Discovering Orthodoxy

People I met at Easterfest

2009-05-07T07:16:00.001-07:00

I gave a lot of you the link to my blog, as well as the Anesti e-mail addresses of the other guys :p

If any of you happen to come on here, I do want to talk to you. Let me know with a comment or something if you're up for getting in touch.

Christ is risen!

Christ is risen! O Death, where is thy sting? O Hell, where is thy victory?

2009-04-19T05:01:00.000-07:00

St. John Chrysostom's Easter Homily

If anyone is devout and a lover of God, let them enjoy this beautiful and radiant festival.
If anyone is a grateful servant, let them, rejoicing, enter into the joy of his Lord.
If anyone has wearied themselves in fasting, let them now receive recompense.

If anyone has labored from the first hour, let them today receive the just reward.
If anyone has come at the third hour, with thanksgiving let them feast.
If anyone has arrived at the sixth hour, let them have no misgivings; for they shall suffer no loss.
If anyone has delayed until the ninth hour, let them draw near without hesitation.
If anyone has arrived even at the eleventh hour, let them not fear on account of tardiness.

For the Master is gracious and receives the last even as the first; he gives rest to him that comes at the eleventh hour, just as to him who has labored from the first.
He has mercy upon the last and cares for the first; to the one he gives, and to the other he is gracious.
He both honors the work and praises the intention.

Enter all of you, therefore, into the joy of our Lord, and, whether first or last, receive your reward.

O rich and poor, one with another, dance for joy!
O you ascetics and you negligent, celebrate the day!
You that have fasted and you that have disregarded the fast, rejoice today!
The table is rich-laden; feast royally, all of you!
The calf is fatted; let no one go forth hungry!

Let all partake of the feast of faith. Let all receive the riches of goodness.
Let no one lament their poverty, for the universal kingdom has been revealed.

Let no one mourn their transgressions, for pardon has dawned from the grave.
Let no one fear death, for the Saviour's death has set us free.

He that was taken by death has annihilated it!
He descended into Hades and took Hades captive!
He embittered it when it tasted his flesh! And anticipating this Isaiah exclaimed: "Hades was embittered when it encountered thee in the lower regions".

It was embittered, for it was abolished!
It was embittered, for it was mocked!
It was embittered, for it was purged!
It was embittered, for it was despoiled!
It was embittered, for it was bound in chains!

It took a body and came upon God!
It took earth and encountered heaven!
It took what it saw but crumbled before what it had not seen!

O death, where is thy sting?
O Hades, where is thy victory?

Christ is risen, and you are overthrown!
Christ is risen, and the demons are fallen!
Christ is risen, and the angels rejoice!

Christ is risen, and life reigns!
Christ is risen, and not one dead remains in a tomb!

For Christ, being raised from the dead, has become the first-fruits of them that slept.

To him be glory and might unto ages of ages. Amen.

My journey to the Orthodox faith.

2009-04-06T04:26:00.000-07:00

BIG ANNOUNCEMENT

I was received into the Holy Orthodox Church on St. Mary of Egypt Sunday, April 5th 2009, by Holy Baptism and Chrismation. I think it's time I shared my journey with anyone who I link here if they're interested :)

This is pasted from a post I wrote on a forum to another seeker, which in turn was based on the story I wrote to my friend's mother in an e-mail.

This is the last place I would have ever expected to have been - at the beginning of 2007, I was an anti-Catholic, pro-Reformed theology, Chick-tract-totin' Protestant (though on the last one, I got put in my place fairly quickly for that). But my seeking, which I'll elaborate on in a bit, has led me here. I realize that not all who have sought high and low have come to the Church (yet :p) and there have even been those who have left the Church for another expression of Christianity, another religion, or no religion at all. I cannot deny what I have found, however, and what scores of others, all oblivious to the others on the same path, who have somehow happened to come across the most ancient form of the Christian faith and have made this unlikely Church their own. Some authors and public Christian figures, as well as Protestant laypeople, have labelled it a "trend" or a "fad", and the question has been asked "Why is the oldest Church in Christendom the newest thing in Christianity?" The fact of the matter is, however, that most, if not all of us, myself included, were painfully unaware of all the other people coming to Orthodoxy - I only realized just how many people have taken the plunge after I came to it. If we were Evangelical Protestants, this would be called a revival - I'm not sure the terminology translates, but God is leading us back to the One Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church as individuals, and letting us find out for ourselves just how many of us there really are.

