Orthodoxy, Orthopraxy and Orthopathy: An Approach to Vocation, Work and Service in the Marketplace
Let me introduce you to a strange word. “Ortho” in Greek comes from the word orthodoxos. We use a derivation of the word in English when we go to an orthodontist to get our teeth straightened. So ortho means straight. The Greek word doxos means glory and honour of the truth of God. So, orthodoxy means straight truth, straight belief, or straight doctrine—belief that lines up with Scripture. Orthodox belief is designed to be a blessing to everyday life, and, at the same time, to bless and worship God.
The Orthodoxy of Vocation
I am using the word orthodoxy to apply to the next chapter on vocation because there is nothing more fruitful, fulfilling or blessed than knowing you are summoned by God to relationship with God, to live the Christian life with faith, hope and love in a beautiful freedom, and to know that you are summoned to work and serve with God in the world in a particular way. That is the meaning of vocation. And vocation bring meaning. It is an all-embracing concept and whole life orientation. Vocation comes from the Latin vocatio and means simply to be called or to have a calling. And for there to be a callee there needs to be a caller. And that Caller is the God of the universe, made known in his Son Jesus through the Holy Spirit. So, let me ask at the outset, whose voice are you listening to? Your parents? The surrounding society? Social media? Or God?
Discovering Your Vocation
To discover your vocation you need to listen to God. Really! Listen to God as he woos you to come to him, just as you are, to find peace, forgiveness, new life and a new way of life in work and Sabbath. Sabbath is not just a day of rest; it is the experience of coming to Jesus as reflected in the much-loved words of Jesus in Matthew 11:28:
Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.
Surely Jesus had in mind those burdened with all the rules and regulations of the Pharisees on what they are to do and not to do in order to please or appease God. Such oppressive religion conceived of as a way or earning one’s way into everlasting life leads to painful uncertainty, gnawing anxiety and despair. And is this situation any different today when people encounter a religious works version of Christianity that says we must keep Sabbath, pay our tenth of our income to the church (is that before taxes or after taxes?), attend religious services, and conform to a rigorous and rigid lifestyle of abstention from all possible contact with the world and unbelievers? In contrast, Jesus offers a better yoke, one that fits well (the true meaning of “easy”) and distributes the load on both shoulders, not chafing, so that following Jesus becomes a light burden. And what do you get by learning from this humble master?—rest for your soul; rest for the inner person because the soul is the longingness for God and life of the whole person. So, it is not so strange that the Syriac (Peshitta) New Testament translates this verse “Come to me… and I will rest you… for I am restful… and you will find rest for yourselves.”[1] This is tantamount to saying, “Come to me and I will Sabbath you.”
The orthodoxy of vocation is this: It is God who calls, woos, wins and blesses us in Jesus did everything God could do to make things right between God and humankind on the cross. And through his resurrection, ascension and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit we are free from religion as an apparatus to please or appease God. Now as Paul says in Galatians neither circumcision (religion) nor uncircumcision (irreligion) counts. What really counts is “faith expressing itself in love” and “the new creation” (Gal 5:6; 6:15). So, our central vocation means we are not called to embrace a religion but we are called to belong to God as sons and daughters, walking and living in the Holy Spirit. It is the Way, that lovely word used in the New Testament to describe the Christian movement.[2] There is more to vocation, of course, but if we don’t get this first item correctly we will miss out on everything else. Do the first button up and the rest will follow suit.
