Why Liars and Heretics?

Liars and Heretics

The name come from the two quotes below

“Anyone who tries to describe the ineffable Light in language is truly a liar; not because he hates the truth, but because of the inadequacy of his description.” - Gregory of Nyssa

and

“The world is kept alive only by heretics: the heretic Christ, the heretic Copernicus, the heretic Tolstoy. Our symbol of faith is heresy.” - Yevgeny Zamyatin

These are both ideas which I have been holding for a while and has been at the heart of some of the recent writing that I have been doing, writing that I would like to share with you here.

The pieces I will be posting here will largely be excerpts from the books I have written and am writing, and will be kind of a serialization.

I hope that you enjoy these thoughts, musings and oversharing, and that they are helpful or interesting in some way.

Comments

Girls Just Wanna Have Fun | Women in Leadership – Part 2

Despite all the women who were actively and positively involved in biblical and church history, i t always comes back to Eve, and the fact that she was responsible for the fall of humanity. Even if you read the story of Adam and Eve as fiction, by analogy, the story still shows that it was Eve’s fault that original sin happened, that she was a weak woman who gave in to sin, and persuaded Adam to sin with her. Adam is complicit though, this is clear if you read the story, but many Christians see Eve's actions as being responsible for the fall of mankind, and the consequences of her sin, run through the whole Bible. Many Christians see this culminated in Paul's instructions in 1 Timothy 2. I desire therefore that the men in every place pray, lifting up holy hands without anger and doubting. In the same way, that women also adorn themselves in decent clothing, with modesty and propriety, not just with braided hair, gold, pearls, or expensive clothing, but with good wo...

This is My Truth, Tell Me Yours | Faith and Belief - Part 1

There are many aspects of our faith that we might question, and which we need to come to terms with, and I’ve only covered a handful of them here. Working through the questions that we have can take time, and I have come to see that the work of figuring out our faith, is a long-term project. When we start seeking answers to our questions, we soon realise that things aren’t as one sided as we may have thought. People have all sorts of different views and interpretations, which are all apparently valid and reasonable, but which are also contradict each other. This leads me to believe that there is only one definitive truth we can be sure of, that it’s impossible to have absolute knowledge of exactly who God is. We all have our own personal beliefs which we carry, which resonate and feel true for us, but we can’t know those beliefs are correct for certain, and so we can’t really judge the beliefs of others, which don’t resonate with us or feel true, to be wrong. We are all wrong...

Binding and Loosing | Faith and Belief - Part 2

What do we do with all of this? One of the things I learned on my journey was the idea of binding and loosing. We see this in the gospel of Matthew. In these passages, Jesus tells his disciples that whatever they bind on earth will be bound in Heaven, and whatever they loose on earth will be loosed in Heaven. You won’t be surprised to hear that there are several different interpretations on binding and loosing, but the one I want to focus on is to do with how we interpret scripture, and that what we bind and loose in our biblical interpretations will be honoured by God. This is the understanding of binding and loosing that seems most logical to me, but it is also the understanding which I have struggled with the most. Binding and loosing is a rabbinic term which means to forbid and permit, and was used when there were disputes concerning Jewish Law. For example, in the first century there were two rabbinic schools, the school of Shammai which was known to bind, and...

Liars and Heretics

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