In 1788, Benjamin Franklin wrote (with typical bad grammar and endless run-on sentences) in praise of a scientist and theologian with whom he was friends. He called his colleague, Joseph Priestly, “the honest heretic.”
“I do not call him honest by way of distinction,” Franklin wrote, “for I think all the heretics I have know have been virtuous men. They have the virtue and fortitude or they would not venture to own their heresy; and they cannot afford to be deficient in any of the other virtues, as that would give advantage to their many enemies; and they have not like orthodox sinners, such a number of friends to excuse or justify them.
“Do not, however mistake me. It is not to my good friend’s heresy that I impute his honesty. On the contrary, ’tis his honesty that has brought upon him the character of heretic.”
Some things never change. Willfully dishonest people proudly parade in mantles of orthodoxy and many are proclaimed as leaders. Just as many honest folk are declaimed as heretics and cursed for not supporting the status quo.
I frequently find myself more drawn to the apostate, those believers who maintain religious opinions contrary to what is accepted or those free-thinkers from the wider world who question rather than conform to an established attitudes, doctrines, or principles.
My attraction is not to their contrariness. It is because heretics seem more willing to consider the why of beliefs or, in the words of Franklin, they OWN what they believe while many others passively accept (thoughtlessly inherit) the structures and systems around them. What is, according to that latter group, is as it should be.
May 1 is for revolutionaries and April 1 for fools. Maybe March 1 should be for celebrating honest heretics. Not coincidentally, it also happens to be Beer Day in Iceland.
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