[✝️] What Does a Faith That Calls Questions Heresy Actually Protect?

✨ GPT-5.5’s Summary

After watching Prof. Jaeho Chang’s video and the resolution declaring theistic evolution heresy, I start from disgust and near-profane anger, then end by praying not for people to be cursed but for an ignorant system of condemnation to collapse.

I watched Prof. Jaeho Chang’s video.¹

At First, It Was Just Disgusting

I saw the news that the Korea Evangelical Holiness Church declared theistic evolution heresy on May 28, 2026, the last day of its 120th General Assembly.²

The first emotion I felt was simply disgust.

It was fucking disgusting.

I do not understand why people who speak God’s name are so terrified before attempts to understand more honestly the world God made. They confess God as Creator, yet fear learning about the created world. They say they are defending faith, yet first crush the people who ask questions.

What kind of faith is that?

Isn’t it just protecting their own certainty?

Aren’t they trembling because God might collapse the moment they step outside the narrow frame they learned?

I am not saying I accept theistic evolution 100 percent. Genesis 1-3, the historical Adam, original sin, the origin of death, the image of God, the redemption of Christ. None of these are light issues. This is not something that can be handled by saying, “Science is right, so just fold the Bible somehow.”

But that is exactly why I am angrier.

If this is such a difficult issue, shouldn’t it be handled more slowly? Shouldn’t people study more? Shouldn’t supporters, opponents, theologians, scientists, and pastors sit with it for a long time?

Then, at some point, the word “heresy” jumps out.

That word is too easy. Too fast. Too damn convenient.

If you don’t want to study, call it heresy.
If you don’t want to understand, call it heresy.
If you can’t handle it, call it heresy.

If that is how this goes, what is really left?

Confessing Creation and Explaining the Method of Creation Are Not the Same Issue

I think this is where the biggest confusion begins.

The confession “God is Creator” and the explanation “by what method did God create?” do not belong to the same layer. One is an ontological confession. The other is a question of how that confession connects with knowledge of the natural world.

Theistic evolution is described as a theological stream that maintains faith in God as Creator while understanding biological diversity and human origins within the framework of evolution. It is also distinguished from atheistic evolution, which sees the universe and life as having arisen by chance.³

Of course, there can be dangerous points inside it. How should we understand the historical Adam? How should we explain the fall and original sin? When did death enter? How should we read Romans 5? These questions are genuinely difficult.

But if difficult questions exist and the response is to drive the questions themselves into heresy, that is less like protecting faith and more like smashing faith’s own capacity to think.

Not everyone who asks a question is trying to abandon God.

If God really is Creator, why should it be frightening to learn more deeply about the world God made? If studying the natural world brings us into conflict with an existing interpretation, isn’t that precisely the moment to reread both Scripture and the world more honestly?

This thought did not suddenly appear out of nowhere. I once held onto “the courage not to stop asking questions” in The Spiritual Agony Numbers Raises, and the Honest Faith I Found on Thomas’s Road, and I looked again at Thomas in My Doubtful Faith.

Thomas was not abandoned because he asked questions. The man who wanted to confirm the wounds eventually arrived at the confession, “My Lord and my God.”

Faith is not the work of killing questions.

It is remaining before God even after passing through questions to the end.

Pretending to Protect the Church While Breaking the Church’s Mind

What made this even more suffocating was the procedural problem. According to reports, the item was handled as an urgent motion, and criticism followed that it had been brought forward hastily without research or investigation.² Kidok also reported that the clerical department had once returned it because of issues of procedure and form, but it was then handled as an urgent motion in the plenary session.⁴

Then they should have been even more careful.

The word heresy is not just “I disagree with that claim.” Inside the church, that word functions almost like a death sentence. It can collapse someone’s faith, ministry, research, and place in the community all at once.

If that word is going to be used, people should at least read enough, listen enough, ask enough, receive objections, and review again.

If that process is skipped, what remains is not the defense of truth. It is a display of authority. To say it plainly, it is spiritual power-tripping.

I hate this kind of thing so much. No, hate is not enough. It disgusts me.

They say they are protecting God, but in reality they are protecting their own worldview. They say they are protecting the Bible, but in reality they are absolutizing only the way they were taught. They say they are protecting the church, but in reality they are pushing out the people who ask questions.

This is closer to spiritual self-comfort than faith.

They make a God small enough for themselves to handle, then treat anyone wrestling outside that God as dangerous. The moment that mode starts acting like authority inside the church, the church loses its mind before the world.

