Asleep in our boat

Sometimes I wonder, when Jesus fell asleep with His head on a cushion in the disciples' fishing boat, what was He doing? He must have gone out countless times with them on that fickle lake, in clear weather and in foul, by night and by day. Did He often just fall asleep? Was He tired, or just bored with what was going on? Of Him, if of no one else, this saying is at least true, ‘I sleep, but my heart is awake,’ yet He is not the Bride (who speaks these words in the Song of Songs), but the Beloved whom the psalmist extols, ‘of all men You are the most handsome, Your lips are moist with grace, for God has blessed You forever’ (Psalm 45:2 Jerusalem Bible).

When the Word and Son of God became man, was that too a kind of ‘sleep in the boat’?

I mean, while reclining and growing in the womb of the Theotokos, He was asleep, yet the worlds continued to run their courses, and nature renewed itself as it always does, even though the Lord who creates, sustains and—yes!—destroys all things was hidden in a cleft, not of rock, but of human flesh.

Of course, how could someone not record that day when sleeping, they had to rouse Him? They needed His help. The wind and the waves were getting the best of them. They were in danger of capsizing. If He didn't wake up and do something, He would have to swim for His life as well. Or would He? Does He only pretend to be asleep, so we have to go to the trouble to rouse Him?

Perfect trust met perfect care on that day. He who slept for our sake in the Woman's virgin womb, and slept for our sake in the rich man's unused tomb, slept also for the sake of His disciples in that boat. Strong as that vessel was, they knew it could not withstand the tempest raging around them. They woke Him. ‘Master, don't you care? We're going down!’ We know how that story, and all the others written about that Man, ends.

Yet here we are in our boat, our fishing boat, the Holy Church, and the sea is getting very rough as we can see. The disciples have forgotten all about fishing. Some are attending to the management of the rudder and sail, some are counting the moneys garnished from the last catch, a few are mending nets, and all are worrying, mostly without admitting it, about the raging tempest around them. Do we know who it is that is asleep in our boat?

Mistaken identities

Most people have probably had this experience at least once in their lives. You are out and about, it might be in a place you know, or somewhere far from home. You suddenly notice someone near you, but with their back to you, or perhaps someone a short distance away but too far to see them clearly, but you are sure that it’s someone you know.

In your excitement you might call out to the person with their back to you by name as I once did, ‘Hey! Jody!’ and when the fellow (along with five other people in the store because I was so loud and abrupt) turned around to look, it was a completely different person. I wonder what I looked like at that moment. I pretended it wasn’t me and sheepishly walked past and away.

With the person seen from afar whom you think you know, it’s worse if you wave and begin running towards them, not so bad if you take your time and just approach, perhaps saying nothing aloud, till you are close enough to see that they are not who you thought they were. Perhaps due to your poor eyesight or their real resemblance to someone you know, you embarrass yourself.

You actually greet them and speak to them, only to find out they are not who you thought they were. ‘I beg your pardon! You look exactly like my college chum Larry! I’m so sorry!’ and after their quizzical look you quit their presence as quickly as you can, and escape into yourself, into nonentity. It helps if there’s a crowd you can disappear into, but if not, well, ‘grin and bear it.’

What is this all about? It is about mistaken identities. They usually happen when we are ‘too quick on the draw,’ using a dueling metaphor. Why we are too quick can be an innocent and light-hearted joy that unfortunately must be spoiled through no one’s fault. It can also be due to some human weakness in us, a shallowness seeking depth, but in the wrong way, time, or place.

Many mistaken identities bring with them a great deal of unnecessary pain and suffering, however. These too often come from human weakness, shallowness, picture-thinking or vain hope. Many a marriage is discovered to be non-existent, an attempted mating between two people, one or both of whom ‘never knew’ each other, but were impelled by fantasy about the other.

One or both wake up one day and realize there is no marriage. For the tradition-bound, or out of economic or social necessity, or both, they decide that ‘that’s how it is,’ that they’ve ‘made their bed and now must sleep in it,’ and resign themselves to an unhappy life. If they’re religious, they console themselves with religious platitudes which they only half-believe, and they persevere.

That’s not what happens with the majority of modern people, who look for the slightest unhappiness with their imagined mate as a pretext to dissolve a union that, if they had really wanted or knew how to preserve, could have continued. But this example, marriage between mistaken identities, is not really what I am thinking about. What I am thinking about, is how we write each other’s stories.

It’s very common among certain kinds of people, to interrupt when another person is speaking, their minds racing ahead with a response or correction so impetuously that they cannot wait for the other to finish a sentence. They almost want to cover over what the other is saying. I say ‘almost’ when I really mean they do want to, but they’re completely unaware of it. They want to tell the story.

They don’t want to hear the other out, because they don’t believe that the other is a real person. The person that they know and believe in is a fabrication of their own needs, wants, or hopes. They want to rewrite any parts of the other person’s story that don’t conform to their expectations. Talking over someone is the mildest form of this delusion, that others must be who we want them to be.

Mistaken identity is, perhaps, one of the main reasons for most of the conflicts in the world at large and close up. As we gradually become aware that other people really do exist, and that they are usually different from what we think they are, and that the story they have to tell, whether verbally or existentially by their lives among us, if we’re honest, we begin to let them be.

We learn to give people room to be who they are, even if we don’t like what that is. This is where the Christian is put to the test. Do we obey the words of Jesus, or do we only say that we have responded to His call? If Christ has called us—and He has, because His call is to all people regardless of their state of life, regardless even of their religious beliefs—then we’ve chosen obedience to His commands.

And what are His commands? ‘A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, even as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another’ (John 13:34-35). And what of mistaken identities? To love others, to want for them that which you want for yourself, is to begin to see them as they really are.

At our gates

It’s a very strange world we live in today, one that we could never have imagined just fifty years ago on a great number of counts. The one that I think about constantly is, how the world has changed to accept it as a ‘given’ that anything you want to do, to be, or to have, you are absolutely entitled to, as long as it doesn’t hurt anyone (else).

I had to put ‘else’ in parentheses because it’s not clear to me whether it’s part of the ‘given’ that hurting oneself should also prevent one from doing, being, or having what one wants (or needs). There’s those parentheses again! It seems I can hardly have a thought or say it aloud without parenthetically subsidizing it with provisos.

But it’s quite true, that it’s becoming mainstream, if it isn’t already, to believe that if something is possible, then you must try it, or at least let anyone else try it, if they want to. The total invasion of our privacy by the media that occurs in all age groups has opened the door to possibilities that many of us would never have thought of.

I used to think, when I was younger, that it was very weird for people to smoke. My parents smoked when I was growing up, but they made it criminal, a capital offense even, for any of us to smoke. My original justification for not smoking was, I didn’t want to be like my parents. The real reason was, it just didn’t appeal to me.

But I also wondered, how could anyone even think of picking leaves of a specific plant, drying them out, curing them, and in various formats (rolled up inside of other leaves, or in paper, or stuffed into little buckets with blow-pipe attached) lighting them on fire and sucking the smoke into one’s lungs? It seemed to go against nature.

Lungs are for breathing good, clean air, just as noses are for smelling fragrances as well as warning us of danger by detecting bad odors. Mouths are for eating, tongues for sensing the delicious and the foul in a way similar to the nose’s functions, and likely for the same reasons. Nature seemed to be pretty straightforward and obvious with us.

I used to have a crude saying, ‘God made [feces] stinky so we wouldn’t eat [them].’ I’ve muffled the real saying with bracketed substitutes; the saying is possibly already offensive. But as to the thought itself, of course, it doesn’t work for some animals, rabbits for instance, who eat their pellets so as to have one more chance to extract the nutrients.

But I still think that the natural world in combination with our sense mechanisms keeps us from harm and guides us to what is good for us—not always, but almost always. And I am appalled by some of the anti-natural things we do in our pursuit of pleasure, justifying everything by the tacit maxim, ‘if it’s possible, then try it,’ especially when I do them.

