The Word of God is alive

Lord, I have nothing that I have not received, and I am nothing but what You have made me.
Glory to You, O God, glory to You!




The Word of God is something alive and active…
Hebrews 4:12 Jerusalem Bible

Alive…
that means it's actual, being spoken at this very moment, continuously and tirelessly repeated, born again in God's heart every day to be transmitted to living men, and it's always fresh, new for each and every man, personal, meant to illuminate him individually.

This Word is ‘the true Light that enlightens everyone who comes into the world’ (John 1:9). There's not a soul on earth that God doesn't speak to.

Do we believe wholeheartedly in His living Word, in that everpresent voice which keeps uttering for each of us the words that can heal?
‘Say but the Word…’ (Luke 7:7, Matthew 8:8).

Our faith in God's Word is measured by our faith in His love. We don't really believe He speaks to us because we don't really believe He loves us.

What's a saint?
It's someone who believes that God loves him.
‘We've come to know and believe in God's love for us’ (1 John 4:16).
Anyone who believes God loves him knows that God speaks to him.

God hasn't ceased being revelation any more than He's ceased being love. He enjoys expressing Himself. Since He is love, He must give Himself, share His secrets, communicate with us, and reveal Himself to anyone who wants to listen. His sole delight is to confide in us and give Himself to us.

God's revelation began with Adam in the Garden of Eden. There, too, began the Passion. Don't we say when someone trusts us, that he's put himself in our hands? He would come into the Garden in the cool of the evening and talk to Adam as to a friend. He was starting to manifest Himself and share His thoughts, trying to make us understand Who He is and delivering Himself up to us. And from the outset, He was shunned and rejected. ‘His own didn't receive Him’
(John 1:11). From the beginning, from the first day, Adam interrupted the dialogue, scorned God's confidences and shattered the alliance they gave proof of. From the very start it was man who walked away, man who turned a deaf ear to God's words.
The Passion began in Paradise.

But God has never wearied of talking to us. He keeps reopening the conversation, hoping we'll listen. He keeps offering His friendship, however often we spurn Him.

In the desert, He used to visit Moses in his tent and speak to Him ‘face to face, as a man speaks to his friend’ (Exodus 33:11). ‘At various times in the past and in various different ways, God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets; but in our own time, the last days, He has spoken to us through His Son…’ (Hebrews 1:1 JB).

His communications had grown so urgent, He'd given and entrusted His Word to us so completely, and He'd reached out toward man so far that the Word, His utterance, became flesh. The Incarnation was God's crowning prophecy, His supreme attempt to reveal Himself. He had created flesh, and He so ardently wanted it to accept and understand Him, that He became flesh Himself.

He took the Word, which He'd never been able to transmit to us without our garbling or forgetting it, voiced it fully, and made it man.

God doesn't repent His gifts. He placed His Word in our hands and has never taken it back.

Once and for all, He came down to the level of each of us. He became flesh so we could eat Him in His mystery, love Him in our neighbor, and hear and follow Him in the Gospels.

The Gospels are God's message directed to every one of us. We must believe that God inspired the evangelists in such a way that their words were really dictated by Him. Are we truly aware of that when we open our Bible? Yet that's what the charism of scriptural inspiration means. If God is the author, how can He fail to move us directly every time we take up His Book and expose ourselves to His influence?

‘…the Advocate, the Holy Spirit,Whom the Father will send in My name, will teach you everything and remind you of all I have said to you’ (John 14:26 JB). This promise, made shortly before Jesus' death, indicates that the words He spoke once will have to be studied constantly, and that He said all of them while He was in the world precisely so that the Spirit might expound them till the end of the world.

The letters kills. Only the Spirit gives life, because He is alive. When we read a passage in God's Book, we must think of it not as a text to be perused, or an idea to be dissected, but as God Himself coming into our tent to speak to us face to face as a man speaks to his friend.

What must we do to read the Gospels with faith?
To read the Gospels with faith is to believe that everything in them is actually happening now, that they're a book of revelation, a book of discovery, that, far more than history, they are prophecy. They tell us who we are and what we're doing. God continues to live with us. He's always the same, and so are we. What the Gospels relate is still going on today. They show us our life, how God loves us.

— Fr Louis Evely, That Man Is You, pp. 25-42 passim

Originally posted January 3, 2010

Ancient

The ancient world is not dead. No, it is alive and well. It lives on, even today, in people who know how to live deeply, faithfully, with a perennial sense of wonder, and with heartfelt thanks to the Creator.

We moderns, or post-moderns some of us, think that humanity has reached the pinnacle of its greatness. Some are so sure of this that they cannot imagine us going any higher, and so they prophesy imminent collapse. There will always be worry warts.

The truth is, I believe, that humanity has not reached a pinnacle, though we may be very close, as a herd of animals, to possibly the broadest and most universal famine of spiritual and creative vitality that history has ever seen.

Western civilisation’s leaders seem either quite willing to hand us over to annihilation, or incapable of realizing that we are poised so close to the edge. The edge of what?

As usual, barbarians ring us and are closing in more and more tightly. The collapse of meaningful language has let truth skip away from us. We no longer have the vocabulary to let us identify who the enemy really is. We swat at flies while predators eye us from the bush.

But as I said, the ancient world is not dead. The modern world with all its glamour and its clamor—is there a difference?—is actually an interruption of true civilization, one of those dark ages that we read about in the history books. Dark ages don’t seem dark to the people living in them sometimes.

So we think our technical advancements are terrific? Yes, they are, at least some of them. It flatters us to think that though we might share plumbing, flushing toilets, and central heating with some of our more illustrious predecessors, they didn’t have cars, airplanes, open-heart surgery or cell phones.

And though we look for other intelligent life forms among dolphins and whales and in the far reaches of outer space, we seem to have forgotten to look for intelligence among those of our own species. Instead, we burn ourselves out as fuel to promote our culture of consumption.

In the jungle, in the mountains, on land nobody wants, among people that no one thinks worth bothering about, in the islands of the sea, the ancient world is still alive. There are people in remote places still free, still human, speaking not with forked tongue or double heart.

They don’t care that they haven’t got cell phones. Few of them need open heart surgery. Most of them would rather live and take their chances against nature than be turned into cyborgs, part human, part device. Sure, many of them have indoor plumbing, electricity and central heating, but they could as easily live without.

