Jesus

The Rules of Religious Blogging

The rules of religious blogging aren’t that different than the rules of blogging in general. So many religious bloggers made their first foray into the medium with religion, and it’s an explosive topic, so it bears some discussion for the layman. The biggest problem is that so many people attribute to their religious views a totality, a monolithic, comprehensive absolutism – quite simply put, a “rightness” – that, in the area of religion, they feel free to ignore the rules of blogging altogether. The results can be disastrous personally, as the blogger falls quickly into pride, defensiveness, and begins to make war on anyone who disagrees. Again, quite simply, the worst tendencies of religious absolutism come out for all to see, leaving the blogger in a seige position, with a taking on all enemies mentality, boxing in all directions, and inviting likewise the audience to participate in the personal moral failures of the blogger – closemindedness, inability to hear, the loss of gentleness and peace, the devolution of spirited debate into personal attacks and enjoyment of other people’s downfall, or plotting enjoyment of their potential defeat. In short, the blogger becomes a monster, the blog a monstrosity, and all we who participate become little monsters hanging on to the mother beast. Gone is any real possibility, though we might kid ourselves, that we will learn something. We become Rush Limbaugh-like, firing missiles from our armored booths, with no felt accountability for where they land.

Prophet Amos, old Russian Orthodox icon
Image via Wikipedia

You might find this intro surprising, coming from me. But I’m not talking about breaking the rules of blogging, merely about ignoring them. It’s one thing to proceed with ignorance and inexperience and end up slamming your first car into a wall. We’d like to avoid that. It’s another thing if you wreck cars for a living as a stuntman, crash test dummy, or safety tester. If you know what you’re doing, are breaking the rules intentionally for a reason, and understand the consequences for you and for others, then maybe it’s appropriate. Maybe. It depends on your purpose and the purpose of your blog and what kind of interaction you want with visitors. I know mine, know what I’m doing and why, and while that doesn’t exempt me from the need to monitor myself, listen to feedback, and possibly adjust, it also means that if I’m breaking the very rules I’m discussing, it may not be hypocrisy at all – it may be quite intentional. My father used to quote Oscar Wilde, “a gentleman never offends anyone unintentionally”. That shouldn’t be an excuse for being intentionally brutal – it doesn’t make it all right – but we must at once be willing to take all offenses we give on ourselves, saying with our fathers, “it is all my fault”, and yet leave the other person their own will, which we cannot presume to own or control. Sometimes what is being offended is pride, or presumption, or arrogance, or unbelief, or some such thing. We must avoid making excuses, tread carefully lest we assume for ourselves the deluded role of ‘hammer of God’ – avoiding hubris, and yet also sometimes be willing to risk pain in order to remove something awful, like a surgeon at work on a tumor. And in that, it’s so easy to become self-righteous and blind.

So anyway, I’m not meaning this to be a comprehensive list of rules. There are plenty of lists out there, if you want to google the rules of blogging. But here are a couple that may be useful:

* Whenever possible, avoid telling a person he’s wrong. Instead, acknowledge right intent, right direction, right in some point, but merely operating with wrong information or incomplete analysis in another area. I’m constantly re-learning this one. It’s something I pull from business blogging, and it’s just as appropriate in a religious setting.

* Always leave something on the table. Don’t attempt to “decimate” someone you’ve decided is an intellectual opponent. If you do, you’re delighting too much in another’s downfall, which is forbidden, is it not? Do you think David mocked Goliath as he slung the stone? We are not that kind of people, if we pretend to be whatever is meant by “christian”. The wrath of God is upon us at such moments. There is always a bigger giant. If you can’t find *any* point of agreement with the other person, let them know that that’s where you’re struggling, and leave it at that. As John Duns Scotus said, ‘unless we can find some single point on which we really and unreservedly agree, we can’t really have a conversation’. That happens to me a lot, because you and I don’t mean the same thing by “christian” or “god” or “Jesus”. There’s always someone assuming for you that you’re in agreement, and who will fight to insist that you agree when you know that you do not. I always end it by saying, “the god that you believe in, I think is fictional, imaginary, and doesn’t exist, so saying we both worship the same God is like saying that you think you’re hearing fairies and I think you’re hearing your own mind – that’s not what “same” really means”. But it’s not really our place to have ecumenical(ist) dialogues and come to ‘agreement’ as we cook our own religious meth, so to speak. Protestants create their religion. The rest of us cannot engage in that kind of thing without ceasing to be what we are. It’s apostasy of attitude and activity that we must avoid, besides mysteriological apostasy.