Which makes me think it through some more. Just because something isn’t obvious and natural doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try it. Who would’ve thought of many of the successful remedies modern medicine has developed if they didn’t pursue possibilities? Yet, just because something is medically possible doesn’t mean it’s wise, moral, or even necessary.

Possibilities coupled with freedom and the resources—time, place, and money—to pursue them simply cannot justify themselves, even when they do not appear to hurt anyone. Reason, a rational mind, and optimally, an informed, rational mind is what determines whether something is worth doing. Or else, mindless consumerism and narcissism is what we fall into.

The very strange world I mentioned at the beginning is the result of the mindlessness that has hijacked our civilization and turned citizens into slaves. Worse than slaves, really, for slavery is only the status created by addiction. Worse than slaves, even worse than addicts, we turn rebels intent on destroying not only God and His world, but ourselves.

Physical suicide is nothing compared to this—spiritual suicide. Yet here we are, doing this to ourselves every day and watching others do it to themselves. Outward deviations—bodily mutilations and anti-social personas—are only the ‘tip of the iceberg.’ We console ourselves, ‘well, at least I’m not as bad as that,’ as we drive ourselves over the cliff.

Savage ridicule and parody is what is dished out to those who still know that life has a purpose, that reason is a gracious guide in the pursuit of beauty. Once again, in this sphere and every other, the unearthly demon is unearthed to plague the earth, to poison its inhabitants with what is not worthy of them, but Truth stands always at our gates with what is.

Something greater

What our Saviour saw from the Cross - Tissot

Holy Cross day, the fourteenth of September, for the Orthodox Christians, begins at sunset the day before, though few have that sensibility. Only the devout who live in communities large enough to support the full feast-day liturgical cycle of vespers (at sunset), matins (at dawn), and divine liturgy (following matins), will preserve in themselves the Byzantine mindset regarding time. It is a very logical and orderly mindset. It claims time itself for Christ, consecrating every moment of it to Him.

This mindset derives from Christianity’s religious ancestor, Judaism, which also consecrates time in its entirety to the transcendent Eternal. This year, the Jewish New Year day, Rosh Hashanah, exactly coincides with Holy Cross day. The Christian feast day commemorates the return of the relic of the true cross after its capture by the Persians. The Jewish one commemorates the creation of Adam, according to their reckoning, five thousand seven hundred seventy-six years ago. Both look back, not ahead.

History itself has been claimed and consecrated by both religions, and though this may have its benefits, this also has its liabilities. Both religions encourage believers to live their faith in the fleeting present moment of time, as a reenactment of and a participation in the mysteries of the past. Both hold out to their followers a future full of consolation for the righteous and judgment for the heedless. Both see humanity as fallen, and infected with sin. Both expect deliverance only at the end of human history.

This is religion, consecrating the past in such a way that not only its imagined glories are celebrated but also its mistakes are conserved and repeated, generation after generation, even if only in theory. For the Christian, though human society and the race itself is evolving and capable of transcending its past mistakes, there is no hope or help for mankind but in accepting Jesus, and then joining in the perpetuation of religious cycles designed to keep our sins, our sicknesses, unabolishable, under control.

When the Holy Cross was set up in Jerusalem and worshiped, albeit a form of latent idolatry, the Church and the State were a single thing. If you were a Christian, your choice had been made for you, and there was no changing it. If you were not a Christian, you had only one choice, to convert and become one, otherwise you were next to nothing. A marginal existence was your lot if you were unlucky enough to find yourself surrounded by Christian society, as totalitarian as any modern dictatorship. We forget that.

Because we were the victors, we muse, we wrote the history that shapes us, and we continue to make it. We refuse to accept the truth of life in the material world, that it is constantly changing, that history writes itself, we don’t write it, but because we think we do, we become its victims, dragged along behind its march as dead weight. Then we wonder why the world pays no attention to us. It’s not a matter of being outdated. It’s not about customs and mores. It’s about choosing death over life.

Which is an irony of the greatest magnitude, because we say we believe in a God who plainly declares that He ‘makes all things new,’ and that He comes to give us ‘life, and life in abundance.’ Yes, it is by death, by enduring this fact of ultimate change, that He renews not only the race, but the universe, in an act of dauntless bravery, meeting annihilation with transfiguration, that carries us over the barrier of our original, damaged nature, and opens to every human creature the possibility of complete recovery.

Isn’t this what the Cross is really about? Isn’t this why it is elevated? Isn’t history itself, even as we have written and remembered it, only a backdrop to the Divine economy that has prepared for us a place in an orderly cosmos which sets us above even asomatic beings we call angels? Bodiless powers as they are, knowing no evolution or change, are below us who have bodies and are being perfected by an evolution that transcends even itself. Something greater than the wood recaptured from the Persians is here.

The Holy Cross, the throne from which Man reigns as God, whose wood, far from dead, keeps renewing itself with each cut of the knife, whose roots planted in the earth give rise to a crown that contains the heavens, whose depths penetrating even the darkness of Hades are matched by heights participating even in the Divine Nature, has been restored to us who never realized what treasure we had lost, by a victory not won by earthly powers or by the bodiless, but by Him who is with us, now and to the ages of ages.

Τον Σταυρόν σου προσκυνουμεν Δέσποτα,
και την αγιαν σου Ανάστασιν δοξάζομεν.

Laboratory of myself

Christians express their faith in many ways. Some are religious, others are not. To those who are indifferent, anyone who is a Christian is classified as religious. That’s a self-defense mechanism for those who use it. Without looking into it, these people categorize as religious anyone who confesses Christ and follows Him, so that they have their excuse for not doing likewise: ‘I am not religious.’

But not all followers of Jesus are religious. I certainly am not. I am not a religious Christian, but a scientific one. I know that the Living God is not static, but personal, dynamic and interested in working with me, to bring me fully into the Truth. Having created me, He wants me to love Him in perfect freedom, to become by grace what He is by nature, and this requires a response on my part.

I am scientific in my approach to God, but it is not that I study God scientifically, but rather that I allow myself to be studied scientifically by God, and by myself under His direction. It is the scientific approach that works best for me.

In the laboratory of myself, experiments are done one after the other, following the instructions in the manual, that is, the Holy Bible.

Someone has called the Word of God the wiring diagram of the universe. I would not call it that, even in its written form as the Divine Scriptures, but I have found it to be the manual to the human species, full of experiments that anyone can do to find out who they are, who God is, and what we are created to be. To read the Bible and not do what it commands is like going to lectures and skipping lab.

I did that in college. Let me warn you, it doesn’t work.

We learn by doing, at least I do. We know we are the image of the unseen God, and that knowledge should launch us on a journey of exploration and experimentation to find our Source. This is not an individualistic pursuit, however, because essential to the scientific method is to work with others, compare results, help each other, and in the end all arrive at the Truth. Solitary scientists often lapse into fantasy.

What is the point of all this?

There are groups that call themselves ‘Christian Scientists’ but aren’t really scientists, it is only their name. There are Gnostics who claim salvation or at least superiority through the acquisition of knowledge, but they don’t really know a thing. There are those who call themselves ‘Catholics’ because they’ve agreed on doctrines that they say are universal, even though it’s obvious they aren’t. There are the Orthodox who believe they have the fullness of Christianity—and that they may have—but what good is it, if they guard it as a treasure to cache instead of spending it for what it can buy?

All these are mere names defining nothing and no one.

What defines us as followers of Jesus Christ is our willingness to let ourselves be disassembled and put back together again. We can’t know in advance the outcome of the experiments done in the laboratory of ourselves, but we want to do them anyway. We want to let ourselves be molded by the hands that made us, not the other way round, molding images that our hands, our thoughts, have made. Those we know would be only idols.

Formal idolatry has long ago vanished and been replaced by the idolatry of fantasy—religious fantasy, psychological and philosophic fantasy, deified opinion, mitered and sceptered personality cults.

