What is normal and what is fanaticism? When does a healthy awareness of our faith mutate into an unhealthy preoccupation or obsession? Does every minute of our day, every encounter with other people really count or are some meetings just non-events in the vast expanse of time and lives?

This is the point at which I wonder if I am a fanatic or am normal. By normal, I don’t mean what most people at most times in most places seem to think or do: that’s “average.” By normal, I mean what Scripture teaches about how we ought to live and what that teaching looks like if lived out in daily life.

Early on in my Christian life I heard someone say that Christians should not be so heavenly minded as to be no earthly good. I remember thinking that it was a catchy saying but also wondering how those two could be competitors. Even in the crawling years of my spiritual walk I concluded quite the opposite: the more heavenly minded one was, the more earthly good they would be capable of doing – or, for any nitpickers reading this, the more good Christ could do through me.

I tend to think everything involving eternal beings or eternal truth matters. I don’t know how to label one event as having eternal significance and another simply a temporal occurrence lacking everlasting repercussions. Perhaps it is a result of taking God’s omniscience, omniscience, or eternal plan to ridiculous, unbiblical conclusions. But I’ve never felt smart or discerning enough to treat some people or interactions as not important.

This gets me into trouble. I think words matter; worse, I think all people matter – especially those who are more sheep than shepherds, who count on others to protect, lead, and nourish them. I get protective. I went to seminary in part to learn how to take care of people but I often find myself trying to help people who don’t want help.

When this happens, I am often reminded that the internet or this blog or that forum is not the church. This carries with it an implicit freedom from responsibility, as though the host is not responsible if guests eat bad food brought by others to an intellectual and spiritual potluck. Forums are particularly prone to this: people are allowed to say anything, teach anything, and dismiss the writings of those who are experts in various fields.

What I want to do at this point is to describe a situation and ask for a response. The situation will not be any particular one but instead one that is an amalgam of several I’ve been involved in. And then you can tell me: Am fanatical or biblical? Do I take things too seriously or perhaps not seriously enough?

    In a comment thread, a popular blogger begins to give her opinion about homosexuals in the church, the sinfulness of their behaviors, and what the church must do. She states that homosexual men are homosexual by deliberate, conscious choice and that upbringing has nothing to do with it. Further, she is certain that no real Christian can struggle with same-sex attraction: anyone who struggles is giving unmistakable and irrefutable proof that they are still dead in their trespasses and sins.

    She further pontificates that what the church must do in order to remain holy is to excommunicate such people regardless of whether they are acting upon their feelings or not. They are to be publicly dismissed from fellowship and fellow members of the church are not to reach out to them.

    My response in this situation has several facets. First, I disagree that all people wrestling with same-sex attraction consciously choose to do so. I also object to the notion that upbringing has nothing to do with it: the individual is responsible for cleaning up the mess, of course, but they did not deliberately create all of the mess. The response of the church needs to be love, not exclusion, and to suggest otherwise is to create an atmosphere of exclusion, not inclusion, for those who struggle with any sin.
    I also object to the person speaking authoritatively when they lack training, possess no clinical experience, and have never done research concerning the issue. While it is true that she has a PhD in Biblical Theology, that does not give her the right to espouse her ignorance as though it were wisdom.
    Whatever facts I might present are usually ignored. Part of the response I get is that the internet is not the church, that we need to be free to express whatever thoughts or convictions we have regardless of how it might affect weaker brothers, and that strugglers and weaker believers are not the responsibility of the author of the post, the poser of the question, or the own of the blog.
    At this point I usually shake my head. Perhaps I took Wesley’s remark – “The world is my parish” – too seriously, but it is my conviction that church membership roles do not define or dictate the limits of our responsibility to one another. I will be held accountable for whatever careless words I speak, the deleterious affects they have on people, and that we have a responsibility to one another to correct, rebuke, reprove, admonish, and love one another.

I believe it is recklessly irresponsible to use authority or credibility gained elsewhere in an unrelated area. My graduate-level exposure to textual criticism, for example, does not earn me the right to question the findings of a Dan Wallace or Bruce Metzger. And my (limited) expertise in personality development and disorders, along with my facility to help others, does not make me someone to be listened to in matters pertaining to church planting or missions.

You tell me: am I a zealot? fanatic? overboard? How serious is our faith, anyway? Are we vitally and organically connected to one another in the Body of Christ or is that just a figure of speech used to convey a sense of unity?

I really want to know. Although I believe I am correct in this matter, I also believe that I am capable of being wrong.


2 Cor 1:13