Cradled in His loving arms

Fra Angelico, Christ's Descent into hades

When we look at humanity in the bulk—or the human being standing next to us in the fine—through the prism of religion, and consider the case for salvation for them—or for him—we can say things like ‘They’ll only go to heaven if they meet and accept Jesus Christ as their personal Lord and Savior.’ We then adjust our distance from them—or from him—according to where we see ourselves standing.
It goes without saying, that we are saved.

We can be even more specific and add layers of stipulations that we apply to ourselves and know for certain to be true, thereby paring down even more the length of the queue to the heavenly gates. ‘Welcome to the all new City of God: Christians only need apply,’ or maybe ‘Born-Again only need apply,’ or even ‘Spirit-Filled only need apply.’ Not many Catholics exclude Protestants these days, though the favor isn’t always reciprocated.

I don’t know if it’s historical, but I liked what I heard Martin Luther say in his theology class in the film Luther, that in 1215 according to the Fourth Lateran Council, ‘Salvation may exist outside the Church, but not outside of Christ.’ As an Orthodox Christian, this reminds me of something I’ve heard in my community: ‘We know where the Church is; we don’t always know where it is not.’ Both sayings hint at something Christians don’t often admit.

That is, salvation—whatever else it means, it is the ultimate and permanent good of every individual human life—is only possible through Christ, but, as C. S. Lewis was bold enough to write, we don’t know for certain if only those who know Him are saved by Him. This is not a precursor to accepting the heresy of universal salvationism, that ‘even the demons will be saved,’ but an unhedged, honest reservation of God’s judgment.

Just who is this Jesus? Just what is He? He is the God-man to be sure. He is Israel's Messiah and Righteous King. He is the Savior of the world… Just a minute! Did you say ‘Savior of the world’? What do you mean by that? Are you saying everyone is saved? Well, yes and no. Everyone who wants to be saved will be saved; everyone who wants to be alone, their own Lord, will be—I hate to use the word, but it’s true—damned.

Jesus Christ is not only the Son of Man, the Son of God, but also—as we of the ancient Church confess—He is the Word of God, the Divine Logos, by whom all things were made, and as far as His power to save, He is the ‘Lamb without spot… slain before the foundation of the world.’ He was put to death in His human flesh, and in the spirit He descended into Hades, preaching to—that is, evangelizing—all who ever live, and die.

What? He may have gone down to hell, but He could only have preached to ‘the spirits in prison,’ those who had died from the time of the first man to the last person to have died before He Himself descended. Well, yes and no. That place, She’ol, Hades, whatever you call it, even Hell, is not a burial ground that waits through time until it fills up. It is already full. We have all met death, no matter when in time we live or lived.

For some of us, something that happens or happened to us while we were living on earth has caused an interruption in the process. ‘We shall not all die, but we shall all be changed,’ is how holy apostle Paul puts it. By a choice we think we make—though it was made before we knew ourselves, and not by us, but for us—some of us do not die, are not sent to that place, but bypass it, instead ‘go to heaven,’ to Paradise, like the good thief.

This is not true of all, probably not true of the majority of humanity. This is not because of any stipulations made by any human authority, or by authorities claiming to speak for God, but just because of ‘the way things are.’ The nature of reality, the way God made us and the world, everything we do in time, everything participates in the act of redemption, initiated by the good and loving God, who does not lie, not to Himself or to us.

It is always, and only, an encounter with the living God, however He manifests Himself—and to us He can manifest only as the Divine Logos, the Christ, the only Mediator between God and man—it is only this encounter, and how we respond to Him when we meet Him, that decides whether we ‘go to heaven, or to hell.’ Yes, whatever our response, the result is final and irrevocable, but we all, we all, are given one chance.

How, when, and where this rendezvous takes place, in the end has no significance, just as we are not saved by works, by anything we do to make ourselves acceptable to what we think God is, only by grace.
All choice is His, from first to last, yet our wills are cradled in His loving arms, the arms of Him who loves us, who wants us for ourselves. Incredible though it seems, there are some who would rather die than live in love, and die they do.

Yahweh Sabaoth, bring us back,
let Your face smile on us and we shall be safe.
Psalm 80

Grace

A baby is born. If all goes well, it is born with no serious danger to mother or child. Though we know what pains the mother endures in giving birth, no one has yet told us of the labor of being born. No one remembers, unless they are hints of it, those odd, terrifying dreams we sometimes are plagued with as children, of darkness, of our extreme smallness, of the threatening largeness of our room, of the strange terror of seeing light through our slightly open nursery door, those strange dreams that bridge our sleeping and our waking.

A baby being born, first the head emerges, again, if all is as it should be, with foamy hair and then suddenly, there is an absolute urgency for the rest of the body to follow. Everyone is tense, and the labor of birth is one that cannot be stopped, it must press on till completion—Push!—till the babe is out. There is the struggle for air, to clear the passages of fluid so the little creature can draw in its first breath, and exhale it as a cry. When it does, everyone exhales too a massive sigh of relief, and then the cord must be clamped and cut. For a moment all attention has focused on the child, but very quickly returns to the mother. The midwives attend her and the child, for it seems both are totally helpless.

This is how it is with us. We come into the world unasked but welcomed as Job says, “Why were there knees to receive me and breasts that I might be nursed?” (3:12). We come into the world totally helpless. Everything must be done for us. Not only do we not know where we are, but we cannot even see clearly. If we see at all, what is that sensation? What are those movements in that brightness, those shapes what are they? And now, what is that vibration? It’s different from the smooth, dark and rumbling sounds we thought were our world. Then something pops, and we hear the new sounds even more loudly and clearly. But where are we? What are we? Totally helpless.

Being born is not much different than being born again, that is, from above, as Jesus tells us, “unless a man is born from above, he cannot see the kingdom of God” (John 3:3). He is just as helpless to do anything for himself as that newborn babe. Everything has to be done for him. Everything is pure gift, even the fact of his birth is pure gift, and all is due to a sacrifice that he is totally unaware of, by a being, his mother, whom he doesn’t even know yet, but begins to know, as his lips feel her soft nipples nudging his unknowing mouth. This is how it is with us in being born again. Everything is gift, all is grace and love and generosity, and we little know at first, and even for long afterwards, how great the sacrifice was offered on our behalf. But we feel the Spirit nudging us, coaxing us to feed and, in feeding on the pure milk of the Word, to drink, be filled, and grow.

We are totally helpless in our new birth. Who can deny that all is grace, that everything offered to us has been given for free, that Someone chose us to be born, not we ourselves? And how can we overlook this miracle? And why would we want to? We all have been born into the most beautiful of all worlds, even though the devil’s envy has defiled it with the spectre of physical death. We all can be born again into a world even more beautiful, that cannot be deformed by the destroyer of souls, because he cannot even see it.

Totally helpless in our birth, we grow by love into the image of our earthly parents and our heavenly Father, until we too conceive, and bear, and love, all for free, until our lives become grace itself.

Indeed, from His fullness we have, all of us, received—
yes, grace in return for grace,
since, though the Law was given through Moses,
grace and truth have come through Jesus Christ.
John 1:16-17

The end of myth

From the creation of the world to the birthing of a child, from the work of fire transforming wood into ash to the alternation of day and night, from considering all appearances and all disappearances, the mind of man from unwritten times till now has evolved explanations of how and often why everything happens in the world around him.

