evangelism – orthopraxy.com

Responding to Accusations

When accused of a general failing – pride, foolishness, laziness, always agree. Be the first to admit it. You needn’t go out of your way to announce these passions, but the moment someone points the finger, join with them. When you accuse yourself, you avoid judgment. When you think them correct always in their observations, you avert the very passions attributed to you, and so overcome them. Don’t defend yourself. If they say, “So, you admit it!” say “Of course.” If they say, “then why don’t you change” say “because I am obstinate, too. Forgive me.”, or “that’s how far gone I am, pray for me”. It doesn’t matter whether technically they see anything real or not. God has granted them words, whether they are false prophets who pretend to see your sins instead of their own, or whether God is graciously reminding you of your sins. If you think with the fathers, you think that all these things that can be said about you are true, and that you cannot recount all the ways in which you have failed. If you think with the desert, you think that you fail in all ways, that every failure that can be attributed to you is true. But don’t be depressed by this, or let others insist that you be depressed. Shame is best expressed in acknowledgement and worship, not in self-pity. Genuine shame is in gratitude for being allowed to live without being struck down for your sins and utterly destroyed – weep over your sins, but don’t be destroyed by them, or it mocks God who has not destroyed you in judgment. If your accusers want you to fall down before them, you cannot – it is a thing you can only give to God. Even the angels do not ask as much. As the fathers say, “keep your mind in Hell and despair not”. So you can be cheerful, even tho remorseful, happy even though sad for your faults.

If someone accuses you of a fault, acknowledge it, and ask forgiveness. If they say that you must do something to gain forgiveness, say you’ll discuss it with your Confessor. It is not appropriate to arrange ‘penance’ from just anyone. The mysteriological significance of penance cannot be replaced with our assigning it to one another. This is likewise why we don’t bless one another. You and I are not priests – unless you’re a priest – I’m certainly not, so I won’t be blessing anyone today, or presuming to assign penance. At some point, another person’s inability to forgive your faults is their own burden, and must be something they work out likewise with their own Confessor. You don’t have to just shrug it off, but you aren’t a slave to someone else’s probationary program for you to fit in with their agenda. In response to “pray for me”, someone once said, “you make it hard to pray for you”. All I can say to that is, “I understand”, leaving it at that. Something similar might be “then we can pray for each other.” It needn’t be arrogant. We are taught to say, “by (that person’s) prayers save me”, believing that our sins are so corrupting that we cannot be saved apart from the prayers of others. Ask forgiveness, but asking isn’t agreeing to a 12-step plan where you mow someone else’s lawn. On the other hand, if you ruined their lawn, it’s probably the right gesture.

When accused of a specific crime, such as lying about something, don’t lie by confessing it falsely to anyone. You can say, “I am a liar”, and you know it’s true, because you have spoken words of God with your lips but not your heart. But don’t say, “yes, I lied about what I told you yesterday” unless that is true. The fathers don’t ask us to become liars in order to admit to being liars. If someone says, “but the fathers say you should admit every fault”, freely admit to any fault, but not to historical events that did not happen.

When there is a subtle blend of accusations – “you’re being proud about this – what you’re claiming happened didn’t happen” – just separate the failing from the facts. “I am indeed very proud. I have no doubt that I am being proud right now, and that I was proud before you even noticed it. Pray for me. However, what I have said is true, and I have not lied about it. Forgive me if I seem to be saying you’re mistaken.”

Accusations are a gift, so that all your enemies, as St. Nikolai Velimirovic has written, may be your friends. In this way, God makes peace in the whole world. “You’re too proud of your intellect.” Answer: “That is certainly true. Thank you for helping me remember.” But mistakes of history – “You cheated on the exam. No one could have gotten all the answers correct.” – are just that – mistakes. When someone is mistaken, especially about you, you don’t have to correct them. Don’t tell them “you are wrong” or “you are mistaken”, but also don’t join them in the error – that kind of accusation is the Evil One tempting you, though they don’t know it. “I disagree” is enough. “I don’t believe so” is sufficient. Keep it subjective – “I don’t think so”, not objective “you are in error”, to allow for your own weakness, blindness, or delusion – in humility – and because in this way you aren’t also accusing them, which otherwise you would be. But if they say, “You are a cheat”, say “Yes, certainly.” and remember that you’ve cheated yourself of paradise. Say, whenever accused of a fault, that the accuser is right. Then neither of you can be wounded by you fighting with them. When they offer the Enemy’s accusation, don’t even say “I think differently” – which is a positive statement – don’t offer your thoughts – humble yourself and leave no room for fighting over your ideas – instead say “I don’t think as much” – adding, if you wish, “though I am certainly capable of it”.

