Modern Biblical Studies

[an excerpt from an e-mail response to a graduate student in biblical studies]


For the Orthodox Church, the West has generally been asking the wrong questions.  The Orthodox have always read the Bible Spiritually, not literally; so questions of inerrancy--as it has come to be understood in the context of the Liberal-Fundamentalist debate of the 20th century--have been almost completely irrelevant to us.  For example, whether or not St. Paul wrote Ephesians (historically) is not very relevant to the received tradition that St. Paul wrote it.  Ephesians is "pauline" whether Paul himself, one of his helpers, or someone with the same "rule of faith" wrote it.  The Church received it as pauline.  Similarly, that Moses actually wrote very little in the Pentateuch (the "Books of Moses") is irrelevant.  The Church (and Judaism) has received them as The Books of Moses.
Having said this, I think modern scholarship should be understood and then set on a shelf (in my experience modern scholarship is not completely bereft of insight, just mostly bereft).  The rules of modern Biblical criticism assume no God, assume modern scholars know more about the ancient texts than those who actually shared the culture and language of those who wrote the texts, and-most importantly-have removed the texts from the worshiping community where they have any meaning at all.  Outside of the communities that have preserved and given meaning to these texts, the bible is only so many words to be speculated on.

For example, in the Gospel of Luke, the Archangel greets Mary with the words that her Son would sit on the throne of David.  Now tell me, historical-critically, when did that happen?  The Bible has never been read by Christians historically.  Sure, most Christians have assumed that the historical events recorded actually happened when and how they were recorded, but that has never been the gist of the Bible.  For Christians, the Bible is a spiritual book to be read spiritually by spiritual people.  The Bible is eschatological, and only those who have begun to experience the eschaton can have any clue as to what the Bible says, can have any clue what "the throne of David" that Mary's Son will sit on refers to.

Money and Betrayal in the Church

In St. John's Gospel we get the clear impression that Judas betrayed Jesus for the money.  The Gospel tells us that Judas was particularly upset at the "waste" of the woman who poured ointment on Jesus.  Judas calculates the value of the ointment--about a year's wages--and complains that the money could have been given to the poor.  St. John tells us, however, that Judas was not really concerned for the poor because he was accustomed to helping himself from the collective money box.  Indeed, the hymns of the Church during Holy Week repeatedly tell us that greed was the primary motive for Judas' betrayal of Jesus.  


I confess that it is hard for me to believe that Judas would betray Jesus merely out of greed, and for such a small amount--30 pieces of silver, a little more than a month's wages, one tenth of the value of the ointment that was freely "wasted" on Jesus.  I'm not the only one who struggles intellectually here.  Many have speculated on what Judas' real motives were.  Speculations range from political to personal to even pious motivations (e.g. Judas thought he could force Jesus' hand to publicly manifest Himself as Messiah).  However, very few "intellectuals" theses days seem to be able to buy the Church's explanation: greed.  Why? What's our problem?


Well maybe my problem is that I am too much like Judas myself.  It too count the value of what others give to the Church in the form of expensive liturgical items and consider whether or not the money might have been "better" spent elsewhere.  I too make my living out of our little church community's collective money box.  I too fail to give freely, like the generous woman, but rather count my pennies and consider what is enough, rather than what is generous.  I too easily, oh so easily, take offence when someone else seems to be "wasting" church resources: "Why does Fr. X drive such a nice car?"  "Why does His Grace Y have to stay in such an expensive hotel?" Why does His Eminence Z take so many trips to the Old Country?"  Yes, there are times when the Judas demon would feel right at home in my mind. 


The parallels between Judas' relationship with money and mine are frightening.  And if others have these same greedy tendencies, then it is no wonder we have a hard time accepting the Church's testimony that Judas' betrayal was a matter of mere greed.  To admit that is to admit that we too could betray Christ, for we have a similar greed at work in us.


But things are not as frightening as they appear.


While St. John focuses on Judas' motivation for betrayal, St. Mark (14: 3-9) points out that some were indignant, not just Judas; and St. Matthew (26: 6-13) says the disciples generally were indignant.  It seems that Judas was not the only greedy one.  It seems that we who struggle with generosity and are quick to call waste any expenditure that we do not agree with, it seems we are in good company.  Well, good and bad company.


Perhaps the difference between Judas and me, and between Judas and the other Disciples, was not that Judas experienced greedy thoughts and I and others do not.   Rather the difference has to do with whether or not we let greed determine our actions, let greed motivate us, allow ourselves to be driven by fear or anger that has greed at it's root.  


Of course, such an explanation should not lead us to breathe easy.  That I am not generous, that I do "calculate the value of the gift" (as the hymns of the Church say of Judas), that I do sometimes take offence at what appears to me to be the extravagance of others, that any of this is the case, I should fear.  I should fear a holy fear that leads me to repentance.  The seeds of greed have not been completely weeded from my heart.  The thought that I could, if I do not attend to my on-going repentance and under the right circumstances, betray Jesus as Judas did, that thought is enough to scare the hell out of me (quite literally).