Modern man puts on an air of superiority and treats with patronizing indulgence, and often overt contempt, the cosmologies and the pseudo-sciences of ancient and primitive men. The world tree, the cosmic egg, mythic images for the unenlightened to help them feel less afraid in a universe which, when they confront it without them, is too terrifying.

So the mind of man thinks, and his thought fits everything he sees, hears, tastes, smells and touches into a complex, ever-increasing pattern of perceived relationships that gives meaning to the universe. The more primitive the tools of analysis at his disposal, the more primitive (we think) his body of explanations, and we call them ‘myths’.

But as I see it, having better analytical devices, having what we call a scientific basis for interpreting and understanding the world around us does not deliver our thought from one intrinsic and inevitable characteristic: Everything we analyse, and our very conclusions and body of knowledge, we are still cutting down to fit into a very limited frame, our mind.

Our thought, with all our sophistications, even now still has the nature of myth, no less than what we consider the childish fancies of the ancients and the primitives. We all still deal in myths, man’s explanation—from miniscule observations—of the meaning, purpose and nature of the universe. We simply replace the older anthropomorphics with new, ‘new lamps for old.’

So then, human thought itself is a myth, that is, in the sense that it is a generator of explanations of what is inexplicable. Religion, then, becomes no less rational than science, and science is no more than a religion. Experimental evidence is still siphoned through a conduit too narrow for it, and so experiments, whether scientific or magical, lead to the same conclusion: the universe as a subset of man’s mind.

But along comes a Man, from all appearances at first, an ordinary man, not prominent, not wealthy, not intellectually trained, from a primitive people, living in an ancient and tradition encrusted culture, one of those less attractive to most moderns and even to most of His contemporaries, the road-building Romans and the philosophical Greeks.

He is trained in the family profession, woodworking, and in the national religion, synagogue Judaism. He has very little to make anyone think Him special, except an incident in His adolescence, when He was found engrossed with some members of the educated elite in prodigious discussions (and then whisked quietly away by his embarrassed parents).

Surprising them all, and us as well, this boy in the fullness of His manhood becomes an itinerant preacher (though not of His ancestral religion) and even a miracle-worker. Oddly enough, though He seems quite capable of it, He does not waste a thought to giving answers to most of the questions that His contemporaries, and us, have about the universe.

He passes them over in silence. He does not contribute to the growing body of myth that we now hold up as our claim to be rational beings. Instead, when He teaches at all, it is on practical matters, and even His miracle-working, from supplying a shortage of wine at a wedding party, to healing the sick and (gulp!) raising the dead, is all very practical. Myth has no place in Him.

If this man lived, taught, worked wonders, and passed into history, we might have thought Him a great teacher, perhaps, or at least someone worth studying, analyzing, writing books about, and adding to our ever-increasing matrix of myths, but not only did He not contribute to the myth, He shattered it. He is an embarrassment now, as He was then, to the myth-makers.

He gives us plenty to think about, but that is not His intention. He did not come to increase our thought but to coax us over the imaginary lines that our thought produces in us. He comes now not to refine our thought, which is no more than myth, but to call forth our faith, which paradoxically carries us over imaginary lines and delivers us from myth.

If we could show the location of His tomb, or better yet, find His bones, then the universe would still be safe inside the reliquary of our science and religion. We could still say with confidence that we know the universe to be rational, and this is how it works, from greatest to smallest detail. Yes, and there are the bones of the great Teacher. We have an explanation even of Him.

But no, He has not left us that option, He has not spared our thought or our myths, He has not deposited His soul in She’ol or His bones in a grave, He has not experienced corruption, but instead He has emptied Hades of its inhabitants, dissolved the imbecility of dark, partial human reason in the bright lightning flash of His divinity.
He has made the end of myth.

Dying and reviving gods

The theme of death and resurrection is a common one in the religions of mankind, starting from the earliest ages. The Egyptian Osiris, the Akkadian Tammuz, the Greek Adonis, and yes, according to Wikipedia, the Christian Jesus. All of these are listed, and many more, under headings of mythology, yes, even under Christian mythology. You can’t blame Wikipedia; they have to stay objective.

What all of these deities, except Jesus, have in common is that they are all in some special way related to the annual cycles of vegetation. Even the Canaanite god Baal is a dying and reviving god. Fraser’s The Golden Bough has taken us on an imaginative, guided tour of many of these deities, and C. S. Lewis has easily debunked the lumping of Jesus into this group of vegetation myths in his writings, and I have nothing to add to either of these.

What I have been thinking of is the effect of these dying and reviving gods on their worshippers. We have little to go on except the historical record of some of their rites, but not much on what, if any, was the moral effect they had. This is where, I think, there is a big difference between Jesus Christ, the only historical figure known to have been executed and resurrected, and all these other gods.

The resurrection of Jesus Christ, even if the world does not accept its reality, has an effect on His followers that is consistent and can be documented from the earliest times until now. In fact, one does not have to be a scholar to research this effect: it is open to anyone who dares to follow Jesus, not just study Him.

Everyone who has followed Jesus has had this experience: There is always something in them which they cannot at any cost keep and still follow Jesus. For some it is a specific experience they desire, something they want to be, or have or do, which they cannot be, have or do and still, in good conscience, claim to follow the Master. Why is this?

Because Jesus is the Word of God, the only Teacher of mankind, and there is a book, the Holy Bible, the only divinely revealed scriptures ever given to humanity, which claims to be the written image of Who He is. Jesus said to His disciples, “If you have seen Me, you have seen the Father.” Christians have something from Jesus that the devotees of the dying and reviving gods did not have, divinely revealed scriptures, the Hebrew Old Testament, and the Greek New. These two scriptures mean endless trouble for those who want to keep living in the ordinary human way and still try to please God. In fact, they say it’s impossible.

And so, that’s the predicament we find ourselves in, with Jesus.
This is why the only true dying and reviving deity is paradoxically called the Living One, the one who was dead but is alive, while His remedy for His disciples’ dis-ease is, in fact, Death.

Though He was Himself God, He humbled Himself, hiding His glory (as do many of the pagan gods in the myths when they come down to man), assumed the condition of a slave (this none of the pagan gods was able to do), and became as all men are, experiencing with us and for us all that it means to be a human being, including physical death. Somehow, His work for us has achieved what man could not do on his own: He reopened for us the gates of Paradise, and gave us access to the Tree of Life which, it turns out, was the very Tree on which He was suspended between heaven and earth.

But back to us, we cannot have things the way we want and still follow Him on the path He led the repentant thief, the path to Paradise.

Religion would make rules for us, forbidding this and that, and give us methods of self-denial that, if followed religiously, would somehow make us worthy of the Garden, but the makers of religion hide from us and from themselves the certain truth of Christ’s own words, that if we want to live, we must die. Back we are to acknowledging that there are some things we cannot take with us when we follow Jesus into Life, and among those things there will always be at least one that we know we cannot live without. Hence, we must die.

Dying and reviving gods, before Jesus, there were none in reality: all were but myths, mankind’s dreaming of heaven.

