What Is Man?

What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him? (Psalm 8:4).

The question, “What is man?” written perhaps a thousand years before the coming of Christ, is the bedrock of true humanism, the only form of dignity that can sustain human life. Our modern world continually re-imagines our nature, but God alone sustains it. I can think of nothing more assuring that the speculation, “What is man?” in a heart of wonder. I can think of nothing more terrifying than the same speculation in the cold calculus of the modern state.

Human dignity is among the youngest thoughts on earth and far from universally subscribed. We are daily exploited, murdered and used for unworthy ends. Individuals fail to see their own worth and give themselves over to evil ends. “What is man?” indeed, and why should we consider ourselves to be of any particular value?

To declare that I am valuable because I am myself – is simply a statement of  self-interest – an instinct shared by most living things. To acknowledge the value of another because it helps preserve my own value is the same instinct extended through a community. This instinct, surely a part of human life from its beginning, has never demonstrated the ability to lift man above his basest desires.

The question, “What is man,” is an echo or a corollary of the question, “Is there a God?” For if there is no God, then the question, “What is man?” has only the emptiness of an echo for an answer. Human dignity is not self-evident. With reference only to our biology we can say that we are carbon-based life-forms that have self-awareness. We cannot assume that other life-forms do not have self-awareness. The question, “What is man?” is thus no more interesting than the question, “What is a bacterium?”

But the question is itself an inherent part of our self-awareness. We want to know if there is anything of transcendent worth in our existence or is it as simply one thing among the many that exists. The question, “Why is there something rather than nothing?” is similar. Does that which exists have any transcendent meaning – anything beyond the ephemera of its ill-fated billions of years (“ill-fated,” for regardless of how you run the numbers, it will cease to exist).

There are many ways to answer the question, “What is man?” All religions do this in one way or another, and the answers are not at all the same. In Buddhism, self-awareness is simply one of many ephemera – having no bearing on the meaning of existence itself.

But the Christian answer is the primary claimant of the modern world’s attention, whether the modern world acknowledges the source of the answer or not. That we are created in the image and likeness of God, and that God Himself has become man in the person of Jesus of Nazareth is the basis of all thought of human rights – the language of consensus in the human community. The assertion of human rights is commonly made today without reference to God. It is thus nothing more than assertion. Human beings have rights because we say they do. Such unsupported assertions only have force when they are asserted by the strong to the weak. This is very much the state of human existence in a secularized world. Rights exist only because a controlling authority enforces such rights. Rights which are denied by a controlling authority have no existence.

Assertions by the West of various human rights, when heard by some non-Western cultures, do not sound like truth claims, only like cultural imperialism. Should women be allowed to drive cars in Saudi Arabia? The answer depends solely on who is speaking.

World culture at present is not grounded in a civilization. There is no consensus of transcendent values, no true common agreement. The secular triumph of a common Europe, the post-War’s version of the tower of Babel, presently stands ready to collapse as the Eurovision confronts the reality of the Euro. “We share a common currency and a bureaucracy in Brussels,” is an insufficient answer to the question, “What is man?”

Modern, secular culture is derivative. Its values are largely drawn from the treasure of earlier Christian values, regardless of their present distortion. Human rights are contingent upon human dignity, itself contingent upon the creation of man in the image of God. Remove the source and the contingencies collapse (in time). Human rights have already begun their collapse. The concept of rights remain, but they exist only as those in power define them. Thus the rights of women (as defined by the state) or the rights of those with minority sexual orientations (as defined by the state) or other state-defined groups have rights that frequently supersede those of other groups. These rights are arbitrary and represent nothing more than the present state of political reality. As such, they do not represent rights, but assertions of power.

The language of rights continues to have the cachet of the earlier imago dei, but one in which the deity is no more than a function of government bureaucracy (of which the courts are but an arm). The great weakness of our present cultural existence is its lack of foundation outside the bald assertion of power. The two most distorted examples of such power-based cultures were Nazi Germany and the Stalinist Soviet Union. These two cultures continue to strike most moderns as distorted when they are compared to our cultural memory of the imago dei.  But their distortions were justified in the same manner as today’s secularist assertions. Only the present direction of the winds of power stands between modern culture and state terror. The slightest change in that wind can revisit the world with a renewed holocaust. The regime is the same: only the victims change.

The belief that man is created in the image of God yields its own corollaries. As the image of God, human beings are endowed with infinite worth. A human life has value derived from its very Divinely given existence. Our value is not a gift of the state or the result of our own assertions. No one life has greater value than another. Neither usefulness nor talent add value to that given by God.

States (as well as the quasi-states of ecclesial institutions) have sought to reduce these corollaries over the course of the Christian centuries. Thus some have been given greater rights by reason of birth, wealth, race, gender, creed, etc. Each of these assertions of greater rights represent departures from the givenness of the imago dei and a distortion of the Christian faith.

