I had a good chat on Thursday with a couple Jehovah’s Witnesses that came to my door. Before they got into their pitch too much, I shocked them by telling them that I agreed with where they were coming from (that things took a bad turn in the 4th century when the Roman State and the Church became intertwined. The difference between them and myself, I explained, was that they throw out the baby with the bathwater. Many evangelicals today have an anabaptist edge–feeling that the Constantinian turn was a mistake and that the collapse of Christendom is a relatively good thing. But we are orthodox; yet Jehovah’s Witnesses are not. They are heretical anabaptists. I am sympathetic to where they are coming from, but they just went too far.

We had a great conversation–something that is hard to have with a JW, since they are trained not to get into discussions–about what is wrong with the church today. I resonated with what the senior JW (the one training the college aged student who accompanied him) had to say. He had a firm grasp of the perils of trying to forge an alliance between the church and the American Way.

I am passionately Orthodox. I am jazzed about the doctrine of the Trinity, the Virgin Birth, etc., but something in me has to wonder…which is worse: to be, like this JW fellow, a heretic with a Kingdom mindset, or a horribly stereotypical sort of Christian–who is greedy, self-absorbed, consumeristic, and lacking in love, yet who still affirms the creed?

Don’t get me wrong. Orthodoxy is incredibly important. But there are more important things than Orthodoxy.

About Mark Van Steenwyk

Mark Van Steenwyk is a member of Missio Dei. He is a speaker, writer, educator, and grassroots organizer. With the support of the Central Plains Mennonite Conference, he travels to radical and intentional communities around the country to help network and offer support.