By leaving nothing for anyone to fight with, you leave nothing for them to stumble over, and nothing for the Enemy to seize from you and make into a weapon. You cannot be pulled into a war, if you become like a lamb, though I find it a very hard thing to do. In this humility, the Enemy’s arrows leave no mark. In this self-accusation, Judgement won’t destroy you. In this willingness to concede all that can be conceded, finding any way possible to agree over your own failings, you become a peacemaker – taking, as did Christ, all sins on yourself. Say, if you fail in it, “it’s my fault. It’s all my fault.” Love, as the apostle says, covers a multitude of sins.

And yes, it’s a tragic facet of public life (corporate culture, academia, politics, religion) that acknowledging weaknesses and following Christ can ruin your ability to be promoted, to even retain your position, and can be spread as gossip like wildfire, distorting your reputation and making life intolerable. In a religious environment, leave. You’re in the wrong one. For the rest of it, though, most of us developed two voices – the one that tells the truth, and the one that responds to manipulation. I don’t fault anyone for it. I have done what was needed to feed my family, and to survive, too. It’s a commentary on public life and the people who make it what it is that integrity is converted into just a means of destroying you, and people who cover their sins are rewarded by the same people with prosperity. When I was in those environments, I always tried to determine whether I was dealing with people who didn’t think of sin as sin, but as merely leverage to convert into a weapon, and those who were genuine. The latter were almost nonexistent, in my experience. And in corporate, academic, and political life I gave very little ground. That’s still how I would do it. For those who would condemn this, did every Christian present himself to be burned in the genocides against our people? Some did, some didn’t, but Saints are among both. But in religious environments, I have preferred to let the chips fall where they may. It is one way I have distinguished cults, with merely the appropriate religious affiliations and blessings, from genuinely Christian communities.

I will say again that to be an Orthodox Church, while incredibly important since there is no other Church, does not mean that you are a Christian community. Cults abound everywhere, because there is little else that religion can do when it embeds itself among people, than to turn the worship of the Creator into the worship of our own personalities. One group is busily ‘defending the truth’ but with clubs and virtual burnings at the stake. Cult, not Christian, whatever its pedigree. Another is busily replacing the Faith with a social theatre, a “mega-church” with a complete absence of genuine Orthodox tradition – in fact a campaign to eradicate it as some kind of vestige – it wishes more than anything to be the biggest non-denominational religious centre in its region, disguised as an Orthodox Church. Bigness and social acceptability are its twin idols. Cult, not Christian. In either environment, reputation can make or break you – it’s very much the same principle at work in corporate, academic, and political circles. Again, it’s better to leave them behind. Staying means accepting the ground of warfare by which they are busily converting human beings into cogs in an ideological and social apparatus that bears little resemblance to the Faith of our Fathers, whatever sign is on the door.

“You’re full of pride,” they would say. And they would be right. I am full of pride. Pray for me. “Separating yourself is a sin,” they would say. “I don’t believe so.” I really don’t believe so. Besides, I have not separated myself from the Church, merely from some versions of it that I don’t think have a monopoly on what it means to be Orthodox. In fact, if pressed, I suppose I would say I haven’t really learned any Orthodoxy from them at all. Surely, that’s my own failing. But nonetheless, to guard my soul, and to protect my family, I stay away. The community I am more or less a part of (I really like the ‘more or less’ – I find it much less prone to spiritual violence) doesn’t beat me up much. I show up twice a year at least, and I send my checks. “Not spiritual”, someone may say. “Of course, I fail in all such matters.” But what I am not, also, is very concerned about my reputation. As for corporate, academic, and political life, I’ve finally been granted, by God’s mercy, emancipation from those too.