As for deception and discernment - yes, I think it is something to be taken much more seriously than many of us do. I would say that much of popular Western Christianity isn't really Christianity at all. The Word-Faith, name-it-and-claim-it/blab-it-and-grab-it, prosperity gospel, one-time-salvation-event stuff that many people in our world see as synonymous with Christianity is just plain wrong. Joel Osteen is the head of the single largest church in the United States, and I don't know whether or not I'm within my bounds to say this, but he is simply completely wrong. The same goes for the Benny Hinns, the Kenneth Copelands, and the Creflo Dollars of this world. Their teachings are not only absent from the Bible, they are anti-scriptural, non-historical, and completely foreign to the historical Christian faith.

Paul Washer, a Southern Baptist missionary, said that "The greatest heresy in the American Evangelical Protestant church is that if you ask Jesus Christ to come into your heart, he will definitely come in." In that same sermon, he stood before 5000 teenagers at a youth conference and told them that "American Christianity is almost totally wrong" and that people at modern-day churches were "wondering why the Holy Spirit hasn't fallen, and why they have to create false fire and false excitement - because God's not in it" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uuabITeO4l8). I don't agree with much of Washer's theology anymore, seeing as though he is a strict Reformed Christian, but he is one of the few Protestant ministers that I still have a soft spot for. John Piper also talks briefly about the distortion of the Christian faith being exported from America to third-world countries, the same faith that's settled in our country as well (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTc_FoELt8s). So it's sort of plain to see that even the Evangelical Protestants are recognizing a lot of the fundamental flaws of modern seeker-sensitive Evangelical theology, and not even the genuine seeking of many of those involved in these movements has been immune to falling prey to the distortions and heresies of the modern Evangelical church.

Jesus warned of this, saying "Then if anyone says to you, ‘Look, here is the Christ!’ or ‘There!’ do not believe it. For false christs and false prophets will rise and show great signs and wonders to deceive, if possible, even the elect" (Matthew 24:23-24). Paul also warned against not testing the spirits and conforming to sound doctrine, warning the believers to "Convince, rebuke, exhort, with all longsuffering and teaching. For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but according to their own desires, because they have itching ears, they will heap up for themselves teachers; and they will turn their ears away from the truth, and be turned aside to fables" (2 Timothy 4:2-4). So from this, I would say that an apparently Christian spirit is not enough to be confident that both the doctrine and practice of a church body is sound.

I don't mean to instill any sense of hopelessness though. That's not my intention, rather I'm concerned with being where it is safe, where the fullness of the faith is preserved and practiced. That place is the catholic Church. By "catholic", I'm not talking about what is now known as the Roman Catholic Church (though the Church of Rome was originally part of the Orthodox Catholic Church), but rather what the very meaning of catholic is - katholikos, according to the whole, complete and uncorrupt. In short, the One Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church that was proclaimed by the hierarchs at the Council of Nicaea in 325AD, which has been preserved to this day by what we now call the Orthodox Church. That is where the fullness of the faith is held, and where true doctrine has been kept. St. Paul wrote "But if I should be delayed, you should know how to behave in the household of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and foundation of truth." (1 Timothy 3:15). The Church is the pillar and foundation of all truth, not the Holy Scripture, or at least individual men's interpretation of it. The Church produced the Bible, not the other way around, and the Bible cannot be understood apart from the context of the life of the Church.

The early saints and Fathers, both Eastern and Western, proclaimed this strict adherence to the Orthodox, Catholic and Apostolic faith. St. Ignatius of Antioch, who was consecrated as bishop by St. Peter, wrote in 106AD "Wherever the bishop shall appear, there let the multitude [of the people] also be; even as, wherever Jesus Christ is, there is the Catholic Church" (Letter to the Smyrnaeans).

St. Cyril of Jerusalem wrote in the fourth century "If you are ever sojourning in cities, ask not simply where the Lord's House is (for the other sects of the profane also attempt to call their own dens houses of the Lord), nor merely where the Church is, but where is the Catholic Church. For this is the peculiar name of this Holy Church, the mother of us all, which is the spouse of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Only-begotten Son of God" (Catechetical Lectures, XVIII, 26).