I sit in my darkening house, eying peacefully the onset of night, simply enjoying the evening. I don’t light a lamp unless there’s something I need to look at closely. My ears are unplugged from constant music because I want to hear the world of sound.
I won’t be a prisoner of time.

The rain falls. I feel it coolly anointing my head, face, my bare torso as I walk through the forest trees. The air is brisk and cold, but inside I am warm. I am a citizen of the world. This is my planet. This is where I was born, where I belong. I am at home here.
I can’t be curfewed.

I am an ancient man. I read and write books. I think. I meditate on the words of holy and divine scripture. I am patient. I can wait for the interruption of the ancient world to end, and end it will. I will live to see it. I am living in it now, but it will increase as light increases, as light is always stronger than darkness, without struggling, by only shining.

The snow of this morning fell amply and coated trees, fields and streets with whiteness. It came quickly and forcefully and then, just as quickly, but quietly, melted away. Now the world is moist with its melting, drinking in the liquid potion of its renewed life.

Now the light is breaking. It will be fully day soon.
The ancient world is alive because only what is ancient is perennially renewed. It is coming, and this is no poem. This is faith, trust and certainty in the loving providence of God. He is our God, and we are the people He pastures, the flock that He guides.
‘Our Redeemer’ is His ancient name.
The God who loves me is coming.

“And there was evening, and there was morning—day one.”
Genesis 1:5

Originally posted December 29, 2010

Life shall go for life

And thine eye shall not pity; but life shall go for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot.
Deuteronomy 19:21

Things take time. The saying goes, “Rome wasn’t built in a day.” Another saying I learned from my mentor when I was catechized into the Church, “A fast change in Orthodoxy is one that takes about four hundred years.” I noticed, when studying Rabbinical Judaism, that converts are not readily received. A man approaches the rabbi and says, “I want to become one of you,” and the rabbi rebuffs him, scorns him even, and tells him to go away. The man is undaunted; he comes back, gives it another try. The rabbi receives him a bit more kindly, but explains to him that becoming a Jew won’t be good for him: Jews are plagued by so many persecutions; he surely won’t be able to take it. Again, he is rebuffed, and sent away. The man is confused, but determined. He returns, insisting to the rabbi that he is serious and begins to show reasons why he wants to be one of the chosen people. The rabbi listens a little longer, challenges him again, but lets him stay, just this once. Gradually, the persistence of the convert and the reluctance of the rabbi results in either final acceptance or final rejection. The process takes time.

The Orthodox Church in America, not the jurisdiction but the fact, also by and large throws obstacles in the way of converts racing to the finish line, to slow them down a bit, while at the same time offering hospitality, the “love of strangers” to those who come hesitantly, meekly, to observe the ways of Orthodoxy. It is not as some have unjustly criticized, a convert-hungry, mechanical contraption that sucks in converts like a whale feeding on plankton. A true convert coming to Orthodoxy is often like Jonah, fleeing from God only to be swallowed and caught in the belly of a whale—and that’s no plankton! Unlike Jonah, however, the convert is not spewn out to languish in self-pity under a withering vine, upset because “outsiders” are repenting and being saved. Rather he or she is spewn out of the Orthodox incubator, the process of formal and informal catechesis, to be sent to others, as they are now “in Christ,” as His witnesses.
We are all familiar with the high profile evangelistic crusades wherein a preacher comes and exhorts the audience to turn from their sins and accept Christ, and then people start streaming up to do just that, and to be prayed over, and ostensibly start their new life in Christ. Whatever is really happening in these crusades, God knows. But the world looks on, uncomprehending, because what it often sees is what Christ described as “seed falling among thorns,” and it is not convinced. The world wants it all right now, and expects that if Christ is the God that His followers claim He is, that’s how it should work. The truth is quite different. Conversion to Christ and life in Him may be instigated by a lightning strike, but that isn’t how it is maintained, grows, and bears fruit. Salvation is a process.
It takes time.

The law of Torah cited above from the book of Deuteronomy is a familiar one. We’ve all heard it at least in its shortened form, “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.” We all know this has something to do with crime and punishment, or with justice, but certainly not with mercy. It seems very unmerciful, in fact. If we know our bibles, we remember that Christ used this scripture to build upon it His teaching that we should “turn the other cheek” if we are struck on one. We think that is the end of it. Nothing more needs to be said. It’s just an ideal we are supposed to strive for, but rarely succeed. We’re all too ready to smite the offender, give “eye for eye and tooth for tooth,” and Christ will just have to put up with us, so we bring the issue to happy closure by asking for His forgiveness.
“Lord, have mercy.”

Why do I cite this bible verse? Well, it means something entirely different to me. To me, it is linked to what holy apostle John writes, “This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers” (1 John 3:16). To me, this is what life for life means, indeed, even what the other incidentals mean, eye for eye, tooth for tooth. Since Christ gave life for life, saving us, we too sharing in His forbearance, mercy and love, can also give life for life. Ours.
What does this mean?

Things take time. The world teaches us that “time is money,” and most of us, unconsciously at least, have believed this saying. We think we own our time, that we own ourselves, but scripture says, “You are not your own, you were bought at a price.” This buying of souls for eternal life goes on even today, because Christ is in our midst, He is among us. In us, He walks through the world seeking His lost sheep. When He finds them, He cares for them. He doesn’t just pick them up, hurry over to the sheep pen, and drop them in. No, He doesn’t treat us like that, but He remains with us, at our side, to guide and restore us, to save us.

Following Jesus, this is what we also do, no matter how long it takes.

Just preach Christ

The follower of Jesus does not proselytize; he evangelizes.
He does not preach Church,
he preaches Christ.
In this he follows His Master, who in the gospels does not seek converts, but seeks that which is lost.

Never do we find that Jesus in His earthly ministry went after people. Never do we see Him arguing a philosophical point to win over an opponent. Never does He proselytize, but He does have words for those who do.

Ουαι υμιν γραμματεις και φαρισαιοι υποκριται οτι περιαγετε την θαλασσαν και την ξηραν ποιησαι ενα προσηλυτον και οταν γενηται ποιειτε αυτον υιον γεεννης διπλοτερον υμων.

Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You travel over land and sea to win a single convert,
and when he becomes one, you make him twice as much a son of hell as you are.
Matthew 23:15 NIV

What do we find instead? Two disciples of a Jewish prophet, John the Forerunner, are directed by him, pointing to Jesus walking by and saying, “That is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.” (John 1:29)

What did the two disciples do? They followed after Jesus. Why? Because they believed the word of the prophet. How did they approach Jesus? They asked, “Rabbi, where do you live?” How does Jesus respond? He says, “Come, and see!”

The encounter with the Truth is gentle. There is no compulsion exerted from the outside. Everything is accomplished inwardly. All movement is internal first, in the heart. Then, it is manifested by the feet, running after the Lord.

This is why the follower of Jesus does not argue semantically to win over an opponent. He does not preach Apollos. He doesn’t preach Paul. He doesn’t preach himself. No, he preaches Christ, and Him crucified, and risen from the dead.

People want to draw us into arguments, wrangling over words, but it is precisely this tactic that the evil one used when he wanted to entrap Christ. To every argument, Jesus responded not with human reason, but with the plain words of scripture.

The Word of God does not need to defend Himself.
He simply is what He is.

In the same way, brethren, all who follow Jesus, all who believe and stand on the Word, who preach, like the angel of the last days, the eternal gospel, just preach Christ, to yourself by submitting all your thoughts to the Word of God, to others by proving on the battlefield of your body that you follow Christ the Victor over sin, and to all those whom the Lord places in your path by your courtesy and generosity, and by always having a spirit of welcome, for men have welcomed angels without knowing it (Hebrews 13:2).

He

Χριστω συνεσταυρωμαι, ζω δε ουκετι εγω, ζη δε εν εμοι χριστος.
Ο δε νυν ζω εν σαρκι, εν πιστει ζω τη του υιου του θεου του αγαπησαντος με, και παραδοντος εαυτον υπερ εμου.

I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.
Galatians 2:20

Yes, I am still alive. I have to pinch myself sometimes, just to make sure. I have to read a word I’ve written, to make sure I have not gone mad, or gone missing. Where am I? Always and forever, here, because He is here, am, because He is. Mine, because He has given me myself, His gift, once and only, inimitable, unfeignable, the same yet different from all His other gifts, which as they gently fall from His caring hands, form themselves into worlds, persons, creations, visible and invisible. He is Lord, and we are nothing but praise, returning back to Him the reflection of His blessed face, which He has imprinted in our depths, singing back to Him the song with which He sang all that is into being. Empty, so that He may fill me. Silent, so that He may teach me. Slow, so that He may quicken me. Dead, so that He may raise me.

O Lord, how wonderous You are among Your saints!

What price, salvation?

There is a strange disconnect between what people say they want and what they really want, and yet they claim to be honest in their convictions. They declare their intentions and then go about laying down plans that cannot possibly bring them to their destination. What is wrong with us? Why do we try so hard to live up to our built-in law of failure?

We all know what the Church is, at least we ought to know, if we read our bibles, if we pray, and if we try to follow Christ in everyday life.

When we are honest with ourselves, how much of what we experience in the church ‘we go to’ is like what we know the Church is?

True, that may be an unfair question, but only in minor respects. We are used to massive failure in human society at large, and in human relationships up close. We have learned to adapt, ‘to roll with the punches,’ to be forgiving and indulgent, to accept the fact that ‘nobody’s perfect.’

We’ve taught ourselves not to expect the best, even when our faith in Christ keeps telling us to expect, not just the best, but ‘the resurrection of the dead,’ as we used to say in the Symbol of Nicaea before they ‘retranslated’ it to conform with modern churchly ‘norms’—it is now, ‘I look for,’ instead of, ‘I expect.’

Hey! I don’t look for the resurrection of the dead, I expect it! And it’s not my human pride, my ego or my flesh telling me to expect this: it’s the Spirit of the living God, living in me, who teaches me to expect it, and not merely look for it.

What do we find in church, then? They say that the Church is a hospital, that it is a place where the sick go to be healed. A nice metaphor, coming from the Orthodox East where sin is considered not so much a crime to be punished as it is a sickness to be cured. This is not an unhealthy attitude. It gives hope and relieves us somewhat of our natural instinct to blame and guilt-trip ourselves.

So we’re sick, that’s all it is! Well, that means we can slow down, take it easy, follow instructions, take our medicines, and presently we will be well again. Not only that, we have this beautiful hospital, with beautiful procedures, we are simply surrounded by beauty, and we’ve been told, ‘Beauty will save the world,’ so we can be comfortable and content, as we wait to be made whole. This is the view from the patient’s bed.

We are told to be patient and follow instructions, and everything will right itself, almost magically, and we will be well again. But how long have we been lying there? Do we even know what being healthy feels like? And most importantly, do we really want to be made well?

A church says that they follow Christ, that He alone is Holy, that He alone is Lord. They say that they have seen the Light, that they have found the true faith, and that the Trinity has saved them. That’s great! But what of the others, those who can’t say these things? Those who don’t even know these things are possible? Who is supposed to tell them? Who to show them? We already know the answer to that—‘Here I am, send me!’ (Isaiah 6:8)

We go to church, and we hear the priest or deacon say—if they are good preachers—that we are the Church, not just the priests, and that ‘the great commission’ to ‘make disciples of all nations’ is our responsibility, not just theirs.

Fine rhetoric, this exhortation, very evangelical, but nothing more than fine rhetoric if it is not backed up by actions.

What happens if some of us take this responsibility to heart, and go forth two by two into the world to fulfill it? Are we supported by these same preachers? What preparations are they willing to take on behalf of our ‘mission’ and our ‘ministry’? Do they even know what preparations to take? Can it be, that all we have to offer the outside world looking in on us, is a once or twice yearly lecture series on such things as the history of the Church or its teachings ‘in our tradition, we…’, an invitation to come and ‘help us to get ready for the next festival,’ and of course, ‘just come and worship with us’?

I used to think the last one—just come and worship with us—was the best, and that it was enough, but honestly, it isn’t. We are not medieval Eastern Europe, where illiterate, barbaric people can come and be ‘awed by the beauty’ of our liturgical services. For them, perhaps, this wall of beauty was a real window into the Eternal, because they had little other possibility of access. For us today, it really can become just a wall.

Why? Because we have advantages, yet we don't make use of them. We can read. Bibles can be picked up in any language or dialect. Among us are experienced and knowledgeable ‘lay’ people, as well as clergy. If we rely on just the services to somehow magically inform and transform people, we are not giving them their true value, and we are lying to ourselves.