The Historicity of the Scriptures

I got a note yesterday from someone who is leaving religion, because they don’t any long believe in the “historicity” of the scriptures.

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I don’t know why people feel compelled to announce this sort of thing. I mean what, are we supposed to keep an empty chair down at the “club”? I don’t even know this person, not really. Maybe it’s to make a clean break. Maybe it’s because we’re all supposed to rush out with “don’t go”. It’s sort of like standing on a ledge, maybe. But invariably these sort of notes are arrogant. This one worried about wounding any “weaker brothers”. It made me sort of chuckle but also wince, like when a TV anchor says something stupid and doesn’t realize it.

The other thing about these sort of notes is that they might as well be multiple choice. They usually contain one of a handful of reasons that we’re all familiar with. I’d really rather get a form letter, like when someone unsubscribes from one of my mailing lists. “We’re sorry to see you go (or uninstall). Is it a) you’re planning to reinstall, b) service didn’t meet your needs, or c) you found one you like better.” Actually, I shouldn’t joke, there are mega-“churches” who actually do that sort of thing. And you know, if you don’t take them seriously, they send their parking lot security goons out to your house to let the air out of your tires.

This one was “I just can’t believe anymore in the historicity of the scriptures.” Yep, that’s one of the usual five. It’s a real yawner though because, only an idiot casts a blanket aspersion against the historicity of the scriptures. What, you don’t believe there were Hittites? Heck, a lot of people didn’t, until we dug them up. I mean, which part? I had a friend who once said he wasn’t sure there ever was a person called Jesus. I pointed out that there’s better support for the existence of Jesus than for Homer. I mean the documentary evidence kept by his enemies is pretty darned good. No serious scholars say there wasn’t a Jesus. They doubt that he is God, but not that he exists in history. There are nut jobs like Madeleine Murry O’Hare, of course, but come on. She’s like the Shirley McClain of atheism. Not to offer an ad hominem, but she’s not exactly basing her thinking on science. It’s like taking financial advice from Joel Osteen. My friend relented, of course, and then we could have a more honest discussion. You can’t even be honest about what’s bothering you unless you’re willing to stipulate to the obvious facts. After all, it’s hard to claim religious people live in a fantasy world when they’ve got logic, science, and archeology and you’ve got blithering belief in the absence of something.

So anyway, no great refutation here. I just don’t care. You want to go, “I’ll hold the trap door to hell open for you”, as a Protestant comedian once said. Why be impolite? Blunt, perhaps, but courteous is my approach. We all know someone who doesn’t believe in something, and goes off to grow their beard (all we Orthodox men should have beards if they grow on us), or live on granola, or tour Buddhist shrines, or whatever. Send me a postcard. But it’s not something that needs a lot of drama. “I mean it, I’m going…” Did you ever run away from home, when you were a kid? “Dinner is a 6:30.”

Look, you want to claim that there was no King David, even though there’s better evidence for that than for who built the pyramids, you go ahead. People “believe” or “don’t believe” all sorts of things. If we were Protestants, we might get all bent out of shape and have a prayer circle around you. But if you’ve been involved with genuine Orthodoxy, we’re not really built on a foundation of beliefs anyway. When people ask, “What do you believe,” the best response is that that’s a Protestant question, and we should really refuse to commoditize (commodify?) our Faith in that manner. Protestantism is the religion of mental beliefs, which is one reason everyone goes out and starts their own ‘talk show’, so to speak. You get gazillions of groups in storefronts, precisely because belief is central, belief is everything, belief is the basis for it all.

Orthodoxy is based on history, not belief. We’re not a knowledge-based religion, like Gnosticism and its modern equivalents in Protestantism – we’re historical. For us, the “I’m leaving” spammer got one thing right, it really is important that there was a David. Not that you believe there’s a David – that’s different. Only a neurotic confuses his own belief with whether something is actually there or not. It matters not whether you believe, or even whether you exist (I push you off a building, and your belief ceases to matter much – you’re gone, the world goes on). It matters whether something is real. And since we live in time, live in history, all real things are historical. That’s why we don’t share a theology with the Protestants or Roman Catholics. Time is a creature. Reality is a creature. They’re created. In that sense, we don’t say that God is “real”. We don’t believe in God’s “existence”. You can’t think like that and really be Orthodox.