* Acknowledge the other person’s intellectual and vocational liberty. You can’t be Orthodox without believing in this freedom. Maybe Calvinists have another take and end up struggling with this. You hear fundamentalists say all the time, “the devil is whispering in your ear” or some such thing. It’s really inappropriate for us to make such a judgment. Our fathers warn stringently against that presumption. I find I’m saying, “I understand that a lot of people live that way, think that way, make that choice. It’s not the way I live, think, or not what I’ve decided.” Sometimes the best way to acknowledge liberty is to pair it with your own. The danger for religious bloggers, and those who drop in for a visit, is the same danger you get in religious forums (an infernal venue that I don’t want here) – that is, deciding that there’s only one possible correct answer, and that you’ve got a handle on it such that nothing else need be listened to. It’s the most dangerous to you when you ‘know’ you’re right. The moment you stop challenging your own ‘beliefs’, then you’re not actually thinking anymore, your intellect isn’t actually free, but instead you’re a creature of ‘beliefs’. One of my religious duties is to remove from my mind all ‘beliefs’. I often say that I don’t believe in God, because I don’t have any beliefs. That’s more an intention than a reality. I know if I dig enough, I’ll find beliefs I haven’t eradicated yet. A belief is something you’ve insulated from consideration, scrutiny, from thought – it’s fixed, it cannot any more be considered. You can’t really respond to a belief. The person has chosen to separate themselves from reality, in actual principle, and to decide that nothing can impact their understanding. They are immune even from the God they presume to worship. They aren’t followers of God, but followers of their own mind. It’s the ultimate atheism, the best demonstration of autonomy from the Creator, the height of pride and also, tragically, the best evidence of terrible loneliness, fear – the very seige mentality we’re saying religious bloggers need to avoid. The best thing you can do for them and for you is to keep responding with, “yes, I acknowledge that’s one way of thinking. it’s not mine, or everyone’s, but it’s one way.” Then, unless you’re a hypocrite, you tell yourself the same thing about *your* beliefs, until they start listening again, and you are free of their power. Nothing destroys faith like belief.

* Make friends of your enemies, where possible. The notion that someone is your ‘enemy’ is suspect in the first place, because you’ve reduced the other person to a concept, which is the first stage in villifying them. You’re not really listening, anymore, just fighting. So if it’s possible, read what they write elsewhere, offer respect, agreement where possible, interest – don’t let it all become teeth and claws. Sure, some people are enemies of God, enemies of the truth, etc. But be careful about painting with that brush. Because, again, it reduces the person down to what the person is saying or doing, and that’s heresy if you’re Orthodox, the height of evil, and the reason we stopped regarding the Roman Bishop and his “christians” as Orthodox in the first place, because they did that theological to the Holy Trinity, in the form of the filioque, making heresy into blasphemy. How can you then presume to do it? Might as well join the other camp at that point, because whatever you’re saying to them, you’ve fallen into their primary error, what St. Photius spoke of as ‘the sum of all heresies’, “all the rash impudence that the West has to say”. Be careful, because once you do that, you pave the way for cyber-crusades, internet inquisitions, and blogger burnings at the cyber-stake.

* Know when to cut it off. There are times when it’s clear that all the other person is not interested in doing anything except fighting. At that point, give them the last word if you want, or if their last word is to kick over something that needs to be repaired, then you take the last word, and then cut them off. I don’t mean cut off anyone who disagrees with you and annoys you personally, or people you like, by not “getting it” or by asking uncomfortable questions. I know a couple of bloggers who do that, and most of us don’t have a lot of respect for them. One of them gives a couple of warnings that if you keep asking the same question in a different way, or keep bringing up an issue that the blogger thinks has already been answered adequately, you’re going to get banned. I don’t read that blog anymore, because I can’t respect the venue or the blog manager. True, I didn’t agree with the people who were getting banned, and I thought the person doing the banning had more or less correct ideas, but it’s not a real discussion if you always hand the game to your own team. That’s religion. That’s belief. It’s the equivalent, in a blog, of what belief is doing in the mind. It’s the antithesis of faith. So why bother? Another blogger I’ve spent some time observing, only posts comments that ask questions he likes or that won’t embarrass him, and he uses the approval/disapproval system to control the conversation, so that he always comes out right. Wow. That’s even worse, and almost no one I know respects him, or what he’s doing. A colleague called it a monoblog. 🙂 That’s fine, if it’s going to be that, but then turn off comments rather than make it a sham.

