In one sense, heretical simply means departing from orthodoxy. Little o orthodoxy is generally defined as the views held by the early church, specifically those elaborated in a variety of councils. Yet in that sense, a great number of beliefs we hold today are heretical. Under this view, all evolutionists are heretics. Depending on the year you use to define orthodoxy, all Protestants are heretics.

Clearly, this isn’t the definition that Protestants today use. I think Protestants tend to use the term “heresy” to indicate that a belief is in contradiction of the gospel. The problem is that Protestants don’t have a very good definition of the gospel either.

The good news for us is that Paul gives a decent definition of the gospel in two places:

According to 1 Corinthians 15: 3-5, the gospel is that “that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep.”

According to Romans 1:2-6, the gospel was promised by God through the prophets and is “concerning his Son, who was descended from David according to the flesh and was declared to be the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord, through whom we have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of his name among all the nations, including you who are called to belong to Jesus Christ.”

Putting these two things together, we can see that the gospel is something along the lines of:

• Jesus is the Messiah
• Jesus is descended from the line of David
• Jesus died for our sins
• Jesus fulfilled the Scriptures in the process of dying for our sins
• Jesus was buried
• Jesus was resurrected
• Many witnesses, including the apostles, saw Jesus after his resurrection
• Jesus is the Son of God
• We receive grace through Jesus
• Apostleship is received through Jesus
• We are called to bring about the obedience of faith
• This is for all the nations, not just the Jews

This is a pretty exhaustive list of what we can glean from those two chapters (but maybe I missed a point or two).

Note that Paul doesn’t say that the gospel is:

• Belief in salvation through faith alone
• Belief in salvation through baptism
• Particular beliefs about models of atonement
• Particular beliefs about hell
• Particular beliefs about interpretations of Genesis
• Particular beliefs about Biblical inerrancy
• Particular beliefs about the eternality of souls
• Particular philosophical beliefs about the nature of reality

The fate for heretics is also supposed to be pretty terrible; in Inferno, Dante places them in the 6th ring of hell. Heresy is a very serious accusation.

This list could go on forever. Yet when I see accusations of heresy leveled by Protestants today, they are always over issues from the second list, almost never from the first. Granted, Paul devoted a lot of time and thought to things not explicitly in the first list. Circumcision is not in the first list, eating with Gentiles is not in the first list. Paul makes it clear, however, that certain behaviors are inconsistent with the gospel (like demanding that Gentiles become Jews when the gospel is intended for all nations). Again, many of the issues that Protestants label heresy don’t even fall into this category.

Basically, heresy becomes a label for all views that a particular Protestant disagrees with, rather than for a view that contradicts the gospel. This deeply troubles me because heresy is an extraordinarily loaded term, implying that the person who holds that belief is not Christian or not “really” Christian. So it becomes easy to simply label opponents as “heretical,” to not actually examine their disagreements, and to divide the church over issues irrelevant to the gospel. Just because a view doesn’t fit with your interpretation of the Bible doesn’t meant that it’s heretical. Just because you find a view inconsistent with your view of God doesn’t mean it’s heretical.

I find, for example, Calvinism to be a morally offensive doctrine; its notion of God is one I find deeply disturbing and in conflict with the God I see in the scriptures. However, I do not think that Calvinists are heretics. Instead, I would simply say that Calvinists are in error. I would reserve the term heretic for those who deny the doctrines in the first list, like the historicity of the resurrection or the doctrine of grace through the death of Jesus Christ.

When we cheapen the term heresy by using it for doctrines that are not heretical, we make it even more difficult for the laity to discern what the gospel really is. We make Christianity revolve around secondary doctrines instead of around the gospel. Obviously, in the vast sea of beliefs held by Christians, some of them are going to be wrong. But a false belief is not the same as a heresy.

If we disagree with someone on a non-essential doctrines (i.e. not pertaining to the gospel alone), we should declare them to be “in error” rather than resorting to a polemical accusation of heresy. If we do not, we risk being schismatics – dividing the church which was intended to be one – a position nearly as bad (if not worse than) heresy itself.

