heresy today

All is well in laptop-land again! The folk from Local Planet, our IT specialist firm, did their stuff and sorted out the problems I'd been having.

They are, I suppose, the 'pastors' to technology, using all their diagnostic skills to figure out just what the problems are, and then being able to draw on their obvious knowledge of the way computers work to sort the problems out.

Impressive, I have to say. Extremely helpful, too, of course. And not a little instructive for a guy like me, who's called to be a pastor to companions (not computers) on the thoroughfare of life.

Today's been a day of meeting with leaders in Christ's church. Folk who, like me, are pastors in the church.

A meeting this morning with a fine and godly man, who's long since served the Lord and is a pastor through and through. He's now joined our fellowship and, under God, is seeking his direction as to where and how his gifts may best be used for Jesus Christ within our life.

A meeting at night with the leaders here to address once again a number of pressing issues with which we've been grappling this past little while. Trying to frame our thinking by the Word of God. A stimulating, stretching exercise.

I had lunch with some pastors from neighbouring congregations. They talked about all sorts of things, but included among them was the question of how much time off they took - and when and where and how.

And how we each made time for concentrated study in our lives. Pastors, like my on-the-ball technician who came riding to the rescue of my badly-firing laptop - pastors need to know their stuff. There needs to be that study somehow built into the pattern of their lives.

Some of the pastors I know deliberately take a two-week break each year for 'study leave'. Others sort of store it up and take it as a rather more extended 3-month break and follow through some course.

And me? Well, I try to do such study all the time. It's on the hoof, I readily acknowledge, in amongst the many other tasks my daily work involves. Not ideal in many ways, but at least it's always earthed in all the issues that my daily living brings.

This study is not really tied in at all with what the Sunday preaching is about. It's separate from that, a wider sort of reading, that's addressing over a period of time, a common theme.

So, for instance, this last little while I've been reading a lot on the theme, I suppose, of the church: and how the church best holds together two important values which the Scriptures underline - unity and truth.

It's hardly what you'd call irrelevant! This is the critical issue we're having to face with a deep and a deepening rift within the church on the issue of where our final authority lies and what, in the end, truth is.

Are the Scriptures themselves the Word of God? Are the Scriptures themselves our ultimate, final authority?

You may think the answer to that is obvious (it certainly used to be). But it's subtly become up for grabs these days. The argument goes like this.

The Scriptures require to be interpreted. And interpretations differ. Yours has no more status or authority than mine. So in the end let's just agree to differ and get on with it together.

It sounds quite plausible, of course.

And anyone objecting to this line is straightaway accused of blatant arrogance and charged with lacking any real humility. But all the while the effect of this line is to drain away the lifeblood of the God-bestowed authority the Scriptures have.

There's one more subtle twist in all of this. The more this line is aired and gains momentum, the bolder its proponents seem to be; until, without acknowledging it as such, the ultimate authority is gradually vested in ourselves.

Interpreting the Scriptures then becomes the business of determining, not what the Scriptures mean, but which bits of the Scriptures apply. Which bits are true. Which bits have any real value. Which bits we can safely remove.

And before folk have figured out just what's going on, the revolution's happened and the Scriptures have been ousted from their elevated throne.

And, lo and behold, there's a new kid on the block. And, surprise, surprise, the new kid's actually us, the great, intrepid 'interpreters'.

This is nothing new, of course. It's as old as the garden of Eden. Eat the fruit and, hey, you get to be God.

It's tempting and subtle and the argument's always persuasive. But it carries a strong insistent government health warning.

This will seriously damage your health.

Alister McGrath's book 'Heresy' takes a good and perceptive look at this sort of thing, from a slightly different angle.

One of the things he argues is that the 'strongly evangelistic impulse' at the heart of Christianity impelled it to be always building bridges into the communities, and societies, in which the church found itself. Engaging the culture, sort of thing.

We can't duck the challenge of that: nor would we wish to for a moment. But ...

"It is, however, a profoundly risky strategy. What might initially have been envisaged as a tactical reworking of some basic Christian ideas seems to have had the propensity to end up as a longer-term reconceptualisation of Christianity itself."

That's pretty much the danger that we're facing again today. A longer-term 'reconceptualisation' of Christianity itself - whereby it becomes something essentially different from what it actually is.

And simply to stress our unity when the cost of so doing is truth does the cause of the gospel no good. Our unity is around and upon the truth of God.

To abandon that tie is to start drifting away from our moorings and to find ourselves all at sea.