In fact, Orthodoxy is the religion of unbelievers. Our Faith is really historical. But our doctrine is really antithetical – to everything else. Our theology is negative theology – the via negativa – we deny things – we disbelieve things. If you look at how our doctrinal statements have been formulated and why, they’re mostly statements that we, like the “I’m leaving” spammer, “don’t believe” – a whole host of things – or that we are “not persuaded” and so don’t intend to convert to something else. It is because I am an unbeliever that I am Orthodox in a sea of neurotic religious speculation. Our councils came about, because it was necessary to rise up and deny things – namely things that religious people had come up with by doing “positive theology” – cooking their own meth, so to speak. All our various statements, which we don’t like making for their own sakes (“Hi, welcome to our church. Here’s our doctrinal statement. We have a great youth program!”), are statements of disbelief or of opposition to belief foisted upon us by others – they’re refutations of the insanity and nuttyness of religion. To quote Vladimir Lossky’s “Mystical Theology” (emphasis is mine):

Unlike gnosticism, in which knowledge for its own sake constitutes the aim of the gnostic, Christian theology is always in the last resort a means: a unity of knowledge subserving an end which transcends all knowledge. This ultimate end is union with God or deification, the theosis of the Greek Fathers… All the development of the dogmatic battles which the Church has waged down the centuries appears to us, if we regard it from the purely spiritual standpoint, as dominated by the constant preoccupation which the Church has had to safeguard, at each moment of her history, for all Christians, the possibility of attaining to the fullness of the mystical union. So the Church struggled against the gnostics in defence of this same idea of deification as the universal end: ‘God became man that men might become gods’. She affirmed, against the Arians, the dogma of the consubstantial Trinity; for it is the Word, the Logos, who opens to us the way to union with the Godhead; and if the incarnate Word has not the same substance with the Father, if He be not truly God, our deification is impossible. The Church condemned the Nestorians that she might overthrow the middle wall of partition, whereby, in the person of the Christ himself, they would have separated God from man. She rose up against the Apollinarians and Monophysites to show that, since the fullness of true human nature has been assumed by the Word, it is our whole humanity that must enter into union with God. She warred with the Monothelites because, apart from the union of the two wills, divine and human, there could be no attaining to deification—’God created man by his will alone, but He cannot save him without the co-operation of the human will.’ The Church emerged triumphant from the iconoclastic controversy, affirming the possibility of the expression through a material medium of the divine realities—symbol and pledge of our sanctification. The main preoccupation, the issue at stake, in the questions which successively arise respecting the Holy Spirit, grace and the Church herself this last the dogmatic question of our own time—is always the possibility the manner or the means of our union with God. All the history of Christian dogma unfolds itself about this mystical centre, guarded by different weapons against its many and diverse assailants in the course of successive ages.

In short, we are an army of unbelievers who wish to be united to God, and defend ourselves against the seduction by which religion would deprive us of it. We are very practical about it. Try to force your religion on us, and separate us from God by means of it, and we declare an anathema against you, and all our people cross their arms, turn their backs, and leave your “belief system” to die in the ashheap of history. We are the people of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, David, Daniel, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and of the seed of David, Jesus Christ. So yeah, if you become ahistorical like the Protestants and create a religion based on a belief system, or you become anti-historical like the “I’m leaving” spammer, and start denying the holocaust or the existence of Assyria (same thing, in principle), or whatever, then you’re right, you’re leaving. You’ve left. Good luck. But let’s not be confused about it – it really doesn’t matter what you “believe” or “don’t believe” in and of itself. What matters is what happened. History doesn’t need our belief to make it so. Once you accept that, you might as well believe you’re Elvis, because the distinction between belief and tangible, historical, scientific reality – the rock under our feet – well, that’s just gone off into lulu land.

Anyway, I still like the form letter idea. Maybe one of the atheist groups should create an online form, and you can fill in (by blind copy) the e-mail addresses of your religious group, and check off the appropriate boxes, before hitting send. I’ve got a belief system or two in my past I wouldn’t mind sending a test form to. 🙂 But come on, because of history? Next you’ll be denying Masada, and that’s just wrong!