Love and More Love

"Christ's final judgement...does not discriminate between those who need love and those who invite condemnation; it only adjudicates between those who need love and those who need more love."
(Andrew Klager, "Orthodox Eschatology and St. Gregory's [Life of Moses]" in Compassionate Eschatology: The Future as Friend published by Cascade Books.


When I read the above line out loud to my wife, she stopped what she was doing and said, "Ahhh."  The kind of "Ahhh" that means, "Yes! That's the God I know in my heart."


Andrew's article is a little tough to work through--he is writing for scholars, after all; but if you get a chance to read it, it is worth the time to work through it slowly.  Use a dictionary if you need one (I always do).  The vision of heaven, hell and judgement are so Orthodox, so different from what we as a western culture are used to think, that I think you too will say "Ahhh" at several points.


Andrew does not (nor does the Church for that matter) say that there is no hell.  He doesn't say that there is no judgement or no condemnation.  What Andrew does is help us understand the Orthodox teaching that heaven and hell are not separate places, but they are possibilities of our human experience of the Love of God.  God's Love is the Consuming Fire.  But what is consumed is only the chaff (our sin, our delusions our vanity) and those who suffer are only those who cling to their sin, their delusions, their vanity.


Of course I cannot unpack in just a few paragraphs what Andrew lays out so well in a twenty-three page article.  Let me just repeat that it is worth reading--but get a good dictionary and take your time.

Wisdom, Faith, Hope, and Love

Today is St. Sophia day.  Her daughters, Faith, Hope and Love (aged 12,10 and 9) were martyred in her presence and she, laying on their graves died.  She is considered a martyr for what she endured.  May God through the prayers of Wisdom, Faith, Hope and Love help us to give our lives away too, in wisdom, faith, hope and love.

Jesus Was Angry

"And when He [Jesus] had looked around at them in anger..." (Mark 3:5).


Jesus certainly was angry; but what did He experience in His anger?  Did Jesus experience what I experience when I am angry?


The Fathers of the Church teach us that there are two basic "natural passions" (sinless passions or feelings) that might be called desire and irritation.  These two natural passions are corrupted by sin to become lust in all of its many forms and anger in all of its forms.  Most of the time when we speak of anger, we are referring to an experience that is laced with, if not completely consumed by, sin.  


When the Bible speaks of Jesus being angry, we must keep in mind that Jesus is sinless.  Jesus experienced all that is natural for a human being, yet without sin.  Jesus experienced both desire and irritation, what the Bible normally calls anger and sometimes wrath.  However, the "anger" that Jesus experienced was completely free of sin: it was a passionless anger.  By "passionless" I do not mean that Jesus did not feel it emotionally.  What I mean is that the feeling was not touched by sin and it did not control, push or knock Him off balance.  What Jesus experienced was nothing like anger as we generally experience it.  


We might say that Jesus was angry, but He was not upset.  Jesus could feel the irritation caused by the encounter with injustice and sin, but He never loses control of himself.  He never acts in any but the most loving, kind and patient way possible (and "possible" is a key word here).  However, Jesus does act, when the time is right and for the salvation of all.  It is noteworthy that in St. John's account of the cleansing of the temple, St. John specifically mentions that after Jesus found the money changers in the temple, He took the time to make a whip of cords before He started driving them out.  Although He felt "anger," Jesus was not driven by anger even as he was driving out the moneychangers.  Jesus did not experience anger as a sinful passion.


This is the reason why it is necessary for Christians (or anyone who wants to change the world) to pursue purity of heart.  If we are going to do the works of Christ, if we are going to change evil systems and structures in the world, if we are going to drive the moneychangers out of the various temples of our lives, first we have to purify the passions of our own heart.  Otherwise, we will only be fighting fire with fire, attacking one evil with another, their injustice with mine.


Spiritual life, the personal pursuit of purity of heart, is no selfish endeavour. It is the foundation from which action can bring about real change.  It is the prerequisite for clear vision.  It is the bringing of the Kingdom of Heaven to earth, starting with what I have the most power to change (myself) and moving out from there.

Lions In Our Hearts

Jamie Moran in an article in Raising Lazarus: Integral Healing in Orthodox Christianity, uses the metaphor of an evil lion caged inside us. This lion represents sinful passionate desires or urges. Jamie talks about two common ways Christians deal with this lion that don’t work very well and then suggests a way based on the teaching of the Desert Fathers. The first ineffective way is the way of the “Puritan,” the second ineffective way is the path of appeasement, and the way of the Desert Fathers is the way of identification.

These are some of my reflections on these three ways.

The Puritan insists that the lion does not exist--at least not in her heart. The Puritan sublimates; she forces herself to do the culturally defined good; she acts; she pretends. The Puritan may indeed convince herself that there is no lion caged in her heart, but the repressed impulses find their way out in other unhealthy ways of being and relating. Because the Puritan must give herself so completely to pretending, she loses compassion and empathy; she loses the ability to see what she doesn’t want to see in others because she has worked so hard not to see what she does not want to see in herself. The fruit of this Puritan way is self righteousness and pride.