Yet the Truth is always the Truth wherever it appears, even if it appears outside the gates, and we can never go wrong in following it, no matter what anyone says.

Fantasy always fades. Only Truth stays bright.

Jesus Christ, we know, is the Truth. For humanity there can be no other Truth, because Truth is One. Let Him enter the laboratory of yourself, do the experiments as He directs you, reading the instructions in His Book, performing what is written there, and learn what He has set aside for you to know, for though it may seem humble compared to worldly wisdom, it is the scientific Truth.

It is only what really is, and only what really is, is worth being.

The sign of the Cross

To confess the Orthodox faith means to be crucified, to become all things to all men so that all may be able to partake in the one life. For if you have truly tasted this life even once, you are never going to forget it. You do not simply remember it; you are flooded with it, and it becomes a spring of water welling up. You become ‘mad,’ in the words of Abba Isaac, so that the rest of your brothers may become partakers in the quality of Christ; so that the children of our forefather Adam may become partakers in the New Adam, in the Paradise of delight and the food which is broken but not divided.

Being sacrificed here means being lost to life and flooded with eternity. The other person is myself. In the words of Evergetinos, ‘The other person is my God.’

The Orthodox, the saint, loves all people and things even before he knows them. He knows them through love. When you draw near to the saint, you see that he cares for you; he knows you and embraces you before he sees you. You see that he loved you before you realized it; that he is your innermost self, your own depths, at once familiar and unknown, and not something alien. In him you come to know love. He puts love before himself. His own self emerges from love and is nourished by being offered to It; ‘God is love’ (1 John 4:8).
At this stage of sacrificial love, the saint becomes by grace the icon of the Son of God who first loved us, and who sheds His blood mysteriously, from before the ages, like the Lamb slain from before the foundation of the world in Revelation 13:8.

Anyone who does not love is not free. Love casts out fear. It burns everything up. A merciful heart is…

‘a heart which burns for all creation, for men and birds and animals and demons, and for every creature. As he calls them to mind and contemplates them, his eyes fill with tears. From the great and powerful feeling of compassion that grips the heart and from long endurance his heart diminishes, and cannot bear to hear or see any injury or any tiny sorrow in creation. This is why he constantly offers prayer with tears for dumb beasts, and for the enemies of truth, and for those who hurt him, that they may be protected and shown mercy; likewise he prays for the race of creeping things, through the great compassion which fills his heart immeasurably, in the likeness of God’ (Abba Isaac, Logos 81).

Stretched upon the wood of the Cross man is at peace, when he is crucified as an offering of love to others. There is no state or place in which human nature is at peace more deeply, more truly and theanthropically, than in crucifixion and on the Cross of love. There is no greater comfort than this pain. Then he is not upholding just one part. He is not interested in anything partial, and cannot live in the hell of halves and hatred. He cannot watch another suffer. He embraces everything. All things are his. He is crucified for them all. He is someone universal and serene.

An Orthodox icon of the Lord’s Crucifixion does not show us the pain of someone suffering from his nail wounds, but manifests the tranquility of the One, the ‘King of Glory’ who is at peace in the calm of love. He is nailed to the Cross, offered voluntarily for the life and salvation of the world. And this act cannot be called death, but is life and increase without end.

When the Orthodox creates theology, works, or is crucified, he is ‘lost’ in order to leave room free for the entry of Him who saves everyone. This occupation by the Lord, this coming and the expectation of universal salvation, the price of which is the death of man’s own soul, constitutes man’s personal salvation; it bestows upon him his true dimensions and the calm of Paradise which he earnestly awaits, and takes him up into a state of trinitarian self-awareness.

‘One thing you still lack. Sell all that you have and distribute to the poor’ (Luke 18:22). This is the ‘one thing’ that all of us always lack. This is what all of us always need to do in order to live: to sell what we have and give it away, to lose it. What comes from this ceaseless sale is an offering for us to give to the ‘poor.’ This is how treasure is laid up in heaven; and that treasure is something we must not and cannot sell or give to anyone, because it belongs in its entirety to everyone. It is the symbol and the fact of the unity, the unification of all, and at the same time the extension of each to the dimensions of all.

The Orthodox is someone universal: what is Orthodox concerns, summarizes, and saves the whole. It leaves nothing outside. Its extent is the infinity of death and its structure the freedom of the Spirit. What is not Orthodox is partial, inadequate and unsteady, provocative and misleading for everyone.

The Church bears the sign of the Cross and of tranquility on its brow (Revelation 7:3); it bears the mark of the Trinity as the mainstay of its life and existence.

— Archimandrite Vasileios, Hymn of Entry, pp. 94-96

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

Dangerous

The words of Jesus are dangerous. Dangerous to whom, or to what? And dangerous how? Perhaps the last question is easiest to answer. How are the words of Jesus dangerous? They are dangerous in the way they push the envelope of what human beings are normally prepared to think, say, and do. They demolish our comfort zones, and tear down the walls of our predispositions and, yes, of our prejudices as well. Though loathe to admit it, we’ve made a midden of the garden, and the words of Jesus would have us set things right again. He knows that we won’t do it, won’t listen to Him, but He tells us anyway.

And yes, the words of Jesus are dangerous to us, because it is to us that He directs them, not ‘to the other guy,’ not to some people living in a faraway land, or on another planet. No, He speaks those dangerous words to me, to you, to us, to them, to all of us. Some people have found a false sense of security by believing that the words of Jesus can be interpreted only by clergy and apply only to them, letting the rest of us ‘off the hook,’ except as hearers of sermons. We let ourselves be a captive audience for a few hours a month. That’s all we want to hear of the words of Jesus. That’s enough for us.

Now, dangerous to what? Well, for starters, dangerous to the world, that is, to the ‘world system.’ That’s the thing—it almost has a personality, it’s so real—that controls us within the environment of the natural world. That’s the thing that puts MSG into everything we consume, so that we will become addicted to it. That’s the thing that divides and conquers all the people of the world, dumbs us down, makes us into wage slaves. That’s also the thing that’s been secretly seeded into the Church, where it crowds out and marginalizes anyone who’s not afraid of the words of Jesus, anyone who does what He says.

Yes, I’m afraid so. The words of Jesus are dangerous to the Church as well, so dangerous, in fact, that to make sure that no one hears what they shouldn’t, those words have been caged and crammed into traditions and formulas. The words of Jesus are dangerous, do not allow dogmatic accretions, resist capture by doctrinal elites, are spoken clearly and directly, and are interpreted only by acting on them. The Bible that contains them does not rob them of their power and authority, but only magnifies their universal truth. The words of Jesus are dangerous, because He speaks them to anyone who will listen.

And as for dangerous to whom? What can be more dangerous to those who want to build on a different foundation than the words of Jesus, which are the only foundation possible, because He speaks them? The words of Jesus are dangerous to all those who think they can proclaim the gospel with one voice, and with another preach a different message. The words of Jesus are dangerous because they pierce the hearts of all who hear them, disclosing what is hidden in every man to himself, granting a glimpse of the Last Judgment before the Day, making each one better or worse according to the choice he has made.

The words of Jesus are dangerous. They do not permit an interloper to enter. They allow no one and nothing to come between Jesus and His disciple. They honor only those who listen and obey, but hide themselves from those who only use them without doing them. No one and nothing is safe in earshot of the words of Jesus. They uproot, they bind, and they cast into the fire everyone and everything not planted by the Father. They are dangerous to those who resist them, to that which tries to subvert them, by making all that is hidden to be visible, and everything spoken secretly to be heard openly and by all.

Yes, the words of Jesus are dangerous.

Suffering

Not very often do I find things in parish bulletins that are worth remembering and keeping, except (in the case of Orthodox churches) the icon printed on the front of them. This morning, in the parish bulletin of a Roman Catholic church which was forwarded to me, I found some tidbits worth more than their weight in paper and ink. They are on the topic of suffering, and derive from the readings appointed for ‘the 24th Sunday of Regular Time’ which are: Isaiah 50:5-9a, Psalm 116:1-9, James 2:14-18, Galatians 6:14, and Mark 8:27-35. Here they are.