St. Augustine (354-430AD), the Western saint whom the Eastern Church disagrees with as far as ancestral sin is concerned but whose views on the catholicity of the Church correspond to the consensus of the other Fathers, said that "In the Catholic Church, there are many other things which most justly keep me in her bosom. The consent of peoples and nations keeps me in the Church; so does her authority, inaugurated by miracles, nourished by hope, enlarged by love, established by age. The succession of priests keeps me, beginning from the very seat of the Apostle Peter, to whom the Lord, after His resurrection, gave it in charge to feed His sheep (John 21:15-19), down to the present episcopate... and so, lastly, does the very name of Catholic, which, not without reason, amid so many heresies, the Church has thus retained; so that, though all heretics wish to be called Catholics, yet when a stranger asks where the Catholic Church meets, no heretic will venture to point to his own chapel or house... such then in number and importance are the precious ties belonging to the Christian name which keep a believer in the Catholic Church, as it is right they should ... With you, where there is none of these things to attract or keep me... No one shall move me from the faith which binds my mind with ties so many and so strong to the Christian religion... For my part, I should not believe the gospel except as moved by the authority of the Catholic Church" (Against the Epistle of Manichaeus called Fundamental, Chapter 4).

This is why I believe that the only safe haven is found within the One Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church, and that trying to figure out what the Bible is saying and what pure religion actually is outside the context of that Church can only lead one, in varying degrees, into heresy and distortion. The Fathers testify to this, imploring one to seek the catholic faith - accept no substitutes, I suppose :p

My own journey to the Orthodox Church is an odd one. I went forward at an altar call in 2006 at a conference called Recharge. I was there because my mother thought that I was self-destructing and needed to get into a church, so her co-worker at her job at the pharmacy invited me to start playing on the Sunday night services at the nearby Baptist church. I very quickly began having my newly rediscovered faith challenged, and me being the one always looking for answers to problems, that was my introduction to apologetics and theology.

So for a while, I was a happy Evangelical, now being one of my own choice rather than simply because it was what I'd been brought up in - my mother was baptized Catholic, but her Italian mother left the Church and took the kids with her after an argument with the priest, my mother ended up being confirmed Anglican and then began attending a large Assemblies of God church when I was very young. I was baptized as a child in the Church of Wales, but apart from my mother taking me to her Pentecostal church, and the 1000-year-old church down my lane on special occasions, like Easter and Christmas, I never went to church. When we came to Australia, I attended Anglican chapel services at school and once went to a Lutheran service with my great-aunt. I also attended a couple of Youth Alive events. But I was just happy to be a Christian without a church.

Keeping the story short, I became very active in my Baptist church, which probably leans a fair amount to the charismatic side as far as the youth are concerned - Hillsong United and Planetshakers songs at evening church, everyone goes to Youth Alive and Planetshakers, does a lot of stuff with the nearby Pentecostal youth groups, etc. At this time, I'd also gotten myself involved in a lot of arguments with Roman Catholics I would come across, and for a brief time I took on the viewpoint of Mr. Chick that the Roman Catholic Church was the Whore of Babylon and Satan's counterfeit Christianity. At this point, I knew very little about the Orthodox Church. I didn't even leap to the conclusion that a lot of people do and brand it the Eastern version of Roman Catholicism, but without a Pope. I simply thought it was the traditional Greek/Russian/Serbian church, which fulfilled the role of what the Anglican Church did, in my view (though even that was mistaken), for the traditional English folk. Shows how much I knew about church history and ecclesiology at that point.

I remember in January 2007, my friend told me about how one of the Greek boys that we knew said that the Greek Orthodox Church was the true church, and me thinking how absolutely ridiculous that sounded. To think, that the ritualistic, superstitious Greek club could possibly be the true church. Again, shows how much I knew :p

I did, however, meet a Russian girl who had emigrated to Australia when she started at my school. We sat next to each other on the bus going home from Year 11 leadership camp, and I found out that she was Russian Orthodox, though currently very nominal. We talked about religion and church, and I decided I was going to get her into church again at the Baptist church. I succeeded, but it's turned out to be my Greek Orthodox parish that I got her to start going to, not the Baptist church :p I like to think that she was my first real push towards finding out more about Eastern Orthodoxy.

