Where the hungry are fed and the naked clothed. Not everyone equal in a pure marxist sense, but everyone valued and counted.

I'm so less worried about people's "eternal" destiny than I am their present condition. It's a new twist on the old question, "How is it with your soul?"

Yep, that's how heresy starts - and reformation. Every reform was heresy once...