The second ineffective way to deal with the lion is to hide it by appeasing it. The one who hides the lion is continually negotiating with the sinful impulse--appeasing it, throwing it bits of gratification when no one is looking in the hope that it will stay quiet in public. The lion, however, always wants more. Eventually the lion acts out in ways that cannot be hidden. He who appeases is always burdened with guilt, always tormented by a mostly hidden cycle of building desire, brief pleasure, and long-lasting regret that creeps into all areas of life either as a sense of failure or as over achieving (as a compensation for the sense of failure).

In some ways the appeaser is better off than the Puritan. At least the appeaser recognizes the lion and can thus sympathize with others who suffer from their lions. At least he has something to repent of--if he can find the courage to do so. However, some who are appeasers eventually find their way into the ranks of the crypto-Puritans. The crypto-Puritans, instead of denying the existence of the lion, are proud of the lion. They call evil good and good evil, and in this condition they are worse off than the Puritans.

The third way to deal with the lion is to identify with it--to get in the cage with the lion. I think this is something like what twelve-step programs try to achieve. By saying to yourself and to everyone, “I am an alcoholic,” you begin to know both yourself and your problem as it really is, and you begin to find the power to muzzle the lion.

Sometimes Orthodox Christians have a hard time getting into the cage with the lion(s) in their heart. Sometimes they have a hard time admitting that the lions are there at all because their own heart is a closed book to them.

The following is a hymn from the Octoechos, Sunday evening, Tone 4:

YOU ESTABLISHED REPENTANCE, O CHRIST,

NOT FOR THOSE WHO ARE GOOD,

BUT FOR THOSE WHO HAVE BECOME OUTCAST BY SIN,

AS WE LEARN FROM MANY EXAMPLES:

THE THIEF AND THE PRODIGAL SON,

MANASSEH AND THE PROSTITUTE,

PAUL, WHO HAD PERSECUTED THE CHURCH,

MATTHEW, WHO HAD COLLECTED TAXES,

AND PETER WHO DENIED YOU.

HOW THEN CAN I DESPAIR,

KNOWING, O MY SAVIOUR, THAT YOU ARE GOOD AND THE LOVER OF MANKIND ?

I WILL TURN TO YOU IN TEARS,

FILLED WITH HOPE THAT YOU WILL ACCEPT ME.

Jesus came to save sinners. The sooner we look into our own hearts to discover the lions of sin caged there, the sooner we will be able to find the repentance that Christ established and be saved.

The Danger of Miracle Working Icons

When Jesus performed a miracle, all of the people were amazed; but very few got it.  They didn't get that the miracle was a sign, a sign to reveal something else.  The miracle was not an end in itself.  And more importantly, the miracle was not an affirmation of what the person already believed.  The miracles of Christ were signs revealing Christ's divinity, revealing the presence of the Kingdom of God.  The miracles commanded those who saw them or heard of them to repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.  We know this is the case because this is the message of Jesus, his very first words in the Gospels: "Repent for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand."


In my life I have been blessed to have been in the presence of several myrrh streaming icons and one icon that was self-restoring (a blackened icon--of St. Nicholas, I believe--that was slowly cleaning itself from the bottom up).  However the community in which these icons resided was in contention with its bishop.  From the outside looking in, that is from my limited perspective, it seemed as though many in the community viewed the miraculous icons as a confirmation of their own position against their bishop.  I even had one member of the community actually tell me this.  In the end, this community separated from its bishop resulting in personal tragedies that continue to ooze pain to this day.


Miracles are dangerous.


We all rejoice when God allows us to see a miracle mostly, I think, because our faith is so weak that anything, any undeniable sign from God that what we can see and measure is not all there is, is a great boost to our faith.  We all long for stronger faith.  We all cry with the father of the epileptic: "I believe, help my unbelief!"  Miracles often do that.  They help our unbelief; they strengthen the little faith that we have.


I'm all for the veneration of and wonder at miraculous icons.  In fact, this Saturday I plan to venerate the Myrrh streaming icon of the Mother of God from Hawaii.  I pray that my weak faith will be strengthened by personally witnessing this miracle.  However, if God grants me stronger faith, it is only so that I can better repent of my sins.  It is only that I might learn humility.  It is only that I might trust God more in all areas of my life, especially those most painful areas where I suspect God has abandoned me.  I pray that God does all of this for me and for everyone who venerates this holy icon of the Mother of God.


Yet one thing is certain: Whatever miracle I see or experience, it is not a confirmation that I am right.  It is a call to repentance.

The Temptation to Press

I've gotten started on the Patrick O'Brian Aubrey-Maturin series. Book one, "Master and Commander," is also the title of the movie starring Russel Crowe based on a couple of the novels in this series. I was hoping to do a podcast on the first book, but I didn't find much in the novel to recommend it as an edifying read for Orthodox Christians. Nevertheless, I'm quite enjoying the novels. It's one of those reads that I feel a bit guilty for liking so much. The story is completely engaging, the characters are real, human, and, unfortunately, for the most part godless. Or I might more correctly say deeply suspicious of the Church, especially the oppressive, coercive earnestness of Evangelicals. What is understood as Evangelical in the context of the novel is the lessons of Sunday school based on "those odious little tracts" teaching that it was God's will for the poor to be poor. But as Captain Aubrey's sweetheart points out, "It's all because they cannot read and write".
However even Captain Jack is tempted to preach a sermon on obedience to authority. His new, mostly pressed, crew was not responding well to his lieutenant's cruel indoctrination techniques. For those who do not know, most sailors were captured against their will--often knocked in the head and waking up in the bowels of a navy vessel.
The Bible is indeed a powerful weapon when used against those who can't or won't read it. Like the caricature of Evangelicals portrayed in the novel, we can all be tempted to read the Bible to buttress what we already believe, and to cudgel those who doubt our wisdom (i.e. To press them into our navy).