My allegiance to the Evangelical/Baptist/Pentecostal way of doing things was shaken a little bit when I started hearing about allegations against the megachurches here, particularly Hillsong, sometimes on Today Tonight and A Current Affair. I put it out of my mind, because honestly, who trusts tabloid news programs? The hits kept coming though - I began going to Youth Alive conferences again, but to my dismay, I realized just how fake it all was. I wrote an entry the day after the Switchfoot Youth Alive conference (http://www.geocities.com/yeahmate777...thechurch.html), and though my theology and beliefs concerning the Church have drastically changed (and I no longer support Way of the Master in any shape or form :p), my grievances remain the same. Something just seemed very wrong. And nobody else seemed to notice.

For Christmas 2007, I was given a book by a family friend called People In Glass Houses: An Insider's Account In and Out of Hillsong Church by Tanya Levin. I want to make it clear though that I didn't jump ship because of it, but it was another in showing me the shaky foundations of the modern Evangelical church. My girlfriend, who at the time was attending an AoG church, read the book as well, and suddenly understood where I had been coming from for the past couple of months.

On top of this, I was beginning to study church history, and I realized that not only was I finding it hard to stay an Evangelical, but also that Protestantism in general was an untenable position. I began to realize that I couldn't answer Catholic arguments against Protestantism, and that concerning church government, the sacraments, the Five Solas of the Reformation, etc, and I simply didn't have a leg to stand on. With all that I'd been going through, I finally gave in and decided that I was going to pursue becoming a Roman Catholic, as my mother was also interested in rediscovering her Catholic roots.

Everything came to a head at the last Planetshakers conference in January 2008 though. I had decided to give this side of Christianity another chance, but it turned out to be the worst week of my life. I was so angry and bitter at the end of it that I could hardly contain my rage while I was walking back to the train with another person's boyfriend who had been dragged there as well. I'm not sure whether it was the first or last night of the conference, but I announced to my girlfriend and her friend out of nowhere that I had decided to join the Orthodox Church. This was when I had been investigating Catholicism, but I suddenly just got the gut feeling that told me to head towards Orthodoxy. I didn't even know a thing about it, but I was going to soon find out.

After reading a few articles, I was blown away at just how much had gone over my head. I also talked to a couple of Orthodox Christians, and was very surprised at how much I agreed with them. There was a stirring within me that pushed me towards it, which I can't explain, but things just all seemed to fall into place. I was subscribed to Reclaiming the Mind, a podcast that interviews Evangelical scholars - but one day when I was agonizing about which Church I was to belong to, I came across a podcast by them that was an interview with Dr. Bradley Nassif, an Antiochian Orthodox theologian who is very involved in Orthodox-Evangelical dialogues (he was born into the Orthodox Church, came to faith in Christ at an Evangelical church, and then returned to the Orthodox Church - a common theme?). That was how I came across Ancient Faith Radio, as Dr. Nassif has a podcast called Simply Orthodox, and so that was the first Orthodox podcast I subscribed to. It broke down all the emotional walls between Orthodoxy and I.

I also got in touch with a girl from Adelaide who was baptized into the Church on Holy Saturday of last year. She answered a lot of my basic questions, but beyond that pushed me to stop being an armchair Orthodox and actually get myself to church and become a catechumen. So I got my English teacher, who is Greek Orthodox, to take me to her parish one night, and she introduced me to the priest, who is now my spiritual father. He and I started talking a lot via e-mail and began meeting and having long-winded conversations about church history and church politics. Now the conversations aren't so exclusively of an intellectual and head-knowledge nature, and are now more to do with my spiritual life - am I reading my Bible? Am I praying? How should I fast? And perhaps that's good - what I needed was the experiential side of Christianity rather than just arguments and apologetics, but I could never find it in Charismatic Evangelicalism... it just all seemed so transparent. Orthodoxy has given me that.

Ask me any questions, I know I probably haven't said all that is needed.

Heterodox Salvation

2009-03-27T00:54:00.000-07:00

Jon implicitly suggested in the comments to my very first blog way back when that I should write something on salvation outside of the Church. I think it's probably time I put this up.

When I was first starting my journey to Orthodoxy, I did fret over the whole heterodox salvation issue. Was I hellbound before, and were the people I was leaving behind as well? My friend from Adelaide gave me this quote from St. Theophan the Recluse, who said "You ask, will the heterodox be saved… Why do you worry about them? They have a Saviour Who desires the salvation of every human being. He will take care of them. You and I should not be burdened with such a concern. Study yourself and your own sins."

