Category Archives: Culture

Never Forget—In Two Acts

02 Saturday Oct 2021

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Only take heed to yourself, and diligently keep yourself, lest you forget the things your eyes have seen, and lest they depart from your heart all the days of your life.
—Moses, Deuteronomy 4:9
Act I
Scene 1
It was a beautiful Tuesday morning.  The sky was clear blue, Colorado blue, if you know what I mean.  At 8:46 am the first airplane appeared.  It was flying low and fast.  It hit the North Tower (1 WTC) at 8:46:40 am.  Explosions, fire, and chaos ensued.  Then, a second plane hit the South Tower.  A third plane hit the Pentagon.  A fourth crashed in a field in Pennsylvania.  By 10:03:11 am the attack was over.  There was death and there was heroism.  2,977 people lost their lives in the attack known as 9/11, September 11, 2001.

President Bush swore that the U.S. would hit back and never forget.

Memorials were erected at the site of the Twin Towers, the Pentagon, and in the field in Pennsylvania.
A few weeks ago was the 20th anniversary of 9/11.  There were public and private events around the country where many gathered.  The slogan for the gatherings was, “Never Forget.”  In fact, most of us went about our daily lives.
Scene 2
It was early Sunday morning.  The sky was blue with only low, scattered clouds, a typically beautiful day in the Hawaiian Islands.  Just before 8 am the first airplanes appeared.  They were flying low and fast.  Explosions, fire, and chaos ensued.  By 9:50 am the attack was over.  There was death and and there was heroism.  2,403 military and civilian personnel lost their lives in the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.

President Roosevelt called it “a date that will live in infamy.”  He swore the U.S. would hit back and never forget.

In Pearl Harbor, the USS Arizona remains as a memorial to the many dead from that infamous day.  It reminds us, Never Forget.

I remember the 20th anniversary events held in 1961.  The attack was still fresh in the collective memory of the country.  On December 7th of this year, there will be an 80th anniversary event.  I suspect it will be muted, attended only by history buffs and those few remaining whose lives were directly effected by the attack.

Scene 3
It was a Wednesday when British troops marched to Washington D.C.  That night, they set fire to the White House and Capitol building.  August 24th, 2021 marked the 207th anniversary of the “burning of Washington D.C., an important event in the War of 1812–the only theme in history a foreign army has occupied the capitol of the U.S.

There are numerous memorial plaques scattered around the country commemorating various battles of this War.  They quietly exhort us, Never Forget.

207 years ago…does anyone remember?

Intermission

On September 11, 2081, what will the 80th anniversary of the 9/11 attack be like?  Will it become as muted as will be the next Pearl Harbor anniversary?  And, September 11, 2208 will be the 207th anniversary of the 9/11 attack.  Will it be long forgotten as is the burning of Washington D.C.?

There are hundreds of monuments, memorials, and plaques commemorating important people and events in Washington D.C.  Many thousands more are in parks and on buildings across the U.S.  If you are attentive when you drive the roads, you will often see a sign pointing you to a historical marker, usually in an obscure location and hard to find.  “Never Forget,” they whisper.  Why do we still forget?
Act II
Scene 1
It is sometime in the 1,400s BCE, about 3,500 years ago.  For 400 years, God had been creating a new nation for Himself, incubating them as slaves in Egypt.  They were to be set apart to worship Him, to be His people.
On a mountain top in a nearby country, God approached an old man, a has been.  The man was once a Prince of Egypt, the greatest nation on Earth.  He had it all.  Now, he tended sheep in obscurity.  Moses was his name.  You may have heard of him.  God gave Moses and his brother Aaron a job to do: lead God’s new people, Israel, out of Egypt.  With God doing the heavy lifting to convince the most powerful man in the world, Egypt’s Pharaoh, to let His people go, Moses led Israel out of Egypt.
Over the next 40 years, God sustained them in the desert while He formed this wandering band of hundreds of thousands into a nation.  He gave them an annual celebration to commemorate His work in freeing them from Egypt—it is called Passover.  He showed them how to cleanse themselves from their sins so as to be able to be in His presence without harm to them.  He gave them the plans for a worship tent (they were nomadic, after all), and taught the priests how to dress.  He taught them how to worship Him.
In his farewell address to Israel and as they stood at the edge of the land promised to them by God, Moses reminded them of all God had done for them over the past 40 years.  And, he warned them of the danger of prosperity.  “Never Forget,” he said.  "He delivered you out of slavery; you are His people." Then he died.