Christ came to make an end of magic, as holy father Ignatios of Antioch wrote to the church at Ephesos, “…every kind of magic was destroyed, and every bond of wickedness disappeared; ignorance was removed, and the old kingdom abolished, God Himself being manifested in human form for the renewal of eternal life. And now that took a beginning which had been prepared by God. Henceforth all things were in a state of tumult, because He meditated the abolition of death” (Ignatios to the Ephesians, ch 19).

If this was true and well-understood in the time of the early fathers, before the onslaught of the ‘dark ages’ submerged the Hellenic and Christian spirit, and continuing from the gospels and the apostles, how much more true today, when we have finally overcome those ‘dark ages’?

Where does this leave the churches?
Back to the statement made at the outset, there is a strange disconnect between what people say they want and what they really want, and yet they claim to be honest in their convictions.

What does the Church exist for?
Whom does it exist for?
They say it is a hospital for the sick, and that Christ is the Physician. Well and good.
Have they removed all obstacles to that purpose?
Have they laid out plans that facilitate it?
Have they got the priorities right?
Are the sick able to meet the Physician?
Are the instructions and medicines they are being administered working?
Are people being made well?

Or are secondary needs taking priority?
Are people being allowed to develop addictions to the medicines, dependence on the clinical staff, and diverted from getting to know their Physician personally?
Are the patients being administered cosmetic solutions to their real ailments, making them ‘look good’ to themselves and each other, while their critical illnesses remain untreated, because there’s no time for that, and no need?
Is a kind of spiritual homeopathy being applied, smaller and smaller doses of the same poison that created the symptoms, until these very ‘medicines’ have become nothing more than placebos, and health and recovery are redefined as ‘what the doctor tells you’ is healthy—not the Physician, but those who say they represent Him?

We are told that salvation comes through Christ. It doesn’t matter what church or denomination is speaking, the Message is the same, because we all use the same Book. “Here is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners—of whom I am the worst” (1 Timothy 1:15), and “God so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16).

Isn’t this what the whole mission of the Church is about, salvation through Jesus Christ? And isn’t this mission accomplished by following the simple command, “Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit”? (Matthew 28:19).

Go, make disciples, baptize.
Can it be acceptable that churches do anything above and beyond these three things? Can it even be possible? Can we really think that we can add to the mission that Christ has already given us? Can we set priorities of our own that supersede what the Word Himself commands?
Go, make disciples, baptize.

A church says that we want the salvation of all, that we are offering the fallen world around us the gift of eternal life, vouchsafed to everyone who comes to Jesus and believes in Him.

Well, why aren’t they coming? Is that really how the Message entrusted to us works? Does the church go, do we make disciples, do we baptize, in that order? What have we put ahead of what we say we want? How can we have failed to realise that if we really want something, we remove all obstacles, and pursue it relentlessly?

We understand priorities in lesser things. How have we failed to apply the same principle to what we say is most important to us?
If we have to, what are we willing to give up to accomplish our mission? Have we really considered the question?
For there is really only one:

What price, salvation?

History

I am a historian, but wearing that hat I often jokingly say of myself, ‘I’m not just history,’ meaning of course that I too have a life in the present. Along with my friend Onesimus, I have to ask, ‘Is there really a past?’ not in an absolute sense, for of course there is, but in any frame of reference that can be both meaningful to us and true at the same time. What he writes here says it better than I could say, or rather, ask…

Is there a 'past' that can be accessed and made intelligible on its own terms, rather than just in the service of the need of the day? Or have we so wound the figures and ideas and deeds of long ago women and men in the layers of polemic that they no longer resemble who they were or what they said or how they lived? History, especially religious history, thus becomes a minefield, littered with the improvised explosive devices of later generations. Layered with conflicts that the originals knew nothing about nor had they any intention in which to engage. But now the whole edifice of official history cracks with tension, bearing weights of dogma the architect never conceived, whole systems of belief that threaten to collapse should one brick of historical 'fact' be questioned. Christian blood was shed defending these bulging walls, wars were fought between self-proclaimed Christian armies either to conserve or annihilate the status quo. All in the name of Christ, of course.

So is it possible to pull back the conflicting dogmas and engage with what long ago people actually did and said?

In Sergei Fudel's humble but startlingly clear work, Light in the Darkness, he describes the Russian Christian intelligentsia of the 1920's, an eccentric as well as eclectic group. One of its members—I can't remember his name—was a historian who was writing a book on the History of the Church, but not a history as we're used to seeing, but a spiritual history, that is, a history of the movements of the human spirit that underlay the visible acts and events of the Church. I wish he had finished that book, and I'd want to get a copy of it if he had, but I don't have a clue where to look for it. The idea, though, intrigues me every time I reread Light in the Darkness and come upon mention of it.

I think that my participation in and understanding of the Church is very much rooted in this way of looking at history, not the visibles but the invisibles. That vision seems even clearer and more compelling than what we normally see and experience. What Onesimus is asking in his final question seems at least a tangent to this vision.

Is it possible to engage with what long ago people actually did and said? In an unexpected and surprising way, I think it is. We just have to know where to look.

What it's all about

Christianity is not all about doctrine. Christianity is all about grace. It is all about mercy and love. This is not, however, what one would think, looking at the Church. But the Church is Christianity, and Christianity is the Church. We must look deeper than the externals of history, and more finely at what the Church is, really is, in day to day life. Even there, we may find masquerades going on, but also the true.

Orthodoxy is true not because of the heroic stand against papal claims by such saints as Photios or Mark of Ephesos. Orthodoxy is true because it sings, and because it sings even in the face of sin. It is true because such saints as Elder Porphyrios can love and bless prostitutes. It is true because of such confidence in the victory and mercy of Christ that it can be gracious to sinners, because Christ is.

Doctrine and dogma are the results of a qualitative analysis of the life of the Church, that is, what the Church actually does. They are formed and accepted spontaneously and organically. When they are formulated in lecture halls or in convocations they often reflect nothing real, are merely ideologies, which the evil one uses to divide the undivided Body of Christ. Anything that resists the love and work of Christ is not Christianity, no matter what it is called.