If one human being exists in the image of God, then all human beings exist in the image of God. None of us is more fully the image than another. In Christian teaching, Christ Himself is the definition of the image of God. To the question, ” What does it mean to be human?” Christ is the answer. In Christian understanding, Christ as incarnate image of God is celebrated from conception (the feast of the Annunciation) to His ascension to the right hand of God. No quality of Christ (sentience, wisdom, volition, race, age, gender, etc.) defines or establishes His place as imago dei. He is the image of God. In the same manner, our own unqualified existence establishes us as the image of God.

Only in this fully Christian understanding of man are the value, and thus rights of each human being guaranteed. Only in a culture in which this understanding is agreed and accepted is such value safe and secure. It is perhaps the greatest treasure given to us by God.

There are many modern Christians who have been lulled to sleep by the language of the larger culture, accepting that those who speak of “rights,” actually accept the imago dei. Many Christians have abandoned the public defense of man as God’s image in exchange for a place at the bargaining table of the state’s assertions of power. The state’s ability to assert various perceived rights is not a defense of our humanity – it is its destruction. Our acceptance of the state’s assertion is a capitulation of the gospel. Nothing less than the Divine value of every human life is worthy of the Christian gospel. Those Christians who do not accept such a value have departed from the faith and made common cause with those who would destroy us.

O LORD our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth! who hast set thy glory above the heavens. Out of the moth of babes and sucklings hast thou ordained strength because of thine enemies, that thou mightiest still the enemy and the avenger. When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained; What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him? For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honor. Thou maddest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands; thou hast put all things under his feet: All sheep and oxen, yea, and the beasts of the field; The fowl of the air, and the fish of the sea, and whatsoever passeth through the paths of the seas. O Lord our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth! (Psalm 8)

Memorial Day

In America, today is called “Memorial Day.” It was originally established to remember the fallen soldiers of the American War Between the States (Civil War) in the 19th century. Today it commemorates all fallen soldiers of the nation. It marks the unofficial beginning of the Summer holidays and is not often kept as a day of memory. This short video has the Russian hymn Vechnaya Pamyat, “Memory Eternal,” which is intoned in services for the departed.

Too many, everywhere, have died in wars within the memory of those whom I’ve known. May their memory be eternal!

Vodpod videos no longer available.

Within A Mandorla

There is a small class of events within the gospels that are treated in a special manner by iconographers. This special treatment reflects the language of Scripture as well. In the icons of the Transfiguration, Pascha and the Ascension, there is a particular artistic device used called a Mandorla. Sometimes circular, sometimes almost star-shaped, it serves as something of a “parenthesis” within an icon. What is being set in the parenthesis is an event which somehow transcends what most of us think of as normal. Revealed in the context of a mandorla is that which we know by the revelation of Scripture but which might not have been witnessed by the human eye – or – if witnessed – somehow transcended the normal bounds of vision.

In the icon of the Transfiguration, the transfigured Christ stands within the mandorla. The Church’s hymns remark on this in their own manner:

You were transfigured on the mount, O Christ God,

revealing Your glory to Your disciples as far as they could bear it.

Let Your everlasting Light also shine upon us sinners,

through the prayers of the Theotokos.

O Giver of Light, glory to You!

In this text for the Troparion (Hymn) for the Feast of the Transfiguration, Christ’s glory is described as having been revealed to his disciples “as far as they could bear it.”

The Kontakion of the Feast carries the same message:

On the Mountain You were Transfigured, O Christ God
And Your disciples beheld Your glory as far as they could see it;
So that when they would behold You crucified,
They would understand that Your suffering was voluntary,
And would proclaim to the world, That You are truly the Radiance of the Father!

The disciples are described in the Scriptures as having been “afraid.” St. Peter speaks of building three tabernacles, “because he did not know what to say.” The experience is more than even the words of Scripture can express.

The depiction of the Ascension in iconography has this same artistic device. Some would perhaps wonder why an event that is described in a prosaic manner “a cloud received him from their sight” should need to be framed within the parentheses of a mandorla. Of course, this description is given only in the book of Acts. Mark and Luke simply say that he was “carried up into heaven.” We are at a place where language has a limit. Indeed, Mark says that he was “carried up into heaven and seated at the right hand of God.” This last formula is a creedal confession – but not an eyewitness description. That Christ was taken up and that He is seated at the right hand of the Father is the faith and dogma of the Church. But the Church knows this in a mystical manner and not in the manner of a newspaper reporter.

To acknowledge this is not to weaken the witness of Scripture or to make a concession to the historical uncertainty of liberalism. It is simply to recognize the nature of the Biblical witness. The iconographic witness of the Church affirms this – placing the Ascension of Christ within a mandorla – recognizing that this will only be known and understood by the mystical knowledge of faith (and by faith I do not mean an intellectual leap of judgment). I will return to this matter of faith shortly.

Very similar to this event is Christ’s Descent into Hades, the traditional icon of Christ’s Pascha. In this icon we see what is referenced in several places within the Scriptures and upheld in the Church’s dogma – that Christ descended into Hades and “trampled down death by death, and upon those in the tombs bestowed life.” But when we confess this cornerstone of our faith we are not reciting what is known by eyewitness account. Eyewitnesses see Christ’s crucifixion and eyewitnesses place Him in the tomb. Eyewitnesses return to the tomb on early Sunday morning and find the tomb open and empty.