Everyone is on their own journey. God will work with what we're given, and what we have to work with. It may be said that there is no salvation outside of the Church, but not because an organization is claiming exclusive rights to being the true faith as such, but because the statement itself is a tautology, as the Church, being Christ's Body, is salvation. I don't hold my former Evangelicalism in disdain though - it is through it that that I first came to Christ, and as my priest said to me, "You wouldn't be where you are now without it. So never be bitter." I also don't want to judge the salvation of those outside the Orthodox Church, least of all because it is not my place to judge and because not even my place is set yet. Another reason is because in some way, the heterodox may be united the Church in some mystical manner known only to God - the connection is not set in its proper context, but God works within all situations, and the circumstances that modern Christianity has found herself in as far as schism and denominationalism are concerned probably require a lot of grace to get all of us through.

There is also the hope that all who have sincerely and genuinely sought God in all of his fullness and truth with the light that they have received will eventually be united with his Church - in this life or the next. And that doesn't just include the non-Orthodox Christians, but members of others religions as well. Now, I'm not advocating a form of religious pluralism or "all ways are true in their own way". I also believe that only Christians will populate the heavenly kingdom - but it's not up to me what everyone will be before they reach it. For all I know, a Hindu or a Buddhist or a Muslim (or perhaps even an atheist, as shocking as that may be to some) may reach the throne of God after a life of searching for the truth, and fall before the feet of Christ and honestly say "Yes Lord, you are the one I was always searching for! You died for me, and you rose from the dead for me!"

Heaven will be populated based on the grace of God and what they did with the light that was given to them - to whom much is given, much shall be asked, and to whom little is given, little shall be asked. God, by his mercy, however, has revealed to me the Orthodox Church in this life, not the next, and therefore I am bound to pursue it. The world is the Great Flood, and the apostolic catholic Church is the Ark. Though we may pull through on lifeboats and rafts and whatever other mercies God sends our way, we run a much greater risk of being swept away by heresy and the passions of this life if we do not get on board the Ark that God ordained to be built for the salvation of humankind, the founder and head of which is Christ.

Every faith has her light, in varying degrees depending on how far removed she is from the Church. Even Scientology, as Fr Andrew Damick says, affirms that mankind is fundamentally broken in a way that needs to be fixed. The Catholics and the Protestants are our closest brothers and sisters in faith, and those we share the most in common with. I also don't deny that the Holy Spirit shows up in places other than the Orthodox Church - we don't control where He goes, we are simply confident of His presence in the Church because of the handing down of the faith from generation to generation, from the apostles to today. Whatever problems I have with the modern Pentecostal church, I will never say that the Holy Spirit is not active within the lives of countless Pentecostals, guiding them, moving them, helping them I grow.

When I was an Evangelical, the Holy Spirit was very active within my journey - He took me first to Evangelical Protestantism, and started a chain of events that has led me to where I am now. I honestly believe that Pentecostalism finds her fulfillment in Orthodoxy, because, though it may have not seemed like it when it so often seems to be wrapped up in cultural traditions (though the problem there is when a particular nation's expression of Orthodoxy is exported with the immigrants into a new country, it can seem at first to look like nothing but a strange and foreign faith) and whatever else, the Orthodox faith is the true Pentecostal faith. It's the Church that began in Jerusalem on the Day of Pentecost, and the miracles that took place on that day have continued throughout the history of the Church to this day. Barnabas Powell (formerly Chuck Powell), a former Pentecostal pastor (whose journey to Orthodox can be downloaded directly from here) said that Orthodoxy in its purest form is where the Pentecostal will be most at home. At the entrance to Mt Athos where the boat reaches the dock, there is a sign that says (from my memory, probably a paraphrase) "To all visitors: Miracles and healings happen here every single day. Do not be alarmed. Say nothing."

So the short answer is, I can't say where non-Orthodox are going, anymore than I can say where any Orthodox Christian, including myself, is going to end up for sure (an old saying goes that the road to hell is paved with the skulls of priests and bishops - that shook me a little when I first heard it!). That's not my place to judge, it's up to God's mercy and Him alone. The only thing I can say is that the Orthodox Church is the Church that Christ founded, and since God has revealed this to me, I am obligated to follow where He wants me to go with this to the very ends of the Earth.