The Gospel Summarized in the Anaphora

With these blessed powers, O Master and Lover of Mankind, we sinners also cry out and say: “Holy are You, truly all-holy!” There is no limit to the majesty of your holiness. You are revered in all your works, for in righteousness and true judgment You have ordered all things for us. When You created man and had fashioned him from the dust of the earth and had honored him as your own image, O God, You set him in the midst of a bountiful paradise, promising him life eternal and the enjoyment of everlasting good things by keeping your commandments.

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But when he disobeyed You, the true God Who had created him, and was led astray by the deceit of the serpent, he was made subject to death through his own transgressions. In your righteous judgment, O God, You exiled him from paradise into this world and returned him to the earth from which he had been taken. But You provided for him the salvation of rebirth which is in your Christ Himself.

For You did not turn Yourself away forever from your creation whom You had made, O Good One, nor did You forget the work of your hands, but You visited him in different ways. Through the tender compassion of your mercy, You sent forth prophets. You performed great works by the Saints who in every generation were well-pleasing to You. You spoke to us through the mouths of your servants the Prophets who foretold to us the salvation which was to come. You gave us the Law to aid us. You appointed angels to guard us. And when the fullness of time had come, You spoke to us through your Son Himself, through whom You had created time.

Being the Brightness of your Glory and the Stamp of your Person, and upholding all things by the power of his Word, your Son did not think of equality with You, Who alone are God and Father, as something to be grasped. And so, although He was God before time began, He appeared on earth and dwelt among us. He was incarnate of a holy virgin and emptied Himself, taking on the form of a servant and being conformed to the body of our lowliness so that He might conform us to the image of his glory. Since sin entered the world through a man and death through sin, so your Only-begotten Son, Who is in your bosom, our God and Father, was well- pleased to be born of a woman, the holy Birth-giver of God and ever- virgin Mary. He was born under the Law, so that He might condemn sin in his own flesh, so that those who died in Adam might be made alive in Him, your Christ.

He lived in this world and gave us commandments for salvation. He released us from the delusions of idolatry and brought us to the knowledge of You, true God and Father. He procured us for Himself as a chosen people, a royal priesthood and a holy nation. Having purified us with water, He sanctified us with the Holy Spirit. He gave Himself as a ransom to death by which we were held captive, having been sold into slavery by sin. He descended into the realm of death through the Cross, that He might fill all things with Himself. He loosed the sorrow of death and rose again from the dead on the third day, for it was not possible that the Author of Life should be conquered by corruption. In this way He made a way to the resurrection of the dead for all flesh. Thus, He became the first-fruits of those who have fallen asleep, the first-born of the dead, that He might be first in all ways among all things. Ascending into heaven, He sat at the right hand of your Majesty on High, and He shall come again to reward each person according to his deeds.

— Liturgy of St. Basil, the anaphora

What Judgment Feels Like

God struck me.

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I committed a moral crime. One that many would excuse me for, but which I believe is serious. I have felt sorrow, and shame, and my guilt. But then I was struck in a very specific, very appropriate way. It seems unmistakeable. I didn’t expect it. But it happened.

First, it felt heavy. Like being hit once, heavily. Then it felt light, lenient that is, and with love. Then it felt just, and that it was necessary.

Do you know what it’s like to be punished by God? To be chastened? To be granted the sorrow of your crime in full measure? It is not something to try to avoid. Judgment is not to be avoided in itself. The evil that prompted it – that is the thing to avoid.

But to be scourged – it’s not cathartic in the way people want to suggest – in a sordid way. People suggest that one is looking for a crime to be mitigated and erased. It isn’t. The crime is still there. We Orthodox hold to not forgetting our sins, to remembering them, in order to know what we are, and what we are not. My crime is not erased, and I don’t feel free of it. I feel… that I was taken measure of, that I have been loved enough to be taught, not by my own mind, but by the hand of God what is wrong. I don’t feel cast out, or destroyed. I feel rebuked, but with gentleness, yet powerfully.

I am brought low by it. I am brought to my knees. It is God. I am in his hands, and he is not pleased with me. Mercy. But more. Mercy. But more. i find the mind does not know what to say at such times. Do not let me go – chasten me. Do not destroy me with wrath – but do not let me off, do not excuse me, do not free me from the correction I need. That’s what it feels like.