The resurrected Christ appears to his disciples. In St. Paul’s recitation of the “tradition” (for that is the word he uses to describe his recitation, we hear:

For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve.Then he appeared to more than five hundred brethren at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles (1 Corinthians 15:3-7).

There are interesting descriptions that accompany the Scriptural witness of Christ’s resurrection appearances. St. Mark says:

After this he appeared in another form to two of them, as they were walking into the country. And they went back and told the rest, but they did not believe them (Mark 16:12-13).

This, of course, is St. Mark’s brief account of the encounter with Christ on the road to Emmaus, described in detail in St. Luke’s gospel. We could add to that St. Mary Magdalen’s mistaking the resurrected Christ for “the gardener” until he speaks her name.

Such statements are not accidental “slips of the tongue” in which the gospel writers leave clues that indicate doubts about the reality of the resurrection. This is a silly conclusion drawn by some modern, liberal scholars. The gospels are carefully written. It is absurd to assume anything accidental within their pages.

What we have instead is a “verbal mandorla,” a description that points to a reality that impinges upon our reality but which has a depth that transcends anything we could imagine. This is the manifestation of the Kingdom of God in our midst.

This brings me back to the question of faith. There is a form of Christian literalism which belongs to a secular culture. The world is rendered only in a secularized, objective manner. Nothing is ever set within a mandorla. There is no perception of the mystery which has come among us in our Lord, God and Savior Jesus Christ. In such a form of Christianity, faith is simply a description of what someone accepts as a set of “facts” in the same manner that we accept or reject what we read in a newspaper, etc. The facts are as static and empty as our perception. No change need happen in the witness of such facts. Either it happened and you saw it, or it did not happen. But the Scriptures themselves indicate that the nature of the witness has a radically different character:

Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. And when they saw him they worshiped him; but some doubted (Matthew 28:16-17).

If Christ appears to them, how is it that some doubted? The Biblical witness would never have allowed such a statement if it was trying to defend the modern literalism of secularized Christianity. Instead, the witness of Christ points us towards the depth of the mystery that is the truth of our relationship with risen Christ. We know Him and perceive Him not simply through a set of intellectual arguments, or even simply through our trust in reliability of historical witness. A “faith” which is founded on argument, no matter how sound the argument, still fails to change the one who accepts it. The result of such “faith” is opinion, not true faith.

True faith ultimately requires a union, a participation, in the very life of the risen Christ. Thus, we are not Baptized into opinions, but into the very death and resurrection of Christ. To use the language of icons, our life is plunged into a mandorla which is nothing other than the Kingdom of God. We are called to live within that parenthetical state – where our lives constant refer and point to the reality which has now filled us. Such a life transcends the literalism of doubt and opinion and enters into a union with God that is itself a witness to the coming of the Kingdom. It is the banishment of secularism and affirmation of the living truth of Christ.

I would not dare to shake the faith of any nor suggest an element of doubt with regard to the events of Christ’s Transfiguration, Ascension or His Descent into Hades. Instead I want to push us towards a deeper perception and participation in those realities – for this is the very root of the Christian life.

The Fathers taught us: “Icons do with color what Scripture does with words.” The iconic grammar of the mandorla, points us to the great mysteries made known to us in Scripture and make it clear that such mysteries may be known and entered into. Glory to God!

A Secular Death

Almost no event shatters the confidence of the secular world like death.
Regardless of a person’s achievements, fame or wealth, death not only destroys but threatens to mock. Many older funeral customs evolved in a relatively non-secular context. It is not surprising that funerals in the secular world are changing quickly: their content speaks volumes about the nature of secularized religion.

A 2009 article states:

Nearly 50 years ago, only 5 percent of the funerals in North America involved cremation. That percentage increased to 20 percent 30 years later, and in the past 15 years that percentage is pushing past 40 percent, which amounts to about 1.5 million cremations by next year.

I have served as a pastor in the American Southeast since 1980. Over the past 32 years I have seen a vast change in popular thought about funerals. Orthodox tradition and practice is quickly being viewed as too expensive, too focused on religion, and too concerned with the body.

Contemporary funerals (frequently termed a “celebration of life”) often have no “body” present. As memorials, the emphasis is on remembering the past – and in the most positive manner. Some celebrations have the feel of a “production,” complete with large projection screen and digitally produced music. Most funeral homes are glad to provide the production work.

In contrast, an Orthodox funeral concentrates on a different memorial. It is God’s eternal memory of those who have fallen asleep that is asked. Our own memory is weak, and biased, itself destined to fade within less than a life-time.

I have often been told that a funeral is “for those who grieve.” This is a deeply secular understanding of death. Secularism thinks that those who have died have need of nothing – they are gone as if they never were. Those who remain have the burden of guilt and grief – it is their needs that should be our present concern.

Death challenges the secular world at its weakest point. Secular life is essentially meaningless. There is an old phrase which describes those who fear something so much that they seek to ignore its presence as “whistling past the graveyard.” It is even easier to whistle past the graveyard if you never go near one.

