OrthoAnalyika Show: 22 August 2010
[Review of the parable as a reminder and warning to the Jews. But what does it mean for us?]
As we learned last year at this time, the landownder is God; he has leased us this land – our homes, jobs, income, time, even our church – to work for him. So the big question is; “having been leased all these things, how do we relate to God, His representatives, His prophets, and His Son? Moreover, how do we relate to the things he has leased us?”
I will answer the second question first (“how do we relate to the things he has leased us?”): we act as if we owned all these things he has loaned to us. I don’t want to dwell on this for too long, but think about how you feel when you write out your dues check to the church – do you feel as if you are giving something of your own to support an organization; or do you feel as if you are offering (or repaying) up a small bit – the “first fruits” – of something that could never really be yours in the first place?
The vinedressers in the story came to feel they owned all the things the landowner leased them, begrudging anything that challenged that feeling. The culture around us teaches us to do the same thing; [but] Christ is trying to teach us to do something different, to do something true. Whom do you trust?
Now for the first question – how do we relate to God? I have to be frank – the word that best describes our attitude towards God is ingratitude. Despite all the obvious blessings given to us here in America, only 56% in the USA give religion an important place in their lives. Here in New England, the number is much lower, and this finding is borne out by survey results describing our worship and prayer habits. I understand that the word “religion” means many things to many people – and that many of them are pejorative, but isn’t that just [in part] another indicator of how unwilling we are to make thanking God through prayer and worship a regular part of our routines? Forget national or regional statistics and look at our own lives: how many of us take a few seconds before and after each meal to Cross ourselves and thank God for it? How many of us take a bit of time out of our morning and evening routines to pray? How many of us make sure that we set aside every Sunday and Feast Day for worship?
The honest answer is that we do not do these things. We do not do these things because we have found other things that are more important to us. It is obvious that we are an ungrateful people. And is there anything uglier than ingratitude? When we see such an attitude in the actions of a child, doesn’t it break our hearts? Not because we want to be thanked, but because it points to something missing in the constitution of that child. It is a sign of selfishness, of something broken and spoilt, of something inhuman, graceless, and uncivilized.
God does not need our thanks. He does not need our gratitude. He does not need our offerings. But in order to become good, in order match ourselves and our actions to the perfection that is in Him, we must recognize and celebrate our true place in this world. And despite what our culture tells us, we are not at its [the world’s] center. God is. And turning our backs on Him means turning our backs on the Truth; [it means] removing the possibility of enjoying the fruits this world He has made us stewards of, and [it means] guaranteeing that the great accounting to come will not end in our favor.
But the story need not end this way. God has sent His Son to you here today. Repent of your former delusion, recognize your place in His creation, and then gratefully render Him all that He is due!
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A clarification about what I meant by “ethnic cemetery club”. The overall point I was making was that our youth should not follow our example because our methods have led (or at least allowed for) the decimation of our parishes and Church institutions. Very few of our parishes are as strong or stronger than they were we took over. Some are all but dead… and don’t care. These are the ones I disparaged as ethnic cemetery clubs. We need some serious evangelization within our parishes so that our parishes can themselves become evangelical. By this, I don’t mean become more Protestant or even more American, but completely dedicated to living and spreading the Gospel. Anything else will lead to the destruction of our parishes, even if they seem healthy on the outside.
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News!!!
Church News I: Who knew? Auxiliary Bishops normative for Antiochian Orthodox (at least in America).
Church News II: UOC-KP offers a reaction to the Chambesy Commission’s autocephaly process.
Church News III: Evidently, ministers aren’t handling things any better than the rest of folks: they “now suffer from obesity, hypertension and depression at rates higher than most Americans. In the last decade, their use of antidepressants has risen, while their life expectancy has fallen. Many would change jobs if they could.” Forced down time (weekly and yearly) is the solution suggested. Sounds good to me!
Church News IV: Then again, maybe their just upset at being encouraged to become superficial entertainers.
Church News V: Insights for evangelism? We make a mistake when we focus on dogmas (“the ‘answer bank’ theory of religion”). What is the center of Christianity? Creeds or Relationships (or something else)?
Crunchy News I: NYTimes article (“Fixing a World that Fosters Fat”) suggests that the government stop subsidizing bad food. Sounds good to me. But in the end, we really have to create a different kind of culture. How many American Christians fast? Why is the number so low (even for the Orthodox, for whom it is supposedly normative)?
Crunchy News II: NYTimes continues supporting the simplicity counter-culture with a case study. Kind of funny that “conspicuous simplicity” is getting knocked.
Gadget News News I: NYTimes points out that “Digital Devices Deprive Brain of Needed Downtime”. How intentional are you willing to be to live a good life? First, you have to define what a good life is… most people just let the culture do that for them (and then tell them how to do it!). Here’s a good background article on the problem.
Gadget News II: It’s going to get worse – what will telepathy mean for our ability to carve out some peace? Is a always-on global network of wireheads the same as the Unity in Christ that we all seek? Sounds like a hellish perversion of it to me, but I’m about as suited for one (a wired network) as I am for the other (perfect Unity)!