* Have a mission statement. A lot of people don’t get blogging for the same reason they don’t get Twitter. They’re newbies who don’t have the background a lot of us do in virtual communities and online venues. If they just came onto the scene about the time AOL opened it’s doors to the web, they’re newbies. And you’re going to get people who think your web real estate is one thing when it’s another. If it’s a forum, treat it like a forum – don’t censor. If it’s a monoblog, then turn off comments. If you’re primarily promoting yourself and sharing information, then make that clear. Whatever you’re doing, even if someone is an ass, you have to give them a pass if you don’t tell them what defines the turf. This blog, for instance, is neither a forum nor a monoblog. It’s a site of personal confession. I’m open to some feedback, some discussion, some comments, but I’m not interested in cooking our own meth. The people you’ll see me chase off, eventually, if they don’t get it after a while, are the Protestant types who want to ‘dialogue’ and create our own religious viewpoints, as though that’s a legitimate activity. I’m Orthodox. That’s not what Orthodox people do. You can find ones who will. They’re Protestants dressed up in Orthodox clothes. It wouldn’t be a site of personal confession if I was here throwing Holy Orthodoxy over my shoulder, would it? The other behavior I don’t spend a lot of time with (in other words, I usually say “look, I’m not interested in this”) comes from visitors who drop in, fire off a “corrective” based on reading a single post (yeah, you can track how many posts they’ve read, and how long they spent on each page, etc), and aren’t really listening to or looking at what you’re doing or why. They’re taking some statement as a disconnected proposition, the way Protestants do ‘bible verses’ and responding to that. In short, they’re not talking about what I’m saying, they’re focuses only on what I said. They’re not paying attention to what I’ve said, but only to what’s happening in their own mind. I don’t really have a lot of time for that, and I tend to want to toss it in one response. So I reduce it to logic, show the fallacies, and move on. Usually is quite effective. Doesn’t mean I need only flowery love sonnets for what I’m writing – those don’t do much for me, either – I’m not a sage – I’m just a sinner who is thinking out loud, trying to be saved and, as I’ve said elsewhere, wanting to avoid having only the walls of my own mind to respond, for reasons I needn’t repeat in this post. Anyway, somewhere, you need to make it clear what the hell you’re doing, so that there’s some point of reference. In the old days, people used an F.A.Q.

* Above all, don’t go nuclear. I’m not talking about your personal feelings, or about getting too upset. I mean don’t arm your online country with weapons of mass destruction in the first place. Once you escalate to the point that you’re your own nation, you’re not a “christian” anymore – if you ever were in the first place. Nationalism and christianity are incompatible, no matter what your flag waving pastor tells you. Nationalism is heresy to all faiths, because it’s an attack on faith itself. And I’m not only talking about the nationalism that things “charity starts at home” or “American and Israel are special nations” (neo-gnostic nonsense). In principle, we’re talking about any time you carve out an area and say, ‘outsiders will have to give account of their religious background, their legal identity, their statement of faith, etc.’ and ‘if you commit treason, sedition, or even questional activities, you will be stigmatized, ostracized, and eventually ejected, or else bombed by a religious dogpile of “loving” violence’. Loving violence – that’s nuclear. You know, I’ve had people slap my face, punch me, or threaten to hurt me or worse, because their religious group had gone nuclear. To the point that even the ‘leaders’ (cult leaders) sanctioned it. When a religion goes nuclear, I don’t care if it’s Brother Billy and First Baptist, your Victory Fundagelical Megachurch, or the coffee hour folks at your local parish, you’re a cult and your leaders, if they are involved, are cult leaders. When you do that with online religious communities, you’re either acting illicitly *against* your religion (Orthodox people would say acting apart from the Bishop) or your religion isn’t worth blogging about in the first place, because it’s just an argument by force. And that goes whether people set out on online smear campaigns, villify you in one of those “let’s all gang up on one person (and scare any sympathizers into silence)” free for alls, or what have you. It’s all illicit violence. If you’ve gone nuclear, and you have enough humanity left to realize it, do the one needful thing – kill the damned beast, so it doesn’t grow any more. Close down the blog, shut off the forum, end the meetings and the e-mails, or what have you, and go and spend the next months in penance and begging forgiveness. You have killed. Even if you didn’t actually draw blood. You have murdered with your mind, and you are an apostate to your Faith and to all faith of any kind. Repent, and bend your swords into plowshares.

And remember, don’t get some monster dressed up as a Saint in your head. Martin Luther burned the town of Muenster, and all the men, women, children, elderly, and infirm within it. If you’re thinking, “Martin Luther would do this!” then you might as well put in Mao, Stalin, Pol Pot, or Hitler. The religious thing is just window dressing.

* Show it to your Bishop. Or if you’re not Orthodox, then take it to your leader. Make sure they know it exists and where to find it. I’m not necessarily telling you that you can’t speak freely. I’m saying that it’s good to make what you say, where possible, available to your Bishop, so you can get guidance and help with any serious problems you might have, or if you really need someone to rescue you from the monster you’ve become. Sometimes, speaking into the hollow of an oak is necessary. I get it. But that’s not what turns you into a monster, usually. Avoid monstrosity – show the Bishop. That’s what he’s there for.