What is the love and work of Christ? It is what we see Jesus doing in the gospels. It is what we see the Holy Spirit doing in the acts and epistles. It is what we see the saints doing who have abandoned all to follow the Lord. It is what we participate in when we follow them. It is mercy applied to the undeserving. It is love lavished on the unlovable. It is refusal of the claims of the unreal. It is forgiveness of offenses. It is justification of the sinner.

Study the scriptures. Turn to them and learn. They mean what they say and will give you language to say what you mean. They uncover the truth about you, but then cover you with the truth about Christ. They baptise and chrismate you into the life of the new creation. They offer you the water that once drunk will quench your thirst for ever. They feed you with the bread of heaven that once eaten preserves you to life eternal. They are mercy, grace and love.

Just keep loving

Right now, some of us followers of Jesus are going through the worst persecutions and attacks on our persons and our families (parents, spouses, and offspring) that we have ever endured, or that we thought we ever would have to endure. We mustn’t forget that we are in spiritual warfare, and it can be very intense. When in the thick of the battle (even when it's only inside ourselves), we sometimes want to take sides against other brethren that seem to be in the wrong, even against someone who appears to be attacking us.

But it's really like this. It is satan (notice we do not capitalise the name, it's just a thing, not a real person, it lost that privilege when it reviled the Lord), yes, it is satan that is hiding behind a parent or brother or sister or son or daughter or friend, or even one's own flesh, hiding behind someone or behind oneself, shooting arrows at us. We think it's the person that seems to be fighting us, but no, it's satan, using them as a shield to hide behind, hoping we'll shoot back—at them, of course.

If we are satisfied to get on the crooked and wide path, satan will not bother us, and our families can appear model Christians. If some of us get on the straight and narrow and some of us don't, it starts making trouble for us, pitting us against each other. But when we're all trying to follow the call, satan uses everything in its infernal arsenal to divide us from each other. (In Greek "diabolos", devil, means "splitter.")

The fatal thing is to withdraw into oneself and say, "There, there, I will just cling to the Lord, since He will always be with me. I don't care if the others hate me for no reason…" Whatever happens, don't do this! Remember, "Love endures all things…"

Whatever happens, just keep loving, that is, don't give up caring (even if the others do), don't try to understand what's happening if it's too hard, just love the people you're with, help them in simple ways, smile, say "good morning," don't take offense at anything, and try not to give offense.

Stay clear of getting pulled into battles that can do nothing but destroy everyone involved. If a fight is going on, love the combatants, speak to and touch them if you can, but if that isn't an option, retreat to the presence of the Father, and just pray, even without words if you have to, even if crying is all you can do. God the Father understands tears.

I hope your situation isn't as bad as that, but in case it is, that's what I have to offer. I speak out of my own life with the Lord. We must stick together, and help one another in the Lord, as soldiers in the front line, even when the battle is shamefully inglorious from man's point of view.

From the angels' point of view, there's more at stake in our daily struggles than we know. And thank God for that! Meanwhile, as they say, let's pray hard, for the time is close.

Interpretations of love

There are so many interpretations of love among people.

One interpretation says…

We must love people, that is, want what is best for them,

have a good will toward them,

but we don't necessarily have to want to be with them,

or put up with them.

This is where many a marriage ends up, and many a congregation.

This is the love that can be commanded

and, once we've hedged the commandment with escape clauses,

we're free to follow this "commandment."

Though there are many kinds of love among us,

the Word of God is the only teacher of what love is.

How we apply it depends on how much we want to see.

For me, just to look, really look, at another human being,

or even at a fellow creature,

without thinking, without measuring, analyzing,

just looking,

for me love comes to the surface quickly.

I want to know the person I am looking at,

and spontaneously I want to love them.

Freedom intervenes to set the limits.
Does the other person want to be loved, or is it an intrusion?
Do I want to activate the love which naturally rises in me,

or will I let it die,

look the other way,

because I realise there will be a price to pay?

I hold myself "ready to love" others,

because Jesus may come to me in the guise of my brother.

I do not fret over whether I should or must love my neighbor

in an active way.

I just love the one who is put before me this moment.

If love requires action beyond that point,

I try to do whatever love demands.

The aftertaste of love is prayer, specifically intercession.

Mother Gavrilia says, "Love does not get tired."
I know what she means…

Once, when I was loving the brother whom God placed before us,

it didn't matter to me that I had to stay with him the whole day,

eating little, taking no rest, just making sure he was fed,

that he would stay awake (we were all up many hours that day!),

that he had somewhere to go while waiting for his bus connexion.

I just wasn't tired.

I could've stayed up all night with him, because I was loving him.

Love just doesn't get tired.

Have you ever noticed how John 3:16

(the often quoted scripture)

and 1 John 3:16

really go together,

and how the 3:16 in John's first letter is really a completion

and commentary of the 3:16 in John's gospel?

The work of sanctification

In a narrow place between two rocks there came to meet me a great Lion. The speed of him was like the ostrich, and his size was an elephant’s; his hair was like pure gold and the brightness of his eyes like gold that is liquid in the furnace…

Then I fell at his feet and thought, ‘Surely this is the hour of death, for the Lion (who is worthy of all honour) will know that I have served Tash all my days and not him. Nevertheless, it is better to see the Lion and die than to be Tisroc of the world and live and not to have seen him.’

But the Glorious One bent down his golden head and touched my forehead with his tongue and said, ‘Son, thou art welcome.’

But I said, ‘Alas, Lord, I am no son of thine but the servant of Tash.’ He answered, ‘Child, all the service thou hast done to Tash, I account as service done to me.’

Then by reasons of my great desire for wisdom and understanding, I overcame my fear and questioned the Glorious One and said, ‘Lord, is it then true, as the Ape said, that thou and Tash are one?’

The Lion growled so that the earth shook (but his wrath was not against me) and said, ‘It is false. Not because he and I are one, but because we are opposites, I take to me the services which thou hast done to him. For I and he are of such different kinds that no service which is vile can be done to me, and none which is not vile can be done to him. Therefore if any man swear by Tash and keep his oath for the oath’s sake, it is by me that he has truly sworn, though he know it not, and it is I who reward him. And if any man does a cruelty in my name, then, though he says the name Aslan, it is Tash whom he serves and by Tash his deed is accepted. Dost thou understand, Child?’

I said, ‘Lord, thou knowest how much I understand.’ But I said also (for the truth constrained me), ‘Yet I have been seeking Tash all my days.’