Scene 2 Israel entered the land promised to them by God. Over the next 1,400 years, Israel struggled to remember. There were 400 years of oppression and peace, then “three generations of the united monarchy (Saul, David, Solomon), nineteen kings of Israel (up to 722 bc) and twenty kings of Judah (up to 587 bc), [and a] hosts of the prophets and priests.” Israel conquered, was conquered and exiled, then restored to their land. They build a permanent building, a Temple, in which to worship God…and then it was destroyed…and then rebuilt…and then destroyed.

At one point during those 1,400 years, the number of those who remembered God and that they were His people dwindled to a mere remnant: only 7,000.  The ritual acts continued.  They never forgot.

Scene 3
It was night when the angels announced the birth of a baby boy to small group of shepherds huddled in a field.  Jesus, the Son of God, was born in a small town in a country on the edge of the Roman Empire.  Few noticed.  For 30 years He lived in obscurity.  During His last three years, He was…well…God incarnate walking the Earth.  He didn’t come, He said, to change the rituals that had gone on before; rather, He said, He came to fulfill them.  Then He was killed.  Then resurrected.  Then He ascended into heaven.
After His ascent into heaven, those who had known and followed Him remained His people, now known as His Church; they continued the ancient Jewish rituals, but in a changed way, a way that recognized and celebrated His death and resurrection.  For 2,000 years, ancient Church has continued to participate in the 3,500 year old ritual of the Passover—we call it Easter, or Pascha (in Greek).  Too, the Sunday worship (Divine Liturgy) continues the 3,500 year old worship of the ancient Church as given by God to the Israeli’s and fulfilled by Jesus.
Epilogue
How have the people of God remembered the events of the past for more than 3,500 years when we barely remember horrific events of only 80 years ago.  Why do the people of God still identify themselves as such after more than 3,500 years when individual nations come and go?
Monuments and memorials seem to be important to help us remember a person or an event date.  But there is more than just remembering famous people or events.  To truly remember, we need to know who we are as a people.  To Never Forget we cannot, as individuals, only gaze at a monument to know who we are.  Each of us must find our individual identity in community with others.  For that, we need traditions, sometimes called rituals.  We have many: weddings, funerals, school graduations, tail-gate parties, thanksgiving dinners…each tradition helps us find our identity in a community of others and with those who came before us and will come after us.  In the rituals we find ourselves and remember who we are as a “people.”
To truly remember God and to join Him in His life we need a communal practice that connects us together, that reminds us of who we each are and of our joined humanity, and that joins us to reality and to God.  Ritual is required  God saves us together.  Alone we may perish.

Ritual.  The ancient path.  We cannot invent new, exciting ways to worship God.  We need the 3,500 years of unbroken ritual given to us by God.  Changed but unchanging.  It is why we “Never Forget.”  It is why we remember who we are in Christ.

This is what the Lord says:
“Stand by the ways and see and ask for the ancient paths, where the good way is, and walk in it; then you will find a resting place for your souls.”
—Prophet Jeremiah

Humanity and Humans

10 Tuesday Aug 2021

Posted by in All, Culture, Humankind, Social Justice, Uncategorized

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 In 2001, Al-Qaeda operatives hijacked four US commercial airliners.  Thousands died that day and later, as a result of the attack.  In October of that same year, the US staged a retaliatory invasion of Afghanistan.  In 2003, the “war on terrorism” was expanded to include Iraq.  As a result, uncounted more combatants have died.  And then there are the “unintended consequences”: the individual Afghani’s and Iraqi’s who were killed or otherwise had their lives upended.

One writer, tracing the history of the United States, says the US has been at war for all but 21 years of her existence.  The US has been warring for 224 out of 245 years.  That’s 91%.  Oh my.