That’s it. The list could go on and on. I figure these are enough. I mean, if you’ve got these down, hell, you’re better off that in most religious venues, aren’t you? And if you can’t do these things, for goodness sake, it’s not for you to run, launch, or participate in an online venue. Get out of it. No one is appointed to the inquisition. If you’re going to stay in, try slapping something on your sidebar that says, “Be gentle, be kind, be peaceable. Be willing to say that you’re wrong. Be willing to acknowledge the other guy is right. If you can’t do these things, go play golf until you can. It’ll still be here tomorrow.” Here, I use remembrance of the times and seasons. Again, I’ll violate these rules sometimes. Sometimes unintentionally, in which case I’ve got work to do. Sometimes, on purpose, but usually more for dramatic effect. I swear up a storm some days, because I’d rather be genuine than religious and, again, this blog really serves a purpose to which that’s appropriate. But in the comments section, I sometimes do all right, sometimes not. That’s where I try to follow the rules as best I can.

Shut your pie hole and help Haiti!

As I listen to people calling in to radio shows, I think, you know, the level of duplicity among right-wing (fascist), Republican (corporate), evangelical (made-up religion), “christians” whenever there’s brutality or disaster elsewhere in the world, is obscene. If it was England, there wouldn’t be a debate. When it’s black people with dreadlocks, we ask all these questions about “whether it’s our responsibility”. One gets a little tired of inbred, toothless, backwoods-drawl “believers” and their nouveau riche suburban counterparts expressing their pride and anger about doing the very thing Christ asked of us – help those who are poor or in distress: “If you see your brother in need and withhold the world’s goods from him, how does the love of God abide in you?”

L1030352
Image by Nite_Owl via Flickr

These folks aren’t Christians – the Christian is the pagan, atheist, Buddhist, Muslim, or whatever that pulls someone from the rubble, bandages his wounds, carries him to the hospital, and puts down his own money to feed and care for him (by their prayers save me). The Christian is the Samaritan, the heretic, the alien, the foreigner, the false religious person, not the Judeo-Christian who sits at home bitching about the cost. I wouldn’t want to be standing in the congregation of those whose verbal ejaculations are a mockery of the gospels, because one day the floor is going to fall in, the grave open up, and the Devil take them all.

If you were singing songs of triumph when we bombed villages in Serbia and shot children in Fallujah, but saying “Yeah, it’s not our job to save the Tutsis from massacre by the Hutu in Rwanda – that’s another part of the world, not our business” – then besides being a hypocrite to reason, and an obvious liar therefore, you’ve hardly got a claim to being Christian. You may be Republican. You may be “conservative”. You may “believe in the Bible”. You may “have a personal savior”. But whoever it is, it’s not the historic Christ of the gospels. It’s not Jesus Christ. It’s a figment of your imagination. A fictious person to whom you’ve merely attributed your own attributes, carving out an idol of God in your own image, rather than leaving behind the world you love, as did the Holy Apostles, and following Christ. Christ is helping those in Haiti. You’re just bitching that other people are casting out demons and healing the sick in his name. You fundamentally don’t get it, and your fundamentalism has clouded your judgment.

Almost every religious person I know has let his politics pollute his faith. Among some of my people, it has been the obscenity of rhetorically beating up Muslims (funny, they weren’t bold enough to talk smack before 9/11 – what, did their faith change with the times? – is it “post-9/11 religion”?). They’ve become tools of Dick Cheney’s and Donald Rumsfeld’s bandwagon. They’re not autonomous, which is the kingdom of which Christ spoke, “my power is not of this world”, but appendages of the political and social machine. It’s not everyone, of course. But religion sets up camp in faith all the time, busily appointing itself like storefront preachers, to the “ministry” of translating the premises of the world into the lingo of religious belief. You want to know if I’m guilty of it too? I don’t know, but my faith teaches me to say that I am, whenever anyone accuses me of a failing, and to accuse myself so that the enemy can own nothing in me. So whether I can think of a specific instance or not, I’m guilty. I’ve been religious. And damn every stitch of it, when I have been. Let’s repent together!

In Haiti, thousands are dead, families left fatherless, widows wailing in the streets, orphans looking for their parents, people have lost their homes and have nothing. Remember, you are charged with the words of our father St. James, Patriarch of Jerusalem, Brother of God, “Pure and undefiled religion is this, helping orphans and widows in their affliction, and keeping oneself unstained by the world.” Don’t mouth off about “yeah, but is it really our responsibility?” like you’ve been smoking too much conservative crack and it’s made you too high to hear the gospel – you’re putting shame and judgment on your head, and it’s just adding to the agony of the world. It’s not about you, and it’s not your job to turn everything into an ideology like you long ago did to your faith. It’s not all a belief system. The Samaritan has more faith than you or I, he will judge us in the last day, not vice versa. And if you think otherwise, you’ve been spoon fed too much triumphalist baby food that was just what your pride wanted to hear. Tell your pastor to go to hell and do something to help Haiti. Protest by withholding what you normally put in the offering plate, if he stands up there and tells you it’s not your concern. The Red Cross is the ‘church’ in that moment more than whatever cheesy architecture is wrapping those pews.