Dying and reviving gods, after Jesus, literally following Jesus, there have been, are and will be many: these are they who, laying down their lives for love of Him, follow the Lamb wherever He goes and, like Him, dying they live forever.

The faith that sings

It seems difficult to enter into discussion with someone who, by the very slips they display in their challenges, demonstrates at the outset an irrational prejudice against things that are patently undemonstrable or arguable on the basis of discussion at all. Orthodox simply do not 'adore' ikons. To even pose such a inquiry begs the question and supplies its own answer.

Archimandrite Vasileios says something to the effect that dogma cannot be understood outside of worship. The same thing, in my experience, can be asserted of holy and divine scripture. Sitting somewhere and studying the bible can lead us to one set of conclusions, experiencing it in worship leads us to sometimes a very different set, sometimes diametrically opposed.

The question then becomes, what is the Bible after all? Is it a book that fell from heaven infallible and ready to be implemented as the rule of a spiritual police state, as the Muslims believe of the Qur'an? Or is it something quite unexpected and different, a verbal mirror reflecting a living God whose will was to become the Man He always wanted us to be?

If it is a kind of mirror, it shows us ourselves as we are, and Him as He is, and bridges the gap between in such a way that migration from death to life becomes a possibility. Then, we realise that it is not meant for us to analyse the reflective surface of the mirror, which is what it is only so that we can become what He is by seeing Him and following His movements reflected in it.

History shows that the Church has understood since the beginning that the scriptures are without doubt the expression of God’s infallible word, paradoxically eternal and before the Church and yet temporal and within the Church, never over it, but rather the ground which supports it and on which it is being built, and a fertile soil for the fruition and harvest of souls.

The argument against the Orthodox faith and church, waged both on a personal and on an institutional basis, is undercut by the testimony of the fruit that the argument has itself produced, not very good fruit, and by the kind of tree that it has proven itself to be. A very old tree that still produces much good fruit is not likely to be cut down in favor of a young tree whose fruit fails to ripen.

Reality, scientific but even spiritual reality, does not yield itself easily to quantification. Not everything perfect can be reduced to numbers and counted. Reality is not about structure but about relationship. A circle exists, and not three of its diameters make its circumference, but the relationship can be expressed only by π, a constant, though not a number as man thinks it.

All divine things exist and operate in a frame of reference that cannot be encompassed by the human mind. The mistake of proud man is to take ownership of, and responsibility for, what is beyond him in every way, seeking to bend it to fit his expectations. So doing, we kill what is alive, not realizing either what true life is, or that Life has come to pitch His tent among us.

This is the dividing line between religion, whether Christian or non-Christian, and the encounter with Him Who Is. Whether we start out with reams of rules or pages of pictures, neither is complete until we discover that neither was the Truth until both were taken in His hands, transformed by His touch, and given back to us breathing the fragrance of His myrrh-bathed wounds.

Sadly, the Bible’s reputed defenders worship what cannot be worshipped, as they decry us who worship only the Divine Nature, God in Three Persons, for whose love our hearts lean in veneration of all that pertains to Him, even each other, following the only divine commandment: Love one another as I have loved you. A greater love has no man than this, to lay down his life for his friends.

That is the faith that sings.

On discernment and fanaticism

Brothers, as you know, if you know me well, there is nothing good about me or anything good that I have, that I did not receive from someone else. From the Lord (to Him alone be praise!) I have received my being, and from the saints (may God glorify them!) I have received sound teaching and good example. Not without reason are we admonished to remember who our teachers were: They were the prophets, the apostles, the holy elders, the saints, everyone who lived in God and for Him without reserve, in spite of themselves, just as we are trying to do, those of past ages, those recently received into rest, those alive with us today, sharing the same Bread, bearing the same Cross. One of these, elder Païsios of Mount Athos, is my personal example: I want to live like he did, because He followed Christ. I receive willingly his words and his example, and these I also hand over to you with my recommendation: his words are true.

On discernment and fanaticism

A Christian must not be fanatic; he must have love for and be sensitive towards all people. Those who inconsiderately toss out comments, even if they are true, can cause harm.

I once met a theologian who was extremely pious, but who had the habit of speaking to the (secular) people around him in a very blunt manner; his method penetrated so deeply that it shook them very severely. He told me once: ‘During a gathering, I said such and such a thing to a lady.’ But the way that he said it, crushed her. ‘Look,’ I said to him, ‘you may be tossing golden crowns studded with diamonds to other people, but the way that you throw them can smash heads, not only the sensitive ones, but the sound ones also.’
Let’s not stone our fellow-man in a so-called ‘Christian manner.’ The person who – in the presence of others – checks someone for having sinned (or speaks in an impassioned manner about a certain person), is not moved by the Spirit of God; he is moved by another spirit.

The way of the Church is Love; it differs from the way of the legalists. The Church sees everything with tolerance and seeks to help each person, whatever he may have done, however sinful he may be.

I have observed a peculiar kind of logic in certain pious people. Their piety is a good thing, and their predisposition for good is also a good thing; however, a certain spiritual discernment and amplitude is required so that their piety is not accompanied by narrow-mindedness or strong-headedness. Someone who is truly in a spiritual state must possess and exemplify spiritual discernment; otherwise he will forever remain attached to the ‘letter of the Law,’ and the letter of the Law can be quite deadly.

A truly humble person never behaves like a teacher; he will listen, and, whenever his opinion is requested, he responds humbly. In other words, he replies like a student. He who believes that he is capable of correcting others is filled with egotism.

A person that begins to do something with a good intention and eventually reaches an extreme point, lacks true discernment. His actions exemplify a latent type of egotism that is hidden beneath this behavior; he is unaware of it, because he does not know himself that well, which is why he goes to extremes.

— Elder Païsios

“Remember who your teachers were…”
2 Timothy 3:14

Le Mémorial de Pascal

“Remember who your teachers were…”
2 Timothy 3:14

Blaise Pascal (1623-1662), known in his day and ours as a mathematician and scientist, was also a spiritual writer. His Provincial Letters (1656-1657) defended his Jansenist friends at Port-Royal against their Jesuit critics. His Pensées, never finished, and published posthumously in 1670, present Pascal's apologia for the Christian faith, addressed to the intelligent skeptic. This work includes his famous "wager" regarding the existence of God.

Pascal's most intimate religious work is the Memorial. This scrap of paper, which in his own hand writing records Pascal's experience on one unforgettable night in 1654, was found in the lining of his coat after his death, for he carried this reminder about with him always. Here I present the French and Latin original of the Memorial, followed by an English translation.

L'an de grâce 1654,

Lundi, 23 novembre, jour de saint Clément, pape et martyr, et autres au martyrologe.

Veille de saint Chrysogone, martyr, et autres,

Depuis environ dix heures et demie du soir jusques environ minuit
et demi,

FEU.

