Not long ago, I attended a funeral celebrating the life of Eva Wangen, an elderly lady in our church whom my wife had known. She had lived a full, engaged, life, marked by a purity in heart and a love for people.
One by one, family and friends came up and spoke of her impact on their lives. She had a passion for Jesus and lived out that passion through loving others. Anyone who crossed her path automatically became a target for love. Although part of a conservative fundamentalist church, she loved everyone including her LGBTQ neighbors across the street. Loved them especially, I am told.
Eva mixed her passion for Jesus with a practice of love and a lifestyle of engagement. Her connections were wide ranging, inclusive of her family, church, and neighbors to a variety of organizations and institutions she belonged to. A bearer of salt and light, even as she aged gracefully into her 90s, she brought about change through reflecting His glory into the lives of those around her. No matter what group or tribe she was a part of, her identity remained pure with her heart solely fixed upon Jesus, unmixed and uncontaminated from the polarizing culture around her.
Eva left a remarkable legacy, a testimony of what a 2 Cor 3:18 witness looks like in today’s partisan, culture war-driven, world: “and we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. … And the Lord–who is the Spirit–makes us more and more like him as we are changed into his glorious image.”
Here’s the Good News
If everyone lived like Eva Wagner, then you would look with incredulity on the many rigorous studies showing the fundamentalist and evangelical tradition to be, statistically speaking, the most likely of all ethnoreligious groups in America to discount stories of both domestic violence and rape and in doing so rationalize or perpetuate men’s violence against women, to exhibit a hostility that morally impugns or wishes persecution on members of other groups different than us, and to exhibit harmful prejudicial views towards racial and ethnic out-groups, Muslims, and those with alternative sexual orientations.
Yet the same scientific studies show the opposite to be true when our faith is pure. When you remove influences such as fundamentalism, right wing authoritarianism, populism, and Christian nationalism from the data, leaving people with a faith that’s unmixed and uncontaminated and hence “filled to the measure of all the fullness of God,” then the data show that they truly love their neighbor, even when those neighbors differ greatly from them.
Some of the upcoming posts will explore how these influences, which encumber and contaminate the heart, lead to a syncretistic or mixed gospel that often becomes unrecognizable to the watching world. Some findings will be troublesome, perhaps even dark for a church called to reflect the “light of the world.” Hence it will be important to keep this post in mind. For there are other Christ-followers, in addition to Eva, who have avoided those influences, through eyes steadfastly fixed upon Jesus in the midst of the partisan storm. Others, like Eva, remain citizens of the Kingdom, refusing to turn scripture into a proof text to promote values and beliefs of a different, tribally-based, kingdom. Others, like Eva, pursue the mission of the church rather than the culture wars that are dividing our nation. And others, like Eva, prioritize love and unity as guardrails of the faith, indemnifying themselves against echo chambers of beliefs as well as perversion in attitudes and behavior.
Beautiful Orthodoxy
The Greek word for orthodoxy can also mean true worship, behavior or inward belief. We see that through the Septuagint translation of the Old Testament which used the Greek word “doxia” for the Hebrew word “gloria.”
Doesn’t that resonate, especially given our calling to be unveiled as Christ-followers so that we can “see and reflect the glory of the Lord?” Couldn’t orthodox Christianity be first and foremostly considered as denoting the glorification of God through the praise, attitudes, and behavior of Christ followers?
Yes, we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works! Imagine a church that truly believes and then lives that, pursuing orthodoxy through a relentless, all hands-on-deck, attention to attitudes and behavior. Where those attitudes and behavior become the gospel metrics of good works! Where truth is first seen as an outward expression of our “inward parts,” testified by love and unity. Where the injunction to act justly, love mercy and walk humbly with our God is cemented into the church. Where the fruits of the Spirit are the primary witness of a Spirit-led life committed to mirroring the life and teachings of Christ. Where our attitudes become first order issues of the gospel as humility trumps certainty and repentance ends privilege. Where the beliefs outside of the creeds become secondary to the true practice of Christianity as seen by our world, by an ekklesia united through the living presence of Christ.
Perhaps we can call this practice of “Beautiful Orthodoxy,” a living demonstration of an unmixed and uncontaminated Christianity, as the “The Eva Wangen Way” (which is really just the reflecting Jesus way), as we begin to explore foundational issues which mar the witness of the white evangelical church – the least of all ethnoreligious groups to demonstrate a “love thy neighbor” practice in America today.
For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them. Eph 2:10