The Iron Shoes of Orthodoxy

The Iron Shoes of Orthodoxy have been worn now for most of a lifetime.  In the beginning it was an easy fit.  Growing up in South Georgia as a preacher's kid who never missed anything the church offered on Sunday made it easy to hear what I was supposed to believe.  My remembrances of those days of coming to faith include things like revivals, camp meetings, retreats, and camps.  Going away to college gave me a first taste of hearing questions I had never thought to ask and figuring that if faith was of any value, it had to be mine and not theirs.   

Even in the search which filled those years, the way was paved with thinking and expressions not really so different from all that was in the past.  When college was history and seminary took its place in the past, I wandered into the parish as a pastor and preacher wearing The Shoes of Orthodoxy.  I found them and put them on again.  They still seemed to fit and they provided protection from the rough theological places out there in the world where I was walking.   

Lately, as I walk the road that has unfolded in this season of retirement, the fit seems a bit constraining.  They still look like they could go a long way up the road, but they are feeling too tight.  Taking them off is a frightening thing.  I am not really sure what bumps and rough spots might be ahead, but I have sat down now a time or two and pondered taking them off and walking barefoot across what seems like hard  and unyielding ground that will likely leave me with bloody feet.