« DIEU d'Abraham, DIEU d'Isaac, DIEU de Jacob »
non des philosophes et des savants.
Certitude. Certitude. Sentiment. Joie. Paix.
DIEU de Jésus-Christ.
Deum meum et Deum vestrum.
« Ton DIEU sera mon Dieu. »
Oubli du monde et de tout, hormis DIEU.
Il ne se trouve que par les voies enseignées dans l'Évangile.
Grandeur de l'âme humaine.
« Père juste, le monde ne t'a point connu, mais je t'ai connu. »
Joie, joie, joie, pleurs de joie.
Je m'en suis séparé:
Dereliquerunt me fontem aquae vivae.
« Mon Dieu, me quitterez-vous ? »
Que je n'en sois pas séparé éternellement.
« Cette est la vie éternelle, qu'ils te connaissent seul vrai Dieu,
et celui que tu as envoyé, Jésus-Christ. »
Jésus-Christ.
Jésus-Christ.
Je m'en suis séparé; je l'ai fui, renoncé, crucifié.
Que je n'en sois jamais séparé.
Il ne se conserve que par les voies enseignées dans l'Évangile:
Renonciation totale et douce.
Soumission totale à Jésus-Christ et à mon directeur.
Éternellement en joie pour un jour d'exercice sur la terre.
Non obliviscar sermones tuos. Amen.

The year of grace 1654,

Monday, 23 November, feast of St. Clement, pope and martyr,
and others in the martyrology.
Vigil of St. Chrysogonus, martyr, and others.
From about half past ten at night until about half past midnight,

FIRE.

GOD of Abraham, GOD of Isaac, GOD of Jacob
not of the philosophers and of the learned.
Certitude. Certitude. Feeling. Joy. Peace.
GOD of Jesus Christ.
My God and your God.
Your GOD will be my God.
Forgetfulness of the world and of everything, except GOD.
He is only found by the ways taught in the Gospel.
Grandeur of the human soul.
Righteous Father, the world has not known you, but I have known you.
Joy, joy, joy, tears of joy.
I have departed from him:
They have forsaken me, the fount of living water.
My God, will you leave me?
Let me not be separated from him forever.
This is eternal life, that they know you, the one true God,
and the one that you sent, Jesus Christ.
Jesus Christ.
Jesus Christ.
I left him; I fled him, renounced, crucified.
Let me never be separated from him.
He is only kept securely by the ways taught in the Gospel:
Renunciation, total and sweet.
Complete submission to Jesus Christ and to my director.
Eternally in joy for a day's exercise on the earth.
May I not forget your words. Amen.

Blaise Pascal lived for only thirty-nine years.
May his memory be eternal.

No suspect witnesses

Something that Blaise Pascal wrote, which can be found in his Pensées, as fragment 592, has always intrigued me…

If the Jews had all been converted by Christ we should only have suspect witnesses left. And if they had been wiped out we should have had none at all.

Pascal's book is also a treasure trove of Christian understanding of the Jews, and not very well known. That is one of the reasons I love Pascal so much: he was not afraid to look the Truth in the face, even when it might seem to go against current thinking inside the Church, or out of it.

If all Israel had been converted, why would they have been suspect witnesses? Could it be because they only supported Christ because He is their Messiah? That would mean they were confirmed in the unique truth of their faith, that their eternal King had come among them, and by accepting Him, they were now, indeed, lords of the earth. Where would that leave the nations? At worst, as enemies to be vanquished and exterminated, at best, as mere servants and slaves of the Chosen People.

But by rejecting Christ for who He was, their witness is not suspect. They rejected their own flesh and blood, making themselves martyrs for twenty centuries of the unique truth of their faith, which the eternal King had come to fulfill, but not only for them, but for the whole world. Otherwise the prophecies of the conversion of the nations would never have come to pass. Conversion, not conquest. Conversion, not subjugation. Conversion, not annihilation. ‘For God so loved the world…’

What Pascal writes is drawn from his intimate knowledge of holy and divine scripture, secreted to him by the Holy Spirit, taught him by the Master he followed so closely. Yes, confirming—though it needs no confirmation if you just see what is before you—what the holy apostle himself writes, ‘Since their rejection meant the reconciliation of the world, do you know what their admission will mean? Nothing less than a resurrection from the dead!’ (Romans 11:15)

Pray, brethren, for our brothers, the people of Israel.
Pray, people of Israel, for your brethren, ‘those who fear the Lord.’

The cost of indifference

Thinking again about this ‘godless’ campaign, ‘Consider Humanism,’ on the part of a group that calls itself the American Humanist Association to propagate their opinions as mainstream while denigrating the Judaeo-Christian ethos, I picked up a little book that is always at hand, Pensées by Blaise Pascal. Whenever I think of humanism, I think of Pascal, for not only was he a prodigious mathematician, physicist, inventor and writer, but he was also an outstanding example of a Christian humanist. Yes, there was and is such a thing, and I certainly hope that I am one. I try to be.

Where I opened Pensées at random and started reading was a passage that represented the thought process of a man indifferent to God, and what Pascal had to say about him. This is Pascal at his densest—what I mean is, it's hard to read him because he says more than the words say on the surface, and it's all so true. He doesn't quote scripture in this passage, which is unusual, as his Pensées is a treasure trove of biblical texts and rambling thoughts about them, but a true disciple of Jesus he was, and he was found at his death to have been carrying his handwritten testimony of his saving encounter with Christ sewn into the lining of the jacket he always wore.
I can relate to that.

Here is the passage, which I would call, The cost of indifference.
People haven't changed much in three hundred years.
Do you know anyone who could be saying this today? I do.

‘I do not know who put me in the world, nor what the world is, nor what I am myself. I am terribly ignorant about everything.

‘I do not know what my body is, or my senses, or my soul, or even that part of me which thinks what I am saying, which reflects about everything, and about itself, and does not know itself any better than it knows anything else.

‘I see the terrifying spaces of the universe hemming me in, and I find myself attached to one corner of this vast expanse without knowing why I have been put in this place rather than that, or why the brief span of life allotted to me should be assigned to one moment rather than another of all the eternity which went before me and all that which will come after me.

‘I see only infinity on every side, hemming me in like an atom or like the shadow of a fleeting instant. All I know is that I must soon die, but what I know least about is this very death which I cannot evade.

‘Just as I do not know whence I come, so I do not know whither I am going. All I know is that when I leave this world I shall fall for ever into nothingness or into the hands of a wrathful God, but I do not know which of these two states is to be my eternal lot.
Such is my state, full of weakness and uncertainty.

‘And my conclusion from all this is that I must pass my days without a thought of seeking what is to happen to me.

‘Perhaps I might find some enlightenment in my doubts, but I do not want to take the trouble, nor take a step to look for it:
And afterwards, as I sneer at those who are striving to this end—whatever certainty they have should arouse despair rather than vanity—I will go without fear or foresight to face so momentous an event, and allow myself to be carried off limply to my death, uncertain of my future state for all eternity.’

Who would wish to have as a friend a man who argued like that?
Who would choose him from among others as a confidant in his affairs?
Who would resort to him in adversity?
To what use in life could he possibly be turned?

It is truly glorious for religion to have such unreasonable men as enemies:
Their opposition represents so small a danger that it serves on the contrary to establish the truths of religion.

For the Christian faith consists almost wholly in establishing these two things:
The corruption of nature and the redemption of Christ.

Now, I maintain that, if they do not serve to prove the truth of the redemption by the sanctity of their conduct, they do at least admirably serve to prove the corruption of nature by such unnatural sentiments.

