"A man that is an heretic after the first and second admonition reject; Knowin_g that he that is such is subverted, and sinneth, being condemned of himself." Titus 3:10-1 l

I was looking at some bible words today and got to thinking about their meanings. We often throw terms about, like heretic or heresy or apostasy or blasphemy but we don't always define them well. I'd like to put some of these "on the block" today for us to consider.

Let's start with heretic and its close cousin, heresy. A heretic is one who commits heresy. Heresy is when you change an existing belief system in a way that makes people upset or raises issues. For example, Christians worship God, but they way they do it is to change the manner it was done to a new "way." In the eyes of Jews, Christians are heretics. Of course Jereboam and his worship of God via golden calves and strange locations marks him as a heretic, but a bad one. You mean you can be a good heretic or a bad one? Yes! You just have to be careful about these things.

This is different than apostasy. That is when you whole hog abandon a belief to make a new one. Christians still worship the same God the Jews do, but if you refocus the object of your reverence to be, for example, Baal then you've become an apostate. Not as cool of a word as a heretic, but still.

A blasphemer is one who is not reverent or disrespectful towards God. You can do this in a lot of ways - not approaching him properly in worship is one. Treating him unsanctified is another. Jesus was called one because he supposedly had no right to call himself God, or to somehow put constraints on God, which was not what he was doing anyway. In one of the Indiana Jones movies, Indy's dad slaps him across the face for swearing and denounces his words as blasphemy - and he is right.

You can see how these long words can lead to more long words. Sanctified means to make holy - God is to be treated as God, in a reverent manner. Reverence, woo boy, is a word I always have trouble with. Some say it means "the fear of God" and I guess that is OK in some ways. I mean, when you flounder around in sin you have a fear of your reward from God, but I think it is more like "profound respect." After all, you can revere your mother - by holding her dear and elevated in your mind. Why shouldn't the same be for God?

To subvert something, which our passage above mentions, means to corrupt the foundation of something. I always thought it had to do with communists, as in "what out for those subversive hippies!" that I heard when I was a kid. I know what admonition means too, that's when you admonish them - tell them to behave themselves and shame them for not.

You might wonder why the bible uses these precise words, and that's because it wants us to have a precise understanding of the messages. Not knowing them, maybe we translate the passage in our minds this way - "A bad guy, after listening to him for a while, you should ignore; Knowing that he's wrong and makes himself look silly." Is it important that we understand exactly the point, lest we become the heretic ourselves.

If you wonder why the vocabulary (yet another five syllable word!) lesson today, let's just say I am going to talk about some harder words perhaps as early as next week. Words like patience, kindness, meekness, gentleness, and their friends. Watch for it.

Randy