There’s plenty of stuff on the web about how to help, and what’s needed, so before anyone says I should light a candle not curse the dark (there’s a nice double entendre there), we just don’t need that extra voice on that side of the delivery truck. But I don’t see a lot of hands helping shove people off the rice sacks that have planted flags in them and are giving the finger to the desperate because they can’t find a “bible verse” to tell them they “have to” show compassion and mercy. So that’s my job. Get off the sacks you freaking false prophets, you cheats and stealers from the poor, you horders of the provisions God gave you to precisely to give away. I’m not “saying it with love” (timidly and in a pretty, Downy-soft, impressionistic manner). I’m just saying it.

Remember, these words, “You didn’t visit me in my distress. You didn’t give me food when I was hungry. You didn’t give me drink when I was dying of thirst. Depart from me, I never knew you.” What do you think is the penalty for stealing from the poor in the sight of God? “Not to enable the poor to share in our goods is to steal from them and deprive them of life. The goods we possess are not ours but theirs.” – St. John Chrysostom

For those interested in helping, I recommend Global Giving (they’re solid – we use them all the time – and you can give any amount using paypal, credit card, or online check) or text “Haiti” to 90999 to donate $10 via your cell phone bill. 100% of your $10 donation passes thru to RedCross for Haiti relief. Your cell carrier keeps nothing.

Text “Haiti” to 90999 to donate. 100% of your $10 donation passes thru to @RedCross for Haiti relief. Your cell carrier keeps nothingText “Haiti” to 90999 to donate. 100% of your $10 donation passes thru to @RedCross for Haiti relief. Your cell carrier keeps nothing..

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.

Bronze ceremonial standard of the Hittites; he...
Image via Wikipedia

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!

What the hell is a Judeo-Christian?

:en:Rabbi :en:Moshe Feinstein
Image via Wikipedia

I don’t know if my dog likes watching news commentary and reporting but, when I come home, that’s what’s on TV sometimes, so he must. From that, I pick up snatches of what your “average joe” is thinking about today.  Today it’s discussion about governments posting religious monuments and stem cell research. It’s a bit like listening to aliens, without the lasers and space ships. One thing that doesn’t seemed to get questioned, I noticed, as I relieved myself in the other room, is the phrase “Judeo-Christian”. Supposedly, the US is predicated on “Judeo-Christian” values and beliefs, and these monuments are “Judeo-Christian”. What the hell is a Judeo-Christian? That, to me, is like saying Islamo-Hindu.

I know, I know, they’re not talking at all about Christianity as I would use the word. They’re linking together components in a historiographical theory that claims there’s some fundamental shared worldview between Jews and Christians. People of the book, they used to call them – tho they don’t include muslims anymore – that went out of vogue in the 1990s – so now that phrase is largely forgotten. I remember the lovely little men who used such terms, with their pony tales and their liberality, who a few years ago wouldn’t think of including muslims in the same breath and, once again, now that the invasion of Iraq and its atrocities are evil, and there’s some color in the white house, they’re back to cautiously regarding the “good muslims” as somehow sharing a history.

One of the exercises we did in college in the History of Mediaeval Philosophy was to compare Avicenna, Averoes, Aquinas, and others, and see whether or not Jews, Muslims, and Roman Catholics (proto-Protestants) sounded more like each other than any of them resembled Holy Orthodoxy. Even the critics, atheists, and committed religionists of other stripes admitted they did. People of the book, indeed. But the religious psychology has just as much in common w. Brahmanism. I know someone who was in a schismatic Roman Catholic group before converting to Holy Orthodoxy. He was always an agitator and never really was happy with his conversion, and now he’s off being a quasi-Buddhist. He doesn’t realize that he just really went back to his original species. The trappings have changed, but not the fundamental premises.