Nothing is so important to man as his state: nothing more fearful than eternity.
Thus the fact that there exist men who are indifferent to the loss of their being and the peril of an eternity of wretchedness is against nature.

With everything else they are quite different; they fear the most trifling things, foresee and feel them; and the same man who spends so many days and nights in fury and despair at losing some office or at some imaginary affront to his honor is the very one who knows that he is going to lose everything through death but feels no anxiety nor emotion.

It is a monstrous thing to see one and the same heart at once so sensitive to minor things and so strangely insensitive to the greatest.

Not ashamed of Christ

The following is, in my opinion, one of the best testimonies of a disciple of Jesus Christ that I have ever read, and I am in a hurry to publish it again here, and of course send you back to read it again at its source. If this is what blogs are for, then they're worth every bit of time we spend on them. I am glad I lived another day to read this, and know that Christ is faithful, not just on paper, but in our own flesh. Yes, Jesus Christ saves…

NOT ASHAMED OF CHRIST

It was one of those days. Everything went wrong that could go wrong. In fact, things had been going wrong all week. My mood spiraled downward into self-flagellation. If everything was going wrong, then it must be because there was something wrong with me. That day seemed to symbolize my whole life—conflicted relationships, hardship and struggle, and blockades which held me back from being all that I could be.

Risen from the Past

What was the purpose of my mere existence, my emotional tendencies, and my mental reservoir of events and people? Was it only to cope with and make sense out of all the years behind me? Was it just to go down memory lane and feel sad? Was it only to survive my losses and subsist on what was left? I felt ashamed of myself—of my inadequacies and sins, of the abuses I had suffered, of what could have been but never was. And now it was too late. I could never go back and make it right. Amends were impossible. Goals were improbable. And the day at hand was a burden.

Why had God allowed my life to go down a zig-zaggy path? Yes, why? Had He allowed it? Or was it the result of my own will, or of misguided authorities, or of evil perpetrators? Was it just another muddy puddle of sin in this fallen world, and was the great thing to step out of that mud or to be lifted out and to be liberated onto the straight path? Was it my destiny to see with my own eyes the difference between dark and light by having lived on both sides of the spectrum? Was that my learning curve? Was that the purpose of my life? To be saved from its totality and finality? To be risen through Christ?

Shame and Faithlessness

If the reality of sin as brokenness, the many fragments of which constitute the bulk of my life, serves as an aid to understanding the nature of sin and the gift of salvation, then why should I feel ashamed? Is that not the same as feeling ashamed of Christ, of the Gospel, and of His ability to continue doing marvelous works on earth? If I am lifted from the mud puddle even at the eleventh hour, is that not all the more reason to be grateful and cheerful? Is it not faithless to think that my existence is defined by an embarrassing and disappointing personal past and not by the impact of the Crucifixion upon that past and into the present?

Whoever is ashamed of me and of my words in this faithless and sinful generation, the Son of Man will be ashamed of when he comes in his Father’s glory with the holy angels.
Mark 8:38

On this account I am suffering these things; but I am not ashamed for I know him in whom I have believed and am confident that he is able to guard what has been entrusted to me until that day.
1 Timothy 1:12

Please do not misunderstand me—I am not rationalizing or justifying the commission of sins, nor am I excusing or minimizing the trauma that other people can inflict upon us. I am saying, generally, that life is unfulfilling and unrewarding but that Christ enables us to work out our salvation through these dynamics nonetheless. This is the only thing that makes life worth living. It is a transformational process, and for that we cannot feel ashamed of Christ or of His condescension to our level. He knows how to reach each one of us as individuals.

Suffering with Hope

When I look back over my life, I have all the evidence I need that a spiritual life is better than a worldly life. Moreover, a life of misfortune and uncertainty is better than a life of resignation and conformity. It seems that the stuff with which Christ could work, the stuff of which I am ashamed, is what permits me to experience transformation and to know the difference between dark and light. Only sinners need to be saved. Only the sick need a physician. I never want to go back to the darkness of my former suffering. If I am to suffer, then let me suffer for Christ as His disciple. Let it be a suffering with hope that I will be found worthy, though unworthy, on that final day.

My comment to the author…

This piece of writing, this testimony, is perfect. I mean it. It is perfect. I am not saying you are perfect in the way that most people understand the word. Nor am I perfect. But your self-expression is perfect. God has granted you His great mercy to 'tell it as it is' with a clarity and honesty that He endorses with incredible power. At this depth the darkness has been transformed to light, a light that can now be shared, to help light the way for others who have fallen or tunneled deep, but not yet deep enough. They who read your words, as well as I, can truly take heart, because you make us know by your words that we are not alone there. You are there, and Christ is there, and soon we will all have arrived at this place where we know for sure, the tombs have been opened and are emptied of their dead. The darkness and cold chill of that hour before the sun rises was worth enduring, because out of the sea of darkness the sun rises as faithfully and predictably as we have been told. This is no accident, that sun rises, and Son resurrects, both utterly and predictably certain. The prophets did not lie, the saints do not fib, our own pains and sorrows, even our very bodies of sin and death, were really only just seeds whose purpose was to be buried, planted so they could sprout and grow into the light, producing at last ears in plenty, sixty- or a hundred-fold. Everything the religious believe is true, and all they or we ever need to do is to admit our brokenness, turn ourselves in to the Healer, and be still. His therapy takes time, but that is what time is for. Biological life was made for death, but death for resurrection. Matter was only the embryo of spirit, and spirit only the Spirit scaled down to meet us. Our blindness was a blessing that resulted in sight, and sight itself only the vehicle of our transformation: to see Him is to be transfigured into Him.

Yes, Sister, this piece of writing, this testimony, is perfect.

Apostles

It is true that some preach Christ out of envy and rivalry, but others out of goodwill. The latter do so out of love, knowing that I am put here for the defense of the gospel. The former preach Christ out of selfish ambition, not sincerely, supposing that they can stir up trouble for me while I am in chains. But what does it matter? The important thing is that in every way, whether from false motives or true, Christ is preached. 
And because of this I rejoice.
Philippians 1:15-18

What a strange thing for holy apostle Paul to say! How much stranger that even in the first generation of disciples the spirit of dysangelical competition arises, at a time when there are many still alive whose testimony includes knowing Jesus Christ ‘in the flesh.’ This is before the Church had taken on an institutional form. Even ‘imperial church’ is centuries in the future. Human nature, somehow tricked into the sin of betraying one’s teachers instead of remembering them (cf. 2 Timothy 3:14), asserts itself from the very start. Yet Paul, a genuine apostle, ‘called to be’ what he is, says he rejoices, because ‘Christ is preached,’ no matter what the motivation.

Such incredible faith! He doesn’t stop to fill our ears with recrimination. He doesn’t tell us who is teaching what false doctrine or compare ideologies of salvation. He knows that the Message will get through to those who are looking for it, even if the delivery is ‘from false motives or true.’ The seeds of factionalism sown by the enemy of mankind are always taking root in hearts full of envy and rivalry which, despite their flowering piety and religious fragrance, bear hateful fruit, hidden under biblical foliage. It is a dreadful fruit of judgment that is offered, though it seem ‘good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom’
(Genesis 3:6).

