by So it’s nearly midnight, so I need to get something up if I’m going to get 30 consecutive days.
The Triple O Again
Orthodoxy, orthopraxy and orthopathy. This has been my regular thought for weeks now. Like I said in my post yesterday I’ve been ruminating on the pathy part. Right passion or right feelings.
Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind and soul.
Love your neighbor as yourself
Love one another as I have loved you
Our culture, the world we live in here in the United States is one of self gratification. During lunch at a restaurant with my wife we overheard a conversation between two ladies who were obviously rather well to do. One was complaining that all he husband does during a vacation is drink. The other told her she needed to find her own “happy place”. It was the saddest conversation to listen to. Lives lived chasing happiness through material things.
There was an obvious lack of love all around. Well, not exactly. There was a love of vacations, material possessions and personal happy places. I wanted to cry. It was so ostentatious and yet so sad. There didn’t seem to be any real love between anybody involved.
I dare say everyone has either heard a conversation or been in one ourselves like it.
“God is Love” we read in the book of John. The summary of the law, the first two quotes above are about love. Jesus’s final command is about love. Paul says “Do everything in Love.”
Other focused. Talk about counter cultural. How does one really live like that? Where do we look for clues?
Jesus lived that life. Jesus lived that Love.
But we can’t do it on our own. Only by, with and through Christ Jesus. By embracing His Love for us are we able to Love others as we should Love them, which is how Jesus loves us.
Now I realize that the practice and the passion (orthopraxy and orthopathy) are tied up together there. But we are body and soul, we are incarnated beings. And therein lies the rub, to quote Hamlet.
They are not separate things. Orthodoxy informs the orthopraxy which produces the orthopathy which feeds the orthopraxy more energy to keep receiving more orthodoxy. Whew.
Practice and passion are tied up in a intricate Tango. Tear them apart and the beauty is gone. Examine them separately and they’re ethereal, lofty ideas that seem unattainable. But put them together and they dance with beauty and grace. Sublime passion and perfect practice. Dance Christian, dance.
Soli Deo Gloria
Amateur Anglican 
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