The Lord is merciful in his anger. His judgment is his own radiant energy, his own grace sustaining and upholding a life, so that it does not fall away and be destroyed by death – by its crimes – by becoming entirely made of evil. One doesn’t presume to ask to be judged, I think, or so it feels, but one doesn’t turn away from it, or wish to escape it. So great a mystery is judgment.

You might think this is the manufacture of my own mind. I am not infallible, and I wouldn’t be guilty of prelest. But I recognize how direct, how surgically precise, and how effective it is. I am not a naturalist who thinks there is always an explanation that omits the economy of God. There is no cause to presume it is anything else. Struck, as though in all the world, for this thing, I was singled out and made to know – I won’t say commensurate (“neither according to our sins hath he dealt with us”), but appropriate judgment.

Thanks are due. God deals mercifully with the sinner. God saves by chastening, rather than condemns by ignoring, the sins of his children. That’s it. No profound ideas here. Just, this is what has happened.

Christ and the Feeding Tube

My wife and I have an understanding. Resuscitate, revive, and sustain life as often and as much as possible. Neither of us will accept any prodding to pull the plug, sign DNR orders, or any such thing.

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We do this, not only because we love one another, and want to live together forever, as we shall in paradise, but also for religious reasons. And we know full well there are those who claim it is Orthodox thinking to “let people go”, to refuse to use “artificial” machines and techniques to save or sustain life. And we think many of these people have imbibed deeply of the spirit of the world, and are not espousing Orthodox thought at all. Some, we allow, have simply misunderstood technology and medicine, or have not thought it through. The prevalence of thinking doesn’t indicate good thinking.

Now to sustaining life: What we’re talking about, quite often, in real terms, is food, water, oxygen, etc. So much of removing “life support” is quite literally what it sounds like – it is removing the things needed to support life. In fact, the most common causes of death in this way, are starvation, thirst, and suffocation. Not only are they painful forms of death, but grotesque and violent, however ironically the very technologies being removed are replaced with technologies to make these less painful or less grotesque – more presentable.

But these are the very things that we are bound by Christ to provide for our families, our brethren, indeed those who have need of them. Feed them. Give them Drink. Etc. “If anyone doesn’t provide for his own, he is worse than an infidel.” and “If one has the world’s goods, and seeing his brother in need shuts his heart against him, how does the love of God abide in him?” “If anyone’s son asks for bread, does he give him a stone?” “I was hungry, and you fed me. I did thirst, and you gave me drink. Therefore…”

You will hear the religious pundits and armchair religious philosophers tell you that technology has extended life beyond what God intended (as though they know what God intended), and that therefore we have to ask “new questions” about when to stop sustaining life. This is gnostic thinking. I won’t expand on that here, but it is, and this is our response:

The questions aren’t new. The ancients dealt with very real issues of the responsibility to sustain life, or to let it expire. Indeed, the early Orthodox established the first convalescent homes for the elderly, not to mention all of their hospices for the homeless, abandoned, and those dying of leprosy and disease. And they fed them, clothed them, and cared for them with whatever means they had. Once you say that we will give this much care, and no more – this much we will sustain your life, but no longer – under these conditions, but not those, you are engaged in a kind of philosophical relativism that has nothing to do with the love demonstrated by the Church. The testimony of the lives of the Saints stands in stark contrast to and repudiation of the decadent, murderous lives of these contemporary religionists. Denying the Saints, they are neither Catholic nor Christian, nor Orthodox and partakers of our holy tradition.

Raising the dead and healing the sick, those who were not of the Faith prompted the apostles to protest to Christ, and Christ told the apostles to let them be – these were doing their good work in Christ’s name. Even greater things would eventually be done in his name. The parable of the Good Samaritan is a similar example.

And so now to the question of saving life. Left for dead, without care, the Jew would have died, but the Samaritan, the one with love, says Christ, provided care and feeding, sustained and revived him.

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What technology has done is made it possible to do that better, for longer, perhaps more expensively and with more finesse and precision, but it hasn’t changed the questions. Who dares say that Christ needs to come and preach a new gospel, and address the questions that he forgot or couldn’t forsee. Who dares to say they will do this for Christ, with their religious philosophy? Gnostics. Gnostics every one. Denyers of the gospel. Repudiaters of the Incarnation. Blasphemers of the Holy Spirit.

