Rejecting Christmas

In the days following Christmas, many people wait in long lines to exchange the gifts they received for Christmas. Many exchange their gifts merely because they wanted something different, rejecting the original gift. Just as Herod rejected the original gift of Christmas by killing 14,000 innocent children, many times WE reject Christmas by killing our neighbors with harsh words and thoughts. Has Christmas changed the way you live, or have you rejected Christmas?

Courage and Hope

The media coverage this week presents us with the opportunity to witness true Christian courage and hope. In the face of struggle and illness, our faith is challenged, sometimes to the extreme. We may even find ourselves at the end of the line. It is at those moments that Jesus reminds us that faith the size of a mustard seed is enough to move mountains. It will be enough to get you through the struggles your face.

Suicide is the Ultimate Sacrifice at the Altar of Self

I’ve been holding off, trying not to really, blog about the recent news of the suicide of popular actor and American hero Robin Williams. It was quite clear in the minutes and hours that followed the news of his death that anyone who dared to speak harshly about him or suicide should be prepared for a plethora of criticism with statements such as:

“You don’t know anything about depression.”

“How can you say such cruel things at a time like this?”

Some of the comments I’ve seen online have been downright cruel against anyone who chose NOT to honor the man for taking his life. HONOR? That’s what I said. Let me explain...

In a prepared statement his widow said,

“Robin's sobriety was intact and he was brave as he struggled with his own battles of depression, anxiety as well as early stages of Parkinson's Disease, which he was not yet ready to share publicly.”

From this statement we are to understand that his suicide could only be characterized as part of his brave fight with depression and other struggles. That is when I realized I had something to say. Giving up hope is NEVER brave.

But I don’t want to write specifically about Robin Williams. I only mention his situation since it was his suicide that brought it yet again into the public conscience. What bothers me deeply, and has for quite some time, which if you read my blog might be obvious, is that our society continues to run full speed ahead into a world dedicated to self.

People celebrate abortion as an expression of self rights.

Sexuality has devolved into pleasing the self through pornography, gender reassignment, same-sex marriage.

And now suicide is a brave example of self expression in the throngs of depression and other illness.

In a society which honors the self above all other relationships, I suspect we shall see an increasing trend toward this horrific end to life. And why not? After all, for almost thirty years life itself has been a matter of personal choice. Why not death? And if the media coverage of Robin Williams is any indication, it shall be seen as just another example of how we have the right to do whatever we feel is in our best interest. If we don’t want to suffer; no problem. It wouldn’t even surprise me if suicide became part of health care “management” to assist those who no longer want to suffer.

Christ said, “Whoever desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, take up his cross, and follow Me” (Mark 8.34) That includes suffering and especially NOT thinking of the self above all other relationships.

So why did I finally decide to blog about this? If you have any love for your family and friends, you will fight the temptation to characterize this suicide as anything other than what it really is; a tragic and cowardly expression of the loss of hope. It is NEVER brave to give up hope. Our hope is in Christ who conquered death for us, so that we might live with Him in a place where there is no pain, suffering or sighing, but life everlasting. Anything else is just simple selfishness.

Of course I would be remiss if I ended this post without reminding you the Church teaches that the state of our heart when we die is permanent. If we enter into death in a state of desperate hopelessness, THAT will our eternal condition. This is just one reason why the Church frowns upon suicide. We don’t what anyone to be eternally hopeless. That would be, and is already, hell.

Being Christian in a Pluralistic Society Requires Love

We live in a post-modern, many suggest post-Christian world. Without doubt, we live in a secular and pluralistic society, which includes Christians of ALL denominations, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims, Atheists, Baha’i, Humanists, Wiccan, and many more I don’t know the name of. For centuries, Christians have been the recipients of legal protection of their way of life from governments of all sorts. But times are changing.

With the growing reality of our secular and pluralistic society, it has become fashionable to declare “Christian persecution” and “intolerance” of our Christian ideals. I can’t speak for everyone, but we must admit that there does exist persecution and intolerance, but is it warranted? Is it government sponsored? Just because a growing number of Americans believe that marriage should be redefined, doesn’t mean Christians are being persecuted. If anything, we are feeling the sting of no longer being the majority moral followers of our nation. I suppose that could “feel” like persecution, but it isn’t really.

Living in a world with other people requires a deeper Christian love than we might need living in a Christian compound.  As Christians we believe that God has given us free will, and with that free will, come consequences. As Saint Paul reminds us, “All things are lawful for me, but not all things are helpful.” (1 Corinthians 6.12) Just because people have the free will to live their life, doesn’t mean their choices will be helpful in their relationship with God.