Some Thoughts on the Wrath of Man

“The wrath of God came against them, and slew the stoutest of them, and struck down the choice men of Israel” (Psalm 78:31).

“For the wrath of man does not produce the righteousness of God” (James 1:20).

I think we have an anger problem.  The problem I’m talking about is not related to self control, but to understanding. Why does human wrath never produce the righteousness of God while God’s wrath seems to be ubiquitous in Scripture?  What’s the difference?  Why is God’s wrath righteous and human wrath never?

Many of the fathers of the church talk about two central feelings or urges from which all others derive.  These two feelings or urges are desire and irritability.  In a world without sin, that is in a healthy human being, desire functions as a kind of longing leading us toward what is God-like, what is true, beautiful, real, and healthy.  Irritability is a kind of prick on the conscience, a discomfort or uneasiness that helps us recognize or turn away from what is not true, perverse, unreal and unhealthy.  Remember, even before human sin, the Serpent was loose in the Garden.  God had equipped Adam and Eve with all that was necessary to discern and avoid evil and pursue and do good--that is grow in God-likeness.

The tree of the knowledge of good and evil was different from other trees.  From this tree, human beings were not to eat.  This implies that discernment of right and wrong, good and evil is possible without an experiential knowledge of the difference.  That is one need never experience evil to discern that it is not good.  In the Garden, before sin, the mere contemplation of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was sufficient to acquire from the tree what human beings needed; one need not eat.  Such food as the experiential knowledge of evil is too bitter a fruit to eat.  God’s command not to eat it was His guidance, His leading of humanity into the sweet path toward life and growth and away from the bitter.

All that God created was good and therefore to be desired.  It was not wrong for Eve to feel desire for the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  Where desire became sin was when instead of contemplating the desired fruit, she reached out and took it for herself.  Instead of letting God in God’s time and in God’s way fulfill her desire, she rationalized, took it and ate it and shared it with Adam.  Spurred on by the Serpent and in direct contradiction to what God had told her, she thought that her desire for this fruit would be fulfilled in exactly the same way her desire for other fruit was fulfilled--by eating it.

In this sin, this missing of the the target that we call the Fall, desire became perverted, desire became mixed with the urge to posses and to control.  In eating the fruit of experiential knowledge of both evil and good, humanity chose the bitter path, the path of perverted desires and painful experience (the knowledge spoken of here is the knowledge of direct experience, not the knowledge of or about).

Not only was desire perverted by the Fall, the irascible aspect (as it is sometime translated from Greek) of humanity became perverted too.  That is, human anger became something very different from divine anger.  Even using the term “divine anger” is a little misleading.  What I mean by divine anger is that quality in God that is reflected in the irascible aspect or ability in human beings before the Fall, human beings who are in the image of God.

Just as desire became possessive and controlling, so too the irascible aspect of human beings changed.  Perverted irritability became selfishly destructive.  Controlling possessiveness when mixed with irritability became wrath and anger in human beings and manifested itself in an urge to destroy, rather than an urge to turn to God, an urge to repent.

God’s wrath is not like human wrath.  But even using the word “wrath” is so troublesome.  We cannot read this word without equating it to sinful human perversion of a selfishly possessive controlling and destructive tendency.  Yet God is neither possessive nor controlling nor destructive.  God is the Creator, not the destroyer; God has given freedom to His creature; it is the human being who has chosen the bitter fruit, the painful path.  When God acts in history to give to human beings the bitterness they have chosen, when human selfishness and cruelty and destructiveness can no longer be tolerated and the created order sustained, when the last hope for any repentance (turning to God) is gone and the only hope for future repentance is in a radically altered context, God allows the painful consequences of human sin--death in all of its forms--to have its way.  And in the Bible, when God does this, it is usually referred to the as the wrath of God.  

But God’s wrath is not like human wrath, just as God’s desire is not like human desire.  God desires human beings to exist as God Himself exists: the Holy Trinity, a community of persons, equal, free and held together by love.  God does not desire to possess; He desires to love in freedom, and where there is freedom there is no control.  God does not turn away from evil because he is angry.  Evil itself is a turning away from what is Real to unreality.  And while God may restrain evil, or the effects of evil, for the sake of love, in the end God’s love and the freedom of God’s love is such that He eventually gives human beings what they choose, even if it is death and unreality.  And in human language, for we have no other language but our various human languages conditioned by the human experience of perverted desire and anger, God’s release of restraint is called wrath.  But this “wrath” is nothing but freedom and love, the giving to humankind the bitter pill we have chosen.

Human wrath, on the other hand, can never produce a loving result.  It can never result in the righteous purposes of God because it is always mixed, it is always selfish and possessive and destructive.  Even when what irritates me is sin, anger is not the salvific response.  Repentance is the response that saves.  