And the everything else includes knowing God and knowing God’s purpose for our lives in this world. We live the doctrines of the Christian faith. The doctrine of the Trinity (as I show in Volume 1) directs God-imaging creatures to live relationally. Those who proclaim that God is love are included in the love-life of God himself and so to become lovers themselves (John 17:21). To believe in God the Creator is to accept trusteeship of the earth. The incarnation—the fact that the word became flesh and dwelt among us—revolutionizes our attitude to work itself. It promotes a radical Christian materialism. The atonement, as an alternative to appeasement—God making humankind right with himself through the cross—equips us to live mercifully. Ecclesiology—the doctrine of the church—evokes the experience of peoplehood since no one can be in Christ alone, or as Ernest Best puts it, “the individual Christian does not exist.”[3] We live and work and minister as a body not a bouquet of individual believers.[4] Eschatology—the doctrine of last things—teaches us how to live with time as a gift rather than a resource to be managed. It give us double vision, seeing the nowness of the kingdom of God already begun on earth in Jesus and, at the same time, the not-yet-ness of the kingdom as we anticipate the consummation of everything at the Second Coming of Jesus and the inauguration of a new heaven and new earth. So, doctrines are to be lived. Of course we are to think about these truths, and loving God includes loving God with the mind (Matt 22:37) with straight thoughts, but above all we are called to live in an orthodox way. That surely is what vocation is about: to be called into relationship with Jesus (1 Cor 1:9), to be called to a way of life (not to a religion), and to be called to do God’s work on earth, three dimensions of vocation to be taken up in the next chapter.
The Danger of Merely Intellectual Orthodoxy
Orthodoxy involves more than speaking correctly about God. We could do that and still be damned, like the friends of Job in the Old Testament—Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar—who spoke with impeccable correctness about God (according to the theology of the day) but in the end received God’s judgement: “I am angry with you [Eliphaz] and your two friends, because you have not spoken the truth about me, as my servant Job has” (Job 42:7). A careful study of the book of Job reveals that the only true and orthodox theologian was Job himself. The reason is sublimely simple: while the friends talked about God; Job talked to God, pestering God with his complaints in prayer. Theologian P. T. Forsyth says that “the best theology is compressed prayer.”[5] The danger of a merely intellectual orthodoxy is that we are tempted to think we can manage God. Our doctrines become fixed, static, inflexible. According to Psalm 115:8 “those who make [such idols] will be like them”—fixed, static and inflexible people.
This can happen in theological seminaries, though it is certainly not the intention of any theological school. As the former academic Dean of Regent College, and having spent ten years in East Africa where the church is growing by leaps and bounds, I used to ask our African students as they graduated, whether or not their passion for God was increased or decreased by formal theological education in the West. Sometimes their answer was surprisingly positive; sometimes discouraging. The reason for the latter is at least hinted in a comment in George MacDonald’s classic, where he makes his character Mrs. Ramsgate say, “nothing is so deadening to the divine as the habitual dealing with the outsides of holy things.”[6]
In contrast to those who worship idols, even intellectual idols, those who worship the living and personal Lord become free and spontaneous since they worship someone who “does whatever pleases him" (115:3). True worship, orthodoxy, welcomes mystery and confesses with Job “these are but the outskirts of his ways” (Job 26:14 KJV). So, orthodoxy is about worshipful, prayerful living. That is our vocation. But what about the work that we do?
The Orthopraxy of Work
Once again, we refer to the origin of the word orthopraxy. Ortho means “straight.” Praxy refers to practice. The term suggests an interesting word used in the Parable of the Ten Minas (Luke 19:11-27) in which Jesus tells a story of a person who is going away to be made king. As with most of the parables Jesus is speaking of himself. This master trusts his servants with a mina each, the mina being roughly equivalent to three month’s salary. The master says as he leaves, in effect, be pragmatic with your mina. “Put this money to work until I come back” (19:13). The Greek word used here (pragmateusasthe) which in the context literally means “trade with” giving us the English word “be pragmatic.” When the master returns he finds that one of his servants has been pragmatic and made ten minas from the one; a second servant made five minas from the one. But the third servant wrapped up his mina and presented it intact, only to be judged by the master as a “wicked servant.” What is truly interesting in the parable, which does have some allegorical dimensions is that as a reward the ten and five mina servants were given more work to do in ruling ten and five cities respectively. The third one-mina servant lost his mina which was given to the one with ten. Implied in the parable is this: be pragmatic about your gifts and talents or you might lose them. We are to work with God in bringing in his kingdom. Fourth century St Augustine put it this way: “God without us will not, as we without God cannot.”[7]
Defining Christian Work
Work can be defined as the expression of energy purposefully whether manual, mental or both, whether or not it is remunerated. But what is good work, right work, straight work, godly work? For be sure of it, the Christian way is a way of works (not to gain acceptance with God but in gratitude that one is accepted and called). Paul puts it this way to the Ephesian Christians: “For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do” (Eph 2:10). But we must ask, whether all these works we do are spiritual or religious? What makes work good, Christian or pleasing to God? Is it really true as John Calvin put it, “There is no work, however vile or sordid, that does not glisten before God?” How can we do the Lord’s work? Is it simply by becoming a pastor or a missionary? When is a practice right? When is a deed Christian? What is straight work? On the most basic level orthopraxy is about practices that are in harmony with God’s kingdom and that bring value and good into the world. Takes Jesus, for example.