Try to avoid suffering.
When suffering is unavoidable, don’t let it scare you.
When suffering comes into your life, accept it with dignity.
Don’t let suffering get you off track of what you need to do in life.
Grapple in prayer with the suffering you cannot avoid, and offer it to God.
Forgive those who bring suffering into your life.
Try to reduce the suffering of others.

The Gospel makes it clear that…

The disciples had no idea that suffering would be part of discipleship.
Peter tried to talk Jesus out of suffering.
Jesus would not be taken off track.
When Jesus asks the disciples, ‘Who do you say that I am?’ He is including the reality of suffering as part of the question.
In order to find ourselves we must first deny ourselves, take up our cross, and follow Jesus.
Jesus does not expect us to seek suffering.
God will accompany us in our sufferings.

The last line above reminds me of a saying of Mother Teresa of Calcutta, that ‘when you are suffering, Christ has come very close to you.’

The other thought I had when reading these words was, remember the Buddha, who made out of his encounter with suffering the Four Noble Truths, the Eightfold Path, and eventually, through his followers, a new religious philosophy, one of liberation from suffering. His philosophy as originally stated seems to me to have no real place for God, yet it resulted in a religion where the help of gods, or at least of boddhisatvas (those who have attained release from suffering but remain accessible to those who have not, in order to help them), is still invoked.

Reading the ‘tidbits’ reaffirmed my hunch that though Christ calls us ‘to take up our cross, and follow’ Him, He does not ask us to run headlong into pain and suffering. We need not seek it; it will find us. And when it does, He is always with us.

ότι μεθ'ημών ο Θεός

Into all the world

This morning, an article caught my eye titled ‘Why Does the World Reject the Cross of Christ?’ by the worthy presbyter Fr Themistokles Mourtzanos. It was a very well-written essay, and everything he wrote is quite true. My only problem with it is, what good does it do to even talk about it? Talk about what? Why the ‘world’ rejects the Cross of Christ. This is not a subject I am interested in. Knowing why the world rejects the Cross doesn’t help me personally one bit, nor does it help my witness to that world.

Instead, the question I would ask, especially if I were a presbyter, is: Why does the Church reject the Cross of Christ? Asking this question might do something for the hearers or readers. It might turn some heads. It might cause even one person, myself at least, to pay attention and pause to consider what it implies. If it seems to you that to ask ‘Why does the Church reject the Cross of Christ?’ is somehow a betrayal or even a blasphemy, think again. We have no say in what the world does, only in what we do..

And yes, why does the Church reject the Cross of Christ? How does it reject it? The Church venerates the Cross, sings about it, praises its power. The members of the Church wear the Cross around their necks, display it in their homes and in their cars. This is certainly not rejecting the Cross of Christ. Others reject it. The heathen, the Jews, the Muslims, the atheists, just about everyone we don’t like. But we don’t, do we? Well, yes and no, it all depends on what you mean by ‘reject.’ And it depends on what you think the Cross of Christ is.

Today we commemorate the nativity of the Birth-giver of God, Mary the Theotokos. She is, as I have often heard, the first Christian, as well as the last faithful Jew. If anyone can teach us what the Cross of Christ is, it is she, who lived a life of crucifixion, of hanging on the Cross, even before she found herself at the foot of One who hangs on the Cross for her, for us, and forever—Jesus the Christ. Not an image formed in its likeness, but the true Cross was what she bore, not what she wore on her as a talisman.

The world cannot really reject the Cross because it doesn’t really know what the Cross is. In fact, look at almost any fashion magazine, or go to any jewelry shop or tattoo and piercing studio, and what do you see? The emblem of the Cross in myriad configurations, hanging on the necks of studly, good-looking young men, hanging from the ears of alluring, sexy young gals who neither of them probably ever set foot in church, unless they were carried there, infants in arms, by their parents for christening.

No, the world actually loves the cross because it doesn’t, it doesn’t want to, and it therefore can’t, know what the Cross of Christ is. And how could it? The Church, though we confess the Cross of Christ, because ‘through the Cross, Joy has come into all the world,’ promotes an image of the Cross, not the Cross itself. Someone else—Jesus—has suffered on the Cross and died for us, so we don’t have to. Instead, we can focus on the celebration, make festivals about it, wear it, even flaunt it. As for living it…

The Cross of Christ means one thing—death. We hear that we must bear our crosses, and we trudge along reluctantly but loyally, even faithfully, bearing them. But it is as the saints have told us, whose sayings we’d rather not hear, that ‘in the Cross all things consist, and in dying on it all things depend’ (Thomas à Kempis, Imitation of Christ, Book II, Chapter 12, ‘On the Royal Road of the Holy Cross’). We might be willing to bear a cross now and then, but to die on one? What can that mean?

Well, we already know the answer. How many times should we allow a person to take advantage of us, and still forgive them? Once, twice, ten times? No, as many times as it takes. This is only the passive aspect of the Cross of Christ. Believe it or not, even while rejecting the Cross, the world already has this one down pat, having learned to eat humble pie and be indiscriminately tolerant and forgiving for the sake of—you know the answer—money. So, it’s not surprising they can’t serve two masters…

But the active aspect of the Cross of Christ, now this is where we all have a problem, whether we’re in the Church, or unchurchable. This is the application of that verse we all love to quote but turn the other cheek on, when it comes to putting it to practice, ‘No one has greater love than this, that he would lay down his life for his friends’ (John 15:13). This is where the question, ‘Why does the Church reject the Cross of Christ?’ comes to haunt us, that is, if we’ve got at least half a conscience, and are honest.

What would happen to the unbelieving world if the Church did not reject the Cross of Christ? Could an honest, unchurched humanitarian like Mohandas Gandhi say, ‘I will become a Christian as soon as I see one’? We only notice in others the faults and failings we have in ourselves, which is another reason why we shouldn’t ask why the world rejects the Cross of Christ, unless we want to admit to everyone that we are doing exactly that. Our camouflage or our excuses can cover us up to ourselves, but not to others.

This is a hard thing to say, I know, because the Church is all that we’ve got. She is the presence of Christ in the world, and we cling to her, but do we understand that ‘Christ among us’ means almost the same thing as ‘Christ as us’? This is not soft blasphemy. This is not ‘we’re all God, so I’m okay, you’re okay’ thinking. Actually, quite the opposite. It’s taking ownership of the Cross, or rather, letting the Cross of Christ take charge of us. It means letting ourselves be nailed when we least expect it, and least want it.

This is the incarnation of the gospel. This is ‘good news for modern man,’ not the book, not even the movie, but the real life. We’re called by Christ not to be mere actors (in ancient Greek, υποκριτης, hypokrítis) but real people, new people, people to whom the good news has come. Yes, people through whom the good news has come, because we have not rejected the Cross, but through dying on it, live, and by that life witnessing to the truth, that ‘through the Cross, Joy has come into all the world.’

Who are we waiting for?

A jealous God, that is what we are stuck with, if we believe in the God of Moses. Even when His jealousy is low key, even when He is not storming at us with threats, there is a firm, underlying tone of ‘it’s Me, or the world. Make your choice.’ He’s quite up front about this. In His special issue of commandments—special, because not only did He audibly speak them to living people, but He personally wrote them out with His finger on real stone tablets—He devotes the first one or two, two or three, specifically to this issue. When you read them, you immediately see there’s no room for doubt, no wiggle room.