Over the course of human history, there have been civil wars, religious wars, wars of liberation, cultural wars, territorial wars, and now cyber wars.  The list is long.  And, even when not in an actual war with another country, we use the language of war; the US continues to wage the war on drugs and the war on poverty.

And, it is not just actual shooting wars in which we engage.

Last week in Texas there was a 4-day march to the capital called the “Moral March.”  The main focus of the march was to emphasize the need to protect our democracy by ensuring voting rights for all (against what is seen by some as the Texas legislature’s move to restrict voting rights).  Famed civil rights advocate Jesse Jackson was involved as was someone from the “Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival” and an organization called “Repairers of the Breach.”  The name of God was invoked to justify the march.  The organizers also used powerful imagery from the US  Civil Rights movement of the 1960s and even the biblical Old Testament story of Moses and the Red Sea.  They use the language of war: “choose a side”; “stop attacks on democracy.”  I’m sure their opponents use similar war language.

Wars, marches, programs, movements…many seem well intentioned to stamp out some real or perceived injustice in the world; they all have one thing in common: humans are involved.  Sadly, it seems, we are the cause of the very injustice we seek to eradicate.

Soviet dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn, while addressing the 1978 graduating class at Harvard, said this:

This tilt of freedom toward evil has come about gradually, but it evidently stems from a humanistic and benevolent concept according to which man—the master of the world—does not bear any evil within himself, and all the defects of life are caused by misguided social systems, which must therefore be corrected.

In his book, The Brothers Karamazov, Dostoyevsky’s Father Zossima says:

[T]hrowing your own indolence and impotence on others you will end by sharing the pride of Satan and murmuring against God.  Of the pride of Satan what I think is this: it is hard for us on earth to comprehend it, and therefore it is so easy to fall into error and to share it, even imagining that we are doing something grand and fine.

What if the entire so-called “modern project,” which tells us that the evil is not in us, but that we must make social programs or governments better to improve all areas of our humanity is one of simply joining in the “pride of Satan.”  What if Satan is simply encouraging us toward doing “grand and fine” things to fix humanity by such ways as wars of liberation, marches for morality, nationwide programs for the poor and afflicted, renewing urban areas, and on and on.

Perhaps there is a different way, a different sort of progress available to us.

Again, Father Zossima:

There is only one means of salvation, take yourself and make yourself responsible for all men’s sins, that is the truth, you know, friends, for as soon as you sincerely make yourself responsible for everything and for all men, you will see at once that it is really so, and that you are to blame for every one and for all things.

There is a popular story told of theologian G.K. Chesterton.  According to the story, in the early 1900s, the London times asked Chesterton to contribute to a series of articles explaining what is wrong with the world.  Chesterton is said to have replied on a post card with the words, “What is wrong with the world today: I am.”

Chesterton was not being contrite.  The Christian Apostle James, writes:

Where do wars and fights come from among you?  Do they not come from your desires for pleasure that war in your members?  You lust and do not have. You murder and covet and cannot obtain. You fight and war. Yet you do not have because you do not ask.  You ask and do not receive, because you ask amiss, that you may spend it on your pleasures. (James 4:1-3)

I am the problem with the world.

That is a profoundly counter-cultural statement in a world that blames the ills of humanity on political and social systems (and their proponents).  It is a statement that runs counter to my deeply-held belief that the world would be a better place if everyone were just more like me.

I am the problem with the world.

Returning to Solzhenitsyn, who said elsewhere:

Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either—but right through every human heart—and through all human hearts.

If the “modern project” is indeed really just a shell game and that the real need is not for better social programs or political systems, what can I do?  If I am the world’s problem, then how now shall I live?

Imagine spending less time anxious over “causes for humanity” and more time trying to acquire the fullness of the Holy Spirt of the Christian God so that I might better love God and my neighbor.  What if I were to primarily focus on doing the next good thing that confronts me, not for “humanity,” but for the human being standing before me.  For my neighbor.  One Orthodox saint said that we love God only as well as we love our neighbor.  Another says that a good Christian life consists of helping 5 or 6 people you encounter.  Neither of these saints, nor does Jesus, speak to helping “humanity”; rather, they talk about helping and loving humans.  Loving formless, faceless “humanity” is easy; loving a single human being is very hard work.