A week on...

2009-01-27T17:00:00.000-08:00

I’ve had a week to reflect on the inauguration of President Obama, and I’m still unsure as to how I should feel. Obviously, my opinion doesn’t matter to most Americans, especially the rabidly pro-McCain Roman Catholics that I came across during election season on Paltalk, among other places (they only needed to convince non-Americans not to vote for that pro-death Democrat).

Would it have been better had McCain won though? How much importance should we as Orthodox Christians place on the issue of life when it comes round to election time? Obviously we must take a firm stand against abortion, but when that issue doesn’t seem to get resolved regardless of whether a Democrat or a Republican is in office, are we still able to support a pro-choice candidate for his other policies? Even if, as some assert, we are just as morally culpable for the decisions of our leaders if we were among those who contributed to their election? I know I’m not an American, so I can’t be held responsible for Obama’s actions (apart from perhaps my encouraging of Americans to vote for him over McCain), but I guess that this carries over into who I vote for in my own country – even though in Australia, abortion doesn’t seem to be a big issue as far as our parties are concerned.

Unless you’re planning on voting Family First.

D:

Being Orthodox in an individualistic world

2009-01-26T20:30:00.000-08:00

Holy Tradition is a difficult thing to swallow, especially when I wonder how easily I can reconcile my own beliefs that seem to be at odds with it. As a Protestant, I was able to pick and choose whatever I wanted to believe; as most people have probably heard, “In essentials, Unity; in non-essentials, Liberty; in all things, Charity.” Yet as an Evangelical, there was always that disconnect from any kind of historical authority that I could never quite put my finger on. I always felt alone.

Not that I didn’t have good relationships at my Baptist church. Regardless of the fellowship that I may have enjoyed there, however, there was always an isolation that I could never quite shake. I remember always feeling as if it was just myself, the Bible, and what I thought was the right interpretation of it. I remember always despairing, thinking that such-and-such a group might be the ones who got it right, from the Armstrongists to the Jehovah’s Witnesses, from the House of Yahweh to the Westboro Baptist Church. Since discovering Holy Orthodoxy, however, a lot of those things have melted away. Who-wrote-which-book just doesn’t to matter so much anymore. But not only that, I no longer feel alone. I still don’t know that many people at my parish yet – I can’t even communicate properly with a number of them, due to us not knowing each other’s languages all that well – but there is that sense of being connected to the historical faith, that which was once for all handed down to the saints.

But it does have its flipside. What about the occasions in which I don’t agree with the Fathers? Take for example the stance of many contemporary Orthodox laymen and clergy alike (including one monk whose work I owe much to) who assert that theistic evolution, the protology to which I hold, is completely incompatible with the patristic interpretation of Scripture (which, at first glace, certainly seems so), and that those bishops who believe in some kind of compatibility between faith and modern science have simply been ensnared by the modernizations of the West.

I know that in the scheme of things, it really doesn’t matter what I personally think about something. The Church is going to believe what she has believed since the beginning. But I’m still not entirely sure where to go with this.

Maybe it's time to revive this thing.

2009-01-13T02:23:00.001-08:00

Being around halfway into my catechumenate, I thought it might be good if I actually started using this blog again for what it's meant for. That, and also the fact that I gave the URL away when I was on Generation Orthodox, so I'd better deliver on the actual material.

Watch this space in the coming weeks, I'll probably start updating.

Little bit of news...

2008-07-17T03:19:00.001-07:00

Last Saturday night, I attended the Divine Liturgy at my nearby Greek Orthodox parish for the first time. Yeah, I know that Liturgy is meant to be in the morning, but they do the English service when the sun goes down on Saturday night, and it's technically the start of the next day. Whatever.

Anyway, there is a lot of stuff that I'm going to need to get used to. I don't know how a lot of the things go, I don't know when to cross myself (I found out the hard way that most of the parishioners don't do it every time the symbol appears in the prayer book), and everything being sung isn't what I'm familiar with. But it was beautiful. The icons all over the walls and the ceiling, the ceremony involved with the blessing of the Eucharist, and the sense that not only are you worshiping with a tight-knit community of believers, but that you are worshiping with the saints of the Church's past who have walked the same steps in the Liturgy as you are now. And whatever I might say about the worship, the short sermon that the priest conducting the Liturgy gave packed in so much more substance than any Evangelical preacher I have ever listened to - and according to a person I talked to at the church, it wasn't even one of his best ones! The fact that he could even so much as skim over aspects of church history without the congregation batting an eyelid when I would be used to people falling asleep beside me was refreshing, to say the least!