He said, ‘I am Yahweh your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. You shall have no gods except me. You shall not make yourself a carved image or any likeness of anything in heaven or on earth beneath or in the waters under the earth; you shall not bow down to them or serve them. For I, Yahweh your God, am a jealous God and I punish the father’s fault in the sons, the grandsons, and the great-grandsons of those who hate me; but I show kindness to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments.
Exodus 20:1-6

No wonder the ancient Church was plagued by those who couldn’t accept that the God of Moses was the same Being as the fatherly God revealed in the life and teaching of Jesus Christ. The Church insisted and continues to insist that there is only One God, the same in the Old and the New Testaments. God’s nature has not changed, only the terms of the agreement, or covenant, between us and Him. That covenant includes a few clauses which even the Church herself has, I think, either failed to appreciate and take advantage of, or else decided that the time hasn’t yet arrived to do so. What clauses?

Well, for starters, the startling assertion made by Jesus that, ‘The sabbath was made for man, not man for the sabbath; so the Son of Man is master even of the sabbath’ (Mark 2:27-28). People read these words and unthinkingly assume that Jesus means that He, being the Son of Man, is the master of the sabbath, and no one else. But this is not the case, as we can see from what He tells Peter, after his confession of who Jesus is. True, Jesus alone is ‘the Son of Man’ in the sense that He is the Christ, but His becoming man has opened to all who believe in Him a share in His status as ‘the Son of God.’

He was in the world that had its being through Him, and the world did not know Him. He came to His own domain and His own people did not accept Him. But to all who did accept Him He gave power to become children of God, to all who believe in the name of Him who was born not out of human stock or urge of the flesh or will of man but of God Himself. The Word was made flesh, He lived among us, and we saw His glory, the glory that is His as the only Son of the Father, full of grace and truth.
John 1:10-14

And then there’s Peter’s confession. The other disciples may have known inwardly, though perhaps with some doubt or misgiving, who Jesus was, but they did not have the courage to declare it, even to Him. It was Peter alone who spoke the truth, which was validated by Christ, who declared that upon this confession, not arrived at by any human reason, or sense of loyalty, or any other merely human need or desire, but by God the Father Himself, His Church would be built, and that to those who confess as Peter did, He would give such extraordinary authority as no man on earth has ever held, except Himself.

‘But you,’ He said, ‘who do you say that I am?’ Then Simon Peter spoke up, ‘You are the Christ,’ he said, ‘the Son of the living God.’ Jesus replied, ‘Simon son of Jonah, you are a happy man! Because it was not flesh and blood that revealed this to you but my Father in heaven. So I now say to you: You are Peter and on this Rock I will build My Church. And the gates of the underworld can never hold out against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven: whatever you bind on earth shall be considered bound in heaven; whatever you loose on earth shall be considered loosed in heaven.’
Matthew 16:15-19

It seems clear to me, that the Rock upon which the Church is built must be ‘You are the Christ, the Son of the living God,’ and not Peter himself, though as primate of the apostles he fulfilled that role in the first generation Church. It also seems evident to me from history that the Church as a whole has not grasped what Christ has awefully given into her keeping. If she did, if she fully realized what power and authority is given her, to legislate on earth for all mankind the terms of the New Covenant, and not merely to enunciate dogmas, canons and customs, what a new and different world we would be living in.

The whole creation is eagerly waiting for God to reveal His sons. It was not for any fault on the part of creation that it was made unable to attain its purpose, it was made so by God; but creation still retains the hope of being freed, like us, from its slavery to decadence, to enjoy the same freedom and glory as the children of God. From the beginning till now the entire creation, as we know, has been groaning in one great act of giving birth; and not only creation, but all of us who possess the first fruits of the Spirit, we too groan inwardly as we wait for our bodies to be set free.
Romans 8:19-23

When I remember all the squabbles and in-fighting among individual Christians and the splintered fragments of the Church, especially over such ignorant issues as Creationism versus Evolution, or such worldly and political ones as Primacy and Jurisdictions, in the light of passages such as what holy apostle Paul writes to the Romans, it becomes hard to sit still and complacently go along with it all. What we believe to be holy scripture shouts at us, ‘The whole creation is eagerly waiting for God to reveal His sons,’ and we nod agreeably and smile, and busy ourselves religiously till Christ returns, or hell freezes over.

The Spirit of the Lord Yahweh has been given to me, for Yahweh has anointed me. He has sent me to bring good news to the poor, to bind up hearts that are broken; to proclaim liberty to captives, freedom to those in prison; to proclaim a year of favor from Yahweh, a day of vengeance for our God, to comfort all those who mourn, and to give them for ashes a garland; for mourning robe the oil of gladness, for despondency, praise. They are to be called ‘terebinths of integrity,’ planted by Yahweh to glorify Him. They will rebuild the ancient ruins, they will raise what has long lain waste…
Isaiah 61:1-4

The passage that Jesus reads from the scroll of the prophet Isaiah, when He is called up to read in the synagogue, the event commemorated on the first day of the year that began on September first, is from the Old Testament. Where is our jealous God now? or of what is He jealous? that we may serve other gods or make graven images to worship? Yes, the passage says, ‘a day of vengeance for our God,’ which possibly accords with the notion that God is angry. And He probably is, but what is He angry about? For even the prophets who did not know Jesus in the flesh, have told us what to do to please Him.

For I, Yahweh, love justice, I hate robbery and all that is wrong. I reward them faithfully and make an everlasting covenant with them. Their race will be famous throughout the nations, their descendents throughout the peoples. All who see them will admit that they are a race whom Yahweh has blessed.
Isaiah 61:8-9

Has this ‘race’ appeared? And what is our jealous God going to do when they turn up? And how long must He wait? Yes, brothers, ‘the whole creation is eagerly waiting for God to reveal His sons,’ but what or who are we waiting for?

Illusions of power

It seems irrefutable to me, the sinfulness, that is, the sickness, of the human race. No dysangelist has to convince me. Yes, you have to learn the ‘bad news’ about yourself before you’re ready to hear the ‘good news’ of Jesus Christ. My own flesh was my dysangelist, but the spirit in me was my evangelist. No one can hear and receive the gospel of any evangelist outside, until their inner evangelist has spoken.

What makes it irrefutable to me that we are a sinful and sick race is our readiness to fall for illusions of power, that is, personal power. Again, I don’t even have to look outside myself to see the evidence of this. Everyone has their own unique set of preferred illusions of power. Mine is, I think, having money. When my bank account gets low, my spirit fails me, I become sluggish. I want to curl up and die, even.

But when I get my monthly social security check and my retirement savings allowance, I suddenly perk up, have the energy to work on my various projects or go visiting, because I feel empowered. That’s my illusion, that I am given the power to be, and do, and live by something outside myself. Without it, I’m finished. My reason and my religion tell me the real truth, I am only because He is, because He provides.

I hastily agree and then fall back into survivalist psychology, making sure I get what I want, personal power through prosperity. Sure, I’m always thankful when I stop to think, what I have, everything, all of it to the smallest detail, has been given me by Him. I am not under any illusion that I deserve it because I worked for it. I know better. Sickness, natural disasters, or barbarians could have plundered me.

But they didn’t. I live in a country that’s safe, I’m healthy, and I have a roof over my head and food on the table. When I remember these things, I laugh at my illusion of personal power and tell myself, all is well, all is well. But I know the pattern will repeat itself. I just don’t want to think of it right now. What illusions of power can be relied on to do, is to hide themselves from you in a pious moment.

Looking outside myself, an illusion of power, perhaps one of the greatest in America, is the possession and use of an automobile. I remember, in the days of racial segregation, I didn’t know much about black people, except that no matter how poor they were, they must have a gorgeous car, even if they had to live in a slum or a shack. I don’t know if this was really true. I just took it for granted. My parents told me.

This white ‘urban legend’ from before the nineteen-sixties reveals to me a basic truth about people and cars today, that they are a symbol, an illusion, of power for people who otherwise feel powerless. I think you can tell, from watching how people drive, not how powerful they are, but how powerless. The crazy guy in the monster truck that almost runs me off the road exemplifies this tragic irony.

Myself, I drive like an old lady—sorry for the stereotype! I once was nearly run off the road by a snazzy sports car being driven thirty miles over the speed limit by, you guessed it, an old lady!—because breaking the speed limit is not one of my illusions of power. I can feel smug about that, but in me even that smugness is an illusion of power. I just know how to schedule myself, so I’m never late—almost!