‘Beloved,’ said the Glorious One, ‘unless thy desire had been for me thou wouldst not have sought so long and so truly. For all find what they truly seek.’

— C. S. Lewis, The Last Battle

The passage above from book seven of the Chronicles of Narnia
concerns Emeth, an infidel warrior who goes to his death, believing in a false god, the demon Tash. In the mythical world of Narnia, Christ wears the form of a Lion, but in most other respects His character matches that of His true form, the man Jesus Christ.

If you're not familiar with this series of books but have seen any of the recent film adaptations, they do not even come close to the story line that Lewis intended. Also, be advised that despite the warnings of a few anti-Narnia ‘Christian’ web sites, these books are not in any sense occult or witchery-laden as some other more recent series. In fact, Narnia stands in stark contrast to them. It is not a modern fantasy series, but in the best classic sense, a kind of allegory or myth.

Written for children, they never cease to interest and enlighten adult readers. They are Christian theology for children, the kind that Christ speaks of when He says, ‘to such as them the Kingdom of heaven belongs’ (Matthew 19:14).

Why did I just quote this passage? Am I going to try to prove anything by it? Not at all. I am not qualified to ask or answer the sorts of questions people sometimes debate, concerning the implications regarding ‘just who are saved’ that they read into this passage. I also don't think Lewis was jockeying into position to ask or answer such questions either.

What this passage bespeaks to me is the work of sanctification. This is not a human work but rather, the work of Christ: It is Him turning us into the kinds of creatures who not only are worthy of eternal life, but also want it. This is what comes to mind when I think about sanctification.

There is only one Christianity—biblical Orthodoxy—and all Christians owe its existence to the Church Fathers from the beginning till now.
Spiritual life goes on, undeniably, outside of the ‘visible Church.’
The work of sanctification is possible only through Christ, because only He accomplishes it.
Real sanctification is different from spiritual sophistication.
When Christ emptied the tombs He did not go only to those who knew Him or of Him, but to all.
Escape from hell and death is possible only through Christ, who is the Only-Begotten Son and Word of God.
Our narrow parameters for ‘just who are saved’ are based on a shallow interpretation of Christ's word about the ‘narrow path.’
Everyone whom He saves will finally know Him, even if while they were being saved, they may not have known by Whom.

Today I read an interesting comment on this very subject. Lorelei wrote, ‘When Jesus said “No one comes to the Father except through me,” he meant that He claims us—not that we must claim Him. Just as Aslan claimed Emeth, and not the other way around.’ This thought really contains a good dose of Calvinism, of predestination, but I am not sure that it must be taken that way.

God's plan of salvation, His divine ikonomía, as we call it in Greek, is too impossibly vast for our puny minds and meticulous methodologies to express or understand. Bits and pieces of it we learn and ingest all our lives, as we follow Jesus in faithful obedience, but we are never given to understand it completely, and as soon as we think we've got it all systematised, God acts, and our house of cards collapses again. Sounds familiar?

Back to the work of sanctification. What I wanted to say, what the story in The Last Battle speaks to me, is that wherever we find the work of sanctification going on—real sanctification, not religious hocus-pocus—there is Christ present, effecting it, since apart from Him, there can be no sanctification, as well as no salvation. The Church must look deeper than creedal preoccupations in herself and in others.

Everything we have been given on the path of sanctification and salvation is not for its own sake, but for the sake of the purposes of God the Holy Triad—what is it He wants for us? What does He intend when He creates us? Can we afford to quench the smoking flax when it is not in our own hands? If we know all is possible only through Christ, how can we welcome those whom He is sanctifying outside our gates?

Must we wait for Christ Himself to empty Hades of the souls whom we have relinquished there? What does Christ mean when He tells us, ‘If you confess Me before men, I will confess you before My Father who is in heaven’? And what does it mean to deny Him before men?
Is there only one kind of apostasy? Who has the boldness to turn away those souls whom Christ has made worthy, thinking they own His Kingdom?

Ikons or not

Fr Stephen has written an excellent testimony about ikons at his blog, Glory to God for All Things, from which this excerpt is taken…

An important aspect of icons (in the teaching of the Church) is that an icon must be true. We cannot make icons of that which is not true. I recall a conversation with an elderly iconographer. We were discussing a particular icon of the Russian New Martyrs.

“It is not an icon!” she declared. I remember at the time wondering what she meant. It clearly obeyed all the canons and conventions for an icon – those whom it portrayed were truly martyrs. She drew my attention to the portrayal of those who were pictured carrying out the martyrdoms.“There is hate in this icon!” She exclaimed. A true icon can never contain hate.

She did not mean that an icon could not portray the martyrdom itself (often a gruesome event). Rather she meant that within the portrayal of the evil-doers, the hatred and anger of the iconographer could be seen. It was, perhaps, a subtle point. But it was a point that was quite vital to this very accomplished iconographer. For veneration and hatred cannot coexist. Hatred will create a distortion which is not healing to the soul but damaging.

I have had this kind of experience and have also written about it here. What offended my faith in viewing a certain picture in ikonographic style was precisely what the elderly iconographer said, ‘There is hate in this icon!’ and that is what makes it a non-ikon. Other than this, and the fact that for Orthodox Christians, ikons must be historical, not allegorical (though the rule is sometimes broken), there is little else to prevent a two-dimensional image from being regarded an ikon.

I may prefer ikons written in the Byzantine style, but others may find realistic paintings of Christ and the saints work for them just as well. That Orthodoxy has standards which it relaxes out of love and necessity is one of the chief characteristics of this Christian faith, and the open secret as to how it has been able to remain voluntarily united for so many centuries.

In our midst

Orthodox Christianity is not so much a religion as it is healing for the soul, the Church not so much a temple as it is a hospital for sinners. This is what has been handed over to us by the Fathers, to whom it was handed over by the Apostles, to whom Christ Himself handed it over. Religion, or rather what men have embraced as religion, is a sickness, and Christ is both the healer and the cure.

At the end of every orthros service we sing from Psalm 41:4, Ιασαι τήν ψυχήν μου ότι ήμαρτόν σοι, ‘Heal my soul, for I have sinned against You.’ Our approach to God is always to the Divine Nature as יְהוָה רָפָא Yahweh Repha (Exodus 15:26), ‘the LORD [our] Healer.’ Christ Himself is the physician of souls (Matthew 9:12). Even to this day, the pious among the Jews sing incessantly, ‘I want Mashíach,
I want Mashíach now!’ (Matisyahu). They too are sick; they too know that not religion, but only Christ, Mashíach, is the cure.

