Feeling Liberal while staying Conservative

I feel very liberal these days.  Not theologically of course, but in practice.  For the orthodox Christian, that may sound like complete nonsense, since “orthodoxy leads to orthopraxy,” meaning right doctrine translates into right practice.  But I have to say that after graduating and walking into the so called “real world.”  Life has taken an interesting turn.  In the past, I used to think orthopraxy meant pursuing an active bent towards making all and every opportunity openly serve the purposes of evangelism or edification.   But strangely enough I found that that approach alienated people, not just non-believers but believers too.  Rather than closing the gap and helping people get closer to God, it widened it, and gave them a distaste for Christianity, which was the exact opposite of what I wanted to achieve.

In these last three years, things have really changed.  I have learned more and more to be gracious with doctrine, pushing forward the results of doctrine such as love, honesty, humility and so forth, while allowing doctrine itself to be a silent friend standing beside me. Present but never outspoken.

This is not to say that I have by any means stepped away from orthopraxy. Rather it is a discovery of what orthopraxy means.  How do you rightly translate good, sound doctrine into good, sound practice.  Well, it is not by doctrinal diatribes or conversion-driven friendships.  Nothing in Christianity is that formulaic.  Rather, the way right doctrine looks when it correctly proliferates the heart, is by the strong presence of God displayed in a life of God-ward humility.  I keep thinking of all the men I admire, and love who lead and serve the local churches I have attended.  What draws me to them is not simply their passion for teaching and preaching the Word or their active ministries with people, but rather the strong and silent presence of something wholey beyond, that emanates from their life as a whole.  Never arrogant, never proud, but always true and mysteriously inspiring. It is as though in studying and meditating on the Holy Word they have found numerous windows into the infinite depths of God, which when opened with appropriate understanding pour out onto the people they interact with.

The reason why I never was able to be like this in the past was because I was result-driven.  I wanted people in the church to grow, and I wanted people outside of the church to convert.  And for myself, I wanted to become able enough with the Word to have in impact in both of those areas.  Now nothing was wrong with any of those desires.  What was wrong was that I never thought about the things that work beneath the surface of achieving those results.  You see, the Gospel has a heart, which aches and yearns with unspeakable pain and hope for the lost to be saved.  And not only the Gospel, every other line of doctrine.  But when you cut the vein that connects the heart from the message, you sever to a degree the power of that doctrine.    And what you get is a weak and cold presentation of what was supposed to be powerful and vibrant .  In other words, the presence of God in all his mighty character, gets shortchanged.

I am not a man of God, not humble, not holy.  But I pray with all my might that I may someday learn to speak truth with grace.  That people might walk away from doctrinal discussions not feeling like they just won or lost an argument, but instead, even if it was just for a moment, felt the wild throb of a divine heart.  I am feeling very liberal these days because I have suddenly stopped caring so much whether people are stepping outside of the lines of what is okay.  Sin is sin, not because you stepped over a line, but because somewhere in that decision, you rejected the heart of God.

I am a Christian, trying to be liberal when dealing with people out of a conservative theological framework.  And that is my latest step in learning to speak truth with grace.