Now there are some potential explanations for why women should submit, and traditional thinking attempts to explain away Paul’s command as being based on women’s physical weakness or lack of education or men’s inherent superiority.

I’d like to propose, rather, that women are so obviously superior that Paul had to single them out in commanding them to submission. After all, one of the common themes in Christianity is that the first shall be last, and the last shall be first. The strong must give up their strength to help the weak.

Why do I think women are superior? Well, it should be obvious to anyone who has read The Atlantic article “The End of Men.” Women make up 60% of college students, we live longer, we’re better at organizing things, and we’re better at managing people. Not to mention we manage to give birth to all men while holding down careers and a household. And we’re more spiritually-minded than men.

Now I’ll give you this: women aren’t as physically strong as men. At least, most women can’t lift as much or run as fast as most men. However, those skills are less valuable in a postindustrial economy. Even in industrial economies, most social scientists realize that the key to improving developing countries is empowering women.

So why, then, should women willingly submit to the sex which is so obviously inferior?

I ask women everywhere a related question: do you really want to marry someone who is your inferior?

You see, when women take on every leadership role, there is no room for men to lead. Yet women want to date and marry strong, talented, and inspiring men. If we take over all the colleges, jobs, and church roles, which is inevitable in an egalitarian society, then there would be no training for the boys we love to grow into powerful men. Instead we’ll end up with a bunch of unmarriable men living in extended adolescence.

The way I see it is this:

Either I can give up the leadership roles I’d naturally assume to men so that there are more mature, spiritually-minded, and talented male leaders, OR

I can take on said leadership roles and develop my own talents, at the expense of producing the quality men that women (including myself) want to marry.

The choice is clear. If women willingly submit and allow men to take on more leadership roles, this in turn makes men better leaders, boyfriends, and husbands. Given how deep Paul’s insights are into the human heart, I have little doubt that this is the real reason behind his recommendation for women to submit. He was just watching out for both sexes.

To understand better this statistic and how to fix the problem, we need more in depth data. A much better survey was done in the Journal of Adolescent Health in 2000. They found that the two greatest predictors of voluntary sexual activity among adolescents were age and spiritual interconnectedness with friends. This makes sense: it’s harder to abstain as you grow older, and the greater support network you have of spiritually-minded friends the easier it will be. (Note that because this was done among adolescents, church attendance would not be as great of a predictor since many teens are forced to attend church by their parents. I suspect that church attendance would be a good predictor for older individuals. If anyone knows of a study that focuses on college-aged students or adults, let me know!)

I think the real problem (as I’ve written about before) is that we tell people to abstain, but we don’t teach them how to do it. This study gives us two good ideas:

1. Develop a good spiritual support network, and
2. Marry younger.

If these are our solutions, it suggests to me that Christians need to reconsider our dialogue on abstinence as well. Though it is undoubtedly an important Christian teaching – and I would never suggest that we temper it – we should emphasize much more that Christians be connected with friends in the church. It’s only once you get there that you can have personal conversations about abstinence and get advice on how to have a pure relationship. It’s only once you have deep relationships with other people who are abstaining that you can really see abstinence as a plausible lifestyle.

No man is an island; though if you could get yourself to a deserted island, you might succeed at abstinence more. For those of who won’t be removing themselves from society as soon as they hit puberty, we need to remember: it doesn’t matter how many pledges you make, or rings you wear, or how much you want to wait. What matters is how deeply connected you are to the body of Christ. We are greatly influenced by those around us, so choose your friends wisely.

Secondly, age is a significant predictor of sexual activity. For Christians, marriage is the only way to get out of abstinence. So if you want to make it easier, one solution is to get married. For years, Christians have seen this as the best way to fix the problem. But with higher divorce rates and many unhappy marriages, I think we should question this strategy as well. We can’t tout marriage as simply the easy way to get out of abstinence; we need to make sure that couples are truly compatible and ready for marriage. So I suspect that the other strategy – besides encouraging young Christians to develop spiritual friendships – will have to involve helping Christians become emotionally and spiritually ready for marriage. We need to be rid of this prolonged adolescence and encourage responsibility at younger ages. Just because your body is ready for marriage doesn’t mean that your mind is.