Since, then, we know what it is to fear the Lord, we try to persuade others. What we are is plain to God, and I hope it is also plain to your conscience. We are not trying to commend ourselves to you again, but are giving you an opportunity to take pride in us, so that you can answer those who take pride in what is seen rather than in what is in the heart. If we are ‘out of our mind,’ as some say, it is for God; if we are in our right mind, it is for you. For Christ’s love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died. And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again. 

So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. 

We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God. God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
2 Corinthians 5:11-21

What is lacking in those who take it upon themselves to deceive and be deceived regarding divine things is, as the apostles writes, ‘to fear the Lord’—in modern terms, what we mean by ‘awe’—and that permits them to erect religious prisons in which they bind themselves and others. They may call their creations ‘ministries’ or ‘societies.’ They may paper their walls with Hebrew and Greek to affect an air of antiquity and authority, but they ‘take pride in what is seen rather than in what is in the heart,’ and so betray not only their teachers, who themselves are only disciples, but the Teacher Himself.

Like the apostle before he meets the Lord on the Damascus road, they ‘live for themselves’ while persecuting the believers. As Paul is struck blind by the One whom he is, in fact, persecuting, they regard not only Christ, but the faith, and everyone to whom they preach ‘from a worldly point of view.’ Being thus blinded, even speaking the words of holy and divine scripture, they worship the words they speak, not realizing that ‘all this is from God,’ nor knowing that ‘if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!’ And what is this ‘new creation’? Christ living among us.

Reconciliation—a word and an idea that eludes them who ‘preach Christ out of envy and rivalry’—is the only ‘ministry’ given to the disciples by the Lord. How can that be? We can do only what we see Jesus doing, and He does only what He sees the Father doing, ‘who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation.’ How is this ministry expressed? Reconciliation to God in heaven is accomplished by reconciliation to the brethren on earth. ‘Whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen’ (1 John 4:20).

Just as the holy apostles, as various as they were in personality, opinion, educational level and social status, worked together as sýnergoi, co-laborers, without dividing themselves or competing against each other, we live with them and with each other the life of the Holy Triad on earth, ‘not counting people’s sins against them,’ but for the sake of divine love ‘convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died,’ being willing to lay down our lives for each other. This is what the Holy Church was, is, and always shall be, everywhere ‘on earth as it is in heaven.’ There is no envy or rivalry among us in the Holy Trinity.

So, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world. This is how you can recognize the Spirit of God: Every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, but every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you have heard is coming and even now is already in the world.

You are from God and have overcome them, because the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world. They are from the world and therefore speak from the viewpoint of the world, and the world listens to them. We are from God, and whoever knows God listens to us; but whoever is not from God does not listen to us. This is how we recognize the Spirit of truth and the spirit of falsehood.

Let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.

This is how we know that we live in him and he in us: He has given us of his Spirit. And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in them and they in God. And so we know and rely on the love God has for us.

God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them. This is how love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment: In this world we are like Jesus. There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.

We love because he first loved us. Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen. And he has given us this command: Anyone who loves God must also love their brother and sister.
1 John 4

Awaiting on You All

On the way home from work one afternoon I listened to the George Harrison song Awaiting on You All that I had copied along with other songs by this artist from his album All Things Must Pass. Hearing this song after so many years (it was on a CD that I had lost and just found again) was an interesting experience, and as often happens when you unearth some part of your past and compare it with your present, I heard it almost with fresh ears. I am not the same person that I was then. I was in my twenties when I followed George Harrison both musically and spiritually. Though the Eastern religious views he espoused most of his public life were similar to mine at that age, it didn’t take long for me to outgrow them. ‘Outgrow’ is not exactly the right word, though. I didn’t really outgrow them. You could say I traded them in, new lamps for old. I never struck a better deal.

Still, listening to the song I was amazed just how spot on he was in much of what he was saying. I can still relate to almost all of it. I don’t think that either of us, George or I, was aware of the fuzzy thinking that made us combine devotion and belief in Krishna and Jesus without noticing the two aren’t the same. I’m not talking about doctrinal or religious differences. Hinduism and Christianity are distinct religions, granted, but anyone who believes in God knows, ‘God is God. There is no thing you can compare to God. God is God.’ We tend to believe that at best other religions are wrong in the details but right in the big picture. This may be true, but no one can say so without denying his faith community. In youth, I think we were bored with dogmatic strongholds, and wanted the freedom to meet God on our terms, not according to those of our ancestors. How little did we understand that ‘the ancestors in stone armor calling for loyalty untrue’ seeking ‘to make a zigzag of the arrow’s flight’ were doing no such thing.

No, they knew that the shortest path between two points is rarely a straight line, though arrows may fly to their mark, being projectiles aimed at a target. Unfortunately people are not projectiles, and our destination is not really a target, no matter how much we wish we could hit the bullseye. We are beings fashioned in the Divine image and likeness. We live in more than three, more even than four, dimensions, and the paths we tread cannot be traced, planned or prophesied by mortal logic or the magic of music. They are no more than mere beginnings, our thoughts and feelings, before we bump into the aweful reality which we glibly like to call ‘God.’ Meet Him on our terms? Hardly possible, unless He allows it, and only as a sign that He is there, hidden behind our wall, waiting for us to… 
No, that is also just what we glibly like to think, as George Harrison sings in his song…

You don't need no love in
You don't need no bed pan
You don't need a horoscope or a microscope
To see the mess that you're in
If you open up your heart
You will know what I mean
We've been polluted so long
Now here's a way for you to get clean

By chanting the names of the Lord, and you'll be free
The Lord is awaiting on you all to awaken and see…

You don't need no passport
And you don't need no visas
You don't need to designate or to emigrate
Before you can see Jesus
If you open up your heart
You'll see he's right there
Always was and will be
He'll relieve you of your cares

You don't need no church house
And you don't need no Temple
You don't need no rosary beads or them books to read
To see that you have fallen
If you open up your heart
You will know what I mean
We've been kept down so long
Someone's thinking that we're all green

… The Lord is awaiting on you all to awaken and see
By chanting the names of the Lord, and you'll be free

I purposely left out the stanza about the pope owning controlling interest in General Motors and not being qualified to quote us anything but the Stock Exchange. This is childish talk and hatchets all the good things he has to say. This, I find, is true of youthful thinkers in every generation. It’s true of otherwise noble and idealistic youth today. It was true of me as a Vietnam War draft resister. We ‘let the cat out of the bag’ about ourselves when we pounce on anyone, especially an authority figure we don’t approve of, and show that, however pure we think our motives, however lofty our ideals, we’re still no better than the fallen heroes we no longer believe in. What George Harrison says in this song I still agree with. Where I have a problem, is what he proposes as a solution to the mess we find ourselves in. As much as I enjoyed chanting Hare Krishna, it didn’t save me, or the world, and it never will.

But the rest is, amazingly, true, as I have found out in the intervening years. The words about Jesus are almost straight out of the Bible. The words about churches and temples, the same. Somebody went to Sunday School as a child. Yes, you’re right. I did.
I know that for sure, and guess what? It stuck. What started out as an incomprehensible religious upbringing somehow became comprehensible when it finally collided with what I was made for. 