But I don’t want to write about other people today, I want to write about us, Orthodox Christians. WE are called to use our free will to live according to the commandments of God. WE are called by Christ to a life of holiness dedicated to God. “The body is not for sexual immorality, but for the Lord.” (1 Corinthians 6.13) But most importantly, WE are called to love our neighbor as ourselves, and when we love, we have to allow the same free will that God allows.

Loving others doesn’t mean condoning or endorsing their behavior. It means that we allow them the same opportunity to exercise their free will that God has allowed to us. It also doesn’t mean forcing them to live according to our Christian way of life. The benefit of a so-called Christian society supporting our moral codes hasn’t been about us forcing our way of life upon others. It has been a result of mutual respect for a minority to live in a society based upon foreign moral standards, while remaining privately dedicated to their chosen way of life. And we are slowly becoming a minority.

Sexuality, while possibly the most popular moral shift of our times, is not the only difference in our moral codes, but since it is so popular, I use it as an example. There are many other morals standards which the Orthodox Church frowns upon that are upheld by our society, not the least of which is abortion. While we as Orthodox Christians teach against such behavior choices, we cannot lose sight of the fact, that until WE are forced to behave according to such standards, we are not being persecuted, even though such behaviors are endorsed and sanctioned by the society at large.

So how do we coexist in such an environment? As members of our society, we each have a say in the common moral codes of our society. This is the rich blessing of living in a democratic society. We cast our votes and debate in the public square, but once the votes have been cast, we agree to accept as lawful while not helpful, the decisions which we, in our private lives, would never endorse. This is not selling out. Rather, it is an expression of love to allow free will.

On the topic of same-sex marriage, it might sound like, “No, I don’t agree with same-sex marriage. I know it’s legal, but we don’t believe it is proper, but I can’t stop you for expressing your own free will.” I try to remind faithful Orthodox Christians all the time, “Legal does mean moral.”

But there is another difficulty in our coexistence. As with the recent attempt in Arizona to “protect religious freedom”, many confuse tolerance with acceptance. Part of this problem is a natural result of the western concept that certain sins are worse than others. In Orthodoxy, ALL SIN separates us from God. Whether someone falls to sexual sins, greed, gluttony, etc., ALL SIN is seen by God as against His will. So if we would “do business” with greedy fat people, we should be willing to “do business” with skinny gay people.

Again, Saint Paul has great advice,

“I wrote to you in my epistle not to keep company with sexually immoral people. Yet I certainly did not mean with the sexually immoral people of this world, or with the covetous, or extortioners, or idolaters, since then you would need to go out of the world. But now I have written to you not to keep company with anyone named a brother, who is sexually immoral, or covetous, or an idolater, or a reviler, or a drunkard, or an extortioner -- not even to eat with such a person. For what have I to do with judging those also who are outside? Do you not judge those who are inside? But those who are outside God judges.” (1 Corinthains 5.9-13)

It isn’t a betrayal of Christian morals to photograph a gay marriage any more than it is to bake a cake for fat people.

Where this get’s a “little murky” might be IF you are in a certain profession in which you are required to PERSONALLY ACT in a way that is against the will of God. This is often the difficulty in medical circles in regard to abortion. So, until an Orthodox Christian Priest is ‘ordered’ to perform a same-sex marriage, the legal status of such marriages is not a matter of persecution.

Will it ever get to this point? I suspect it will. Jesus said,

“If you were of the world, the world would love its own. Yet because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you.” (John 15.19)

The day will eventually come when Christians are forced to act against Christ, and the blood of martyrs will once again flow through the streets. It is already happening in other nations. But until it does…remember what Jesus said,

“In the world you will have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.” (John 16.33)

Politicizing Morality – Good, Bad, or Unavoidable?

By definition, morality is a communal agreement about behavior or attitude, and by definition, is relative to a particular group. For example, one group agrees to share the use of a local pond. By agreement, the pond can only be used for swimming and fishing, but no powered vehicles are allowed. By definition, then, it becomes immoral to boat on the pond. If someone wants to use their boat, he must either defy the moral code by boating, or politic to change the moral code to allow boating. It’s during the politicking process, that I’m concerned with for this blog post.

The process of arguing morals within a particular group, can take a variety of tangents. But the common thread is, one person (or several/many people) wants to engage in a behavior that another person (or other people) believes to be against the agreed morality. And so the debate is engaged, and the group is divided into the boaters and the swimmers, the fishers and the players, the environmentally conscious and the polluters. Every member of the group is forced to align with one side or another of the debate, each for their own reason.