You may ask, but what if the sin that irritates me is in another.  I cannot repent for him or her can I?  

Well maybe you can’t or maybe you can--repentance is a very deep well.  However, one thing is certain: you cannot change the other person.  You cannot control, which is sin.  Righteousness will never result from manipulating or controlling others.  But God who knows the heart, God can lead others to repentance.  I do not know how to do that.  Anger does not do that.  God does that.  So no matter what the source (or apparent source) of my anger is, the response is to turn to God, the response is to repent.

Lest I be misunderstood, I’d like to end by saying that repentance and turning toward God does not mean that we do not act.  We must act.  We must do the works of God while it is day.  We must do good and confront evil; however, and this is a huge “however,” we must be on guard against our own sin, our own desire to posses and control.  The Serpent is still active, and as in the Garden it is often the very good thing or act or deed that becomes the excuse to indulge in selfish possessiveness.  

“And the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eye, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof….”

Tormenting Fire

"He that trusteth in the Lord shall not fear when God shall judge all with tormenting fire." (From the second Antiphoy of the Resurrectional Anabathmoi in tone eight).


Notice that "all" will be judged with tormenting fire.  In St. Mark's Gospel (9:49) Jesus says that "everyone will be salted with fire."  The question is not if, it is when--and what you will do when you experience fiery torment.  The promise of this verse that we will pray in matins tomorrow is not a promise for some future rescue after our death, but it is a promise for God's help and deliverance from fear when we face tormenting fire now, in this life.


It seems we are always surprised when doing the right thing (the Christian thing, the holy or godly thing) involves fiery suffering.  Self control, for example, often involves a kind of suffering that is often (at least in confession and in the writings of the fathers) compared to fire.  Desires can be burning.  And the trial we experience as we choose to suffer rather than to obey the desire, this is the judgement of tormenting fire.  


It is unfortunate that our culture has taught us to read the words of Christ which speak of hell and fire as something merely future.  I find it very interesting that only once (Matt 5:22) does Jesus refer to the "fire of hell" (Gehenna).  The other two references (Matt. 18:9 and Mark 9:47) are to the "hell of fire."  That is, the hell is an attribute of fire, of torment.  Therefore we might say that any time one is enduring a fiery trial, one is experiencing a bit of Gehenna, the hell of fire.  And in the midst of that fiery trial, judgement or temptation, one may trust in the Lord.  And trusting in the Lord, one will be delivered from fear.


Much of the time, we succumb to temptation because we are afraid that we cannot endure the pain--the pain of unfulfilled desire (and the bodily discomfort that may accompany self-control), and the fear that whatever resources God has given us or will give us will not be enough.  Fear pushes us over the edge.  Fear makes it too much to bear.


But those who trust in the Lord, we are taught by the hymn of the Church, will not fear when the tormenting fire judges us.


Every temptation and our response to it is a judgement.  It is a judgement in the sense that it reveals what's really there.  Failing the trial, falling into sin, is not the worse thing that can happen.  The worse thing that can happen is not to accept what has been revealed, to blame someone or something else.  If a fiery trial reveals that we are sinners, then we can turn to the Lord, who came to save the sinner.  And turning to the Lord, we learn to trust the Lord.  And trusting the Lord, we are delivered from fear and can endure better the fiery torment next time it visits us.  

To Obey is Better Than Sacrifice

A guest staying with us for a few days mentioned that she had heard a nun (Roman Catholic, I believe) say that the asceticism of monasticism and parenthood are really quite similar.  She said that as a monastic, whenever the bell rings, she immediately has to stop what she is doing and obey the bell.  For parents, that bell is their children.


Similarly, Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh in the introduction to his Essential Writtings is reported to have said that his years of service as a military doctor during the Second World War was "excellent training for the monastic life, teaching him to accept the will of others and to put their needs before his own in the most practical way."  


None of us like very much being told what to do--told by other people or told by our circumstances.  However, the germ of the ancestral sin, the deep root of our own sin, is our unwillingness to relinquish our will; to trust the judgement of others above our own; to believe that even in the midst of awkward, uncomfortable or even painful circumstance, the Love of God is present and the Power of God is at work.  


I think this is the reason why the Church continually brings to our mind the martyrs.  When the Church talks about martyrs in Her hymns, the martyrs are often spoken of as being revealed rather than made.  That is, their manner of death does not make them martyrs, it reveals that they were martyrs already. 


Martyrs are those who have learned to believe, to trust and to know that the Love of God and the Power of God are at work in difficult circumstances.  They have learned to discern the voice of God in the voice of others, even others who "know not what they do." They have learned to pray with their whole mind and body, offering their frustrations, pains and sufferings of all sorts to God as a "living sacrifice, wholly acceptable to God."


Whether parent or monastic, salvation begins and ends with repentance, with the turning away from our own will and through submission to the will of the Other, who is God, yet who generally rings our bell by the hand, voice, or cry of another.

Master and Commander: Where Did God Go?

Lately my “fun” reading has been in Patrick O’ Brian’s Aubrey--Maturin series.  I read Master and Commander and couldn’t put it down.  The series is set during and around the Napoleonic Wars (beginning of the nineteenth century) and revolve around a Captain in the Royal Navy (Aubery) and his best friend and ship’s surgeon (Maturin).  