Iron and Wine (2004) offered the world perhaps the first love song about cremation:

She says “If I leave before you, darling
Don’t you waste me in the ground”
I lay smiling like our sleeping children
One of us will die inside these arms
Eyes wide open, naked as we came
One will spread our ashes round the yard

The song has the honesty of recognizing that death at least yields something tangible.

The inherent meaninglessness of an existence that has no transcendence – nothing beyond itself – offers the modern world great temptation. If we will have no God, then we will invent lesser gods and serve them instead. Radical environmentalism has become a growing substitute for God. Some lessen their “carbon footprint” by extreme measures – limiting family size by any means possible. Of course, the ultimate lessening of our footprint is to remove ourselves from the planet – to what purpose? Indeed, what purpose the planet itself? Who would laud such noble sacrifice?

The transcendence of a two-storey world – one in which this world only has meaning because of the “next” world – is equally flawed. The world in which we live is not only transcended – it is positively devalued (except in those accounts in which eternity itself is determined within the short span of life on earth). In traditional Western Christianity, this two-storey account of life and death predominates. The world in which we live has no connection to the world in which God dwells, apart from moral concerns. There is no sacramental union, only the token appearances that appear magically in churches from time to time.

In the traditional theology of the Eastern Church, this world and the “next,” are not two worlds. We use the language of place (heaven and earth) for lack of language not for accuracy. There is more to the created order than we see (“all things visible and invisible”). But that which is not seen is not inherently separate from that which is. Sacrament (mystery in the East) is a way of describing the relationship between what is seen and what is unseen. Everything is sacrament, icon and symbol.

In such a setting, death is a change, but not an end. That which we see, the body, remains important and worthy of honor. A funeral, the service of remembrance, is a sacramental gathering in the presence of God. The body is honored, even venerated. The life of remembrance, eternal remembrance, begins.

My wife and I have a fifth child, one who died in the 5th month of his gestation. I held him at the time of his still birth. We mourned his loss, and gave him a name. We entrusted his life to the good God who gave him to us. The only relationship I have had with him has been one of remembrance. Each day in my prayers he is remembered along with my grandparents, my parents and in-laws who have gone before. They are not a part of my past, but a part of my present, particularly when I am awake and stand before God, seeing the world as it truly is.

The fiction of sentimentality and the emptiness of secular mourning quickly fade before the great presence of God. The proclamation of Christ’s resurrection is no pious notion about the world to come. It is the triumph here and now over death – the presence of Life pressing in on us – lifting up the world into the fullness of its meaning – gathering together all things in one.

Memory eternal!

Learning to Walk

I cannot remember learning to walk (I was nine-months old). I do, however, remember learning to ride a bicycle. I think the two experiences are fairly similar. I know that falling down is something both of them have in common. I also know that both of them require falling down as part of the learning process.

Learning to walk as a Christian seems little different to me. The only way to learn to walk is – to walk. And such walking necessarily involves falling down.

Christ said to those who believed in Him: “If you abide in My word, you are My disciples indeed. And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free” (John 8:31-32).

The truth of which He speaks requires action (“abide in my word”) in order to be known. We cannot know the truth and then do it: if we do the truth then we will know it. Like walking or riding a bicycle – you have to walk in order to learn to walk – you have to ride in order to learn to ride.

This suggests that our Christian journey is only partially aided by critical understanding. I can see someone else walk and know that it is possible – perhaps know it well enough to actually try to walk myself. But I cannot know the truth of walking until I do it myself.

We are a land of experts. Almost everybody has an opinion about everything – including when we say, “I have no opinion.” The suggestion that we should love our enemies is met with questions and objections (for instance). It is better met with the “baby” steps and stumbles of one who seeks to do the commandment. We learn as much from our failures as we do from our successes (sometimes more).

Various authors have been credited with the saying, “Christianity has not been tried and found wanting. It has so seldom been tried.” The saying is true.

The Invisible Christian

But you, when you pray, go into your closet, and when you have shut your door, pray to your Father who is in the secret place; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you openly (Matt. 6:6).

You are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hidden. Nor do they light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a lampstand, and it gives light to all who are in the house. Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven (Matt. 5:14-16).

Blessed is he who is not offended because of Me. (Matt. 11:6)

There is an invisible side of the Christian faith, known only to God and the believer. St. Matthew’s gospel refers to this as the secret place. It is not only intended to be secret, but exists only in secret. If we refuse to protect the secret then we will find its door closed to us as well.

Our faith also has a very public aspect and cannot normatively be practiced solely in secret. I say, “normatively,” recognizing that circumstances of persecution make the public confession of the faith difficult. However, as the lives of the martyrs attest, even under persecution, the Christian life maintains a public aspect – unto death if need be. Our modern culture frequently asks us to hold these matters in reverse. We speak of secret things and hide those which should be public.

