It is a gnostic trait to turn a blind eye to the policies of a government claiming to be “of, by, and for the people” as if there is some larger “spiritual reality” that renders public failure to “love our neighbor” as insignificant and “political” (as if “political” deals only with “ideas” and the opposing tribes of thought on those matters).

It is “gnostic” because the “special knowledge” comes from a God detached from embedded earthly life (thereby rejecting the purpose and meaning of the incarnation), and so “truth” is something received in some detached morality; detached from the lived , bodily, earthly and ecological realities, which enables this gnostic stance to ignore either the presence or the absence of lived, bodily and socio-political morality as insignificant to truth. This is the heresy of the “Christian Right”, who align themselves with political ideologies that are able to detach their morality (sense of love for neighbor) from the lived consequences and real results on people and planet.

The heresy represented by this radical dualism is heightened as this dualism works to damage and degrade the very life systems of the earth, which is an interconnected, interdependent reality in which we live and on which we depend. This extreme dualism rips at that very fabric. The heresy is not so much that it rips at “right knowledge and right doctrine”, but that it rips at life itself.