Yes, my parachute failed to open, and the earth received my bruised and broken body. I was alive for just a moment, just long enough for me to realize I was about to die. Then His gentle hands slipped under my head and shoulders as He lifted me up from what should have been my grave. He had already been there, aeons before I came to birth or leapt to my unintended death. No, this did not literally happen. I’ve never used a parachute. But His hands are real.

Awaiting on You All, a great song,
but He is waiting only from our point of view.
On His side, we are either already with Him, or without Him.

Unruly

‘When you go to the Temple, be on your guard. Go near so you can hear. The offering is more valuable than the sacrifice of fools, even if they are unaware of doing wrong,’ writes the wise Qohelet (Ecclesiastes 4:17 JB). Who knows what he meant when he originally wrote down his thoughts in that ancient scroll? But as with the rest of holy and divine scripture, the Lord knows what would be made of His words from the moment they were received by the Qahal, the Church, until the end of time. I find myself remembering this verse and applying it very often these days.

‘You can tell them by their fruits,’ says the Lord in the holy gospels. ‘Can you pick grapes from thorn bushes, or figs from thistles?’ His metaphor (Matthew 7:15-20) shows how ridiculously easy it is, or should be, for the disciple to distinguish false prophets from true. For what is a prophet after all, but one who dares to speak in God’s name, claiming authority which can only be given by God, who also accompanies that authority by signs? What signs? There are many. Read the bible. ‘Signs and wonders’ are more than story-telling. Infallibly, Christ’s sheep know His voice.

Once upon a time we were hearers of a homily, given by a recent seminary graduate, which seemed to revolve around the idea that what we need to do is attend more religious services, and at those we do attend, to arrive on time and not leave before they’re finished. The rewards of this good behavior were amply held out to us, and also the reverse. Heaven isn’t gained by those who stay away, but those who come to church punctually and faithfully, will have their reward. Honestly, I’ve never doubted that, but it is a general truth that cannot be used to corral and regiment the unruly flock of Christ.

For we are unruly. We follow a Lord who, though He fulfilled every commandment was yet called a law-breaker. Indeed, He observed the faith festivals of the Jews because He was a Jew, but wherever He went He revealed the Reality underlying all religious observance. What Reality? Well, that He and the Father are One, and that if we have seen Him, Jesus Christ, we have seen the Father. He keeps telling us in the gospels that He is only saying and doing what He hears the Father saying and what He sees Him doing. ‘The disciple is not superior to his Teacher’ (Matthew 10:24). We are unruly.

For the following of the Lord Jesus Christ is not the road of rules, but His life revealed to us in the scriptures is the rule of the road.

Our seminarian piously recounted for us the story of a man of his acquaintance who was very holy—so holy in fact that, like the Theotokos and many other saints, he was vouchsafed the date of his repose. What made this man holy was his faithfulness and piety. He never missed a service at the seminary chapel, Sundays or weekdays. Never came late, but always early or on time. He prayed daily the Chairetismoi, the poem written by Romanos the Melodist to glorify the Mother of God. He had a spiritual father to whom he frequently confessed and to whose word he was obedient.

The reward of his piety was a vision of the Theotokos three days before his death, which he revealed to his spiritual father. His sacrifices had been accepted, he was told. He would enter paradise in three days. And true to her word, he reposed on the third day. Such are the blessed rewards granted to the saints of God.

I have no doubt the man was a saint. I also don’t believe that the preacher even told us a tenth part of the good that this man of faith carried out for God. I wonder what it was like to know him when he was still alive in the flesh. Did he share with the young men at seminary anything of his real life, that which lay as the foundation of the pious building that they could see? Probably not, for the saints are invisible in their comings and goings, their mercies and their acts of love, invisible to themselves as well as to others. He worshiped and loved ‘Panagia.’ I wondered, ‘Does the preacher know why?’

To hear his homily, one would gather that the highest form of devotion to God is religious activity, piling up divine liturgies, orthros and vesper and paráklisis services, placing oneself in the hands of a spiritual father—in short, becoming essentially a ‘white monastic,’ that is, to be living like a monk, but in the world, not within the monastery. I’m sorry but I don’t even remember what the gospel lesson was at that service. If he touched upon it in his homily, perhaps it was an exegetical opening for whatever else was on his mind to tell us. We all listened respectfully, as he concluded his story.

And I repeated to the man next to me in the pew who was looking a bit uncomfortable and squirming in his seat, ‘Christ’s sheep know His voice.’

The Mediator

From the fifth chapter of martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s book
The Cost of Discipleship…At the very moment of their call, men find that they have already broken with all the natural ties of life. This is not their own doing, but His who calls them. For Christ has delivered them from immediacy with the world, and brought them into immediacy with Himself. We cannot follow Christ unless we are prepared to accept and affirm that breach as a fait accompli. It is no arbitrary choice on the disciple’s part, but Christ Himself, who compels him thus to break with his past.

We must face up to the truth that the call of Christ does set up a barrier between man and his natural life. But this barrier is no surly contempt for life, no legalistic piety, it is the life which is life indeed, the gospel, the person of Jesus Christ. By virtue of His incarnation He has come between man and his natural life. There can be no turning back, for Christ bars the way.

He stands between us and God, and for that very reason He stands between us and all other men and things. He is the Mediator, not only between God and man, but between man and man, between man and reality.

The call of Jesus teaches us that our relation to the world has been built on an illusion. All the time we thought we had enjoyed a direct relationship with men and things. This is what had hindered us from faith and obedience. Now we learn that in the most intimate relationships of life, in our kinship with father and mother, brothers and sisters, in married love, and in our duty to the community, direct relationships are impossible.

Between father and son, husband and wife, the individual and the nation, stands Christ the Mediator, whether they are able to recognize Him or not. We cannot establish direct contact outside ourselves except through Him, through His word, and through our following of Him. To think otherwise is to deceive ourselves.

Wherever a group, be it large or small, prevents us from standing alone before Christ, wherever such a group raises a claim of immediacy it must be hated for the sake of Christ. For every immediacy, whether we realize it or not, means hatred of Christ, and this is especially true where such relationships claim the sanction of Christian principles.

For the Christian the only God-given realities are those he receives from Christ. What is not given us through the incarnate Son is not given us by God.

Anything I cannot thank God for, for the sake of Christ, I may not thank God for at all; to do so would be sin.

The path, too, to the ‘God-given reality’ of my fellow man or woman with whom I have to live leads through Christ, or it is a blind alley. We are separated from one another by an unbridgeable gulf of otherness and strangeness which resists all our attempts to overcome it by means of natural association or emotional or spiritual union. There is no way from one person to another. However loving and sympathetic we try to be, however sound our psychology, however frank and open our behaviour, we cannot penetrate the incognito of the other man, for there are no direct relationships, not even between soul and soul. Christ stands between us, and we can only get in touch with our neighbours through Him. That is why intercession is the most promising way to reach our neighbours, and corporate prayer, offered in the name of Christ, the purest form of fellowship.

This breach with all our immediate relationships is inescapable. It may take the form of an external breach with family or nation; in that case we shall be called upon to bear visibly the reproach of Christ… Or it may be a hidden and a secret breach. But even then we must always be ready to come out into the open.