In the liturgical discipline of the early Church, the mysteries (today often called “sacraments”), were indeed mysteries: they were not open to public view. The catechumens, those who were preparing to be baptized, were dismissed from the service to attend other prayers and instruction, while the faithful, alone, remained for the celebration of the mysteries. In Orthodox liturgies, the dismissal of the catechumens remains, at least in word. The mysteries of Baptism and Eucharist are now open for public attendance, though the mystery of the Eucharist may only be received by the faithful.

In our larger culture, many things that should remain “secret” are open for public knowledge and scrutiny. The most sordid details of private lives are openly discussed before audiences on our screens. Magazine covers of relatively innocuous magazines promise “how-to’s” of great sex. I need say nothing about environs of the internet.

Secret matters of the religious life are often treated in a very public manner. St. Paul only obliquely refers to a man who was “caught up to the third level of heaven.” Most scholars agree that he is referring to himself – but such speech would have been deemed inappropriate. His oblique reference skates up to the very edge of acceptability.

Today, Christians often boast about their innermost experiences – we would seem to be a civilization of mystics. It is very difficult to find a balance in our lives.

The secularity of our culture constructs a false world-view for us, creating confusion within the spiritual life. Secularity presumes that there is such a thing as “neutral” territory. The world exists as a vast, neutral ground, inherently objective with no loyalties one way or another. People who subscribe to various versions of secularism see religion as an import, something which does not naturally belong to the order of things. It is not that secularism sees the world as “atheistic”: the world is simply nothing one way or another.

The “natural” spirituality of secularism is indifference. If you want to think about God, that is your business. If I don’t want to think about God, that is my business. But nothing in the world should make me or anyone else inherently think about God. The world and all of its stuff – is indifferent. The expression of the world is thus found in its neutrality. All expressions that deny this neutrality are disruptive. T-shirts and crosses, “Tebows” in the end zone, a creche in the public square – all are disruptive of the neutrality of the secular order.

Those who have been born to this order, those who are the children of the modern world, find that their inner lives are as “naturally” neutral as the world around them appears to be. Reading about the lives of saints creates a longing, a homesickness for a land that is as foreign as any fantasy. Do people actually see angels? Can bread truly be more than bread? Do waters part? Do voices speak from fiery clouds? Even the quiet efforts of prayer and the best intentions within the liturgy can be experienced with an emptiness that mocks our attempts at piety. No convert from ancient paganism ever suffered the numbing lassitude of neutrality’s temptations.

The “neutrality” of nature has moved beyond perception in contemporary society – it has now become a positive value. Thus, the disruptions of religious actions are seen as distractions and disturbances to the way things “ought” to be. They are unnatural and unwelcome. A reader of the blog relates public rebukes (in Greece!) for simply saying, “Thank God.” Of course, I am certain that oaths  and curses invoking God receive no such rebuke! Here in the Bible belt of America, a friend relates being publicly attacked for offering the traditional English “God bless you!” when someone sneezed. A recent letter to the editor in my local Tennessee newspaper requested that letters mentioning religion be removed to somewhere other than the editorial page, since the newspaper is “secular.” Little wonder that wearing a cross is increasingly forbidden in the work place.

The enforced “neutrality” of secularism asks Christians to become invisible.  Christians are the new pariahs. Invisibility is not a difficult request for modern Christians. Our religion is often enough invisible to us as well. Some will even argue that this is as it should be – Christianity belongs in the closet (Matt. 6:6).

Man is not meant to live a closeted life. If we are the light of the world, then the light will burn a hole in our secularized baskets and burn the closet down! But this is to describe what should be rather than what is. Modern experience teaches us that baskets and closets simply snuff the light. We go into our closets and pretend to be the light of the world.

The context of Christianity in the modern world differs significantly from the context of first-century Palestine. Our context is the fantasy world of secularism. Our struggle is not against the false public piety of the Pharisees but against the false humility of invisible Christianity. Religion should be understood as a set of practices. Religion or spirituality as a set of ideas is a fiction of secular thought: “keep your religion in the closet of your head.” How we eat, how we speak, how we marry, how we die, how we mourn, how we order our time, how we dress, how we manage our money – all of these and similar “folkways” rightly involve practices that are identifiably religious. For the modern invisible Christian – folkways are  largely indistinguishable from those of the surrounding culture.

To live as the light of the world is to be a transforming presence. We do not transform the world by coercion – we transform the world by our Christian existence. Much of our culture, even in its secular form, owes its shape to the transforming presence of Christians. That the world today has a concept of human rights is the direct result of Christian Trinitarian thought and its understanding of personhood.

However, the offspring of Christendom has learned to reject its history and to imagine itself to be self-invented. Christians cannot agree to this myth and pretend that we have not lived within the world for 2,000 years. We are locked in a struggle.

The primary weapons of that struggle remain the inner life of prayer and the purification of the heart. We will not be the light of the world if our hearts are filled with darkness. Christians do well to be confident and hopeful within their daily lives – for “greater is He that is in you than he that is in the world.” Despair and anger are the tools of darkness and have nothing to do with light.

By the same token, Christians should not be fearful of the growing aggression of radical secularism. We should not abandon Christian folkways (where they exist). The return to traditional Christianity (as opposed to secularized market-based Christianity) should include embracing a transformed life expressed in public as well as private. If we are the light of the world, we need not fear the darkness.