It’s funny to me, because I often hear abstinence challenged on the grounds of how important it is to develop sexual experience before marriage. While much of the America seems intent on developing their sexual prowess before marriage, how many people are thinking of how to prepare themselves mentally? I think this is an area where Christians could really stand out and have an important impact.

Of course, you could also go the old-fashioned route – live at home and sew your significant other into a bundling bag. That could work, too, right?

A marshmallow was set in front of a young child, who was then told that they could choose to eat the marshmallow then or wait a period of time (studies vary between 3 and 15 minutes) and get an additional marshmallow to eat. As Jonah Lehrer explains in an article at the New Yorker:

Mischel’s conclusion, based on hundreds of hours of observation, was that the crucial skill was the “strategic allocation of attention.” Instead of getting obsessed with the marshmallow—the “hot stimulus”—the patient children distracted themselves by covering their eyes, pretending to play hide-and-seek underneath the desk, or singing songs from “Sesame Street.” Their desire wasn’t defeated—it was merely forgotten. “If you’re thinking about the marshmallow and how delicious it is, then you’re going to eat it,” Mischel says. “The key is to avoid thinking about it in the first place.”

In other words, the key to not giving into temptation is to avoid even thinking about it. If you want to avoid overeating, stop thinking about food. If you want to avoid wrath, don’t think about what makes you angry. If you want to avoid adultery, stop lusting after women.

The point is that human beings are not very good with self-control. We can tempt ourselves – we can touch, smell, and taste the marshmallow – but if we do, we’re probably going to fail and simply gobble it up. The wise ones are the ones who deliberately rid their minds of the temptation. It took hours of research to prove one simple truth from the Bible: if you want to avoid sin, you must flee temptation.

Even atheists can’t argue with it now.

Before condemning Lady Gaga, it’s important to remember that there can be great literary import to exploring the perspective of Judas. Judas’ situation prompts wonderful philosophical questions. If Judas had free will, could he have chosen to not sacrifice Jesus? If he had free will, how would the prophecies about Jesus been fulfilled? The ancient Gospel of Judas (dating to the 3rd century, so unlikely written by Judas himself) portrays Judas as having made an agreement with Jesus to fulfill the prophecies, earning himself a place as a star in the sky. It would be interesting to read a piece exploring some of these issues.

Of course, one can’t expect something of that caliber from pop music. I’m going to mostly ignore Lady Gaga’s blatant mixed metaphors (“I’ll wash his feet with my hair… forgive him even after three times, he betrays me… I’ll bring him down… A king with no crown – somehow you manage to reference Jesus and Peter and Judas all at the same time?”) and focus on my biggest issue.

The line that most troubles me is this: “in the most Biblical sense, I am beyond repentance. Fame hooker, prostitute wench, vomits her mind.” Jesus called all to repentance, doctoring in particular those who were sick with sin to make it clear that even the prostitute and the tax collector are included in God’s kingdom. The prostitute is closer to God than the Pharisee. Mary Magdalene’s inclusion as a disciple disproves Lady Gaga’s verse.

Yet I can’t blame Gaga for having this impression. The Church has historically failed terribly in modeling ourselves after Christ in this manner. We do not seek out the prostitute to heal her, but instead we condemn non-Christians who are predictably lost in sin. All the while, we fail to deal with the unrepentant Christians with whom we ought not even associate  (1 Cor 5). We judge those outside the church without dealing with those inside it – the exact opposite of what Jesus and Paul told us to do.