Anyway, I listen to words like this thrown around, with no one batting an eye, and not one voice asking what precisely is the theory behind this compound “Judeo-Christian” and I realize that if an Orthodox person were to stand up and say that the Jews are the enemies of Christ, that there is no separate “dispensation” of salvation for them apart from the Church (standard evangelical speculation), and that we have nothing to do with these false Jews but are ourselves the New Israel, the Israel of God, the ancient religion of Adam, of Noah, of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, of Solomon and David, we would undoubtedly be labelled anti-semitic. And there can be no greater crime in the current political empire than being anti-semitic – our support for zionist Israel is “unwavering”, and is continually being “renewed”. We wouldn’t have to go that far, though, to incur the wrath of “anti-racists”. Just saying, “Judeo-Christian? Don’t know what you mean. We have nothing to do with the Jews, unless you mean the Christian ones. Yes, we have a Patriarchate in Jerusalem – are you talking about them?” – that would do it. That would incur the ire, the wrath, the hatred and vitriol of those who insist that there’s a standing dogma about Jews that we all must share – support for the nation of Israel, and hence for Zionism, their supposed shared content and historical continuity with Christians (yes, I deny that, too), and the notion that the religion of these folk is just as salvific, not to mention the unwillingness to even say the word “Jew” unless it’s in delightfully upbeat or solemnly positive context.

Judeo-Christian? No such thing. Not if we, the Orthodox, are Christian. If we’re not, then yes, certainly, Judaism, Islam, and Protestant Roman Catholicism have a lot of substance and history in common. As religious philosophies, most certainly. Historically, though, Judaism is a concoction of the enemies of Christ, that section of Hebrews who wished to remain anti-Christian, when Christ rose again and filled the world with his body, the Church. Reformed Judaism, Orthodox Judaism, Judaism in general – this is not the faith of the ancients. These are religions of recent invention. True, they draw upon a gnostic and occult that existed alongside the ancient faith, and certainly they draw upon early anti-Christian gnosticism and hermetics, and mediaeval scholastic inventions, just as Protestantism and Roman Catholicism do. But they are not the faith held by the Patriarchs, our Saints. And no Orthodox mind can declare them to be such. All such dispensationalism is abjectly heretical.

It will be deemed anti-semitic to say there is no separate salvation for the Jews. Why not be honest – there’s no separate salvation for anyone? Why make the Jews an issue. We feel the same way about the Greeks. Nationalism doesn’t save. Ethnicity doesn’t save. Christ saves. And apart from Christ, there is no salvation. That is the Christian Faith; it is the very statement of that Faith for which Christ himself was crucified – it is indisputable. Calling something else administratively “Christian” or to declare it “Christian” by sheer exercise of ecclesiastical judgment, is simply dishonest. Words become nonsense when they don’t have even the remotest resemblance to their historical significance.

Same with the word Jew? What is a Jew, anyway? Those who bandy about terms like anti-semitic at the drop of a hat can’t answer that authoritatively. An old adage goes, “Want to start an argument in an elevator full of Jews? Ask what is a Jew – is it a practitioner of some form of Judaism, a citizen of the nation of Israel, or an ethnic designation?” The “Jews” themselves can’t agree. What is it, then, that an anti-semite or an anti-anti-semite is really against? Besides, terms like anti-semite are really inappropriate when we repudiate salvation by any other religion, by any national affiliation, and by any ethnic background with equally disregard. If you were a South African Jain Buddhist of Polish descent, and we said it doesn’t convey any special treatment or presumed theosis, what would you call us then? Even “racist” becomes nonsensical, since Buddhism, for example, is not a race. How about “intolerant”? That gets tossed out there a lot – not to mean what it really means – failing to tolerate something – but to label anyone who fails to say what you want to say about others – that it’s all “just as good”, “six of one”, that there are “many roads, all leading to the same place”.  I think it’s you who is intolerant, if you can’t even speak accurately about those with whom you disagree.

My old bishop used to say, when referring to the temple, to the implements of the altar, to the books kept in the altar, to the psalms sung by the choir, the smoke filling the air, the candles, the vestments, indeed all the physical implements of the ancient faith, “Really, we’re just Jews.” Not these cooked up “Messianic Jews” who get together and play at temple the way evangelicals play at church, wearing yamikas, slaughtering lambs, and reading the King James Bible (the scaled-down 66-book version). I’m talking about being able to refer to Saint Moses, the Patriarch, as easily as to St. Paul. I won’t go into a long set of proofs and illustrations. If you’re Orthodox, these things abound. They’re all around you on a consistent basis. If you need text, you might read Georges Barrois, if you’re interested. I’ve heard his “Jesus Christ and the Temple” delves into this. One can just as easily read the scriptures, in the context of the liturgy of the people who wrote them.