I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service. And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God (Romans 12:1-2).

The Disappointment of Religion

Reading the lives of the saints often raises our expectations. We read of someone transfigured with light, or of someone who is present in two places at once. We read beautiful descriptions of the inner life, of an awareness of our union with God or clarity with regard to the nature of all things. In comparison, our own religious experience will be sterile, a voice crying out in the wilderness met with stony silence. For some, such comparisons can lead to despair. For others, these comparisons make them doubt the authenticity of saints’ lives. In many cases we simply discover the disappointment of religion.

The modern religious search often begins in disappointment. The rhetoric of religious believing and the reality can be miles apart. There can be very legitimate reasons for this disjunction. The truth claims of many religious groups border on the absurd. Complex dogmatic constructs quickly reveal themselves to be the intellectual fabrications of cultural and psychological forces. Disappointment leads to disbelief.

A hallmark of the modern world is the emphasis on the individual. Religious systems that cater to this emphasis (whether knowingly or unknowingly) often find rapid success. The same rapid success can be followed with rapid disappointment. The criteria of individual values, rooted in emotion and psychological states, are notoriously changeable. Those who live by experience, die by experience.

Experience is the great watershed of individualism. The greater the emphasis on the individual, the greater the emphasis on psychology and emotion – for these are the primary aspects of individual experience. If the focus shifts from my place within a network of relationships to my place within myself, then the focus necessarily leaves me with nothing but “me.” Love ceases to be a set of practices and becomes a feeling.

Feelings and psychological states are inherently a part of the human experience – but they are a very poor basis for human community and culture. The rise and dominance of consumer culture is the result of experience being exalted to the pivotal point of our existence. We shop, we buy, we consume in order to “feel” good. And the feelings which we deem “good,” are themselves those that are sold to us in the deeply psychologized world of advertising. That God makes me feel good can be  little more than saying, “I like salt, sugar and fat.”

People are always hungry (for salt, sugar and fat) and people always have an array of feelings and psychological states. But these are secondary elements of human existence – meant to be balanced, made whole and subservient to our greater life. Consumer societies will never be happy, stable, or healthy. Their happiness and stability can be managed by those who have the power of propaganda. By themselves, they will never create a healthy civilization.

The purpose of the Church is not to create healthy civilizations, nor does the Church exist to be yet one more outlet of good feelings and neuroses. The Church is that place where God is being reconciled to man, and man to God. It is that place where all things are being gathered together in one in Christ Jesus. It is the ecclesia, the Divine Community of the Body of Christ, in which we may be made whole and in which the truth of our existence can be made manifest.

How does that make you feel?

Depending on the state of our lives, feelings in the ecclesia can be terrifying, satisfying, depressing, or meaningless – everything human beings are capable of feeling. It is also inevitable that we bring with us into the Divine Community the brokenness of our psyches. Thus, we are prone to use others in distorted ways. We attach ourselves to leaders and use their confidence or eloquence (or far darker things) to patch together the shattered pieces of our own psyches. We use our peer groups in destructive ways to create islands of belonging, fleeing the alienation and abandonment of our inner history.

These (and many similar things) are the distortions of individualized consumers. We do not know how to live without meeting the irrational demands of our feelings. Our psyches have no training in how to heal – only in how to use things and people around us for comfort, defense and need.

This cultural reality makes it very difficult to speak of authentic Christian experience – for we speak to one another as addicts. We largely know experience as an alcoholic knows alcohol. That an alcoholic might prefer vodka to wine tells me nothing about vodka or wine. Religious experience tells me almost nothing about God, the Church, truth, etc. It is God, the Church, truth, etc., viewed through the fog of distorted modern perception.

Facebook offers us the icon of our modern selves: I like it.

Not surprisingly, Orthodoxy is not well adapted to modern existence. You may or may not like it. Orthodoxy does not care whether you like it (or it should not). There are many drawn to certain aspects of Orthodoxy – conversions are commonplace today. Conversions that are similar to the consumer-variety – those that populate the world of denominationalism (and non-denominationalism) are not unknown – but they are productive of but three things: unhappy Orthodox, former Orthodox, or former consumerist Christians. It is this latter that is the proper goal of the transformation of the mind (Romans 12:2).

That transformation, from consumerist governed by the passions, to disciple governed by Christ, is the very heart of the Christian life. In its earliest stages it is deeply disappointing and necessarily so. Our passions need to be disappointed and reordered.

I have written elsewhere that ninety percent of Orthodoxy is “just showing up.” I meant then and repeat now that the slow work of transformation requires our presence within and to the ecclesia, the Church gathered. My forgiveness of others is often a rebuke of my own passions: I find you irritating, because I am governed by my passions. Christianity, from the time of its gifting to us by Christ, has consisted of daily taking up our cross and following Him. It is a road of dispassionate living.

