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By Root 1522 0

like God’s promise uttered to us from the future, toward which we reach an outstretched and hopeful hand—just as our ancestors did. The gospel is for us a beckoning, a summons, always associated with transitive words like “leave,” “come,” “go,” “follow.” So, just as a new path opens up new territory in which cities can be built, the gospel is for us a movement, a pioneering adventure, leaving behind it a pathway along which institutions are constructed, renewed, replaced, and so on. But the movement is never contained or controlled by the institution any more than the wind is contained or controlled by the branches through which it blows; no city along the path should be taken as the journey’s end.

We desire to be born again as disciples of Jesus Christ. There has been much talk of “born-again Christians” in recent years, but the truth is, most of us who identify ourselves as born-again Christians could stand to be born again again. In fact, we need to be born again again and again, not simply as lost people born into foundness, damned people born into forgiveness, the walking dead born into new life, or outsiders born into insider status, but as nondisciples (whether know-nothings or know-enoughs or know-it-alls, it doesn’t matter) born into a lifelong experiential learning adventure of discipleship. We might say that Christians are people who have entered a certain sedentary membership or arrived at a status validated by some group or institution, while disciples are learners (and unlearners) who have started on a rigorous and unending journey or quest in relation to Jesus Christ. It’s worth noting in this regard that the word “Christian” occurs in the New Testament exactly three times and the word “Christianity” exactly zero. The word “disciple,” however, is found 263 times.

In no way are we who seek this new birth as disciples claiming a superior status. We have no interest in distinguishing ourselves as super-Christians, better than anybody else; if anything, we are surrendering our status as first-or even second-class Christians (and our critics constantly assist us in this regard). Some of us figuratively and some perhaps literally are voluntarily demoting ourselves below full Christian status, seeing ourselves as third-rate sub-Christians who have not yet arrived, people sojourning but still far from our home. We may have crossed a starting line, but we have not crossed a finish line, so we are still in motion.

We pray that God will create something new and beautiful in and among us for the good of all creation and to the glory of the living God. What we need is not simply a new way of thinking, although our quest leads deep into and through the mind. We also need a new way of being, a new inner ecology, a new spirituality that does more than make us opinionated or fastidious, but that renders our souls an orchard of trees bearing good fruit, rooted in who we are before God and who we are becoming in God. We are seeking to be people of “orthopathy” in whom the deep orientation or attitudes or feelings (pathos) of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control blossom and bear fruit.

This inward transformation, of course, requires community, an expanding network of connectivity that perhaps could be captured by a term like “ortho-affinity”—a good and right way of relating to one another in communities of faith and in relation to our neighbors outside our faith communities (including those who consider themselves our enemies).1

Our faith is vain and self-centered if it only brings blessing for us or to us. It also must result in blessing that flows through us to the world. Good thinking (orthodoxy), good being (orthopathy), and good relating (ortho-affinity) must interact with and express themselves through good work and practice (orthopraxy) in the world, the creation that God made, loves, and will never abandon or betray.

We do not expect ourselves to be capable of completing this quest by our own strength, guided only by our own flickering lights, so we pray, expressing