Culture News: David Brooks diagnoses the root of all our problems – mental weakness. I’m with him – we don’t see our shortcomings and we certainly don’t do the sorts of things (things the Church calls “asceticism”) to help. Again, Orthodoxy has the answer the world needs, but it’s to a problem that our culture doesn’t even recognize. It’s like living on another planet.
Science News: Why We See Spirits and Souls. Good stuff written by an atheist (but not an anti-theist). Are “spirits [to include other people] projections of the brain”? As Christians, we are called to become one with God and all others that are in Him; healthy folks have a natural sense of empathy that helps us “feel” this… but what if scientists can describe the internal brain process that leads to this feeling (and even reproduce it artificially)? Does that mean that this feeling is misleading? Can we really share life with anyone in an ontological sense? The author thinks we should redefine (and celebrate) religion as a cultural construct and leave out those pesky (and, according to him, non-crucial) questions about whether God exists, whether the soul dies with the body, etc. And this guy claims to be religion-friendly?!
Serious Stuff: We need to think – and be more intentional – about how we die.
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Volya Moment.
Response to a e-mail question: why did you convert to Orthodoxy? What does it offer that Methodism didn’t?
Retrospective evaluations are always suspect, but I wrote enough during that time to make this one a little less so.
With most conversions, there are “push factors”, those things that make the existing mode of worship problematic; and “pull factors”, those things that make another mode of worship desirable. Both were factors in my conversion, so let’s start with the things that made me even consider going to church somewhere other than a Methodist church.
The Push Factors
Before I begin, let me point out that Methodism has a lot going for it; of all the Protestant groups, I still prefer the Methodists. The traditional Methodist worship service with its hymns and doxologies (sung buy the entire congregation!); the theology that admits for the need for hard work and self discipline, but still puts the love of God and salvation through His Son paramount; the focus on bringing this love and salvation out into the world by serving the poor, combating addictions, and living out a “social gospel” are beautiful and (dare I say) God pleasing. I loved being Methodist because it taught me how to be Christian and how wonderful it was to live in the love of Our Lord.
So why did I leave? What wasn’t I satisfied with? I guess it comes down to really one thing (that manifested itself in many ways): I didn’t think we were taking things serious enough.
In worship, the goal seemed to be moving towards entertainment. The loose liturgical rubrics allow for a lot of lee-way. How do you decide what to do? “Emotional effect” was increasingly the answer. Now please know this: the churches we attended were relatively old school when it came to worship. No praise music or clown masses, thank you very much. But even so, it was a bit of a show. Very well done, but still a bit of a show.
In theology, Methodism has been hit pretty hard by the liberal stick. For instance, I had a seminarian in Bible Study tell me that the Church created the myth of the virginity of Mary in order to protect the perfection of Christ. That’s not what the Creeds that Methodists confess (which are the same Nicene and Apostles’ Creeds that they have always used), but liberalism eats away at the foundation of the Gospel, which is Christ Jesus. It’s been a long time since Methodists were strong and confident enough to condemn personal sin (as if the Wesleys would have balked at making people uncomfortable). They are still good at corporate and political sin (defined as pretty much everything the US does), but condemnation and repentance of personal sin is a prerequisite for growing in true love and unity through our Lord! It’s like taking a short-cut and trusting that God will accept still let us get where we need to go … but many are the same short-cuts that Christ Himself condemned. There is one Way, and that is the Cross. I just didn’t see a lot of calls for personal repentance coming from our Methodist pulpit.
In practice, Methodism allows room for perfectibility/sanctification, but there really aren’t any mechanisms spelled out for folks to use to get there (aside from learning more humility, more love, etc.). There is a lot to do (e.g. charity, committee work, missions, choir, Bible study), but it’s not tied in with the process of sanctification so much as it is with finding ways to serve God and His people and learn more about Him. Fine, but what is the measure of holiness? And how am I held accountable as I seek it? Without a strong set of instruction on virtues and vice, you run the risk of just giving everyone a pass. Which is what I saw far too much of. We reveled in the ability to find the way God was working through everyone – this is beautiful and true, but only part of the story; what we were missing was the recognition that perfection requires repenting of and forsaking sin. It’s a whole lot easier to just contextualize and justify bad behavior. “God loves me like I am” becomes an excuse for selfishness rather than a motivation to earn that love (through grace).
Practically, I was not given much information on how to be a good husband, how to raise a strong family, etc. After all, affirming the family and marriage would mean denigrating divorcees and single parents (not to mention gay/lesbian unions). This led me to check out things like “The Promise Keepers” (a disappointing experience, but at least they called for the kind of educated and Christ-centered intentionality I knew to be necessary) to help augment the Methodist experience.
