Be a Heretic Monday Starter Kit

A Handy Definition

Be A Heretic Monday: An unofficial weekly holiday that takes place on the Monday of every week, wherein Christians are allowed and encouraged to ask extremely difficult questions about their faith, even those that relate to the very pillars of their beliefs. This might take the form of a letter to a spiritual leader, an informal discussion with a friend, a Heresy Dinner with a group, or simple introspection.

I celebrate this almost every week, and have for two years. It’s challenged me, helped me grow, and given me an excuse to have conversations with others that go beyond surface-level “Nice weather we’re having.”

Not this kind of heresy. No fire involved. (Sorry, pyromaniacs.)

Why Practice Be a Heretic Monday?

One: Seeking truth is fun, and beautiful, and an act of worship.

Two: The common stereotype of a Christian is someone who blindly and not-very-intelligently accepts teachings she doesn’t really understand or know much about. While faith is central to Christianity, faith is not the same thing as sitting back and letting others do the work of interpretation and critical thinking. Asking hard questions will help us be more open to hard questions from others who don’t share our beliefs. (Note that I didn’t say it would give us the answers to solve all theological problems and refute all arguments.)

Three: We need to care more about what we believe. If we aren’t bothered by injustice or contradictions or how we should apply ethics to our lives or what others’ perception of God is because of the way they interpret the Bible, we are losing something really, really important. (Rachel Held Evans talks about this problem here.)

Figuring Out the Sea

Like most webcomics, xkcd--a comic with an affinity for lowercase letters and nerdy references--appeals to a particular audience, has a certain tone, and doesn’t vary too much in format.

Except last April, when xkcd's creator, Randall Munroe, started posting a series called “Time.” Read about it here for more details. It’s pretty cool.

The basic plot of this 3,000+ panel comic involves two people who are concerned about why the sea seems to be rising, so they go on a journey to find out why. I know this because one summer evening without much else going on, I watched the whole thing. And this frame right here was by far my favorite.

The reason I love this? The speaker isn’t going to give up on figuring out the sea. That’s a good, important goal. But he would be satisfied with just finding more beautiful places even if he doesn’t find answers.

It is extremely unfortunate that I have Miley Cyrus’s song, “The Climb” coming to mind right now. But that is what is happening.

Why? Well, I remember a discussion of her lyrics that went something like this:

Person 1: Wait, why doesn’t it matter what’s waiting on the other side? Isn’t that kind of the point of the climb?

Person 2: Yeah, what if you went over the mountain and you found a desert or something?

Person 3: Or what if you were Frodo and you climbed up Mount Doom only to find a happy meadow with fluffy bunnies and puppies frolicking around? That would be bad too. Because then you wouldn’t be able to destroy the ring. Unless one of the bunnies took it the rest of the way.

(Fine, yes, I was Person 3. Someone really should make a LOTR montage with “The Climb” in the background. Picture that with me for a moment, please.)

Questions and Answers

Sometimes, when we want easy answers, we get hard answers.

Probably the best Biblical example of this is Job. If you slog through his monologues, he basically thinks he can call God into a courtroom and get everything straightened out. With a little cross-examination of the distant deity, his friends will suddenly understand exactly what was going on.

When God shows up, the reader expects him to talk about the bet with Satan, the drama that went on up in the courts of heaven. That would still vindicate Job, although in a different way than Job himself was looking for. It would still be an easy answer.

Instead, God launches into a speech about his own power, and his relationship to creation. It’s about what he values and what he can do and what would happen if he wasn’t constantly sustaining it all. Which is interesting and all, but makes you wonder things like, “What does this have to do with anything?” “If God is totally in control of nature, does that mean he is responsible for the deaths in natural disasters?” and “How is this just?” God’s speech to Job seems to raise more questions than it answers.

That’s fine with me, most days. I love hard answers. There is a kind of beauty in the gray areas of paradox, and a certain smugness that goes along with believing two seemingly opposing things. It’s the same kind of smug feeling I get when I tell people that I love the windy, rainy weather. You are just too unsophisticated to understand the true beauty of storms, I think to myself. Oh, sure, sunny cloudless days are nice. But there’s a power in difficult weather that you have to be really deep to appreciate.

But guess what? Sometimes, when we want hard answers, we get easy answers. And that teaches us humility too.

Just a Little Heresy

Every Monday, I celebrate a cherished, longstanding tradition that I just made up last year: Be a Heretic Monday. In one of my classes on that day, I try to ask the professor a heretical question that relates to what we’re talking about.

It doesn’t exactly have to be blatantly heretical as you might think of it, like “Why do you keep insisting that Jesus died for our sins when he clearly wasn’t a historical figure at all?” It really just has to be something that a Bible major would be too timid to ask. (As a general rule, Bible majors usually don’t say controversial things, maybe because they’re afraid people will question their orthodoxy and thus their legitimacy as future pastors.)

This tradition started because I usually have Bible and philosophy classes on Mondays, and I genuinely want to know the answers to questions like, “How do we explain the violent language in some of the psalms?” and “If God doesn’t change, why does he seem to give different standards of moral ethics in the Old Testament compared to today, particularly in regard to women and slaves?”

And there’s nothing wrong with this. I believe that when it comes to matters of faith, you should know where you are and how you got there. An intelligent, well-thought-out faith isn’t the opposite of a child-like faith. Kids ask questions. They’re curious. They want to know why. Most of the time, it’s the grown-ups who stop caring, who know the definitions and functions and right answers, without the whys. They know that things work but don’t know how to explain them.

So questions are great. However, like almost anything else, the need to question can be taken in the wrong direction.

In Defense of Ridiculous Hypotheticals

Have you ever met those people? You ask them a fascinating question, like “What do you think would happen if a terrorist attacked Cinderella’s Castle in Disney World?”

And they give you kind of a strange look and say, “But that won’t happen. They have security.”

“Well, what if the South had…?”

“They didn’t.”

“But what would you do if…?”

“I wouldn’t.”

This person’s motto is, “If it didn’t happen, isn’t happening, and won’t ever happen, why think about it?”

And they almost have a point. Almost. Sometimes, I think we do need to bring a conversation away from frivolous hypotheticals and talk about things that have a direct impact on our lives. But I still think discussions of situations that can’t happen are worth our time. Here are three that I’ve been a part of in the past few weeks, along with thoughts on why they were meaningful.

My Two Favorite Questions

Most people don’t have a favorite word. I’m a writer, which means that I’m not “most people” in pretty much any category.

For a while, I thought my favorite word was “pretentious.” The word just sounds like what it means. (Try to say “pretentious” without sounding pretentious. Can’t do it, can you?)

And before I knew that word, “snickerdoodle” was high up on the list. Besides sounding funny, you can practically smell the cinnamony goodness as soon as you say it. It’s like an onomatopoeia, but for a smell.

Then it came to me one day, the obvious answer to the question, “What’s your favorite word?” in case anyone would ask (which they haven’t yet…maybe I need stranger friends). My favorite word is my favorite question: “Why?”