As the debate rages on, the common goal of the group (in this case, the use of the pond) is forgotten in exchange for the goal of winning the debate. Once this happens, the division of the group is complete – winners and losers. NOBODY wants to be a loser, so the debate degrades further into name calling and bullying. At this point, oftentimes, the boaters (the ones who originally desired to alter the moral) take matters into their own hands and, boldly violate the moral code causing further division of the group into law abiding and law breaking. Then comes sanctions followed by sympathizers who just want to keep the peace. The debate has become personal and THIS MEANS WAR!

I purposefully used the common use of a local pond to outline exactly what is happening in our nation about a variety of topics. I was asked recently for advice about how an Orthodox Christian should “function” within their work environment while such debates are occurring within the office. The example given was in regard to “non discrimination policies” and what categories should be included. The initial thought of the Orthodox Christian was simple, and genuine. “We do not discriminate! Why isn’t that enough?”

The reason it isn’t enough has to do with boaters and swimmers. As a society, we discriminate ALL THE TIME. (Think local pond) Society is a group of people who have agreed to discriminate based upon certain categories. Yes, we DO discriminate every day. We discriminate “against” pedophiles, bank robbers, short people, tall people, skinny people, fat people, married people, single people, gangbangers, polluters, dog walkers, dog owners…..you get the point. It isn’t that we don’t discriminate, but HOW we discriminate. The moral code – the agreement of the group – is what we are debating, and currently there is a growing agreement that certain characteristics should be included in the “not allowed” category.

Just like the local pond, we each have aligned ourselves with a particular group for our own personal reasons. And just like the local pond, the debate has degraded into personal attacks and NOW we are either haters or sympathizers. So, how do we “function” as Orthodox Christian within this environment? I suggest we consider Saint Paul’s advice:

 I wrote to you in my epistle not to keep company with sexually immoral people. Yet I certainly did not mean with the sexually immoral people of this world, or with the covetous, or extortioners, or idolaters, since then you would need to go out of the world. But now I have written to you not to keep company with anyone named a brother, who is sexually immoral, or covetous, or an idolater, or a reviler, or a drunkard, or an extortioner -- not even to eat with such a person. For what have I to do with judging those also who are outside? Do you not judge those who are inside? But those who are outside God judges. Therefore "put away from yourselves the evil person." (1 Corinthians 5.9-13)

If we heed the advice of Saint Paul, we will remember the proper focus during the constant debate of society morals. We are held to a higher standard as members of the Church. We participate in the process only so far as we are able to avoid the degradation of the process into haters and sympathizers. However, just like our local pond, I believe the degradation is unavoidable.

Whether the topic is discrimination policies, marriage, property rights, immigration status, it really doesn’t matter. The process is the same and continuous. The boaters will eventually be allowed to use the local pond, simply because the swimmers don’t want to be considered haters. And they will find another place to swim, until someone wants to go boating. THEN…the whole process will start all over again.

Prayer in Public Schools

You might be surprised to know that I do not support prayer in public schools. I often meet people, online and in person, who presume that because I am a priest, I would support a policy of returning prayer to public schools. Well, that couldn’t be the furthest from the truth.

While I do acknowledge that our schools had a long history, as did our other government institutions, in which prayer played an important role in the beginning of every day, I must also acknowledge that we are a very different society today than “yesterday.” Our nation used to be a predominantly Christian society, so public prayer normally consisted of some Christ-oriented prayer. But we have to face facts, whether we admit it or not, that our nation is no longer predominately Christian.

What’s that I say? America is no longer a Christian nation? Well, I’m not sure we were ever truly a Christian nation. We may have been founded by deists, but that is a far cry from Christians. We cannot forget that the Bible of Thomas Jefferson resembled swiss cheese with all the verses and chapters cut out and removed, because he personally did not agree with them. Besides the deists, would a Christian nation have laws supporting abortion and capital punishment? Would a Christian nation have such blatant examples of personal greed? Our nation is founded on freedom, which admittedly is a Christian value, but we have long since turned away from using our freedom to honor God. But on to prayer in public schools….