Yes, but Orthodoxy is still a religion. That is how it is experienced by most of its adherents. Indeed, Christianity in general is experienced as a religion. How and why is this possible?

To begin with, every people has a religion, and all religions begin as myths, that is, stories and traditions that convey truths without themselves being the Truth, providing some relief to the human condition, but never able to cure us. Even the people to whom the Divine Nature revealed Himself, taking up their myths and fulfilling them by signs and wonders, instituting the only divinely revealed religion, even the Law given to them as an incapable covenant, even that could not heal them. ‘If a law had been given that could impart life, then righteousness would certainly have come by the law’ (Galatians 3:21). Of course, this people is Israel, which now fills the world as Jews and as Christians.

Christianity is a religion because it is the co-heir with Judaism of that ‘only divinely revealed’ worship of ‘the Being’, in Greek ο Ων, ho Ón, in Hebrew יְהוָה, Yahweh. Into this religious heritage Jesus of Nazareth was born and raised, of this people He has been acclaimed Lord and Christ, proven by His resurrection from the dead and all that follows from it, and nothing that He did while He walked the earth as a Son of Israel ever refuted or denied this religion. Instead, everything He did fulfilled and perfected it.

Worship of the Father is no longer ceremonies alone, and it never was. The Only-Begotten Son of the Father had to come, in person, to settle once and for all every dispute among the children of Israel on this and all other points. Those who worship the Father must worship in spirit and in truth. And He is the Truth.

There is only One Israel, and yet there is the Church and the Synagogue. In the first, Christ is revealed, in the second, He is hidden. ‘Truly, God is hidden with you, the God of Israel, the Saviour’ (Isaiah 45:15). What tender and pitiful love the Messiah, the Christ of God, Jesus of Nazareth, must have for His people, to have suffered through the centuries hidden within them, as they have maintained their faithful watch over the holy things of God! How faithfully He has stood by them through their every persecution and suffering, even to the gates of She’ol, to near annihilation. He who prays, ‘Father, forgive them,’ has made good His prayer, becoming the Father’s answer, having emptied She’ol for all humanity, for all time, till the last human creature passes into the brightness of His mercy.

And what of the Church, the Bride of Christ, even His Body on earth, visible sign of His presence, home to fugitives and exiles of earth? This is the Israel of God, religion her mainstay, hemmed in by walls the world builds to protect itself from her, though she is its place of healing, and her food and drink its best medicine, no less than the Bread of heaven, and the Blood by which the whole universe was restored before it ever began. He has come and lives in her midst, who says, ‘It is not the healthy who need a physician, but the sick.
I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners’ (Mark 2:17).

Knowing Him as He is, for who He is, and why He has come, the Church has more than mere opportunity, more than promises only, but possibility. Faith is fulfilled in obedience, sickness cured in love, slavery dissolved in faithfulness, and death, finally, overcome in mercy. ‘And there will be princes dancing there. All find their home in you’ (Psalm 87:7).

St Sergius of Radonezh

A saint is not remarkable on the surface; all his riches are internal, in his soul.

A peasant came a long way to the monastery to see St. Sergius of Radonezh. When he asked for the abbot, he was told that he was working in the garden. The peasant went off to the garden and saw a man there in poor and dirty clothing, hoeing along with the other workers. The peasant returned to the monastery dissatisfied, thinking within himself that the monks were making fun of him, and repeated, that there might be no mistake, that he wanted to see the famous holy father, Sergius.

Sergius arrived back at the monastery just then, and welcomed the peasant, serving him at table. The saint looked into the heart of his guest, and saw there the thoughts about himself. To quiet him, he told him that he would see St. Sergius if he waited a little.

Just then, a prince arrived at the monastery with his nobles. Both the prince and the nobles bowed low to Sergius and asked his blessing. The monks then removed the peasant from the room to make room for the new guests, and this peasant looked with wonder from afar, and peered to see that which he had spurned the sight of from nearby. He chided himself for his ignorance and was deeply ashamed.

When the prince had departed, the peasant quickly went up to the saint, fell at his feet, and asked his forgiveness. And the great saint was gentle with him, and said: “Don’t grieve, my son; you thought a true thing of me, reckoning me as nothing, while others are deluded in thinking me something great.”

— from The Prologue from Ochrid, by St Nikolaj Velimirović

Good Christian

This was the Lord’s Day when we hear in the gospel the command, ‘Put out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch.’ This is the Lord Jesus calling out to His disciple Peter, who was out on the sea of Galilee with his companions casting his nets without catching anything. ‘Master, we toiled all night and took nothing!’ the Rock called back, as if the Lord didn’t already know, and then, ‘but at your word I will let down the nets.’

Often try as we might, all our efforts come to nothing, that is, when we are doing what we think we should do. But when the Lord intervenes in our failures—for He always does, though we don’t always notice—when the Lord gives the command, if we dare accept it and do what He tell us, well, something good always results, without exception. We may not always be ready and willing for what happens, but the word He sows in us never returns to Him empty.

So Peter did as he was told, willingly and yet reluctantly. The scriptures don’t tell us either way, but I can only imagine what I’d have done, if it were me. On the one hand, willingly because I want to obey His word, reluctantly because I am always apprehensive, always afraid, of change. I heard an important but startling truth from the lips of Fr Demosthenes, our preacher, this morning, ‘God never gives us a word that He doesn’t expect us to act upon.’

To put the same idea positively, ‘God always gives us a word, that He expects us to act upon.’ When I think about it, this is absolutely true, at least it has been in my life. Most of my sins have been and continue to be not ‘sins of commission’ but ‘sins of omission,’ knowing what is the right thing to do, and not doing it, for whatever reason. Why we don’t recognize this more quickly is due to our religious upbringing. We think only bad things we do are sins.

As Fr Demosthenes also pointed out—for this post is going to be nothing more than what I remember from his honest homily this morning—we think of ourselves as good people, as good Christians because we tell ourselves, ‘I haven’t killed anyone. I go to church. I volunteer and support good causes. I am a nice person,’ and that’s where we leave it. The problem with this is, it is simply not true. We aren’t good people, though we may be nice.

We do what we want to, and we call it good.