This connects with what I felt recently in Homophobia Cannot Be Called Faith. There I wrote, “Ignorance cannot become faith.” It is the same here. The moment scientifically weak claims or theologically underexamined certainty are wrapped in the authority of faith, ignorance is no longer just an empty blank. It becomes a force that injures people.

And young people see that.

People who have studied biology see it. People wrestling between science and faith see it. People who somehow want to explain the gospel to atheist friends see it.

Do those people leave the church simply because “the world is better”?

I do not think so.

Sometimes they leave because the church looks too ignorant and cowardly. Because it looks less like a place that thinks with you when you ask a question and more like a place that classifies you as dangerous for asking it.

And these days, people can ask AI even once. With that bare minimum of effort, they could at least begin to suspect how flimsy their existing belief system might be. But they do not even make that minimum check. That is painfully sad.

Even seminarians are not exempt. If the inside of the church is this rotten, isn’t it obvious that seminarians first learn to live without questions, then leave the church, and eventually become atheists?

At this point my anger rises all the way to the top of my head.

Part of me just wants it all overturned. Authorities that peddle God’s name like that, atmospheres that crush questioning people, cultures that dress ignorance up as piety. I want all of that to collapse.

Still, Anger Must Not Be Aimed at People

But that is where I have to stop.

Not “die,” but “collapse.”

My anger has to go there.

My anger must not be aimed at people. If it becomes a desire for someone’s soul to be ruined, then I too get sucked into the very structure of condemnation I hate.

What must collapse is not a person’s life.

What must collapse is false authority. An ignorant system of condemnation. A church culture that labels questions as heresy, treats scholarship as betrayal, and crushes people inside the church who are wrestling on the front line of evangelism.

This seems to be one reason people like Prof. Jaeho Chang are lonely. They are not only contending with atheists outside the church, but also with self-assurance inside the church. If the response to someone trying to witness to God more honestly in the age of science is, “Isn’t that dangerous?”, how deep must that loneliness be?

I want to pray for people like that.

And I want to pray for myself too.

Now that I have written this far, the anger has settled a little.

It still feels fucking awful. It is still suffocating. Heat is still rising inside me.

Even so, I do not want to curse people. I do not want to become someone who hates ignorance and then learns to despise people. I do not want to criticize false certainty and then make my own certainty into another idol. I do not want to speak of truth and become someone who crushes another person.

In the end, I return to the question I held onto in Minhyuk vs GPT-4o: Exclusivism / Inclusivism / Pluralism: “How would Jesus read this, and how would he live?” What doctrines and logics save people, and what discernment bears the fruit of the Spirit? Before that standard, a way of first cutting off questioning people looks terribly shabby no matter how pious its language may be.

Prayer

Lord, I am truly suffocated.

Have mercy on us foolish people who speak the name of God but run away before truth, who say we are defending faith but crush people who ask questions, who confess God as Creator but fear learning the world God made.

Lord, we say we believe in God, but in reality we build a small God we can handle. Please do not let the spiritual self-comfort that condemns people who think outside that frame keep acting like authority inside the church.

In this age of science, please hold people who are trying to testify to God more honestly, people trying somehow to carry the gospel to young people leaving the church and to atheists, and people like Prof. Jaeho Chang who endure in that lonely place.

Lord, give us faith that does not fear truth.
Give us humility that does not drive questions into heresy.
Give us honesty that does not package ignorance as piety.

I pray in the name of Jesus. Amen.

References

1. Jaeho Chang, “Theistic Evolution Heresy Controversy

   Are Augustine, John Stott, Billy Graham, C.S. Lewis, Tim Keller Heretics?”, YouTube, published June 2026. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cSXFsn9k6DE

   ↩

2. Na Su-jin, “If You Believe Theistic Evolution, You Are a Heretic: Korea Evangelical Holiness Church Condemns Evolution after Two Years”, Newsnjoy, June 5, 2026. https://www.newsnjoy.or.kr/news/articleView.html?idxno=400529 ↩ ↩²

3. Son Dong-jun, Kim Dong-gyu, and Kim Yeon-woo, “What Is Theistic Evolution? Questions Left after the Heresy Resolution”, Kukmin Ilbo / Daum News, June 4, 2026. https://v.daum.net/v/QADfDB4qWk ↩

4. Hyun Sung-hyuk, “Korea Evangelical Holiness Church Defines Theistic Evolution as Heresy”, Kidok, June 2, 2026. https://www.kidok.com/news/articleView.html?idxno=507521 ↩