I have been reading so much nineteenth century British literature over the past fifteen years or so, that I was somewhat surprised by the explicit immorality referred to in the novel.  The references are subdued by twenty-first century standards, but by nineteenth century standards, they would be shocking indeed, perhaps unpublishable.  

I am not naive regarding Victorian era morality.  Just because talk about sexual immorality was not explicit, does not mean that it did not happen.  Nevertheless, there was a high standard.  And while deviation from that standard may have been common, it was understood as deviation, perversion.

O’ Brian wrote the Aubrey--Maturin series between 1970 and 1999.  The new sexual morality of the twentieth century certainly colored how he portrayed the early nineteenth.  However, there is another factor.  O’ Brian’s characters are largely a-religious.  Maturin is a Catholic, but doesn’t seem to practice.  Aubrey is Protestant enough to hate Catholics generally, but not specifically, unless it is convenient.  Mostly, references to God or the “Transcendent” or religion (except in political contexts) are absent.

Why is this?

In an essay on Patrick O’ Brian by William Waldegrave attached to the end of the current text I am reading, I got my clue.  Waldegrave refers to a particular navel incident that O’ Brian describes, an incident that Waldegrave’s own great grandfather participated in and described in an unpublished manuscript.  Waldegrave commends O’ Brian’s historical accuracy—"though happily Aubrey shows none of my forebear’s tedious commitment to the exposition of the scriptures."

O’ Brian brings a late twentieth century religious sensibility to his retelling of the early nineteenth.  Waldegrave in the late twentieth century finds his great grandfather’s regular reference to scripture to be “tedious.”  And while I’m sure levels of religious commitment varied among sailors (not everyone had a “commitment to the exposition of the scriptures”), certainly religious reference was much more common in the early nineteenth century than one notices in O’ Brian’s novels.

This is not a criticism of O’ Brian’s novels.  He wrote for a late twentieth century audience.  Contemporary readers would probably find a historically accurate reflection of the religious feelings, thoughts and references of the time to be “tedious.”  I merely wanted to explain to myself what was missing.  O’ Brian’s portrayal of the naval life in the early nineteenth century seems to be praised by everyone for its accuracy.  

No one even notices that God is missing.

I think therefore....

What you think others think is probably a good indication of what you think.  Much of what we think, that is much of our attitude toward life, our circumstances and  our relationships, lies unacknowledged in our hearts.  Often our general opinion of our inner lives has more to do with what we think should be going on there rather than what really is.  However, counselors and wise spiritual guides have always known that one of the truest indicators of what someone really thinks, what their attitudes really are, is revealed in their candid assessment of others.

This principle is set forth masterfully in Dickens' Dombey and Son.  Mr. Carker the Manager is the trusted assistant of Mr. Dombey, the very rich and very proud protagonist of the novel.  When confronted by Mrs. Dombey for his deceitful fawning of his employer, Mr. Carker the Manager explains that if he did not play to Mr. Dombey's pride, someone else would.  His justification for his deceitful flattery is that others would do the same, or so he thinks.

Later in the novel, Mr. Carker the Manager accuses his brother John, and all of the lower staff of Dombey and Son, of secretly wishing for the fall of the Great Man, Mr. Dombey.  Mr. Carker the Manager cannot believe his brother when he tells him that none of the staff that he knows have any but the highest regard for Mr. Dombey and wish him only good.  The Manager calls his brother a liar, so sure is he of the malice in the hearts of others.  John's denials do nothing more than strengthen the Manager's conviction, for he reasons that subordinates would never admit such evil thoughts.

But the thoughts are only those of the Manager, thoughts that he projects on others creating an imaginary justification for his own deceitful dealings with his employer.

Why Support Monasteries?

Monasteries are essential because they pray for the world: "they are blast furnaces of prayer for the world." Also monasteries preserve the wisdom of the faith, not in books, but in the lives of holy people whom we in the world can turn to when everything seems to go upside down.  Also monasteries provide a home for single people where they can be freed from selfishness, the selfishness that married people have to overcome in marriage and parenting.  Single people do not know that they are selfish (generally speaking).  The monastery is a place where singles can be saved from themselves.  
Since Orthodoxy is so young in Canada, and monasteries are just in the infant stages of their development here, it may be hard to see their importance.  But Orthodoxy in Canada is not normal.  It is sick in many ways that healthy monasteries could heal.  For example, bishops should come from monasteries.  Because we have so few monasteries, most of our bishops are just unmarried men--this is courting trouble.  Years of monastic obedience and discipline are necessary to form a man who can bear the weight of the church and not be squeezed by stress into some sort of unhealthy behavior.  Bishops and priests need very holy and very wise (and very strict) men as father confessors to help them stay on course.
Yes, of course, we should support the poor in all conditions, but monks and nuns are the best example of the poor we should be supporting. 

Dombey and Son #1

I am again reading Dombey and Son by Charles Dickens.  When I started on my Dickens binge about fifteen or twenty years ago, the first work I read was Dombey and Son.  I didn't much enjoy it.  I didn't get it. 