The point is that when I listen to people tossing out this “Judeo-Christianity” and it goes unchallenged and without disclaimer, I think, “They’re not talking about anything that has to do with me. This is an alien religion that I don’t have anything in common with. Not even the words on their monuments which my people wrote, since we do not mean the sames things by those words.” In their attempts to be inclusive, they’ve been exclusive. And I imagine, were I a Buddhist, I could feel marginalized. Here, though, I don’t want these US governments creating monuments to my faith. Historically, that’s been a disaster. Look at all the religious crap that’s been commissioned by rulers throughout the ages. Screw the rulers; give me the monks. You don’t get bizarre arias, and weirdly occult tapestries out of decent monks. These stone billboards they’re dropping onto capitol lawns just muddy the waters and spark arguments over things that aren’t even real, like “founded on Judeo-Christian traditions”. Which practicing Jews signed the Declaration or wrote the Constitution? And come now. You mean Protestant traditions. The US is a Protestant nation. Its tolerance for everything else extends just as far as its ability to coopt it and shape it into something seemingly compatible. It’s a syncretic tradition, all right. That’s what the hyphen means. And all this presumed ‘inclusion’ and ‘tolerance’ is just intolerance of anything but that syncretism. If we don’t want to be what you are, don’t want you speaking for us, deciding for us, whatever, you’ll brand us with labels, bomb our villages, and villify us in your pseudo-histories. Tolerance indeed.

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

Our Christian Names

A 6th century mosaic of :en:Jesus at Church Sa...
Image via Wikipedia

In our quasi-revolutionary, neo-gnostic culture, including most especially academia, and especially still religious academia and its amateur counterpart among those of us who read books, it is popular to refer to every scholar (and eventually everyone who has said anything at all) by surname. “Ecco’s thesis is…” “Jaki is daring when…” “Cantor actually challenges the notion…” The depersonalization of the individual, the treatment of the person as genus – as nature or essence – is in fact heretical to Holy Orthodoxy, which is why we do not refer to Saints in such a manner. Applied to the Holy Trinity, this reversal is in fact the reason for the Great Schism by which Holy Orthodoxy has repudiated all heresy, and the heresy of heresies. Person is not interchangeable with genus. So to speak that way, it truly to speak as a heterodox. It is barbarian speak, it is the speech of the unlearned, of the irreverent, of the thoughtless and impious.

Still, you hear dapper religio-academics referring to “Fr. Schmemman” or just “Schmemman” when they’re being particularly “down to earth”. The sing-songy tone is one of perhaps unintended disdain – the kind of disdain that is inherent in a trivialization of personality, intended or not. One hears it in hip-hop speech, hippie slang, and the “bro” and “dude”-ness of insipid “guy-speak”. And why shouldn’t we expect it among Orthodox, when in some Orthodox Churches you hear of people being called, in the Roman Catholic vein, “Father Anderson” (at least they don’t toss out just “Anderson”), not to mention “Fr. Bill” (who would ever dare to refer to a Saint Bill), or even just “Bill” (“Bill’s not coming to the men’s breakfast today.”) – I think I just threw up. It’s either the heretical anti-personal anthropology of the heterodox or the vain ultra-personalism of their social descendents, thoroughly Protestantized, as if we were joining hands together, singing campfire gospel songs, and listening to the mystical insights of the Fr. Larry or Brother Lenny or even Linda. (well, we have yet to see Father Lisa, but the attitude is the same). The imposition of cultural flippancy on one hand, or cultural utilitarianism on the other, is a great show of religiosity but really a mediocrity of Faith.

I won’t argue this endlessly with naysayers. You are of your tradition, and I am of mine. Be what you are; let’s not argue. I don’t have to eat with you, and you certainly won’t be sitting at my table, if you’re claiming we share the same Faith. And yes, I do eat with out and out Protestants, Roman Catholics, Episcopalians, Witches, Warlocks, Atheists, and Spiritualists. I don’t eat with people who, pretending to honor Christ, dishonor his Church, claiming it’s all one big religion and I’m (quite unwillingly) a part of it. Rank me among the unbelievers, if that’s the case. Give me Samaritans any day. Those I can pat on the back and make friends. So before you say, “Christ ate with sinners,” think also about who was *not* at his table. Did he break bread with all the false Christs?

The truth is that speaking in this manner ultimately belies the Holy Incarnation of Christ. Christ shared our nature. Christ became man. And his name is Jesus. When you say in your heart that name, you teach your mind how to say all names, and how to think of all your brethren. Why then, this disdain which masquerades as disregard, mere casualness, and laziness? Piety, as my old Bishop used to say, is taking little pains. What pain it was for God to be born with a man’s name.