Good looks, another illusion of power that I think probably everyone has. Others have its opposite, calculated and studious ugliness, although to them it is still beauty in some form they admire as an antithesis to what they think the world thinks beautiful. I don’t know, it’s just a guess. However you’re dolled up, your illusion of being attractive gives you a feeling of power. Without it, you feel nihilistic.

I can imagine myself, full of illusions of power. My wallet full of credit cards that I use irresponsibly, I roar about town in a tank that can’t be driven under the speed limit, all the windows rolled down, the sun roof open so my wildly, exotically dyed plume of hair can fly about in wisps that can’t be missed by anyone I almost hit, my arms covered with tattoos like ‘death to the world’ and other glorious things.

No, these are not my illusions of power, only the fantasy of my evil twin, but do you get my meaning? Alongside these blatant and bullish examples, things that no real Christian would ever be susceptible to, are other illusions of power that pertain to the religious and devout. I needn’t go into them here for fear of offending pious ears, or rag-tagging undeservedly elements of authentic piety that may look the same.

But it’s no secret, especially if you have ever watched Christian TV or gone to a church conference or even to a feast-day panegyri, illusions of power are not restricted to worldly things. There are many kinds of ‘spiritual materialism’ that seduce the unvigilant into lairs of ultra-piety, an ostentatious rosary or prayer-rope capable of strangling a real devil, or garments that make it hard to tell if there’s anyone inside.

From illusions of power, save us, O Christ-God! Prevail upon us, most holy Theotokos, by your prayers to abandon our hopeless hope in illusions of power! Show us the way, blessed saints of God, by your selfless examples, out of our illusions that we can be something or someone better than what God has made us, or by our own powers save ourselves. Give glory to Him alone whose it is, my soul! Rest in Him!

To such as deserve it

By my religious faith, marriage is a holy mystery that is predicated on the union between a man and a woman. Yet I do not deny that the patriarch Abraham was married to two women and had two concubines as well. It’s not my place to judge the ancestor of all who have faith, whether or not he was obeying God’s Law, as we have defined it from our reading of the first chapters of Genesis.

It’s also not my place to question it, if a person standing next to me in church is a Christian or not. If they are standing there, I must assume they want to be there, whatever their beliefs or behaviors are. And if there is a couple that is living together, a man and a woman, well, whether or not they have a marriage license or a church blessing, I accept them for who they say they are, what their relationship implies.

As far as I was taught, it is not the church blessing that makes a man and woman husband and wife. That only confers the acknowledgment of the Church that a couple has entered into a relationship that God has ordained in the bible, again from the first chapters of Genesis. The man and the woman themselves, in union with God through their consciences, inaugurated their marriage without other human help.

My religious faith, being thus defined and accepted by myself, only regulates my life, how I live it, and with whom. As the apostle Paul says, it’s not my place to judge others who are outside the household of faith in which I have chosen to dwell. Let God be their Judge, as He is mine. Marriage in the Christian sense by definition cannot be contracted between a man and a man, or a woman and a woman, regardless of what such unions are called.

I am not against such unions, nor am I against calling them ‘marriage,’ nor do I defy the government that permits them to receive recognition by means of certificates. None of this affects my religious faith, how I live my life, and with whom. Nothing has changed for me at all. On the other hand, much has changed for another group of people that has been and still is vilified, unrighteously, by a majority of humanity.

The reason for this reviling, this despising, this contempt, this prejudice, this persecution of this group of people has absolutely nothing to do with real religion. I don’t know where it comes from, only that it has been perpetuated by unholy tradition in almost every culture. Religious beliefs are invoked to justify it, but they’re not the real reason, only a convenient one, and ‘freedom of religion’ is the cry to defend it.

But freedom of religion is the freedom to worship the Almighty, the Eternal, in the way that each person sees fit. It is not a license to disobey the government (read the letters of the apostle Paul) or to despise others for any reason. The most that Christian faith allows with regard to our relationship to those with whom we differ in beliefs or lifestyle, is to separate from them, to live our faith, and let them live theirs.

There are many beliefs I have which have moderated my participation in the society around me. My faith does not allow me, for example, to ever go into an ‘adult book store,’ but it also keeps me from watching television, even from wanting to do either. I have also quit a past job or two because the practices of my employer violated what I believe is right and just. It’s in our power to live as we wish.

But it is never in our power, if we are Christians, to enforce our beliefs or our practices on another. This is so obvious. Though Christian faith gave the world a secure basis for democracy and civil rights, unthanked by a majority through ignorance or indifference, it still shines bright in the saints who really do follow Jesus and not just say they believe in Him. He gives us our marching orders in the battle.

And that battle has nothing to do with a human enemy, except our own flesh. The battle is never against other people. It is always and only a war with ‘principalities and powers,’ a spiritual war which can be fought only with spiritual weapons, and whether won or lost in each engagement, is always reflected in what happens in the material world. Though armies march, victory is only with the Lord.

Maccabaeus took note of these masses confronting him, the glittering array of armour and the fierce aspect of the elephants; then, raising his hands to heaven, he called on the Lord who works miracles, in the knowledge that it is not by force of arms but as He sees fit to decide, that victory is granted by Him to such as deserve it.
2 Maccabees 15:21

On their knees in prayer

Love wins. Freedom of religion. A stout, middle-aged woman sitting with a very fixed look of immovable determination. Which of these three pictures comes closest to what you believe is the message of Christ? Which comes closest to the gospel? 

Perhaps I should ask, if Jesus were here, where would He be standing? With the young people holding up the sign that says ‘Small Town Not Small Mind’ and ‘#Love wins’? With the older people holding up small signs saying ‘Freedom of Religion’ in front of their faces and above their heads? Or with that stubborn woman sitting her ground in that office?

I can’t ask the question, ‘if Jesus were here’ because He is here. He’s here as always, among us, trying to save us even though we oppose Him at every turn, pitting our wills against His, all of us as guilty as the next guy, ‘kicking against the goad’ as Paul the Apostle calls it, because we want things our way, we want to be right.

Once again the evil one has succeeded in tricking us into hating one another, despite our rhetoric or our dogma that we don’t hate anyone, we don’t hate the sinner, we only hate his or her sin. What about hating our own sin? Is ours any less than the sins of others? Do we think that Christ is happy with our marriages, especially if we’ve been married three or four times like the woman in the third picture?

If we know what marriage is, what God instituted as marriage in the beginning, why He designed not only the human race but even most living things as opposite but complementary pairs so that the pattern of His being, as Love, could be shared by them, if we know this, how can any human law change anything, redefine the Divine economy, or be a threat to us? The issue that is currently dividing the nation is clearly a civil issue, not a religious one. No one’s religion is being curtailed. This is about the rights of a citizen.

Can citizens hope to have rights to do just whatever they please, irrespective of God’s Law? Well, no, of course not. The problem lies in discerning just what God’s Law is. One way to find out is to permit a ‘right’ and see where it leads us. If it leads us to greater peace and freedom, health and happiness—all of these being real, not pretended, or wishful thinking—then I would say it is probably in accord with God’s Law. Things that go against God’s Law inevitably and eventually fail. They lead to worse conditions in society. Just study history.

Whether a society is Christian or not, when it goes against God’s Law, it falls. What has just been established by the Supreme Court is just such a permission. We don’t know yet where it will lead, but hope, not fear, should guide us in allowing it to run its course. Let God decide, not the Supreme Court, the man in the street, or a fearsome, rebellious woman, if this ‘law’ is just.

For laws are just only when they accord with God’s Law, and yet He tolerates all our legislation, even when we are sure He must hate it.

Following as a half-forgotten, neglected shadow behind the ‘marriage equality’ ruling is the spectre of ‘a woman’s right to choose,’ that slippery euphemism for abortion, itself a detoxicated term for infanticide—killing babies. I wonder what the three pictures would look like, if this were the issue.