The lesson I take from Lady Gaga’s latest release is not that Christians should jump to condemn her or modern culture; God will judge those outside the church. It’s that we should take more seriously the call to love the lost, that we should redouble our efforts to share the gospel in prisons and on street corners. Our greatest worry should be that Christians will never be accused of what Christ was accused of – hanging out with the tax collectors and prostitutes and sinners.

On a college campus, that is always bound to be applied the wrong way. I’m not saying that we should blend in with a culture thoroughly corrupted by pride, sex, and selfishness; we should still strive to be perfect as our Father is perfect and should strive to avoid sin as Christ was sinless. We are called to be the light of the world. But we need not fear about associating with sinners so long as we are clearly fleeing from sin ourselves. The danger is that very few people I know can constantly be around sin without soon falling into it themselves. It takes a very, very deep love of God to be capable of fully loving the lost without losing oneself again. But until Christians learn to do that, we will always be subject to the criticism of outsiders like Lady Gaga.

The sad thing is that lovers of pop music have little recourse but to listen to the likes of people like Lady Gaga. That’s why in the end, I have to side with Jon Acuff. We really need a Christian version of Lady Gaga. Oh Bruno Mars, you could almost be there if you haven’t totally invalidated the sanctity of marriage in “Marry You.” Sigh. How long, O Lord? Will you forget us forever? How long will you hide clean pop from us? How long must we censor Cee-Lo and feel guilt for loving Enrique? At least we’ve got Ke$ha on our side…

Nothing could be farther than the truth. Bell is not defending some feel-good notion that everyone will get to heaven. He even thinks that many will suffer in hell. Yet the purpose of hell is not eternal punishment for sin, but rather allowing humans to see the natural consequences of their sin and eventually come to repentance. He argues that God wants all men to be saved, and that God will make this happen with time.

The cover of Rob Bell's new book Love Wins.

Bell does not give sin a free pass, but issues a call for Christians to live as Christ taught, with the understanding that this is the way for Christians to usher in God’s kingdom on earth. This is not a pluralistic vision in which all religions are the same, seeking the same goals, but rather a radical understanding of how sin has no place in God’s kingdom. In Chapter 2, Bell writes:

“God has shown you how to live. Live that way. The more you become a person of peace and justice and worship and generosity, the more actively you participate now in ordering and working to bring about God’s kind of world, the more ready you will be to assume an even greater role in the age to come.”

But our status in this age to come is not determined by this life alone; death is not the point at which our ultimate fate is set. Instead, in an understanding reminiscent of C.S. Lewis’ The Great Divorce, people can choose to remain in hell. We see people choose hell on this earth – when they murder, rape, and plunder, when they are consumed by greed and pride and lust. It should be no surprise then, that some will choose hell in the age to come. But after an examination of Gehenna and the meaning of the word aion – which Bell translates as age instead of eternity – Bell concludes that hell is a place of refinement that prepares people to ultimately choose and be capable of enjoying heaven.

Love Wins is a piece of popular theology; Bell does not thoroughly address his opponent’s objections. He does not review the extensive debate over the word aion, nor does he undermine opposite interpretations of various texts, which is important considering his many unorthodox readings of Scripture. For this reason, I’m not sure that I can fully buy Bell’s argument; I am not an expert in Greek to know whether Bell’s arguments are sound, nor do I know the position of commentators on a great number of verses about hell. But I can say that Bell is asking all the right questions:

“Of all the billions of people who have ever lived, will only a select number ‘make it to a better place’ and every single other person suffer in torment and punishment forever? Is this acceptable to God? Has God created millions of people over tens of thousands of years who are going to spend eternity in anguish? Can God do this, or even allow this, and still claim to be a loving God?…Why them? Why you? Why me? Why not him or her or them? How does a person end up being one of the few? Chance? Luck? Random selection? Being born in the right place, family, or country? Having a youth pastor who ‘relates better to the kids?’ What kind of faith is that? What kind of God is that?” (Chapter 1)

As he answers these questions, he doesn’t fall into a liberal wish-washy position in which sin doesn’t matter, nor does he offer what Bonhoeffer would call “cheap grace.” His vision of heaven and hell still demand that people repent and learn to live by the fruits of the spirit. I have heard Bell called “satanic” and “heretical,” but I must disagree. His universalism does not undermine the need to spread the gospel nor does it reduce the importance of Jesus in salvation. His universalism is not a “get out of jail free card.” Instead, his universalism is a challenge of radical repentance for American Christians who have gotten used to the idea that saying the sinner’s prayer is sufficient to save.