1. Jesus worked as a carpenter and then as a missionary (techton, the word usually translated “carpenter” can be an entrepreneur, someone who can design and build a house or a boat).
2. Jesus ministered in the marketplace and used marketplace metaphors to communicate the truth about God and God’s kingdom.
3. Jesus preached the good news of the kingdom of God, God’s new world coming, not the good news that our souls would be saved so we could go to heaven (Luke 4:43).
4. Of Jesus’ 132 appearances in the gospels 122 were in the workplace.
5. Of 52 parables taught 45 had a workplace context.
6. Jesus called twelve normal working adults to build his church and to forward his way, not clergy or rabbis, and some of them had questionable occupations such as tax collecting or being a zealot/revolutionary.
7. Jesus did not just do spiritual work! When he was baptized, before he had worked a miracle or preached a sermon, when he had spent his time crafting cradles and building houses all the while knowing that the world was going to hell in a handbasket, the Father said, “I am really pleased with you.” “You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased” (Luke 3:22).
As I reported in the last chapter of Volume 1, when I became a follower of Jesus I felt called to do God’s work full time. There was no one in my life at that time, not even my godly pastor, who could tell me that this sense, that feeling, my calling to serve God full time, did not necessarily mean that I was called to become a pastor. Everyone is called to do God’s work full-time. Eventually I became a pastor and I have no regrets about my life path. But years later I left being a pastor to take up carpentry. People around me said, “you have left the ministry. You are no longer doing God’s work!” They were radically wrong. The English Reformer William Tyndale was killed for saying it, but he believed otherwise. "There is no work better than another to please God; to pour water, to wash dishes, to be a souter (cobbler), or an apostle, all are one, as touching the deed, to please God."[8]
Look at the work God does. God is a creator making things. He is as creative today as he was at the beginning of this vast universe. But God invites his God-imaging creatures, men and women, to work with him through informational technology, music and graphic art, in designing homes or computer programmes, in construction and development. God is also a sustainer, keeping the world running. Consider Job 38-41 where God takes Job on an African safari and faces him with all of God’s wild work, asking Job in effect, “You try running the world better than I am.” God does work we cannot do. But God invites farmers, homemakers, politicians (who are maintaining the infrastructure so people can thrive), systems engineers, garbage collectors and street sweepers to join God in “tend[ing] to the fabric of this world, and their prayers is in the practice of their trade” to quote the intertestamental book Ecclesiasticus 38:34.[9]
God is also a redeemer, a transformer, saving souls and persons, mending broken hearts, releasing the captives and recovering sight to the blind (Isa 61; Luke 4:16-9). But God invites technicians, pastor, computer repair persons, counsellors, social workers, lawyers, doctors, nurses, and all who fix things to enter his ongoing transformational work. God is finally a consummator bringing the whole human story to its wonderful end with the second coming of Christ, final judgement, the resurrection of the dead, the full coming of the kingdom, and a renewed heaven and a renewed earth. But God invites pastors, parents, teachers, people in the media, film-makers and reporters (who are showing where things are going) to join him in his consummating work. As Martin Luther put it in his Exposition of Psalm 147:
God could easily give you grain and fruit without your plowing and planting. But He does not want to do so…. What else is all our work to God—whether in the fields, in the garden, in the city, in the house, in war, or in government—but just such a child’s performance, by which He wants to give His gifts in the fields, at home, and everywhere else? These are the masks of God, behind which He wants to remain concealed and do all things.[10]
So when someone says to me, “I am leaving secular work and going into ‘God’s work” I always ask, “What were you doing before? It’s fine to leave one kind of Lord’s work and, if God so leads, to go into another kind of Lord’s work, but don’t say that the first was secular.” What make work Christian is not the religious character of the work but the fact that it is done with faith, hope and love. It is not the husk of the work that makes it a delight to God but the heart. Listening to a child, designing a software programme and examining a spread sheet can be profoundly Christian. In contrast preaching a sermon and caring for the sick can be done in a secular way and for one’s own vainglory and will not be pleasing to God. Can you imagine putting Luther’s words over the entrance to a theological seminary today?