The story is about a completely self-absorbed, successful businessman who fixates on the fame of his company, Dombey and Son.  However, to make his fantasy complete, he needs a son.  His firstborn, a daughter, is of no use to him, doesn't even exist (as far as  he is concerned) except as one who gets in the way.  And yet this daughter is a saint.  Out of the dry, rocky ground of emotional abandonment, a flower blossoms.


When I first read Dombey and Son it seemed too fantastic to me that love would take hold in the heart of one so despised by her only parent (mother having died as a result of the birth of her brother, who himself lives only long enough to complete his first year of schooling).  


At the time I first read Dombey and Son, I was of the raise-up-your-child-in-the-way-he-should-go school.  Like Job's comforters, I thought the lines of cause and effect in relationships were pretty clear: Good, loving parenting produced good, loving children; troubled children came from....[I wouldn't have actually said it, but I thought it].  That's why I didn't get Dombey and Son.


Reading Dombey and Son a second time, now that my children are raising their own children, I see things differently.  Maybe I get it more.  Maybe the lines of cause and effect, while still important, are much more convoluted, interrupted, and influenced by the inner workings of the child herself and the Grace of God and the mysteries of free will than I had ever imagined.  Maybe the inner workings of the child, her dispositions and her choices, her responses to her perceptions and interpretations of what is going on around her (regardless of her parent's good, evil or indifferent intentions), maybe these inner workings of the child have as much (or more) to do with who a child becomes as do the quality of the parental nurturing and other circumstances in which a child finds herself.


This is not to say that parenting is irrelevant--clearly it is not.  Rather, it is to say that parenting, even very good parenting and advantageous social and economic circumstances only provide a context, a soil if you will, in which the seed of the child grows.  But then children are not seeds.  Children are human beings who make choices, who interpret, who assume, hope, doubt, believe.  Children are very complicated seeds planted in very complicated soil.  The lineaments are not easily traced out.


One aspect of a child's inner workings is her openness to God; or rather, her openness to dependance on God, openness to receive from God.  In Dombey and Son, Florence, the saintly yet despised daughter, prays: "it is the pouring out of her full heart," Dickens says.  And in her prayer, the finite world of her temporal circumstances opens to take in light and comfort from another realm.  


Florence's family certainly provides no sterling example of prayer or godliness.  How she learns to pray and receive help from God is a mystery.  It's always a mystery.  Similarly, many a child raised in a pious family never really seems to get prayer.  Some do later in life.  Some just fake it.  Some don't even try.  This too is a mystery.


That flowers can grow out of the scorched earth after a forest fire is amazing.  That a saint can come from the barren field of parental neglect is even more amazing.  But then, isn't it amazing that anyone in this world is saved, that anyone in this world exhibits the qualities of the next?

Crosses We Bear

Freedom is one of the crosses we bear.  This cross is particularly painful in relation to those whom we love the most.  There is no love without freedom.


We want the best for those we love.  We do not want them to suffer.  We do not want to see them suffer.  And sometimes, we can no longer bear suffering with them.  We want the suffering to stop, yet we see no end.  We do not see how the confusion of the tongues--the pride of mankind resulting in our inability to communicate--how this too is part of God's saving love.  We do not see how being crucified by those we love saves them.


In my opinion, the greatest tragedy of theology is that it reduces the Cross to a plan, a schema, a balanced and antiseptic explanation of how.  The Cross cannot be explained; it can only be suffered, it can only be endured. 
Just as Jesus could have called down legions of angels to avoid the cross, so we can set up defences, legions of explanations, excuses, denials, reasons, theologies, plans, and hopes rooted in delusion, all to avoid the pain of love in freedom, all to keep from having to really let go, to let our hearts be crucified through the freedom we give those we love.


We do not believe the Parable of the Prodigal Son.  We do not believe the Parable of the Lost Coin.  We do not believe that the suffering of the shepherd in search of the lost sheep will be rewarded.  We would rather not suffer so much.  Its easier (and makes much more sense too) to keep our heart close to the ninety-nine.  But love doesn't make sense.  And so love suffers. And so love is crucified.


The enigma of the Prodigal Son is that the loving Father gave everything to his son so that the son could all but destroy himself by means of it.  How is that love?  


Ah, there I go again, asking for a how.  There is no how.  Love just is, and it suffers.


The enigma continues in the son coming to his senses.  Suffering makes him remember what he had always known.  And when he comes to his senses, the son knows that his Father will receive him again.  He knows this because his Father has already given him freedom, real freedom--freedom to go and thus freedom to return.  Hidden in the heart of the son is the knowledge of his Father's love, a loved demonstrated to him in giving, in suffering, and in freedom, which is the cross.

Transforming the Devil into a Serpent

SEEING HOW LAZY I AM AT USEFUL THINGS,

THE SUBTLE SERPENT BECKONS ME TO EVIL,

TRANSFORMING HIMSELF TO SHOW ME THE SWEETNESS OF SIN,

THE WICKED WORK OF HIS OWN HANDS,

CONTRARY TO THE COMMANDMENTS OF GOD.

THUS, HE PUSHES ME, //

THROUGH EVIL HABITS, TO ACCEPT EVIL FOR GOOD.

