Originally what follows was going to be a comment on the previous post entitled Seriously Letdown..., but it grew so large that I decided it deserved its own entry.  So here is my answer to our own Mr. Hibbity Gibbity to his question:  So wait a minute . . . according to Orthodoxy, I'm living a heretical Christian lifestyle? Hmmmm.  First lets throw out some definitions:

• Heretic: Someone who is in error.
• Apostate: Someone who knows that they are in error and will not repent of it and continues to lead others astray.

So yes, by the above definition you are living in heresy, since to the Orthodox Church you are living in error, that is not to say that you don't have a place in the Kingdom of God, merely that you are not in line with the faith of the Apostles.  The Orthodox Church is not in the business of saying “if it feels good to you then it is okay by me”.  We practice and protect the faith as handed down by the apostles, and any deviation from that faith is error, so in this sense you and every Protestant and Catholic on the planet is praticing one form of heresy or another. It is no different from the way that Protestant Evangelicals view Catholics and Orthodox today.

To them we are viewed as being in error and as heretics, since we do not adhere to the doctrines that they put forth; and like it or not people the Protestant Reformation was about cleaning the heresy out of the Church, the Catholic Church specifically but that mattes less today than it did then.

As I stated in my blog entry, it is not so much about we are right and you are wrong as it is do you keep the faith as set forth by the apostles and practiced today by the Orthodox Church?  Well your answer would be no; then you are to the Orthodox Church a heretic.

But the same could be said about me in the eyes of say the Methodist Church.  Take the Eucharist, or communion as it is called more widely.  For me there is more going on than just bread and grape juice; but to the Methodists it is only a rote ceremony that is performed. So since I am not inline with that doctrine I am a heretic in the eyes of most Methodists.