Therefore I advise no one to enter any religious order or the priesthood, indeed, I advise everyone against it – unless he is forearmed with this knowledge and understands that the works of monks and priests, however holy and arduous they may be, do not differ one wit in the sight of God from the works of the rustic laborer in the field or the woman going about.[11]
Defining Orthopraxical Work
Faith defines orthopraxy. There are precious few occupations prohibited in the Bible, perhaps as few as three.[12] As Calvin said, even the vile and vulgar work can glisten with God. But it takes faith, which is wholehearted responsiveness to God in Jesus and whole-life directedness towards God to make our work pleasing to God. And, strangely enough, faith is largely unselfconscious as illustrated in a well-known parable of Jesus. In Matthew 25:31-46 Jesus separates people in the final judgement not by whether their works were religious or secular, but on whether people worked for him. To the righteous, the sheep on his right, he said, “I was hungry and you fed me, naked and you clothed me.” But the righteous are surprised that Jesus personally received and was ministered to when they made a meal, clothed their child, or visited someone lonely. They cry out, “Lord, when did we see you” in all these human need situations. The Lord replies, “Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.” Perhaps one of the purposes of the church’s ministry it to set people up to be surprised on the judgement day. The goats on his left were equally surprised. “Lord, when did we see you” in need and not respond. They would have gladly helped if they knew that it was Jesus himself in need not their brother, sister or neighbour. What does this suggest about faith?
Faith-work is essentially gratuitous. That obscure English word suggests that our work must be free from connivance, from a calculating spirit, free from contract (I do this for God and God will do that for me), but strictly because we belong to God and because of his mercy, we love God and love our neighbour. And we love our neighbour, whether seen or unseen, mainly through our work. And the work that we do is ordinary work: feeding, clothing, warming, visiting, helping, informing, fixing, designing, building, making, calculating, communicating and praying.
Job is, once again, a classic case. Satan accuses Job before God of being righteous for the benefits of being pious. “Does Job fear God for nothing?” (Job 1:9). So, the great and terrible test is conceived to find out whether Job’s faith is gratuitous. When Job finally cries out, “Though he slay me, yet will I hope in him” (13:15), he proves that he has true faith in God and not as a bargain. Christian practice is for God’s glory, whether it developing a compensation policy for employees or empowering the poor, it is for God’s glory. J. S. Bach wrote on each musical manuscript, “For the glory of God,” reflecting Paul’s word in 1 Corinthians 10:31 where he says, “whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God.” We can do the same in our everyday work. As such we will be working with orthopraxy. But what about our ministry?
The Orthopathy of Service[13]
Once again we have a coined word originally used by the Jewish rabbi Abraham Heschell who in his two volume work on The Prophets said that the Old Testament prophets were gripped by the passion of God for justice and mercy. Orthopathy was later popularized by Richard Mouw of Fuller Theological Seminary. Ortho, as we have already learned, means “straight” while pathy arises from the word “pathos” or “passion.” So, we are speaking about straight passion, a matter of the heart. If orthodoxy mainly concerns the mind, if orthopraxy mainly concerns the hand and foot, orthopathy mainly concerns the heart or soul. But why am I linking orthopathy with ministry and what is ministry anyway?
