“Words of admonition and reproach must be risked when a lapse from God’s Word in doctrine of life endangers a community that lives together, and with it the whole community of faith. Nothing can be more cruel than the leniency which abandons others to their sin. Nothing can be more compassionate than that severe reprimand which calls another Christian in one’s community back from the path of sin.”
(Bonhoeffer, Life Together)
Something I’m pondering.
One of my teachers spoke of the “cruelty of heresy” (a phrase I believe he stole from a book title), a concept that has stuck with me, and which also helps to define what is heresy and what is merely heterodoxy.