I know a great number of non-Christians who like the teachings of Jesus, who work to right injustice in this world, who would love to be part of a church community, but who just can’t buy the notion that a loving God would condemn billions to hell. I know a great number of Christians who are ashamed to spread the gospel, not because they are ashamed of Jesus but because they cannot go to their loved ones and say “you will be condemned to hell for all eternity, unless you say this prayer.” If sharing Bell’s beliefs can bring non-Christians into churches, and make Christians more willing to share a gospel of a loving God, then I welcome having more Christian universalists of Rob Bell’s variety.

What is the empirical evidence for evil?

What scientific proof would demonstrate humanism?

What test may be run to prove injustice?

Or even, how can you scientifically prove the authority or validity of science? (qua Hume’s criticism of induction)

Fry concluded with a quaint sentiment: “It is not the job of an atheist to be smug, to hold the truth, to bull, tyrannize, dominate arguments, to say that we have the truth of the universe.” And yet he lambasted religion throughout his speech, discussing “some God whom they cannot prove exists, and whom they cannot with any reason, be convinced to believe in.” Fry must then think that Galileo, Newton, Bacon, Francis Collins, C.S. Lewis, the list goes on and on, must all be quite unreasonable men. Yet his butchering of intellectual history didn’t stop there.

Fry announced that “it is one of the most piteous facts in the world that the country founded in the greatest spirit of the Enlightenment and the age of Reason, of education, of principled free thought, should be perhaps, in all the Western world, the country now most threatened by spirits who are working actively and urgently and self-consciously against the sights of this country, who are active to extinguish the light that lit America, that lit Harvard, and that lit the world for 150 years.”

This is historical reaching on Fry’s part at best. The founders of the American Revolution – Washington, Adams, Franklin, Jefferson – were all deists, if not Christian. Locke, Rousseau, Hobbes were all Christian men. The ideas which sparked the American Revolution were all grounded in ideas about God. The founders believed not simply in human rights, but that men “are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.” Harvard was not founded by humanists for the purpose of promoting Enlightenment principles, but by Puritans to devote mens’ minds to the service of God. Our motto is Veritas Christo et Ecclesiae. The first rule of Harvard’s first student handbook was about admission, and the second two rules were as follows:

“2. Let every Student be plainly instructed, and earnestly pressed to consider well, the maine end of his life and studies is, to know God and Jesus Christ which is eternal life (John 17:3) and therefore to lay Christ in the bottome, as the only foundation of all sound knowledge and Learning. And seeing the Lord only giveth wisedome, Let every one seriously set himself by prayer in secret to seeke it of him (Prov. 2:3).

3. Every one shall so exercise himselfe in reading the Scriptures twice a day, that he shall be ready to give such an account of his proficiency therein, both in Theoreticall observations of Language and Logick, and in practical and spiritual truths, as his Tutor shall require, according to his ability; seeing the entrance of the word giveth light, it giveth understanding to the simple (Psalm 119:130).”

Stephen Fry is flat out wrong. I cannot demonstrate this with the empirical evidence that he demands, but I can rely on the testimony of historical sources. I must reject the principle “I will not be told” that he so lauded, for it is better to trust the annals of history than to simply invent facts to suit my needs.

The saddest part is that his ideals of Truth, of Injustice, of religious Freedom and Tolerance – they all come from thinkers who grounded these ideals in God. It’s like building up a skyscraper and then removing the foundation. Fry’s secular humanism is little more than the incoherent rubble that he tries to pass off as the tallest building in history.