This kind of life and love is only truly possible with help from God.  Acquiring this help, the help of the Holy Spirit, is the main goal of our lives.  In his book, On Acquisition of the Holy Spirit, Orthodox St. Seraphim of Sarov says:

Acquiring the Spirit of God is the true aim of our Christian life, while prayer, fasting, almsgiving and other good works done for Christ’s sake are merely means for acquiring the Spirit of God.

Working to acquire the Holy Spirit is a way to begin to quiet the passions raging within my own soul, the passions that cause so much trouble for me, for those around me, and for the world; it is the way toward gaining that peace that passes understanding that the Apostle Paul writes about.

Returning to the 9/11 attacks back in 2001.  Rather than starting another war, the “war on terrorism,” I have often wondered what would have happened had the US simply turned the other cheek.

If you want to join a war, a movement, or a cause, here is the place to start: fight the battle within, the one we each face against our own disordered passions.  Ask God to help.  He is faithful.

A final work from St Seraphim:

Aquire the peace of the Holy Spirit and a thousand souls around you will be saved.

Life, Luck, and God

29 Thursday Oct 2020

Posted by in All, Culture, Death, Humankind

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I read a novel recently in which one of the characters, a man in his twenties, was rightly imprisoned for sexually abusing his thirteen year old sister.  Taking revenge, he used his prison connections and his wealth to have his sister kidnapped, drugged, and sold into sexual slavery where she died after a few years.

This was troubling to me because it caused me to think about the seemingly lucky or unlucky circumstances of our lives.  There are real-life children sold into sexual slavery.  Some people have lost family and homes to war.  Natural disasters disrupt lives and cause widespread death and destruction.  Children are born with mental and physical disabilities.  Random accidents maim and take lives.  Some people are born into poverty, others into great health and wealth.

Life certainly doesn’t seem fair.  So, I find myself wondering what should I, as a Christian, think about the role of luck and God in my life.

Luck, in its most common definition, is the description we use for the things that happen to us that seem to be beyond our control. Philosophers and ethicists speak about the concept of luck.  There is no agreement among them whether luck exists, and if it does, to what degree are we each accountable for the events of our lives.

Authors such as scholar C.S. Lewis and sociologist Max Weber have written about how the modern world has become “disenchanted.”   In the ancient world there was once room for “enchantment”: people believed in gods, spirits, demons, fairies, elves, dragons, and such.  When seemingly unexplainable things happened around people and to people, they created explanations for the mysteries they experienced.  For example, if you make one of the god’s mad and you may experience a fire or an earthquake.  Over the centuries, Christianity vanquished “the gods” and now modern scientism has vanquished the Christian God.  So, in our modern world there is now little room for an enchanted world in the minds of “serious” people; they exclude the possibility of mysterious things “beyond the veil” of the natural world, including God, angels, and miracles.

It seems to me, then, in a disenchanted world, luck is all we have to account for disparities and tragedies of life: Born into or encounter bad things in life? Bad luck.  Born as a “healthy, well adjusted, hard working” person and into a good life?  Good luck.  The examples of good and bad “luck” are manifold as there are lives.  

However, the Christian knows that all of reality is indeed enchanted: there is a God, angels, demons, and the souls of the departed.  So, what about the role of God, luck, and my own free will in my life?

Christians usually avoid reliance on luck.  To explain the events around us, we generally appeal to God’s plan (providence), that usually say that everything comes from God.  Tragedies can occur, we may say, as punishment for the wicked. Or, sometimes we offer that suffering is given to us because it is good for our soul.  We may appeal to God’s love by saying that God wanted a dead loved one more than the family did.  Other times we may appeal to God’s predestination, that these are the events God has for our lives.  We may claim to know the intent of God, that this world is the best He could do given our free will.  We may try to excuse God, claiming that, while He knows how it will end, He doesn’t know how we will get there, again, due to our free will.  Unfortunately, each of these explanations in some way holds God responsible for the tragedy.

