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Table Talk                                                    

Orthodoxy is Exciting, Heterodoxy is Boring
by John Fahning

Somewhere along the line, I can't remember exactly where or when, I decided that heterodoxy was boring and orthodoxy was exciting. The excitement came with an idea, a very old idea found in a proclamation which goes like this: "Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God is one."  That is to say, you can have no other gods.

That is exciting because it concentrates one's mind, as well as one's life, setting a person on a course of sorting things out. People nowadays call it "prioritizing." If God is God, and God is One, then there cannot be two or more gods competing for your attention ... or your faith and trust. Well, I suppose there can be, but only one is going to win in the end. The question is, which one? The plural "ones" is not an option for orthodoxy.

Jesus said orthodoxy is like the man who discovered a treasure hidden in a field. As soon as he found it, the man hid the treasure, sold everything he owned, and bought the field! One treasure in one field? Yes. If that isn't exciting, I don't know what is.

You may say the man was not very bright because he did not hedge his bets, did not keep his options open for finding a better treasure in some other field. You may say he should have played it safe and bought a few shares in the field in case the treasure didn't turn out to be worth as much as he thought. Then he woThuld have had something left with which to buy shares in a second field, or a third, or many fields. You would say that if you are heterodox.

This man of whom Jesus spoke was orthodox. He sold everything he had and bought the one field for the one treasure. It is possible that he later sold the field, but there is no record of his ever doing it. If he did, he traded orthodoxy for heterodoxy and was forgotten, because heterodoxy has forgotten what is important and is, sooner or later, itself forgotten.

The man of whom Jesus spoke was orthodox because he saw in that single treasure in that single field something so precious, he was willing to trade everything he owned for it. The treasure is Jesus himself, as in the hymn, "Jesus priceless treasure, source of purest pleasure, dearest friend to me."

This single treasure gets the orthodox woman up in the morning when nothing else will, and gets her up for the sheer adventure, excitement and pleasure of it. She gets up to see if the treasure is still there, and it is! One day she will wake up and see him face to face, along with other orthodox friends and neighbors she has heard of but never met before, beginning with Abraham, her father in faith, and Sarah, her mother. I won't list them all because you get the idea. It is, by the way, an orthodox idea, not a heterodox one.

I could go on and point out why the Apostle Paul is so exciting, and why his sharp, orthodox "edge" slices through all the heterodox baloney whenever he writes. Or, why Luther, as orthodox as they come, is so exciting and why his light shines so brightly, piercing heterodox boredom even today. And I will go on.

Luther, following Paul, believed salvation is by faith alone in Christ alone, not faith and works in Christ alone. Faith produces works but you can't see the works because your eye is on the treasure which is Christ.

Don't worry about the works, unless you are heterdox, because, when you get up in the morning, something will happen. You can count on it. Your faith is producing works, though you will never see them because you have only been looking at the treasure of Christ, how he loves you and forgives all of your sins and then, looking toward your neighbor, you also see him there. When you wake up for the last time, you will wake up in heaven, what another hymn calls "the great gettin' up mornin" to end them all.

A heterodox pope declared Luther a heretic and excommunicated him. May I ask you a question? Who do you think lived a more exciting life, Martin Luther or the Pope? Pope Leo X wrote "Exsurge Domine" or "Cast out O Lord, that wild pig from your vineyard." He thought Luther was the wild pig, come to destroy God's vineyard.

Luther thought the Pope had sold the vineyard, so Luther wrote a Catechism which said of that single treasure in that single field, "He has redeemed me, a lost and condemned human being. He has purchased and freed me from all sins, from death, and from the power of the devil, not with gold or silver but with his holy, precious blood and with his innocent suffering and death." You decide who is telling the truth, who is orthodox and who is heterodox, and which of the two is exiting and which is boring. (Here's a hint, the bishops all sided with the Pope.)

Because we have come to "bishops" I must now issue a red alert. It is a fact that boredom causes drowsiness, then sleepiness, and unrelieved boredom causes insanity and eventual death. You can be, literally, bored to death.

The reason the new ELCA is so utterly, mind-numbingly boring, as are its newly minted "real" bishops and most of its pastors, is that they have sold the one field with its single treasure and become heterodox. And, in order to be heterodox, they must believe at least two contradictory things at the same time.

They can believe more than two, and no doubt will over time since that is the nature of heterodoxy, but for now, and, in order to implement heterodoxy, members of the ELCA must believe and practice two.

If you are a member of the ELCA you may ask, "where does it say I must believe and practice two contradictory things at the same time? Where does it say I must believe in Jesus Christ and a certain kind of ordination? Prove it."

Read this:

A. Agreements
    Agreement in the Doctrine of the Faith

4. The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and the Episcopal Church recognize in each other the ESSENTIALS of the one catholic and apostolic FAITH as it is witnessed in the unaltered Augsburg Confession, the Small Catechism, and the Book of Common Prayer of 1979 INCLUDING "ORDINATION RITES" etc., [baloney, boredom, snooozzzz and more boredom] (Called to Common Mission, Adopted, August 19,1999).

Now, if you are still a member of the ELCA and are even partially awake, or partially sane, I ask you to explain to me, with a straight face and eyes at least partially open, that believing in a bishop, not just any bishop, but one ordained in a particular way, is not an essential of your faith. You can't explain it. You are also without excuse because you sold the field in 1999 and are locked out. The one treasure is no longer yours. You have more than one essential now, more than one treasure, and that's called heterodoxy.

So, how do you like trying to believe and practice contradictory things simultaneously? You say it makes you sleepy? Or crazy? No? Perhaps you think it won't affect you? Do you also think falling asleep while driving a car won't affect you? Or, is it now the case that your bishop and pastor do the driving and thinking while you sleep? Has it occurred to you that they might have gone to sleep, or gone crazy before you did (they are your leaders), as a way of coping with the boredom of heterodoxy? Wake up and listen to what you are saying, or at least try to hear the sound of your snoring and the craziness of what you now say you believe. One more time. Orthodoxy is exciting, heterodoxy is boring and boredom can kill you. Forever.

John Fahning is listed on the Augsburg Lutheran Churches List of Clergy and serves as an interim pastor in Dresser, Wisconsin.

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