In 2014, with such a wide range of Christian Churches and a substantial presence of non-Christians, what would such a public prayer include? It wouldn’t include references to Jesus Christ, for fear it would offend the non-Christians. It could, I suppose, include reference to God, but for the growing atheist movement. It wouldn’t be permitted to include references to Allah, even though Allah is technically the Arabic word for God, since many Muslims insist on its usage to be limited to the Islamic God, and fundamentalist Evangelical Christian would have a fit. It might, I suppose, include a prayer to “the supreme energy” which many Christians would pretend acknowledged God, but as Orthodox Christians, we could never tolerate such a blanket reference. EVEN IF the “rest of the nation” could agree on such terminology, it veers so far from the Triune God of Father, Son and Holy Spirit, we could never allow our Orthodox youth to participate.

So that leaves us with no prayer in public schools. As an Orthodox Christian Priest, I can better explain why WE prayer and others do not pray, than I can explain why certain prayers are wrong to pray. I don’t doubt many Protestant Christians, and a growing number of Orthodox Christians, are unable to appreciate the nuances that overwhelm such a public prayer. To this I would turn our many faithful to a careful study of Christian history and discover there existed, especially at times of secular and pluralist influences, rules forbidding the faithful from praying with others. It wasn’t because we were being elite, but because we were protecting the faithful from offering incorrect prayer? Lest you think there is no such thing as “incorrect prayer” consider this example of the Gospel.

Now it came to pass, as He was praying in a certain place, when He ceased, that one of His disciples said to Him, "Lord, teach us to pray, as John also taught his disciples. So He said to them, "When you pray, say: Our Father in heaven, Hallowed be Your name. Your kingdom come. Your will be done On earth as it is in heaven. Give us day by day our daily bread. And forgive us our sins, For we also forgive everyone who is indebted to us. And do not lead us into temptation, But deliver us from the evil one." Luke 11.1-4

The disciples took this instruction so seriously, they commanded Christians to pray this prayer three times each day. I would rather have our children pray this in front of their icon corners and before/after meals, than to have them mumble some “O great unknown in the sky….” prayer, but it could just be me.

On the Fifth Day of Christmas – When Will the Suffering End?

According to the 12 Days of Christmas SONG, today is the day we expect five golden rings. Instead of gifts today, the Church offers us instead a somber reminder of the suffering at the hands of King Herod. In his rage against God, he slaughtered thousands of innocent infants, trying to kill the new-born Jesus. The world is still raging against God, with the killing of millions of babies by abortion and tens of thousands of others at the hands of terrorists in the Middle East.

The terror continues against God’s people, not because they (we) have done anything against them, but because any hint of the love of Christ creates anger and resentment in the devil and those whom he controls.

America kills more than one million innocent babies by abortion each year, EACH YEAR! And most of us just sit idle and watch from the sidelines. It is up to us to protect those who cannot protect themselves. We cannot sit quietly by as millions continue to be offered on the altar of individualism. We must pray for the elimination of all innocent killing by abortion, and any other indiscriminate killing sanctioned by our nation.

In case you’re wondering, I am also against capital punishment. For Orthodox Christianity, ALL human life is sacred and must be protected. 

Zygote – Life is Life and ALL Life Should be Honored

Today’s topic assigned by the 40 Days of Blogging Challenge is “Zygote”, which is the term used to describe the initial cell established in the creation of life. In the creation of human life, the Church has always believed that the “zygote” is a full human being. Well, it is a human being in so far as any of us are fully human. The reality of life is that we are ONLY fully human being in Communion with God, and as a human life, must be treated with the utmost respect and honor.

There are many Christians and Christian organizations, including an Orthodox Christian organization known as Zoi for Life, that exert much energy in the defense of human life, as a zygote. However, I’m not at all convinced the same would defend life in other forms. Many, however, defend a zygote while encouraging the killing of other human beings in prison. On the other hand, some defend the life of the prisoner while protecting the right of women to freely have an abortion.

It would seem to me, if someone believes life is important, than ALL human life should be equally important. All life, whether human or not, is a gift from God and has a purpose. Human life has a singular purpose of being in communion with God, and nothing less. But the honor of life does not rest solely in end-of-life issues, and those should include those who suffer IN life.

Hungry, crippled, blind, deaf, naked, in prison, mentally ill, unemployed, underemployed, abused, abandoned, orphaned, divorced, depressed, homeless – all examples of human beings who suffer. It would be nice if ALL life was defended in our society. But in the meantime, at least some life is honored, and for that I suppose I should be thankful. I’ll have to settle for hopeful for the remainder.

This post is written for the 40 Days of Blogging Challenge sponsored by the Preachers Institute. You may find other blogs participating in this challenge. I hope you enjoy this year’s Advent journey.