Who would be in the first? Would it be young people holding up signs that read ‘Love wins’? Hardly. And in the second, would it be older people shielding themselves from view with signs demanding ‘Freedom of religion’? I doubt it. As for the third, what kind of woman would stand up for the unborn ripped from the womb, and go to jail rather than let another abortion be performed? Would she have the same look of fierce determination on her face? 

Fortunately for us, Jesus is among us, mercifully.

He is steadying our course, even when we seem to be sailing off course. He’s with us here in this boat out on the stormy sea. Yes, sometimes He may be asleep in the stern, because His trust in the Father who sent Him to save us is so strong that He can sleep.

As for us, we are frantic, trying to save ourselves, trying to protect ourselves, even to protect Him, until we realize, it’s no use. We had better wake Him up, because we’re going down. We’re sure of it. Yes, we had better wake Him up, talk to Him, find out what He wants us to do, even if it means to do nothing and let Him work.

For the work of Jesus is to save, and our work is to let Him do it, to cooperate with Him, let Him have His way with us, to trust Him as much as He trusts His heavenly Father. If we only did this, every issue that arises would evoke a single response from us, not three. Only one picture would show what we would do.

A hundred million people on their knees in prayer.

Mining

Specifically, Orthodox mining.

Not to say that Orthodox Christians have a corner on poverty and humility, but they do. At least you would think so by looking at what gets posted by them on social networking platforms like Google+. Poverty, yes, not of material goods maybe, but of independent thought. Humility, well, what can I say? If anything else is true about them, I don’t know, but if they ever tire of mining the depths of the fathers for tidbits of elusive but illumined wisdom, I’ll eat your prayer rope.

Mining, yes, not for earthly gold, not for the wisdom of this world, but for God’s holy wisdom where it can be found. And generous. Have I forgotten to mention how generous they are? I mean, how generous we are? Because although myself, I only go mining from time to time, instead usually just airing out my mental linens, I too am an Orthodox whatever. I used to call myself an Orthodox muzhik. I don’t know where I got that word. I’m a Slav with a little bit of Yid mixed in, maybe that’s it.

One of my favorite, ultra-mystical bible verses comes from the book of Job in the Jerusalem Bible version—I have to mention this, because Job is one of those books that is often messed with by bible scholars and rearranged versewise by different translators, and my version may not match yours, jot for tittle—‘Man makes an end of darkness when he pierces to the uttermost depths the black and lightless rock’ (Job 28:3). When I go mining, this bible verse is my guide.

Not to take it out of context, perhaps I should quote the entire passage. The odd thing about random quotations from the bible—or from the Church fathers—is that they often seem more mystic, mysterious, illuminating and ultra-spiritual in isolation than when their original context is shown. This is true of my bible verse as well. Here is the passage:

Silver has its mines, and gold a place for refining. Iron is extracted from the earth, the smelted rocks yield copper. Man makes an end of darkness when he pierces to the uttermost depths the black and lightless rock. Mines the lamp-folk dig in places where there is no foothold, and hang suspended far from mankind.
Job 28:1-4 Jerusalem Bible

‘Mines the lamp-folk dig’? and ‘hang suspended far from mankind’? What gives? Yes, in this case, I think scalping the passage and keeping just the verse that’s my favorite, dangerous though it may be, preserves the biblical illiterate from even worse heresies than the occasional mining expedition. Years ago when I was one of those ‘all who wander are not lost’ kind of people, I picked up a book on the hollow earth hypothesis in which these weird verses were used to support it.

But back to mining. We Orthodox Christians are always on the lookout for treasure. Maybe that’s why I feel so at home here. Like the others, I too am a treasure-hunter. No, we’re not like that fellow from upstate New York who wanted to find treasure so badly that he fadged up a tall tale about angels and golden plates. No, we don’t fadge up anything, we want real treasure. Dark angels don’t guide us. Our guides are shaggy beards and shroud-capped elders hidden from the world.

The treasures we find, as you can read anywhere we Orthodox dump our jewels, are bona fide, authentic, soul-saving gems of hoary wisdom—I mean, holy wisdom—that miners before us have dug up on the holy mountain and other places we can’t go ourselves. Their generosity is simply mind-boggling, and their hospitality is—what can I say?—so massive, that we can no more escape it than we could crawl out of a black hole. Once even light comes near, it’s never seen again.

Well, I’m no different, I suppose, even though I don’t shrink from airing out my ‘mental linens,’ as I call them. Generosity and hospitality are the Orthodox trademark, even though they’re often concealed behind a windscreen of hyper-scrutiny, nano-triumphalism, cosmic costumery, and pathogenic piety. That’s a mouthful, and half the words aren’t even in the dictionary. Another trademark of Orthodoxy. Our language is suitably obscure, an ‘ornament and a safeguard.’

Again, back to mining. Since we’re never satisfied with anything merely ‘on the surface’ we’ve got to dig deep. I do it all the time, except in my case it’s not into a thick pile of books, but into my own flesh. I too use the same treasure maps that other Orthodox use, but somehow—perhaps because I think that the old is in the new, not the other way round—I’m not afraid to look for the treasure in places ‘where there is no foothold’ instead of only where beards and bones abound.

Mining for wisdom, the only treasure worth digging for, we go down, down below the flow of daily life, like divers into the sea, but a sea so thick, so hard, so rocky, so dark, yes, even so cold, that none but the tough-minded dare to delve its depths. What we come up with when we ‘pierce to the uttermost depths the black and lightless rock’ is, in fact, ‘the end of darkness.’ Once we have found it, what do we do with it? Do we keep it, share it, peddle it, or shave it?

But as for the world, that shallow, paltry thing, we miners know better than to waste our hard-won treasures there. ‘Death to the world’ is our message, as we take another plunge.

Are they servants of Christ? (I am out of my mind to talk like this.)
2 Corinthians 11:23

Conscience

C. S. Lewis was definitely on to something when he wrote ‘Right and wrong as a clue to the meaning of the Universe.’ Without bringing in the idea of laws or rules or a code of morality, we all seem to know when something is right and when something is wrong. I don’t want to try to rewrite what the great Christian apologist has already amply covered in the opening chapter of his classic Mere Christianity, only to perhaps add a few angles of my own.

Of course, almost everyone has been raised in an environment framed by Judæo-Christian values, even when their own families may have not been practicing Jews or Christians. Even people who’ve never actually picked up a bible and read some of it are affected by its teachings. The Western world, even in ‘outgrowing’ God, still has a difficult time eluding Him and not feeling guilty about it. Theistic belief and unbelief is not really the dividing line anymore.

The bible says, ‘You believe that there is one God; you do well. The demons also believe and tremble’ (James 2:19). It goes on to say that religious belief is nothing if it isn’t accompanied by ‘good works.’ And in the teaching of Jesus we find that, in His description of the Last Judgment (Matthew 25:31-46), not once does He make religious faith, not even faith in Him as ‘personal Lord and Savior,’ a criterion to decide who enters paradise and who gehenna.

But back to the notion of knowing right and wrong, even without bringing God into it, or laws whether divine or human in origin, everyone knows when they are doing wrong. This can be felt as an act or behavior sinful, irrational, illegal, anti-social, or self-destructive, depending on one’s world view. Most people know that this ‘knowledge’ is what is called ‘the conscience,’ and most people just accept it. A few, driven perhaps to self-justification, reject the idea.

The authors of the Declaration of Independence wrote, ‘mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.’ This observation has more applications than mere political theory. It clearly describes ‘the human condition,’ what people do in everyday life. We put up with a lot that we disagree with, more in ourselves than in others, by quieting our consciences.

When we do something we know or feel is wrong, if it seems minimal we excuse it. If it is habitual, we justify it. It no longer is in the category of ‘sinful’ or ‘wrong.’ It’s just ‘human weakness.’ We put up with it and, if we are believers, can comfort ourselves with bible quotes like ‘love covers all offenses’ (Proverbs 10:12), even our own. The conscience, though, is still always there, more immovable than the rock of Gibraltar, or even than the Word of God, but why?