But there are those who do not wish to dishonor all that is dishonored by using these inappropriate designations. And sometimes they ask how to cultivate a habit of proper attribution. I’m no wise person to consult, but I think it’s helpful, when you think in your mind of “Fr. Alexander” (Schmemann) or “Fr. John” (Romanides) to think of them in the light of “Saint Alexannder” or “Saint John” for whom they are named. Who among us would have the spite to refer to a Saint Maximovitch or a Saint Hotovitzky? If we can’t bring ourselves to what we know and should sense is irreverence toward the Saints, how dare we do it of anyone among us, especially not those icons of the saints who are our teachers and clergy, those who bear Saint’s names? When you say the name of your brother in Christ, think “he will be glorified” if he is living or, if he is reposed, add “pray for me” to your thoughts when you say his name. Fr. John (“pray for me”) Romanides. Fr. Alexander (“save me by your prayers”) Schmemman. Then, over time, you will find it hard to speak shamefully of such people and, perhaps, with mercy, of anyone (“grant me such mercy, Lord”). In fact, what we’ve been doing is speaking of people in a naturalistic way, as though they are dead, or as though they will not live forever. This is, perhaps, part of the cure for our blindness. And of each other, perhaps especially if we find it hard to honor one another in our thoughts, it is good to remember, to be mindful, of such gentle sayings: “he will be saved, and I will be condemned” Matthew, “by his prayers save me” Michael, “remember me, St. Barbara” Barbara, “pray for me her Angel” Micah.

Keep in mind that we call it your “Christian name” for a reason. The name you received at Baptism is the new name, written on a white stone, the name by which you will be called in paradise, the name that in the Kingdom, this economy of Christ’s Incarnation,  you are known by and are referred to. Doesn’t the priest say this name when you receive Holy Communion? Isn’t it written into the prayers said at the altar, behind the iconostasis? The pride it takes to disregard the name, and shake it off, preferring “Homer” and “Kelly” to the names of your patron Saints who watch over you and pray for you, should you make it pride upon pride by applying it likewise to others?

We sometimes hear the xenophobes among us complain that this is an “ethnic” tradition – that it’s Russian or Greek. Such statements beg the question, besides which they are inaccurate. This is the ancient tradition, the living tradition, the one tradition. This is not “your” tradition or “mine”. It’s “ours”. How can we claim such things? It is the tradition of paradise, active in Heaven, and indeed throughout the whole of the One Church, undivided and indivisible by Death, which we repudiate, speaking life everywhere. If the Saints speak to each other this way, gathered around us, when we pray, what arrogance says that the bonds of our Death, the cultural of our natural birth, or the affected culture of pseudo-academia is the basis for what comes out of our mouths? The whole man is made new, speech and all. All must be deified – you must not cling to anything and say, “Not this. Except this.”

And do remember your mother in the Faith, the Church whose missionaries founded your Church. It’s impossible to listen to “Americans” (which are not a people, nor a race, nor even a nationality), refer to traditions as Russian when they received the *entire* Orthodox Faith from the Russians in the first place.  Shame. Sadness. Blindness. Again, I won’t argue this here – not today. One thing at a time. Blindness and foolish talk are everywhere – they are cheap and abundant – trying to cover every argument at once makes truth into a commodity also, and I won’t do it. I will say that I think you know, in your heart, when you’re espousing ideology (be it communist, deconstructionst, neo-fascism, or some glib amateur cultural anthropology), and when you are in fact striving to walk in the footsteps of the Saints down through the ages. It is so much easier to be a succesful rhetorician of ideology than a failed but determined adherent of better men who lived wiser lives.  Easier to be the fathers’ widely heard critic than their poor and obscure imitator. Bleh.

Anyway, I write here for a few reasons. To give people answers who bother me with questions, so they’ll go away, and also so I can think through and give answers clearly, be transparent in what I’ve said, submit it to others to correct, and not let the impulses of the moment govern my response, and so I don’t often have to repeat it. I write also to record thoughts for my own memory, because it’s poor (I am neither mindful nor therefore righteous – I’m forgetful of everything I hope to remember). I am writing also to confess my sins – not the specific circumstances of them, but the sins (Whenever someone accuses you falsely, say “I am guilty”, even if you did not do what they say – say “I am guilty of sins like these” and “Yes, I am prideful. I am an angry man. I am impatient and thoughtless. I have committed all the sins you say except, perhaps, renouncing the Orthodox Faith.”) Here is one place I say such things because, saying them, I hope to believe in them fully and be saved. I write here also to think, because, for me, the two things (writing and thinking) are so tightly interwoven and bound. I need to think, and I need a place to think, a place conducive to the kind of thinking I’m doing. I create such places wherever I want to do a new kind of thinking.

Have you ever picked up a bottle of something and it said not to use it for what it was designed for? Like a children’s toy, clearly designed for a certain age group, that says not to let that age group use it? Or batteries that say not to leave them in the device after use? I wish I could offer a disclaimer like that – “This may poison you. What I say may be not only completely useless but actually harmful. And yet, if you want to use it, it’s here. I won’t stop you.”

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]
Scroll to Top