Summary
In short, if people believe that Christ is the Son of God, that He incarnated, suffered, died, and rose so that we might be made perfect; then I expect them to act like it. I expect their worship to be something dignified and special (numinous!); I expect their theology to be solid and unchanging; and I expect them to be constant in their condemnation of sin and teaching of virtue. I expect them to make every action meaningful and righteous. I didn’t know what to call it at the time, but I wanted to allow Christ to sacramentalize every aspect of my personal and corporate life. Perhaps Wesley’s “Holiness” and “Perfection” could have provided a specifically Protestant way to achieve this, but those concepts have atrophied over the centuries within Methodism (or been intentionally worn down by theological liberalism and the denomination’s ties to leftist political causes).
So those were the push factors. I’ve been a bit vague on the actual issues (but have discussed them before), but I honestly believe that they are less pressing than these things that I have mentioned. Now for the the pull factors; what what was it that I found attractive in Orthodoxy?
The Pull Factors
Well, it certainly wasn’t the worship in a foreign language, or all the other foreign things that come with corporate life in an ethnic-based parish. Years of graduate study of slavic culture had made me anything but a slavophile. Nor was it the exclusivity (e.g. closed communion; long trial-period for catechumens). Nor was it the cult-like devotion I saw some parishes had for their priest. Nor was it the fundamantalist and know-nothing attitude towards Scripture that I found in some parishes. These were serious distractors. No, there was something about Orthodoxy that drew me towards it despite these things: I had finally found an entire credible institution that took Christ seriously. Sure, you can find given churches in most denominations that, at certain times, take Christ seriously… but Orthodoxy had everything, its worship, it’s theology, its practice, completely infused by the Gospel.
In worship, the sacraments weren’t symbolic, they were real; and worship life revolved around their revelation. The liturgy was centered on God, not just making people feel closer to Him (through good music, preaching, etc.). It was old fashioned and other-worldly and assumed the existence of outdated things like sacred space and the need for sobriety, but wouldn’t you expect worshiping a perfect God to be somewhat uncomfortable and challenging?
In theology, the temptation to become part of the culture is less strong in Orthodoxy because of the stronger pull of Tradition. The Protestant Sola Scriptura has the Bible to help resist, but the “advances” of liberal theology make adaptation the norm. Fundamentalist Protestants can fight this, but they seem to end up using Scripture in a reactionary manner to fight change. As a result, both end up adapting to the culture, but one in a way that excuses it and another in a way that condemns it. There is some of this in Orthodoxy – the temptations remain – , but the larger corpus of works, to include centuries of consistent canonized interpretation means that it is harder to change theology for immediate purposes; there is simply the Truth and the trusted record of its application. The believer may not always like what it teaches about a contemporary issue, but can trust that the doctrine was not created to support or oppose anyone’s modern agenda. This means that Orthodoxy sometimes looks liberal (as in its willingness to accept the implications of real science and calls for more serious stewardship of the environment); and sometimes looks conservative (as when it decries extramarital sex, abortion, and hedonism of all sorts). Scripture is the most important part of Tradition, but other things (like commentaries and service texts) are informed by the same revelation of the Gospel as are the Biblical Gospels themselves. As a social scientist, I recognize that these additional data points allow me to better place my own views within the “mean” of correct belief than if it were just me, a few friends, and our Bibles.
In practice, I appreciated the ascetic demands Orthodoxy made on me. The ubiquity of the prayer book, the expectation that all believers devote themselves to daily prayer and study, the fasting, the charity; all these things were designed with a single purpose: gradually purging me of my sin and leading me toward a life of righteousness. This is buttressed by the constant application of the [grace of the] Sacraments. Regular Confession keeps me accountable and regular Communion gives me the strength to continue along the Way that Christ established for us. Moreover, in part because the entire package is so traditional, family life is constantly affirmed, informed, and strengthened. [add a section on ecclesiology?]
Could I have found these things (or their functional equivalents) within Methodism? Perhaps, but individuals and groups that try to become more traditional are often tempted to simply become more fundamentalist. The personal “holiness” movement within Wesleyianism could have provided a sub-culture that probably would have helped, as would have finding a more traditional Methodist church. But the advantage of Orthodoxy is that there is so little variation in Worship, Theology, and Practice across parishes. Plus the whole package is devoted towards doing exactly what I need it to do. There are people who want the same things I do and who are willing to fight for them throughout personnel changes and fads within their Protestant churches. Good for them. But when I grew tired of this and wanted to find more support in a church that took things more seriously, I didn’t want to end up doing the same thing every time the preacher changed or every time I had to move. Orthodoxy solved that problem.
And once I was in, I found that it offered so much more. I won’t say that I am comfortable as an Orthodox Christian; not only am I still a sinner trying to become (through grace) worthy of the gifts God offers, but Orthodoxy (at least as it is practiced here in America) brings other distractions; most notably the ethnic thing. Preserving Old World culture helps some people (especially those with fresh roots there), but is a real stumbling block for others. But this becomes less a problem over time, and it is easy to find parishes that celebrate being Christian in the American context. You may notice my inconstancy here: but I find that ethnicity is not nearly the problem for sanctification that flaws in worship, theology, and practice are. I can put up with one, but the other… why bother?
