'Trying to communicate this important material to students led me to ask the question, "What happens to someone who follows heretical teachings?" It became quickly and readily apparent how cruel heretical teachings are and how prevalent the heresies are in contemporary times. Victims of these teachings have been encouraged either to escape the world and their basic humanity into some form of flight and death or to use religion to undergird and isolate further their own self-centred self from the need to be loved and to love.
We are susceptable to herertical teachings because, in one form or another, they nurture and reflect the way we would have it be rather than the way God has provided, which is infinitely better for us. As they lead us into the blind alleys of self-indulgence nad escape from life, heresies pander to the most unworrthy tendencies of the human heart. It is astonishing how little attention has been given to these two aspects of heresy: its cruelty and its pandering to sin.'
C FitzSimmons Allison, The Cruelty of Heresy: An Affirmation of Christian Orthodoxy, p.17