What is “artificial” is their philosophies, their contrived gospels. Medicine, using the tools and techniques at hand, has been around forever. And Christ himself, sanctified the concept of medicine, by himself accepting the attribution “Great Physician.”

Honour a physician with the honour due unto him for the uses which ye may have of him: for the Lord hath created him. For of the most High cometh healing, and he shall receive honour of the king. The skill of the physician shall lift up his head: and in the sight of great men he shall be in admiration. The Lord hath created medicines out of the earth; and he that is wise will not abhor them. Was not the water made sweet with wood, that the virtue thereof might be known? And he hath given men skill, that he might be honoured in his marvellous works. With such doth he heal men, and taketh away their pains. Of such doth the apothecary make a confection; and of his works there is no end; and from him is peace over all the earth, My son, in thy sickness be not negligent: but pray unto the Lord, and he will make thee whole. Leave off from sin, and order thine hands aright, and cleanse thy heart from all wickedness. Give a sweet savour, and a memorial of fine flour; and make a fat offering, as not being. Then give place to the physician, for the Lord hath created him: let him not go from thee, for thou hast need of him. There is a time when in their hands there is good success. For they shall also pray unto the Lord, that he would prosper that, which they give for ease and remedy to prolong life. He that sinneth before his Maker, let him fall into the hand of the physician. – Sirach 38

We hear so often, “for all practical purposes they are dead.” Practical purposes? What does life have to do with practical purposes? And you rail against machines? You’ve just declared that a human life is nothing but a machine.

Did not even the Lord raise one who had died? Was already dead. Was long since dead. He raised him, “Lazarus, come forth!” Indeed, Christ raised all the dead, and when Christ died, the dead rose and walked around and were seen by those who knew them. Christ is the antithesis of these theories of life which are hostile to our history, Faith, and tradition. Christ is the one who goes far beyond the stench of the grave, descending even into Hell to retrieve those who have long since reposed.

Speak against the Lord, Gnostics, if you dare. You repudiate the very one who can save your life, now and forever. But you Orthodox, who are you to decide with the philosophies of the Protestants, the metaphysics of the heretics, who should live and who should die – who is kept alive and cared for too long, and who should be abandoned and their care removed? When you mouth their vanities, you are not my brothers, when I or my wife are sick. Don’t come near our bedside. Stay out of our hospital room. Keep the bony fingers of your heresy from our lives. You are not our brothers; the Samaritan is. Give us the Samaritan. The pagan that saves our lives is the Christian, and the Christian that says, “let them expire” is the pagan, and we will not pray with you.

I have even seen one blasphemer’s “Orthodox” web site that is offering up these “withhold treatment” orders for his congregation and others, as he preaches his vain personal philosophy as though it were the truth. Schemer. Ideologue. There’s one frock in which I cannot find life, one stole under which I cannot find shelter.

Now, I’m not interested in debating this with anyone. Above all else, I see our religion as a religion of life. Did not Christ say as much? God is God of the living. All the enemies of life can offer is religious philosophy – they have no appeal to the one that created life, not recourse to our Holy Tradition that is not polluted with the whispering of others. It is true that some holy men held varieties of opinions on varieties of things. No doubt someone can easily find such an opinion. In the end, I will forgive an opinion, as you must forgive mine.

But if you come near us with your gleaming knife of sacrifice, I will call you “pagan”, which is what you are. Keep away. May God curse the knife that is raised over our living bodies, the testament of his greatness and power. As much as you do not sustain us, you do not sustain Christ. As much as you do not save our lives, you do not save the life of Christ. As much as you withhold treatment from us, you withhold treatment from Christ. And what will the Physician say to you in the Judgment? That you were philosophically right? “Physician, heal thyself!” He has already spoken.

And may God preserve the physician that shows forth the glory of God, with machines, with mixtures, with tubes and tools, with wires and computers, with whatever means he may have. As the Samaritan gave from what means he had, so in the case of my family, give, and you will be rewarded by the Most High God who created us both, who made Heaven and Earth and put it into your hands for this purpose. You are the instrument of the Almighty. Save us, by the prayers of all the Saints.