‘Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away’ (Luke 21:33). What words? It is Jesus who speaks this in the gospels and, yes, His divine message will last forever. Not the literal words, but their meaning, because they are, to use technical jargon, hard wired into the mainframe of the universe, and that’s where whatever it is that we are is also hard wired. Again, even without bringing God into it, our very nature is inscribed with this knowledge.

The knowledge of ‘right and wrong’ is the same as the knowledge of what is and what is not, of reality and unreality, of what must be and what never could be, not in this or in any other universe. How can I be so sure? Don’t the scientific theorists tell us there are innumerable universes where ‘different laws’ can be expected to be in force? Well, this is where I have to retreat in my assertions and humbly admit I don’t know for sure in the same way that God knows for sure.

Even though I just brought God into the equation, I can let Him out again and say, what makes the bible or any other scripture or tradition sacred or holy is not the books themselves or the precepts they contain, but the human conscience. I can believe that God wrote the Ten Commandments on stone tablets with His literal finger, or not. It’s a matter of religious belief, unprovable. But that conscience is, that all notions of right and wrong are there, is inescapable.

Without knowing why we have a conscience, we can still believe in it, and trust it. ‘Let your conscience be your guide,’ is equally applicable by believer and non-believer, and usually is. Otherwise human society could hardly function. It doesn’t challenge me, that an atheist may call it ‘herd instinct’ and attribute it, as he may with all of human nature and the physical universe, to blind chance, and I am not offended. Chances are, he doesn’t know any more than I.

Yet both of us are, by my religious faith and even by my meager powers of reason, recipients of, no participants in, the Divine Nature, who has come and dwelt among us in human form, restoring by anticipation the role of mankind in the management of the universe, and finally that role in reality, God’s multiple, simultaneous incarnations. Now having a conscience, then conscience shall have us. Now disobeying, then incapable of not being what we are.

Back to earth, the world rocks and trembles at what we, its inhabitants, are capable of. Yes, both the sublime and the stupid. Righteousness, as our man-made laws would frame it, is peeled away and discarded for what it is, by those who listen to that voice that speaks now ‘still and small’ but which then thunders like ‘the roar of many waters,’ and we at last recover what was robbed from us at the Tree. Yes, it is true, ‘Let your conscience be your guide.’

Greetings of the New Year 7524

The new year seventy-five twenty-four! Yes, I’m afraid so. You all thought we were in the year two thousand fifteen, didn’t you? The new millennium. That’s right. Well, for the Orthodox, the ‘world’ is about five thousand years older—five thousand, five hundred and nine years older, to be precise. Well, maybe not exactly ‘precise.’ There is probably someone somewhere who has the calculations down to the minute, even the second, and I wouldn’t want to offend them. People can be so fussy when it comes to things like the Calendar.

Other nations have other calendars, other ways of counting time. The Mayans are the most famous. Their notoriety comes from having a calendar that goes back a very long time, but then comes to an abrupt stop—December 21, 2012, 11:11 UTC, according to some—portending the end of the world. Since we are still here, we can conclude that perhaps the ancient Mayan calendar makers just were tired of carving more glyphs and called it a day. Maybe something just ‘told them’ a different calendar was coming, that would supplant theirs.

Maybe more than a different calendar, a new religious faith, even a new world. If the scientists and the Native American traditions are correct, this very same planet, earth, has seen many cycles and many worlds come and go on its face, both human worlds and natural ones. The Christian also knows this in a somewhat different way. Worlds, they rise and fall, but Christ, the Word and Son of God, still lives wherever His people live, even when they are unaware of Him. And who are His people? Every creature that shares His image, as He has shared ours.

So, not only calendars, but cultures, religions, nation states, all of them rise and fall. All of them, as far as they are human constructs, are made to fall, made for dissolution. They are the manifestations of Adam, that is, the old humanity that was awakened to spiritual life when the Holy Triad breathed Themselves into that first clay-born man, and then drew out of him his permanent and perfect counterpart, woman. Tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands, of generations of humanoid creatures lived and died as mere animals, until the first Adam was made man.

That event, the apex of God’s creative energy on this planet, is what we time ourselves from in the Calendar that just turned more than seven and a half millennia old. The years printed in many old bibles show a creation date of four thousand four years before Christ, the calculations of James Ussher, Anglican Archbishop of Dublin and Primate of all Ireland. This is followed religiously and insistently by the worshipers of the King James Bible, you know, the ones who say that the Greek New Testament must be corrected if it differs from their translation.

The Jews, too, who may have a better claim to know what year was the First in the calendar of humanity, will be observing the new year fifty-seven seventy-six on the evening of September 13 this year. Twelve days after the Orthodox, but one thousand seven hundred forty-eight years earlier—this has always been a mystery to me. There can’t have been two creations, or two Adams, can there be? Well, as far as two creations, no, not just two: There have doubtless been creations and re-creations uncountable in God’s manifestation of the natural universe.

As for two Adams, well, yes, there have been, there are, and there will be two, and only two. Don’t run to look in a mirror, but we are one of them, as conceived, evolved and born. We are also the other of them, signed, sealed and delivered. We are humanoid creatures who, like the literal first Adam, become men and women (babies at first, actually) when we receive our first breath. Then, sometime later, we are human beings who, like the second Adam, signed (with the Cross), sealed (with Chrism), and delivered (by Baptism), become—transfigured.

No, none of this has anything to do with the discrepancy between Jewish and Christian Orthodox calendars. I admit it. What this day we call ‘Indiction’ means to me has nothing really to do with calendars or counting days and years at all. I would rather that it were called ‘Induction’ because on this day the God of all the earth, who while filling all things united Himself with our human nature and came, no, comes among us speaking words mightier than those spoken in the first creation, that we might be inducted into His new creation, the last and everlasting.

At that time, Jesus came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up; and he went to the synagogue, as his custom was, on the sabbath day. And he stood up to read; and there was given to him the book of the prophet Isaiah. He opened the book and found the place where it was written, ‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.’ And he closed the book, and gave it back to the attendant, and sat down; and the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. And he began to say to them, ‘Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.’ And all spoke well of him, and wondered at the gracious words which proceeded out of his mouth.
Luke 4:16-22

As the scripture says concerning this Jesus, ‘And all spoke well of him, and wondered at the gracious words,’ let us not stop where His first hearers did, hearing and then going home and living as though nothing happened and no One had spoken. Let us hear Him, brethren, and accept His gracious call, become His disciples, and leave with Him when He departs from the synagogue. Let us go with Him out ‘to the highways and the by-ways’ and not only witness the miracles of His new creation which He does there, but let us do also what we see Him doing.

Everywhere and every day let us go with Him, ‘to proclaim release to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.’

Relevance, and authority

Scriptural use of language has nothing to do with relevance but is about authority and dominance.

When folks talk about scripture needing to be relevant to the masses, they have already admitted that the message has no authority and must use tricks to fool people into believing it contains truth.

[As to] the authorities wanting to arrest Jesus for his speech: It was not because He spoke messages that were relevant to them. It was because he spoke with a royal authority and imposing wisdom that they had not encountered before.

The words of the scriptures make the reader’s opinions irrelevant on the basis of their authority. This is a very hard pill for many faithful to swallow. We can understand every word in a sentence—or not—understand what a passage means—or not—and still have it affect our lives in ways that show us how powerless we really are.

Authority has no need for relevance. On the contrary, if a policeman tells you that you have broken a law and must pay a fine or go to jail, you don't turn around and tell the officer, ‘What?! That law isn't relevant to me.’

You search the legal code to understand it and change your life as a result, so you don't have to pay the fine again, which raises, to my mind, the real issue: If a person does not believe in the authority God has over their world, the scriptures will never be relevant to them, regardless of how contextualized they might be.

— Jacob Gorny