Weird dream


A reflection about online heresies


I had a very strange dream last night--or rather, while caught in a kind of half-asleep twilight of the mind, very early this morning. Too early. I do not say it was a dream from God; most are not. It did draw together a couple of things I have been thinking about and doing lately--web postings and thinking about modern heresies.

In my dream I was trying to publish a number of Christian websites. Some ran through the system and posted with no difficulty, while others would not go online whatever I tried. The system was rebelling against me and I could not figure out why, until I took a look at the contents of the various pages.  The pages that would not post, whatever I did, were all either useless or heretical.

I am no Daniel, but after a several cups of coffee I worked out the dream, and the interpretation. Some of what is placed on the Internet to tell about Christianity is of no use at all in getting people to heaven. It might as well not go up online, for all the good it does. If we understand Christianity as a many-centuries-long program to bring people into right relationships with their great Creator, and their fellow man, some efforts to do that are more fruitful than others. Some are useless, and some are something worse: bad guidance that does not convey the essential things but offers sidetracks and red herrings. One may think one is being a Christian but, instead, be paying attention to all the wrong things.

There are many and various perversions of Christianity online today. Some are strongly legalistic, denying the role of God's grace to remake us from within. In these we earn God's favor by our willpower. Some are antinomian: God loves you so much that your behavior doesn't matter and morals are merely relative matters of taste, experience and  private judgment. Some modern day heretics claim superior enlightenment to that the gospel supplies, in that they overrule, by re-explaining, what Jesus and the apostles said and did, a kind of reinvented Gnosticism. There are still other perversions: There is no shortage at all.

We cannot stop the Internet from being what it is: a worldwide repository of every statement people care to make, true or false. In the real world, as opposed to my dream world, falsehood posts as easily as truth. But falsehood does not have the same effect as truth.  Falsehoods may mislead, for a time, those called to Christ, but by his grace they will keep asking, seeking, knocking (Matt. 7:7) until they get true answers. Those contenting themselves with other things were all along seeking other things.

In the long view of things, it is almost as if the bad messages were not posted at all. In the end, Jesus gets all the people he came for. The gospel liars just make things harder for us, cause us to stumble because of bad information, confuse our straight paths, muddle our message toward the world because the public hears a cacophony of contradictory views, not one clear gospel.

We can do nothing for the person whose inward and basic desire is for a form or show of godliness without exposing himself to God's transforming power (2 Tim 3:5), but we can help the rest. We must make plenty of noise in behalf of the true gospel, trusting that our din will come to the ears that need to hear it.

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