(Verse one, Lord I Call, Monday Vespers, Tone Three, Oktoechos, Monastery of The Myrrhbearing Women trans.)

I was struck by this verse as I was chanting it this morning.

Yes, I know it is for vespers, but since I only have vespers printed out of the Oktoechos, and I am only chanting daily matins, I chant the Lord I Called verses for the Kathisma verses of the following day. I will print out the whole thing one of these days, just like one of these days I will chant both daily matins and vespers. But "one of these days" may be a very long way off, so for now I am blessed to pray some evening verses on the following morning.

Now back to what struck me. I was struck by the devil's dependence on us. My laziness and my evil habits transform the devil into the lying serpent of temptation making the bitter fruit of sin seem to me to be sweet. Through my bad habits, the devil is transformed, through my laziness, I am tempted.

What is even more amazing to me is that in the end, I accept evil for good. That is, thinking I am grasping the good, I choose evil. Like Eve in the Garden of Eden, I am deceived. God created me to long for sweetness, but my laziness and my unwillingness to control myself (bad habits) creates a space in which the devil is transformed into a serpent of deception. The snake lies to me. It tells me bitter is sweet and evil is good.

It is strange. Eve did not desire sin. She desired to be wise, to be like God. I do not desire bitterness, but sweetness; not evil, but good. Yet I am deceived--again and again. Somehow within myself I create the space to be deceived. Laziness, lack of attention, mental inertia: these create the eddies, the little vacuums, in which the evil one is transformed into a serpent.

The only little relief I have found is in a kind of constant inner appeal to God for help. This is often in the form of the Jesus prayer (or some similar cry), but is also sometimes in the form of a wordless ache, or sometimes a light and joyful snippet of a hymn, and most seldom but most radiantly in the form of a quiet peacefulness. I don't get there very often. It usually takes work. I have to force myself to pray, to pay attention to the words of prayer. I experience a little relief. And then I get lazy again. I let old habits of thought have their way.

It seems like I create a lot of eddies in my mind for the serpent to fill with misdirected desire.

And through it all, God is merciful, ever waiting to rush to my aid when I call upon Him. He never chastises me for calling on Him. (I think the bitterness that I bring on myself is the chastisement.)

The problem with words

Words are like husks that carry a germ. This germ comes out of who we are. The husk is what you find in a dictionary. The germ carries the vital force of the seed; it is what determines what plant will sprout from the seed. Sometime, maybe often, the one who listens cannot hear, cannot receive the germ. When we discern that such is the case, it is generally better not to multiply husks.
Silence speaks very loudly. Silence invites the listener to hear differently.
Words have their place, but sometimes that place can only be found in silence.

Truly You Are The God Who Hides Yourself

The role of a priest is to help people pass from death to life. He has no other calling, no other purpose, no other job to do. Everything a priest does serves this one thing: PASCHA.
The life of every human being is a passage from darkness to light, from deadening passions to enlivening peace. Even the priest himself is making this passage. The one who heals is himself being healed.
I've often wondered why God has chosen to put his Spirit in clay pots, containers made of dirt. Why doesn't God use angels? Why has God chosen to reveal Himself by hiding in the hearts of sinful people? St. Paul says that it is so that the "surpassing power" may be clearly seen as from God and not from man. Sometimes, I confess, the power doesn't seem very surpassing, or very powerful--not that I doubt the power of God--but the dirtiness of the clay is all I can see sometimes.
And yet a light shines in the darkness. The trick is to turn to and follow the light. With our clergy, there will always be plenty of darkness to distract us if that is what we fixate on. God's treasure is in jars of clay. But there is also light, sometimes faint, perhaps, but sparks in the darkness, hints of holiness, brief moments of clarity that point the way to salvation. These are what we must follow. For this is how God has chosen to guide us: through His Spirit hidden in jars of clay.

Clergy Seminar

For the past three days I have been listening to lectures by Monks from Lebanon, praying three times a day with all of the clergy in the diocese (about eighty of us), eating together and encouraging one another. It has been a huge blessing so far.
The main speaker is the abbot of the St. Michael the Archangel monastery near Tripoli, Lebanon and he is also the Metropolitan of Northern Lebanon. His remarks focused on the need for the priests to be filled with the Holy Spirit--full of peace and virtue. He said that there are no deserts any more. What he meant was that it is no longer possible to escape the world physically (there is even e-mail on Mount Athos). To be saved we must find the quiet desert in our hearts. There we will find the Holy Spirit. It is oh so easy to quench the Holy Spirit. We must "force ourselves" to be quiet so that we can at least begin to pray the words of prayer (the Jesus prayer, for example). Then after a little while, we will feel peace and begin to experience the dawning of real prayer. This is the only gift we have to give the world.
Like Pontius Pilate, everyone around us asks the question, "What is truth?" And not only truth, what is real? What is love? What matters? And like Jesus, we can only remain silent and be who we are. There is no explanation. There are no words. There is only the transformation of the Holy Spirit in the quiet place of our lives. This being-transformed self, who we are, is the only word that can be heard.
This is how we bring the desert to the world. We bring the desert with us. Even at a Marriott hotel in Orange County, it is possible to find the desert.