Specifically, while we've been reflecting upon Jesus as "the Way" and Christian community as "Followers of the Way," we should pause to make a comment about orthodoxy and orthopraxy.
I don't know if this is completely true, but I have a suspicion that the creedal debates that characterized the first three to four centuries of the church, the constant concerns over heresy, tipped Christianity toward an overemphasis upon orthodoxy, the espousal of "right belief." To be sure, theology matters. I'm not suggesting otherwise. But when faith is reduced to assent to metaphysical propositions, something vital is lost.
One of those things is the rabbinic context of the Gospels, where followers of Jesus were just that, followers of a rabbi. Jesus didn't present himself as a metaphysician, theologian, or a philosopher. Instead, Jesus set before the world a way to follow, a life to emulate. Following in this way is the mark of a disciple.
The word to describe all this is orthopraxy, the "right practice" of the faith. And for many Christians, due to our bias toward orthodoxy, this is a foreign, exotic notion, the idea of "practicing Christianity." Along with the related notion of a "skilled Christianity." Any yet, if Jesus is "the Way," the Dao become visible in human history, then the life of faith can be viewed as a practice. There is believing in Jesus, and there is following Jesus. There is believing in Christianity, and there is practicing Christianity. There is a propositional Christianity, and there is a Daoist Christianity.
There is orthodoxy, and there is orthopraxy. There is belief, and there is also the Way.