In both Greek and Hebrew “service” and “ministry” are the same word. Ministry is an accordion word, into which you can pump as much hot air as you wish. But there is so much misunderstanding about ministry that I am inclined to propose a moratorium on the use of the word for three years to cleanse our minds from the fuzz. We tend to define “ministry” by what we see “ministers” doing: preaching, delivering pastoral care, praying with people, and leading people to Christ—all good things to do of course. But this practically eliminates the vast majority of God’s people who think they are only doing “ministry” in their discretionary time, after work and home life when they can assist the pastor in his or her ministry in the church. Even if these people believe in the universal ministry of the people of God under the New Covenant, ministry gets, for most Christians, relegated to a very few hours a week. But there is a better way of defining ministry. We can replace it with the biblical word “service,” a word used simultaneously for both service and ministry. It would be arresting if young people aspiring to become pastors or missionaries were to say, “I think I am being called by God into service!” (Rather than being called into “the ministry”). But perhaps it is not that simple.
For one thing the Bible uses the word “service” in many ways, as common service waiting at tables, for example. But there is a special use of the word service in the Old and New Testament. In Isaiah 42-63 there are four songs of the servant,[14] which are variously called “the servant of the Lord” or “my servant” when God is speaking. And what, after all, is a servant but a person at the disposal of another—in this case God—to do what this other wishes. So, the servant/minister is first of all a servant of the Lord, not the people. But the servant of the Lord also serves people for their edification, improvement and flourishing. And as the four servant songs proceed their way through Isaiah 42 to 53 it clearly the servant/minister first starts with the whole nation of Israel being the servant/minister. Then, perhaps because the people did not take up the universal servant/ministry role as a people, an ideal or spiritual Israel is suggested in what looks like an hourglass. But in Isaiah 52-3 the servant/minister is obviously an individual person by whose wounds we are healed: the Lord Jesus, also called the Messiah/Christ, but also being given the messianic title, the Servant (Acts 3:13; 4:27, 30). But the good news is this: now in Christ the whole people of God are called into service/ministry! But, to return to my question: why link service/ministry to orthopathy?
On Being a Servant of the Lord
We do this because service/ministry is not just serving people but serving God. To be a servant of God is to be a person at the disposal of God to do that God wants done, for the needs of the world no matter how much it costs. And to do this one must have passion for God, orthopathy. Sadly I fear that some servant/ministers are apathetic about God, going through the notions, playing a role, doing their job, but caring very little about the One they are serving and how they are serving. Having passion for God and God’s heart seems a prerequisite for being a servant/minister. Take the Old Testament saint Job again for example.
Previously I named Job as a theologian because, as God said in Job 42:7 Job, “spoke well of God” by praying to God while his friends did not speak well of God by talking correctly about God. Previously we discovered that Satan was wrong in his estimation of Job, namely that Job was pious solely for the benefits obtained therein: health, wealth, family and esteem in the community. So, to facilitate the test agreed upon by God and Satan, the latter was allowed to remove all these benefits. But Job refused to curse God and die. Rather, he said “though he slay me, yet will I hope in him” (13:15). But we fail to notice in the story as it unfolds the astonishing thing that Job never once asks for healing from his disease and ailments. What he wants more than anything is God. His passion is for the friendship of God. In Job 13:3 he says, “I desire to speak to the Almighty and to argue my case with God.” What Job wants more than anything is the presence of God, to know the heart of God. “Oh, for the days when I was in my prime, when God’s friendship blessed my house” (29:4). As he prayed this he made three gospel discoveries.[15]
Like David Job was a person after God’s own heart. To that end his speeches were directed primarily to God, challenging God, exploring God, confronting God, wrestling with God, and almost “bearding God” as P. T. Forsyth suggests in this vigorous image. Meanwhile his pious friends with degrees from impeccable seminaries were almost hiding under the table in fear that God from on high would blast to smithereens their impertinent friend.
