Christians once believed that heresy could destroy a person. We now congratulate ourselves for knowing better. Doctrine is treated as an intellectual hobby for men with large libraries and small social skills.
Now the only things that seem to matter are whether someone hurts your feelings, sells VIP tickets to a concert, or poses for a photograph at the gym. False doctrine lacks the vulgarity required to trend.
We have become experts on the lies people believe about themselves and amateurs on the lies they believe about God. We understand how false beliefs about identity shape emotions, desires, and behavior. Once the subject turns to God, however, ideas suddenly become harmless. Apparently, a lie becomes dangerous only when the subject is you.
Yet the soul lives by faith. Faith receives a word, rests upon a promise, and trusts a person. Change the word, the promise, or the person, and faith bends toward another object. A lie about yourself can wound your confidence. A lie about God can corrupt your worship. What you believe about God shapes what you worship. What you worship shapes what you love. What you love orders your life.
Heresy does not merely place the wrong answer on a theology exam. It disorders the soul. It directs trust toward a god who does not exist, a Christ who cannot save, or a gospel with no power to raise the dead.
There are things in this world that can kill you. We naturally fear them. There are lies that can damn you. We tend to feed on them.
The grave is not the worst place you can end up. Hell is.
Somewhere along the way, we stopped burning heretics. Then we stopped believing there was anything worth burning for.
Now, seriously, leave the matches in the drawer. Retiring the stake did nothing to make falsehood safe. It left us with harder work. If beliefs can deform a soul, how do we confront them without destroying the person who holds them? How do we take truth seriously without turning every conversation into a doctrinal trial?
I face some version of that question every day as a chaplain. I care for Christians with whom I disagree, people from other religions, people whose spirituality has been assembled from podcast clips and painful experiences, and people who want nothing to do with religion at all. I do not enter the room with ecclesiastical jurisdiction. I cannot demand agreement, administer church discipline, or treat vulnerability as an opportunity to win an argument. Suffering has never been a permission slip for commandeering another person’s conscience.
It has also never made a person’s beliefs harmless. Someone may believe that illness is God’s punishment for an undiscovered sin. A woman may believe that forgiving her abuser requires returning to the abuse. Someone may refuse necessary treatment because accepting help would demonstrate weak faith. A grieving parent may believe that anger toward God has made God angry with her. These beliefs may be spoken in Christian language, reinforced by a religious community, and held with complete sincerity.
Interfaith care does not require me to declare every religion equally true. It requires me to offer excellent care without requiring another person to become more like me before receiving it. Respect for a person is not agreement with every proposition inhabiting his head. Sometimes respect means taking a belief seriously enough to ask what it is doing to him.
That is the value of spiritual assessment. It is not an orthodoxy exam disguised as bedside conversation. Heresy is not a clinical diagnosis, and “patient remains stubbornly Monothelite” would be an extraordinarily useless chart note. Spiritual assessment listens for how a person makes meaning, locates hope, assigns responsibility, receives love, understands suffering, and relates to whatever he considers sacred. Spiritual care listens long and closely enough to discover which beliefs are carrying the person and which are standing on his throat.
The belief can be examined without placing the person on trial. That examination requires courage because affirmation is easier. Affirmation keeps the room pleasant, protects the chaplain from conflict, and brings the conversation to a tidy close. A person says, “God is punishing me,” and the chaplain reflects that it sounds painful. A woman says forgiveness requires returning to her abuser, and the chaplain admires the importance of her faith. Everyone feels heard. Nobody has been helped.
A chaplain can coast a surprisingly long way on reflective listening and holding space. Yet, spiritual care eventually has to risk a question.
How did you come to understand God that way?
Who taught you that forgiveness requires access to you?
What does this belief ask you to do?
What part of your faith forbids medication?
Does this fit with what you otherwise believe about God’s mercy?
Has “God will provide” become a reason to leave the application unfinished?
May I offer another way this has been understood?
These questions belong to the church’s ancient care of souls. The church has never needed to choose between caring about doctrine and caring about people because doctrine is one of the ways it cares for people. It tells us who God is, what has gone wrong, and where salvation may be found.
The chaplain does not introduce theology into the room. The room is already pregnant with beliefs and stories interpreting the cancer, the relapse, the eviction, the death, the unanswered prayer, and the family member who refuses to call.
This does not require the chaplain to become a theological chameleon. I remain a Protestant while caring for a Muslim, an atheist, or a Christian whose theology consists entirely of Brandon Lake lyrics. My convictions teach me that this soul belongs to God. That is precisely why I must understand the person in front of me and remain within the authority I have actually been given.
An immortal soul deserves questions equal to the weight of what it believes. So leave the matches in the drawer. Bring better questions.