Though we all have to enter upon discipleship alone, we do not remain alone. If we take Him at His word and dare to become individuals, our reward is the fellowship of the Church. Here is a visible brotherhood to compensate a hundredfold for all we have lost. A hundredfold? Yes, for we now have everything through the Mediator, but with this proviso—‘with persecutions’. A hundredfold with persecutions—such is the grace which is granted to the Church which follows its Lord beneath the cross.

And they were in the way, going up to Jerusalem; and Jesus was going before them: and they were amazed; and they that followed were afraid. And He took again the Twelve, and began to tell them the things that were to happen to Him.
Mark 10:32

As if to bring home to them how serious was his call, to show them how impossible it was to follow in their own strength, and to emphasize that adherence to Him means persecutions, Jesus goes on before to Jerusalem and to the cross, and they are filled with fear and amazement at the road He calls them to follow.

Miracle

Τίς Θεός μέγας, ως ο Θεός ημών;
Συ εί ο Θεός ημών ο ποιών θαυμάσια μόνος.

Who is so great a god as our God?
You are the God who alone works wonders.

The deeper you enter into the mystery of suffering, following the Lord, the more miraculous does the world become. You have left behind the kind of life that you lived all alone, with yourself as your guide, your wishes your command, where you never looked back to your Master except when your way forward to your delight was barred. Then, you stopped, turned around, and asked Him for a miracle, maybe. Or was it yourself that you asked? No matter. Now, you have left that life behind you.

To follow the Master, to have Him as your delight, His wishes your command, His living Word your guide, living no longer alone but always with Him, taking what He gives, what greater miracle can you want? The world has become all miracle, because He has pitched His tent here. The world has become all miracle, because it has become all cross, it has become the place where suffering is transfigured into sovereignty. Dying with Him, we share in His kingdom, Who is the King of Glory.

‘Lost, let them nail me, while my ransomed soul a steed of Spirit mounts, and my hungers hang. Let me inherit what the jailer stole, and hidden, as I thirst, what prophets sang.’ {+}

The whole world was shining with brilliant light and, unhindered, went on with its work; over them alone there spread a heavy darkness, image of the dark that would receive them. But heavier than the darkness, the burden they were to themselves. But for Your holy ones, all was great light…
Wisdom of Solomon 17:19-20, 18:1 Jerusalem Bible

By faith and not by sight

δια πίστεως γαρ περιπατουμεν, ου δια ειδους·

for we walk by faith, not by sight
2 Corinthians 5:7

The struggle seems to be, between what is,
and what rather should be.

We see ourselves, the world around us—if we are Christians, we see the Church—as we are, as it is, and we are dissatisfied, we are moved to crisis, we feel abandoned, we feel we must do something, and inwardly become crusaders, we must right wrongs.

When it is within ourselves, we do well, knowing ourselves to be under conviction, knowing that the Cross rises in awful majesty before us, inviting us: what will we do? just stand and watch, or lay down our burdens, allow ourselves to be stripped and mocked, our flesh nailed to the wood? find our lives by losing them?

When it is outside our selves, we must take another path.

Are other people, other things, really as we see them? Is the struggle really to be pressed home, between what is and what should be? between the reality and our ideal? And if so, whence this ideal? and what is it? Is the ideal something that really is out there, in past, in future, our only in our minds, in our seats of judgment?

By faith, not by sight—do we ever see other people as they are, or do we only perceive them? We see an image, as flat as the man we see on the television screen, speaking the news. This is what he looks like, sounds like, the surface of the moment to a living being who is years deep and miles wide, whose height is beyond the range of our vision, whose feet have trod what paths we may have never found. Yet we think we see him, we say we know him. He is as hidden from us as if we were blind.

The same is true of things, of events, of historical movements, we do not see them, understand them, either, only what we perceive, only what our minds tell us. The natural man walks by sight, judges by sight, struggles by what he thinks right, and carries on a fight—as if he could—to save the world, even when he says to himself, ‘I only want things to be as they should be; that's all I want.’ But Christ says, ‘If you were blind, you would not be guilty of sin; but now that you claim you can see, your guilt remains’ (John 9:41).

By faith, not by sight: faith is the substance of things unseen, and so the spiritual man does not walk by sight, but by faith. There is no ‘is’ and ‘should be’ in his thoughts, for he knows, by faith, that God is sovereign, that He is working His purpose out, and he trusts, he trusts in Him. This is not the ‘faith’ of mere religious profession that can find fault with and fight ‘the infidel’, that makes him an anointed crusader, a defender of God Most-High. Is a god that must be defended any better than the kitchen gods broken to pieces by Abraham?

Look deep, if you must look at all, or else avert your eyes from anyone, anything, but yourself. We cannot see very far beyond ourselves, so if we must walk—and walk we must—let's walk behind Him who is worthy of our trust, and take the path He treads. Yes, avert your eyes from anyone but yourself, but only to make sure you're still right behind Him. Otherwise, keep your eyes straight ahead, let Him, if anyone or anything, block your view of your destination, because this is where you want to be: ‘If anyone serves Me, he must follow Me; and where I am, there My servant will be also’ (John 12:26).

Yes, Lord, by faith, not by sight.

Make no mistake

People build their lives on a foundation of certainties. They couldn’t live them any other way. Certainties are things they can count on to be there day after day, dependably. They know for sure about these things because over a long period of time, they’ve found them to be true.

Some of these certainties are natural. The sun rises every morning. Their hearts can be depended on to keep beating. They are locked into relationships with family and co-workers. Their cars will probably start up in the morning so they can go to jobs that they will probably still have.

Again, what they consider certainties are based on what they have observed and experienced to be true. As it is with the details of daily life, so it is with matters that have a greater scope, a more enduring nature. These are certainties about one’s self and about others that matter.

Sometimes I say things about myself and others that might seem excessively optimistic, even to the point of boasting, and to many these seem to be beyond certainty. They think in their hearts, ‘How can he say that? Only God can know such things. How can he be so sure of that?’

The truth is, I am no soothsayer, no prophet. Neither am I a man confident of his own virtue. As I see others fall around me, I know I can fall, and sometimes I do fall, yet I say of myself or others, ‘Unbreakable’ and ‘You can trust him. He is faithful. He has never disappointed me.’

Yet to me, these things I say are true. They are words of my testimony. They are the certainties I build my life on. Knowing and depending on them make it possible for me to live day in, day out, despite every challenge that comes against me, every obstacle that tries to block me.

But make no mistake. I know that I can count on myself and on these others whom I call brothers and friends, not only because I have observed their behavior over a long period of time (and sometimes not long) and can depend on them to be and act a certain way.

It is precisely because my confidence is not in myself or in these others, not in our strength or our love or our faithfulness, not in ours but in Christ’s, that I can live on a foundation of such certainty that even the threat of death, let alone lesser fears, cannot dislodge me, or us.

We are not play acting or giving lip service when we exclaim, ‘Not by us, Yahweh, not by us, by You alone is glory deserved! By Your love and Your faithfulness’ (Psalm 115). Brothers, we know whom we have believed in, and we know that it is He who gives us the power to stand, and His sure guarantee.

Ours is the Faithful and the True, the Living One. We know it is not by our own strength that we can be and do everything. It is only He, only He. Thank you, my friends, for sharing this confidence with me, and for walking with me, helping me to follow along behind the flock of His companions, walking behind Jesus.