Learning to live within the ecclesia, is learning to renounce the distortions of individualism and the dominance of our desires. We do not renounce our individuality, but rather take up our individuality as persons – as those who live for and with others. My individual life is not strictly my own. My life is a common life – the Life of Christ that dwells within His ecclesia.

This new life is far from a disappointment: it is fulfillment. But those who would be fulfilled must first be disappointed. A beloved friend once advised me: the truth will make you free – but first it makes you miserable.

To Believe and Not to Believe

I have written extensively about the “two-storey universe.” In short, this is a description of how many modern Christians see the world. There is the first floor – the natural world which operates according to naturalist, “secular” rules, and the second floor – the world of God, heaven, hell, angels, etc. The spiritual crisis of modern man is the inherent disconnect in these two worlds. It is a belief construct whose history goes back some centuries yielding a deformed Christianity and a rising tide of unbelief. As I have written elsewhere, many Christians have serious doubts about whether there actually is second floor.

One interesting component of this world-view is unbelief. When a Christian whose world-view is dominated by the two-storey universe ceases to believe – what he ceases to believe in is the second storey. There need be little change, if any, to the first-floor on which he perceives himself to live. He does not cease to believe in the God who is here, but in a God who is “out there.”

Of course, what remains in such a situation of unbelief, is an acceptance of a universe that is less than a full account of how things truly are.  The first floor of a two-storey universe is not the same thing as the “one-storey universe” I have described: it is simply a house with the second floor blown off. It is in this sense that I have commented on Christian fundamentalism (one of the primary proponents of the two-storey universe) and contemporary atheism as two-sides of the same coin. Their interminable arguments are a conversation that takes place in half a universe. One argues that there is a second floor while the other argues that the truncated, detached debacle of a first floor is all there is. However, they do not disagree about the fundamentals of the first floor. The daily world (and often the daily life) of a two-storey Christian can be as empty and secular as his atheist counterpart. He differs only in his anxiety to prove the existence of a second floor.

I believe it is important to go to the heart of these matters – to realize that when arguments take place between such inhabitants of the two-storey world – nothing authentic is taking place. Both positions are inheritors of a broken view of the world and neither will ever state the truth in a satisfactory manner.

It is interesting to me that there are atheists who do not belong to this category of “two-storey unbelievers.” Their lack of belief in “God” includes deep questions about the very character of the universe and the nature of human existence. As such, they share much in common with the Tradition of the Orthodox faith. Many converts to Orthodoxy must undergo something of an “atheist” stage in order to leave the mythology of the two-storey world and enter into the revelation of God as Christ has given to the Church. It is for this reason that in the service for the reception of converts there is included a formal renunciation of various errors. You cannot follow the “only truly existing God” while at the same time believing in a God who does not exist. We are to believe in but one God.

To Bethink in Wonder

There are many cliches describing our cultural failure to be “present to the moment.” We do not “stop and smell the roses.” We do not “let go and let God.” There is a momentum to life that carries us along. Our jobs, our families, our habits – all conspire to make us oblivious to the landscape and lifescape hurrying past our awareness. It is not surprising that we are often described as being spiritually “asleep.”

Arise, O Sleeper, wake from the dead. And Christ shall give thee light (Eph. 5:14).

With this in mind, we can easily see that one of the hardest disciplines of the spiritual life is “staying awake.” In the fathers, the word for this is nepsis, variously translated as “watchfulness,” or “sobriety.” Christ speaks of the bridegroom coming “at midnight” (Matt. 25:26). We are told to be watchful, for there is someone for whom we should be watching.

This watchfulness is quite different from the sharp words, “Watch out!”  – the warning we throw at one another to avoid danger. There is certainly plenty of danger in the spiritual life and we should certainly “watch out,” but fear is never a proper foundation for our lives. It is the watchfulness of those who await the joy of the bridegroom’s arrival that is the hallmark of sobriety. St. John the Baptist, the “friend of the Bridegroom,” is the great saint who embodies this life of watchfulness.  He waits, watching – and finding, he announces the arrival and says, “He must increase and I must decrease.” The Church’s teaching sees his ministry extending even into Hades following his martyrdom. In the icon of the Resurrection, St. John is always depicted among the dead – for even among the dead he maintains his watchfulness and announces, “Behold the Bridegroom comes!”

The fasting employed by the Church in preparation for great feasts (such as Pascha), as well as the Wednesday-Friday fasts, are part of this watchfulness/sobriety. It is hard to sleep when you are hungry. John ate locusts and wild honey, observing a life-long Lent that awaited the Pascha of Christ’s coming to the Jordan.

In the middle of a busy world it is easy to imagine ourselves to be awake. However, the somnambulant spirituality of modern man (our usual state) constantly leaves us bumping into furniture and crashing about the world, injuring others and making a general mess of things. True nepsis requires a heart for the Bridegroom and His appearing.