I would have asked him about these contradictions and accuracies, were I given the opportunity. Alas, I was the fifth person in line, and the questioners in front of me decided instead that knowing Fry’s favorite type of cheese was more important than actually using their free thought to disagree with him. I would be interested in hearing how a secular humanist would respond to such criticisms, but in my experience, the secularist spends more time attacking perceived flaws in religion than actually questioning his own beliefs. And I say that humbly based upon my own experience as an atheist during the first 18 years of my life. If Fry is the best that secular humanism has to offer, it looks like I’ll be sticking with Christianity.

I know what you’re thinking – isn’t abstinence the Christian teaching? Hasn’t this method already failed us? After all, numerous studies have shown that abstinence-only sex education does not actually lead to abstinent behavior. In fact, this abstinence-only education that the Religious Right has insisted upon seems to lead to more teen pregnancy! The Christian philosophy has already been proven wrong!

Abstinence may be Christ’s teaching, but abstinence-only certainly is not. There’s a lot more there than simply saying no to sex. Saying that abstinence is Christ’s teaching on sex is like saying that multiplication is a complete education in math. Yes, multiplication is an important and essential part of math, but to teach multiplication-only is to lose all of the beauty and elegance of calculus and curves, of division and derivatives. To teach abstinence-only is to lose all of the power and grace of chastity and commitment, of purity and patience.

So what would a Christian sex-education focus on?

“But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell.” – Matthew 5:28-29

“The acts of the flesh are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery…” – Galatians 5:19

“But sexual immorality and all impurity or covetousness must not even be named among you, as is proper among saints.” – Ephesians 5:3

Essentially, avoid lust, immorality (sex with anyone besides your spouse), and impurity. This teaching is far beyond what is taught in abstinence-only education programs or in comprehensive programs. Teaching these things would require actually teaching children to avoid all sorts of sexual temptation.

The other trick is getting kids to take health class seriously when we're equipping them with fake babies.

But why should we even bother? Couldn’t we just go back to the comprehensive sex education model and be done with it? No. We need to thoroughly consider this option, because, as the Guttmacher Institute reports, seven of every ten teenagers has had sex by age 19. Furthermore, nearly one in five female teens at risk of unintended pregnancy did not use contraceptives at last intercourse. But Christians aren’t the only ones who think talking about temptation might be the way to fix sex-education.

Jonah Lehrer (one of my favorite bloggers, if you haven’t been able to tell by how often I link to him) wrote last year about the ineffectiveness of sex education:

It’s really difficult to change the sexual habits of adolescents. That’s because we’ve been trying to change behavior with facts and information. We’ve assumed that the way to get kids to wear condoms is give them statistics about sexually transmitted disease, or that the way to get students to abstain from sex is to lecture them on morality, or the difficulty of caring for a child while in high school. The problem with such facts is that they don’t help teens deal with their moment of sexual decision, which most likely occurs when they’re half naked and deranged with desire. In other words, we’ve assumed that sexual choices are rational choices, influenced by classroom exhortations and dry information. But that’s wrong.

Lehrer discusses a study from that looks at the effects of arousal on decision making:

Although the undergraduates could all recite the benefits of sexual protection, this rational knowledge was irrelevant. The charge of arousal was simply too powerful: they could no longer resist doing the wrong thing, even though they knew it was wrong. As Ariely and Loewenstein drolly concluded: “Efforts at self-control that involve raw willpower are likely to be ineffective in the face of the dramatic cognitive and motivational changes caused by arousal.”

I think Lehrer is spot on, and this matches perfectly with the Christian teaching that we must avoid impurity and lust as well as explicit sexual immorality. The Christian worldview maps well onto the discoveries of these behavioral economists. Lehrer concludes with the following:

The point is that we’ve been arming our kids with the wrong mental tools. Instead of giving them statistics, we need to provide them with the cognitive tools to deal with temptation. Instead of urging them to abstain, we need to show them how to abstain.

All I can say is “Amen!”

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