Nobody names their own movement after an insult. But that’s exactly what happened with the Methodists. Their critics mocked them for taking their faith too seriously, and the name those critics coined ended up outlasting everyone who meant it as a dig. It starts with two brothers at Oxford, a Bible study, and a denomination that eventually rode on horseback across the American frontier.
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Have you ever heard someone call another Christian a heretic? Maybe it was a teacher who changed his mind about the end times. Perhaps it was a theologian who questioned a popular doctrine. Maybe it was someone in your own church who asked the wrong question out loud. Christians throw the label around a lot, and it lands hard. It can end ministries, split churches, and leave people wondering if they’re even saved.
But what does the word actually mean? And more importantly, who gets to decide?
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Most people reading Ephesians 2:3 don’t slow down at the phrase “by nature.” They don’t need to because it seems obvious enough.
We are, the thinking goes, born corrupt and sinful. It’s in our DNA, inherited from Adam, baked into us before we take our first breath. The phrase “by nature children of wrath” gets read as Paul’s confirmation of what Augustine called original sin: a corrupted human nature passed down through the generations like a genetic defect.
There’s just one problem. That’s not what Paul meant.
Proverbs 4:7 says, “The beginning of wisdom is this: Get wisdom, and whatever you get, get insight.” I love that. Wisdom doesn’t start with having all the answers, it starts with honestly pursuing them.
That’s exactly the idea behind a free Bible literacy assessment I just launched, and I want to tell you why I think it matters. Here’s a question worth pondering: do you actually know the Bible’s big story?
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There’s a number where familiarity ends and anonymity begins. It’s called Dunbar’s Number. Robin Dunbar, a British anthropologist, hypothesizes that we have a limit of roughly 150 people we can maintain stable relationships with. Relationships in which an individual knows who each person is and how they connect to everyone else. Beyond that number we might recognize faces, but we can’t know stories.
Churches hit this wall too. At around 150-200 people, additional growth becomes difficult without sustained, strategic effort. Church growth experts call it “the barrier,” and they’ve built an entire industry around breaking through it.