ORTHODOXIES

"Sometimes I feel like a heathen," my friend confided to me.
"Why do you say that?" I asked. I had an idea of what she meant, but I wanted her to explore her thoughts further.
"Well, it's not that I don't believe in God," she said, "but I'm not even sure what that means anymore."
"I think I understand," I replied.
"I just can't believe a lot of the things I'm supposed to believe. I know you're a minister and you think it's important for people to go to church, and all that" she continued, "but I'm not comfortable there anymore."
"You think you're a heathen because you don't go to church?" I asked.
"Well, that's part of it," she said. "I just can't get myself to believe a lot of those things."
All of this from someone who was born into in very committed Christian family, attended Sunday School, youth fellowship, Bible Classes, and attended Church Services almost every Sunday from childhood into middle age.

I did not say so at the time, but I think I know the feeling exactly. In recent years I have found that many of the teachings that I had accepted uncritically over the years no longer have the same hold upon me. Sometimes I wonder if anyone believes all the things that they're supposed to. And if they do, what does that say about them? And what does it mean to be a heathen? When we repeat the creed we all say, "I believe in God…" We are all saying the same words, but are we all saying the same thing? And if we're not, whose statement is correct and how do we determine that?

In Christian circles our reference is always back to the Bible. That seems simple enough until we begin to discuss our understandings of what we read there. Convinced of the correctness of our own interpretation it is easy to determine that anyone who does not agree with us is obviously wrong. So going back to the Bible is not quite as simple as it seems. How then can we determine what true orthodoxy is? Even Creeds and Confessions are open to interpretation and debate. No group seems to have the corner either on truth, or, alas, on arrogance.

In my earlier years I attended evangelistic meetings in our village. A regular part of these meetings was the invitation and altar call. If one were "convicted of one's sin" and wanted to "accept Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord" one was invited to raise one's hand, and later during the singing of a hymn (usually "Just As I Am, Without One Plea") one was invited to go to the altar. Even though I carried a deep sense of sin with me throughout my youth I never either raised my hand or went forward. Indeed, I felt a sense of resentment at being told that everything I was doing was wrong. Everyone's belief was wrong except the way the evangelist offered. I resented what seemed to me to be their arrogance.

At the same time I felt a sense of superiority toward my relatives and friends who were Hindu. As a Christian I considered myself to be more enlightened than they. I felt I was more progressive and we often went to their "prayer meetings" to scoff. The irony was that I knew nothing about the spiritual traditions of my ancestors. Indeed, I had no interest in learning anything about it. I was already beyond that, I thought. And why not? I had learned well from my Christian teachers. My Hindu friends and relatives were still "heathen."

There is a coercive arrogance within most orthodoxies. Taken to extremes this arrogance seeks to dominate others and force others to accept our way. The Taliban, which exerted that kind of force in Afghanistan, is a case in point. The Crusades in the middle ages and the Inquisition easily fit into the model, as well. Indeed, the whole missionary movement, which sought to impose a foreign belief system on native peoples on every continent while condemning the spiritual traditions of these native people, witnesses the same arrogance. It was in this context that the term "heathen" came into greatest use in modern times.

Anyone, therefore, who did not accept the Christian orthodoxy was a heathen. Other orthodoxies have different names for those who are outside the fold. "Those who were not Jews were Gentiles." My friend chose this expression well. Her life experience and personal growth had brought her to a point where she no longer felt she belonged to that orthodoxy. She was uncomfortable with the tenets and practices of the orthodoxy. So even though she had greater spiritual maturity than in her earlier years, it did not matter. "Those who were not Jews were Gentiles." Those who were not able to totally accept the orthodoxy of the Christian tradition were "heathen." Over and over in recent years I encounter people who struggle with the same tension. They were raised in the Christian tradition but they no longer feel comfortable there. Their ideas and understandings are not always welcome.

Today there are those who are reclaiming the name "pagan." That, of course, was a term that has often been used interchangeably with the word "heathen." The early missionaries went into the pagan cultures to convert the natives. Pagans, heathen, savages, were all terms which encompassed those outside the orthodoxy of Christianity. Today's pagans refer to their beliefs and practices as "earth based" religion. Although I am not familiar with that tradition at any depth, it seems to me that orthodoxy can easily set in there, as well.

So how important is it to accept and conform to an orthodoxy? How does one respond to the vast array of conflicting and competing orthodoxies? While comfortably ensconced in one orthodoxy it is easy to classify the "heathen", the "infidel", the "gentile". Yet anyone who is sincerely searching and sees value in any orthodoxy other than his or her own is classified as being outside the system.

In every religious tradition the seeker breaks out of the bounds of the orthodoxy in which he was raised. Jesus is the best known example of this. He was constantly in difficulty with the orthodox of Judaism, the Pharisees. He was accused of breaking the law and of blasphemy. His vision and his experience of the spiritual life could not be contained in the orthodoxy of organized Judaism. Similarly Mohammed and Siddharta Gautama (the Buddha) could not be contained within the orthodoxies they inherited. In more recent times men like Martin Luther, John Calvin, and John Wesley outgrew the orthodoxy of their time, Interestingly, all of these have become identified with new orthodoxies, completely contrary to their original intentions.

In every age, in every place, there are men and women who have been compelled by their own inner guidance to go beyond the bounds of the orthodoxy into which they were raised. The blasphemer, the infidel, the heathen may have a vision which cannot be contained in the orthodox. In a sense, most of us grow out of the orthodoxy of our upbringing. We know the words, but the Creeds and Confessions no longer articulate the content of our spiritual experience. Thus when my friend confided, "Sometimes I feel like a heathen," she was expressing the experience of having outgrown the orthodoxy in which she was raised. In a very real sense that makes heathens of a lot of us.