Another way to account for our sleep-filled spiritual lives is our secularity – our default spiritual position. To see the world as self-existent, governed by its own rules, operating according to some set of independent principles, is to give ourselves over to an agreed-upon model of indolence. We assume the secular world-viewas the basis of our lives, with “religion” or “spirituality” as optional extensions of personal preference. The truth of things is that God is everywhere present and filling all things, all things existing only because He sustains them. The “principles”  which we see as “laws” are the providence of God, the bounty of His good will. Secularism is the sleep which deadens the mind and hardens the heart. Our stubborn faith in the immutable independence of the world is a breeding ground for fear and anxiety. The secular world-view leaves God at a remove: the world not the arena of His goodness, but the battleground of brute forces. We brutalize ourselves as we feel driven to control the world and our lives, bereft of the active kindness of a good God. We exchange neptic watchfulness for anxiety and panic.

Whenever we take charge of the outcome of history, we agree to do violence.

Watchfulness is inherently an attitude of wonder. In the words of St. Gregory of Nyssa, “Only wonder understands anything.” Wonder is not the vision itself – it is not an awareness of the Bridegroom. However, it is the state of the heart in which we can see Him when He comes. Wonder confronts the mystery as mystery. It does not judge. It does not speak but listens. Wonder does not assume. Wonder dwells in the silence of the heart, for it waits for the announcement of the Bridegroom’s advent.

Wonder is an exercise of love, making room for the other as it recognizes that we are “fearfully and wonderfully made.” It is not a position of passivity – though it is not always acting in the “active voice,” seeking to impose itself on and control the “objects” around it.

I have a long fascination with language (having been a Classics major in college). Ancient Greek had a “Middle Voice” in its verbs (as does modern Greek). In the Active voice, the action is directed towards the other (such as a direct object); in the passive voice, the action is directed towards the subject (“I was struck”). But in the middle voice, the action is my own, directed towards myself. The Middle is often the voice of the inner life. English once had something like a Middle voice. It survives in the suffix “be.” Thus verbs such as become, bemuse, besmirch, beclothe, bedazzle, etc. are all “middle voice” verbs. The action is inward.

Wonder is middle-voice in its meaning. A word, largely fallen out of use, that seems useful to me is: bethink. The dictionary defines it as “to cause oneself to consider.” We think about many things, but we would do better to bethink, or at least to bethink whenever we think. The world is not as it appears to someone who has been nurtured in a secular world-view. There is far more than meets the eye. This “far more” does not yield itself to the easy, active attentions of life in the Active voice. Neither does it impose itself on us should we choose to live in the Passive voice. It comes and is seen when we live with our eyes wide-open and our hearts watchful. It is revealed to the heart of wonder, which alone understands anything.

All Dogs Go to Heaven

The fathers do not agree utterly on the question of animals and eternal life – so the question of their eternal disposition is never answered in a manner that satisfies. But there are a few things worth pondering about the lives of animals (of which I have chosen dogs as representatives).

Animals, like all creation, are subject to the same corruption as human beings. St. Paul says that all creation has been made subject to the same process of death and decay that human beings endure:

For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it in hope; because the creation itself also will be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God (Romans 8:20-21).

This “subjection” is not “willingly,” i.e. creation made no sinful decision that caused this to happen. Thus, in a certain sense, creation is not “fallen.” However, it is subject to the same “fallen” existence that we know. Were fallen human beings to live in an unfallen world, our catastrophe would be greater (perhaps unredeemable). Little wonder, however, that creation groans. That it tolerates our footsteps is a sign of great patience and love.

So, what does it mean that creation is fallen yet not fallen?

I return to dogs. It is not incorrect to say that a dog is without sin. It does nothing wrong, nothing un-doglike. Dogs act in accordance with their nature. Human beings, however, frequently act contrary to their nature. This unnatural life is the very epitome of sin.

This, of course, is not to say that dogs do not do terrible things. It says, however, that the terrible things they do are the result of human abuse and sin. We make them what they are.

However, were they not consistently acting in accordance with their nature, they would not be trainable. They are able to be taught – but not taught to be something other than a dog (despite the fact that we sometimes think of them as acting in a human-like manner).

Do dogs pray (does creation pray)? Absolutely! “Let everything that has breath praise the Lord” (Psalm 150:6). But how do they pray? Their very existence is prayer. Every created nature is made to live in communion with God. Human nature itself lives in communion with God. Our fall does not consist in becoming something other than human – we have yet to become truly human. Thus St. Paul says: “Man is the glory of God” (1 Cor. 11:7). And St. Irenaeus says, “The glory of God is man fully alive” (Adv. Her. 4.34.5-7). Our becoming truly human would mean the restoration of our true integrity – we would live in accordance with our nature and praise the Lord without ceasing. The natures of all creation ceaselessly praise God by their very existence. Our struggle is to rejoin the song of creation with the whole of our being.

I confess that my dog-thoughts are the result of living with a puppy since Bright Monday. We are daily rejoicing and struggling with the consequences of his dog nature in the environment of my human house. He is learning and I am learning. Given my propensities, I cannot help but theologically reflect on it all.

The ultimate disposition of dogs (and all creation) is in the hands of God. I personally pray that the groaning of creation will be met with a liberation that includes an eternal life for all and everything. At present, my dog and I groan for the liberation of a well-trained life. I pray to become more consistently human – and I’m sure he prays for the same thing.