God’s plan seems simple: He created humans to enter into a union with Him, for us to participate in His life.  Here is what is in store for those who chose God:

Eye has not seen, nor ear heard,
Nor have entered into the heart of man
The things which God has prepared for those who love Him.
—1Corinthians 2:9

It does seem that God’s plan requires that we have free will to choose Him, and His plan for us is so extraordinary that apparently He is willing to risk that we choose otherwise and bring about terrible tragedy and the fall of the cosmos itself.

The hard thing for us is the accepting the paradox that God does have a plan that will not be thwarted and that we do have free will to act.  The problem for us is that exactly how it works itself out in our lives is a mystery.  And herein is an important point: with our western mindset, we want to turn this into a problem we can solve.  We modern people do not like mysteries because they take away our control.  You see, a problem implies a solution that brings the problem under our control.  Mysteries, however, cannot be brought under our control; rather, they must simply be inhabited. Said differently, an enchanted world contains mystery.

While God’s plan mixed with our free will is a mystery, we can know some things about it.

First, God doesn’t need us at all.  Nor does He need evil and tragedy to bring about His plan.  Unfortunately, the first humans, Adam and Eve, exercised their free will poorly; we and all of creations now live in the aftermath of that first decision.  And, through our own actions, we each, too, often reaffirm that fateful decision by also choosing other than God and turning toward the Prince of this world.  The consequences of our choices is death: the continued sin perpetuated by humans and the natural disasters evident in the world.

Because of our free will, not all events in our lives is willed by God: we make choices and all of the cosmos is fallen, which include the weather, earthquakes, fires, etc.  While it may give us some comfort to believe that God wills all things, the cost of that belief is that we must then also believe God wills all of the tragedy around us from the death of a child to the slaughter of millions. 

So, while God does permit good and bad to occur as a result of our free will choices, this does not mean that He simply sits back and watches as history unfolds.  The Christian God is not the god of life and death we see in the natural world; rather, He is the God of love and life found only in true reality, the enchanted world of all of creation.  As such, God does not leave us alone to meaninglessly suffer and death in this natural world, He acts always for our salvation.  Jesus, the innocent God-man, died to defeat the death that enslaves us and to transform the otherwise meaningless suffering and death of those who choose to turn to Him.   Christ on the cross is the ultimate act of love and life: His death also was not a necessary part of God’s plan; rather, it was a completely free, self-less act of love to save us from our free will choice to bind ourselves and the world to someone other than God—to Satan.

In Jesus’ own words, He came—

To preach the gospel to the poor;
[God the Father] has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted,
To proclaim liberty to the captives
And recovery of sight to the blind,
To set at liberty those who are oppressed.
—Luke 4:18

Perhaps it comes down to this.  While we can argue about the role of God’s plan, our free will, and luck, God has created humankind and willed that we freely choose to be in a loving relationship with Him.  He permits us to choose poorly and Christ has given His life to redeem that choice.  God has something extraordinary in store for us that was worth the risk of the fall of all creation and the horrific tragedies around us.  That brings us to another choice: either we embrace that reality or we decide we cannot turn to that God because we believe that certainly there is a better way to run the universe.

Christians need not feel we must defend God or justify His actions in tragedy.  The radical good news of Christianity is that death is not something to be explained by religion; rather, it is an enemy that has been defeated by Christ.  So, when we look into the lifeless eyes of “the old, the young, the needy, the orphans and the widows, and on all that are in sickness and sorrow, in distress and affliction, in oppression and captivity, in prison and confinement,” or even the dead, we should not see “bad luck” or God’s hand; rather, we must see only the defeated enemy.  Then we must turn our minds and hearts toward God, the God of salvation Who has rescued us from death and Who redeems our suffering and, giving Him thanks, offer to others the love Christ has first shown us. 

I call heaven and earth as witnesses today against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore choose life, that both you and your descendants may live…

—Moses (Deuteronomy 30:19)

For more on this, I recommend The Doors of the Sea: Where Was God in the Tsunami? by David Bentley Hart.