Non-Doctrinal Heresy

With a title like the one on this post I'm sure millions will scamper to my seldom updated website to peruse my musings! So the title's kind of crappy, but I am being reminded again this week of something I heard a bit in the past and I think it's important.

The circles I tend to run in like to focus significant attention on maintaining doctrinal purity and identifying heresy. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but why is it that we are so stringent about doctrine yet so weak on behavior? You can be a heretic for saying Jesus wasn't human, but if you hate your neighbor we'll let it slide. Believing the Bible's a collection of nice thoughts will get you booted, but we understand that you're too busy to ever lift a finger on behalf of the poor. I think you get the point.

I suppose there are many reasons this is the state of things, but I know that one of the outcomes is a loss of credibility for Christianity (in the words of "The Scandal of the Evangelical Conscience"). We behave no different than anyone else and wonder why the church has so little influence on others and on our culture. We may be focusing all our attention on the lesser form of heresy.