Job was not a half-hearted researcher and theologian. The seventeenth century Puritan William Perkins said that “theology is the science of living blessedly forever.”[16] And as a science theology involves fervent investigation. And there is no investigation of God and God’s purpose for life better than prayer. P.T. Forsyth says that “prayer is to the religious life [sic] what original research is to science—by it we get direct contact with reality.”[17] So Job, like Abraham pleading with God for Sodom, like the Syro-Phoenician woman begging for crumbs under the table, like Jacob not willing to let the god-man go until God blessed Jacob (Gen 32:26), like Jesus in the Garden exploring his heart options before the Father, and like Paul asking three times that the thorn in his body might be removed, each is extracting revelation from God. This is orthopathy, straight passion, a heart after God’s own heart. And without this heart passion we cannot be God-pleasing servant/ministers, no matter how educated, eloquent, or gifted we might be. Orthopathy is essential for service/ministry because without this we cannot touch people for God whether in the church, workplace, home, government office, hospital, or school. The kingdom of God is not, as Scripture says for the mildly interested but the passionate, yes even the desperate (Luke 16:16). So how shall we then live?
With orthodoxy—in our vocation. With orthopraxy—in our work. With orthopathy—in our service/ministry. We need all three. And what God has joined together let no person put asunder.
References:
[1] William Hendricksen, New Testament Commentary: Exposition of the Gospel According to Matthew (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1973), 504-5.
[2] Acts 9:2; 19:9, 23; 22:4.
[3] Ernest Best, One Body in Christ: A Study in the Relationship of the Church to Christ in the Epistles of the Apostle Paul (London: SPCK, 1955), 190.
[4] Paul coined a new set of words in Ephesians by joining the Greek word sun which means “together” to a bunch of nouns and verbs: “made us alive [together] with Christ” (2:5); “raised us up [together] with Christ and seated us with him” (2:6); “fellow citizens” (2:19); “being built together” (2:22); “heirs together” (3:6); “members together” (3:6); “sharers together” (3:6); “joined and held [knitted] together” (4:16).
[5] P.T. Forsyth, The Soul of Prayer (London: Independent Press, 1954), 78.
[6] George MacDonald, The Curate’s Awakening, Michael R. Phillips, ed. (Minneapolis, Minnesota: Baker House Publishers, 1985), 176
[7] Quoted in Amy Sherman, Kingdom Calling: Vocational Stewardship for the Common Good (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2011), 238.
[8] William Tyndale, "A Parable of the Wicked Mammon," (1527) in Treatises and Portions of Holy Scripture (Cambridge: Parker Society, 1848), 98, 104.
[9] Quoted in Lee Hardy, The Fabric of This World: Inquiries into Calling, Career Choice, and the Design of Human Work (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1990), i.
[10] Martin Luther, “Exposition of Psalm 147,” quoted in “Martin Luther on the Masks of God,” by J. D. Grear, http://www.jdgreear.com/my_weblog/2013/08/martin-luther-on-gods-masks.html (accessed Jan. 27, 2016).
[11] Martin Luther, Luther’s Works. American Edition, 55 Vols., eds. Pelikan and Lehman (St. Louis and Philadelphika: Concordia and Fortress, 1955ff), 36:78.
[12] The three I note are prostitution, someone who practices manipulating the spirit world, and an extortioner.
[13] See a recent volume in which orthodoxy, orthopathy and orthopthy are developed. Charles R. Ringma, In the Midst of Much-Doing: Cultivating a Missional Spirituality (Carlisle, Cumbria, UK: Langham Global Library, 2023), 220-4
[14] Isaiah 42:1-9; 49:1-7; 50:4-9; 52:13-53:12.
[15] In Job 9:32 Job complains that God is “not a mere mortal like me that I might answer him;” in Job 16:19-21 he affirms that he has a lawyer in heaven, an “advocate,” “witness” and “intercessor” who will plead his case with God; in Job 19:25-7 Job maintains that he has a relative in heaven, a redeemer, who will declare him free and righteous, and that he will “see God” in the flesh.
[16] William Perkins A Golden Chain (1592), in I. Breward (ed.), The Courtenay Library of Reformation Classics. III. The Work of William Perkins (Appleford, UK: The Sutton Courtenay Press, 1970), 177 (169-259).
[17] Forsyth, The Soul of Prayer, 78.