And even if we babble insanities, “Kill me. Let me go. Starve me. Suffocate me. Abandon me. Go away. It’s my time. I want to die.” What friend hides from his own friend in time of need? What suffering person calls out, “leave me be” that you shrug and leave them be? Who are you? What kind of friends are you? What friend sees his friend on a ledge saying “I don’t want to live,” and thinks, “all right then. To each his own.” If you’re my friend, you will ignore me if I plead for death. You will give me life, because in life is the Spirit of God. Because I get old, you want to abandon me? How is my life less valuable than an infant’s? Who are you to decide which lives have more or less value? Or if I’m unconscious? Is the infant able to tell you his preference for life or death? If you are knocked out, shall I wait until you wake up to ask if you’d like treatment? Try to get around it all you want. Good people, like the Good Samaritan, care for those who are sick and dying. Bad people offer up philosophies over their sick beds.

And to hell with your religious arguments. Christ healed even on the Sabbath. Your argument is with him; you won’t find it here.

Welcome is not a Slip of Paper

Welcome is Prayer.

The other night I went to hear a speaker at a local church, and they had me fill out a “visitor’s slip” for their database, and they expressed welcome both personally and corporately. They served an excellent meal. They had a renowned speaker. The priest introduced himself and took an interest. They seemed to go out of their way to make me feel welcome. But I didn’t feel welcome.

I felt like an outsider – somehow fundamentally outside the community. I felt like an outsider when prior to the lecture, they introduced the speaker, but there was no prayer. How does one share in listening, perhaps learning, without invoking the One it’s all for, and without whom it’s all vain? The speaker finished, and we were invited to eat, but there was no blessing of the food. Again, I felt outside – an outsider who had to say his prayers privately, as I do when I’m among the heterodox. Indeed, it felt a little like either I was heterodox, or they were. What had I done? Then the Q&A session began, again without prayer, so that we’re into a third hour without ever asking God’s help, his protection against passions, his guidance for our minds and ears, his strength against pride. And it quickly became an occasion for very uncomfortable comments that certainly were not fitting the piety of Holy Orthodoxy.

One can only hope that it ended with prayer; …

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Building Simply, Building Small

“For who hath despised the day of small things? For they shall rejoice…” -Zechariah 4:10

If you want your dream to be,
Build it slow and surely.
Small beginnings greater ends.
Heartfelt work grows purely.

If you want to live life free,
Take your time go slowly.
Do few things but do them well.
Simple joys are holy.

Day by day, stone by stone,
Build your secret slowly.
Day by day, you’ll grow, too,
You’ll know heaven’s glory.

— Donovan (from the soundtrack to Brother Sun, Sister Moon)

St. Seraphim on Evangelism

“Acquire the Spirit of Peace and thousands will be converted.” – St. Seraphim

Orthodox doesn't always mean Christian

George (from Seinfeld) converts to Latvian Orthodox I have found that it is possible for a person to be Orthodox, in the sense that they are baptized, chrismated, do penance, and receive communion, and yet not be Christian. Likewise, it seems possible for an organization to be an Orthodox Church, but not be a Christian community. This will seem controversial, but I think it’s so.

I have witnessed one atmosphere of hyper-correctness and emotional and physical abuse, with strong sociological characteristics of a cult. I have witnessed another atmosphere that was anti-clerical, anti-ethnic, vaguely neoconservative, and spent a lot of time plotting to manipulate their image to the bishop, and affect the reputations of various clergy based on what ‘camp’ they were in. I have witnessed another atmosphere working to integrate Orthodoxy with things that can never be integrated, collaborating with emissaries from gnostic groups and roving hyper-ecumenists. I have listened to clergy explain how they are working with people to oust monks and priests who have the ‘wrong’ attitudes, and are barriers to the union of a world-christianity, and the evolution of Orthodoxy into a cultural instrument. I have witnessed a community that is working quite consciously to de-asceticize Orthodoxy and build a kind of system of religious affiliation that is devoid of personal devotion but maintains control through a kind of corporate power structure. Some people are likely not to believe I’ve seen these things, or will question my interpretation of them; there’s little I can do about that. …

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