Do we do what God wants us to do? Are we even listening for His voice? Would we recognize it, if we heard it? Christianity—Father Demos said ‘Orthodoxy’ but we can substitute a more general term—is not religious activities, training or even study. We can know a lot of stuff and even act within the confines of our select knowledge without ever reaching the only kind of knowledge that matters, that is, knowing the Lord.

‘What is the benefit of knowing the Lord, and why isn’t my religious affiliation, activities and training enough to guarantee my salvation?’ Because none of these things can compare to knowing the Lord, and knowing Him, to love Him, really Him, and not an imagination or idea of what or who He must be. It’s the difference between worshiping an idol and following the living God, to put it bluntly and not mildly. If we know the Lord, we will love Him and do what He commands.

So to be a good Christian, one must do more than ‘pay my tithe of dill and cumin’ as the Pharisees boast, and place oneself in the presence of the Lord and listen for His voice, His word of command. ‘God never gives us a word that He doesn’t expect us to act upon.’ Do we want to hear that voice? Do we want to act on that word? Like Peter, something in us wants to protest, even in the face of love. Yet if we know the Lord, our love for Him conquers the old man in us, just as His love conquered death and Hades for us.

What of the consequences? We know one thing: that obeying the word of Jesus Christ always changes us, always changes the people around us, always changes the world. Metanoía, a word with so many shades of meaning that we lose track when we try to count them—repentance, turning around, renewing our minds, change: those are some of the simplest—from metá, ‘beyond’ and noó, ‘what the mind does, thinks’: this is the meaning of our every encounter with Jesus.

‘Put out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch.’ Yes, Lord, and what a catch! This was more than I bargained for. Your love and mercy and abundance are too much for me. If I dared, I would say, ‘Depart from me, for I am a sinful man,’ but You already know it, already know everything about me. You even teach me about myself things I could never know. You know I am sinful. That’s why You came for me. That’s why You called me. That’s why I even exist at all. You love me.

Me, a good Christian? No. A good man? Again, no. I might dream I am good somehow, but out of that silly dream I always awake. We are just following you, Lord. Following along the saints who follow behind you, hoping that we will continue from day to day, knowing that every step is only at Your beckoning. All we can cry out is, ‘Lord, help us to know you more, so that we can love You more, and loving You more, that we gladly run to fulfill Your word, that it does not return to You void.’

Now, where to next? Help me to keep my eyes on You. Help me to walk, my feet fitting Your footprints. Raise me when I fall. Carry me when I am too weak to move. Awaken me when I slumber, raise me again from the sleep of death every day, for You are the Resurrection and the Life. Change me, renew my mind, turn me around, help me to repent. Lord, I am not worthy that You should come under my roof. But speak the word only, and my soul shall be healed.

The work of Christ

I found this essay on the internet, but I couldn't discover its author, other than that it appeared in a Lutheran publication. It seems to me to be a good analysis of the difference between (authentic) Christianity and Islam.

The work of Muhammad is based on being honored and the work of Christ is based on being insulted. This produces two very different reactions to mockery. If Christ had not been insulted, there would be no salvation: This was His saving work: to be insulted and die to rescue sinners.


Already in the Psalms the path of mockery was promised. ‘All who see me mock me; they make mouths at me; they wag their heads’ (Psalm, 22:7). ‘He was despised and rejected by men ... as one from whom men hide their faces . . . and we esteemed him not’ (Isaiah 53:3).

When it actually happened it was worse than expected. ‘They stripped him and put a scarlet robe on him, and twisting together a crown of thorns, they put it on his head.... And kneeling before him, they mocked him, saying, “Hail, King of the Jews!” And they spit on him’ (Matthew 27:28-30).

His response to all this was patient endurance. This was the work He came to do. ‘Like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he opened not his mouth’ (Isaiah 53:7).

For Christ, enduring the mockery of the cross was the essence of His mission. And for a true follower of Christ enduring suffering patiently for the glory of Christ is the essence of obedience. ‘Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account’ (Matthew 5:11).


This was not true of Muhammad, and Muslims do not believe it is true of Jesus. Most Muslims have been taught that Jesus was not crucified. One Sunni Muslim writes, ‘Muslims believe that Allah saved the Messiah from the ignominy of crucifixion.’

 Another adds, ‘We honor [Jesus] more than you [Christians] do...We refuse to believe that God would permit him to suffer death on the cross.’

 An essential Muslim impulse is to avoid the ‘ignominy’ of the cross. That's the most basic difference between Christ and Muhammad and between a Muslim and a follower of Christ.

During His life on earth Jesus was called a bastard (John 8:41), a drunkard (Matthew 11:19), a blasphemer (Matthew 26:65), a devil (Matthew 10:25); and He promised His followers the same: ‘If they have called the master of the house Beelzebub, how much more will they malign those of his household’ (Matthew 10:25).

The caricature and mockery of Christ has continued to this day. Martin Scorsese portrayed Jesus in The Last Temptation of Christ as wracked with doubt and beset with sexual lust. Andres Serrano was funded by the National Endowment for the Arts to portray Jesus on a cross sunk in a bottle of urine. The Da Vinci Code portrays Jesus as a mere mortal who married and fathered children. How should His followers respond?

On the one hand, we are grieved and angered: On the other hand, we identify with Christ, and embrace His suffering, and rejoice in our afflictions, and say with the apostle Paul that vengeance belongs to the Lord, let us love our enemies and win them with the gospel. If Christ did His work by being insulted we must do ours likewise.

Jesus Christ is still the only hope of reconciliation. And it means that His followers must be willing to ‘share His sufferings, becoming like Him in his death’ (Philippians 3:10).

The above is not a testimony inciting Christians to hate Muslims or even to disparage the faith of Islam. It is not meant to provoke confrontation. Despite the political and social thrust of Islam which makes it a worldly force to be reckoned with, even Islam harbors souls who truly do seek God and love Him. As Christians in the West, our response to Islam will necessarily be different from the response of Christians living in predominantly Islamic countries.

Wherever Christians live, we must be prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice when challenged by the world system, because we follow a crucified Lord. But like His, our response must consist primarily of love, even if this love leads to our own death. A world under Islamic domination will always look different from a world inhabited by those whom Christ has freed, but we have seen neither world in history yet, only partial glimpses. Not Islam, but Christ. Not slavery, but sonship.

So, if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed.
John 8:36 Jerusalem Bible