And I've been in correspondence with the parish priest, and I'm pleased to admit that I'm now an Orthodox catechumen (doxa to theo)!

In other news, I got my licence. So maybe this will open up some doors as far as getting to Liturgy goes!

An audio file you should check out...

2008-06-18T06:37:00.000-07:00

Before I actually get to detailing my journey away from Protestantism and towards Orthodoxy, I thought that I might point you in the direction of somebody who did it long before me - Metropolitan Kallistos Ware.

http://deimos3.apple.com/WebObjects/Core.woa/Browse/spu-public.1492141529?i=1779098053

If that doesn't work, go to the iTunes Store, and search for "My Journey To The Orthodox Church". His will be the only thing that comes up. It's a great talk to listen to, so have fun with it!

Also, another interview that I would recommend is one by the Generation Orthodox podcast with Mike Tubbs, the ex-vocalist of East West, who joined the Eastern Orthodox Church a while ago.

http://iconnewmedianetwork.com/mp3/go/gop-6-11-12-07.mp3

(That one's a .mp3, you can download it straight from here!)

-Tom.

Why the atonement?

2008-06-07T19:15:00.000-07:00

14/04/09 EDITED TO ADD: Though my theology of the atonement may have been off when I first wrote this blog, I'm going to leave it up to show where I was at the time that I first started looking into Orthodoxy.

Recently, I’ve been having a number of conversations with an acquaintance of mine. He’s a former member of the Bahá’í Faith, but is now an atheist. Tonight, he presented me with this quote before asking my opinion on a related issue.

Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them. If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones.

-Marcus Aurelius

He then asked me what my view on religions other than Christianity was. Did I believe them to be false, or at least not the ‘highest truth’, and why? My answer was this - that while many religions will contain elements and/or aspects of truth, religious pluralism serves little more than political correctness. Every single religion makes mutually exclusive claims, and in that, either one of them is right, or none of them are. Judaism denies the possibility of the Incarnation, and Islam asserts that Jesus never died, and because of that, was never resurrected. I noted that the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ is a central tenet of Christianity, and that both claims cannot both be true; Jesus either died, or he did not. My contact replied by saying that virtually all major religions believe in a supreme being, who created and cares for the world, and treats his creation with love and forgiveness.

According to him, the only differences are things that are hardly to the point, including the Jews rejecting Jesus as a later prophet, Christians rejecting Muhammad as a later prophet, and the Muslims rejected the Bab as a later prophet. He also made clear that he agreed with the Jews and the Muslims that “the central ‘tenet’ of Christianity is nonsense and spiritually misleading” as well as considering that “if God is all-powerful, why the need to die and come back again? why not just do the ‘thing’ without the dying?”

Exactly what he was getting at, I am uncertain, but it raises a point that Christians need to make clear to those in other religions or no religion. We do not serve a God who will merely sweep sins under the rug like the god of the Muslims can - the God of Judaism and Christianity has always demanded payment for sin as well as repentance. Scripture testifies to the nature of this payment when it states:

For the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it to you upon the altar to make an atonement for your souls; for it is the blood that makes an atonement for the soul.

-Leviticus 17:11

My friend referred to this as barbaric, and that “people associate the spiritual need with peace, fulfillment and love… they can’t see things like sacrifice, blood and sin, and feel that connection”. The fundamental flaw with this reasoning, however, is that on the cross, both God’s love and wrath worked together in perfect harmony. I, for one, cannot picture anything more loving than the Creator becoming one of his creatures in order to take the penalty that would have fallen upon them otherwise. In order for God’s love to be truly accessed, his standard of justice must be met, and through being incarnated in Jesus Christ, he took the fall in our place.

We cannot have our cake and eat it too, however. Jesus Christ is either the Word of God incarnate, who was born to live a perfect life, who died for our sins, and was resurrected in both victory over death and a vindication of his divine honour, or he is not, and he did not. We cannot have it both ways, and anybody who attempts to do so will find themselves in a rut - who do they say he is?

Just my thoughts at 1:20am on a Sunday morning.