Category Archives: Humankind

Defending Myself

24 Saturday Sep 2022

Posted by in All, Humankind

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

, , , , , ,

What Our Savior Saw From the Cross
—James (Jacques Joseph) Tissot

With the stories of anger and violence in the world, this question has been on my mind: “How far am I willing to go to defend myself?”

Let me set side the question of facing a life-threatening self-defense. Rather, I’d like to focus on self-threatening (ego-threatening) scenarios that arise for us every day in any of many ways: An impatient driver curses another driver who was doing nothing wrong; a woman in a checkout line fumbles with her credit card while trying to manage three unruly kids as the man behind her grumbles loudly about her poor parenting; a man sends an email to a coworker who badly misconstrues its intent and responds with angry accusations. You get the idea.

I think it is a human tendency to want to respond when falsely accused; at least it is my strong tendency. It seems to be my “natural” impulse to get my feelings hurt and want to set the record straight when wronged. And, most sadly, I often want to respond in such a way that hurts the feelings of the offender just as they hurt me (an eye for an eye). Aristotle thought this way, too. He went so far as to make the resenting of someone who offends us a measure of our “manhood.” From his work The Nichomachean Ethics, Aristotle writes: “Not to resent offenses is the mark of a base and slavish man.” And there can be an upside to responding publicly: having a witty social media response to an affront can gain one followers and boost one’s own ego.

But then there is Jesus:

The chief priests accused [Jesus] of many things. So again Pilate asked him, “Aren’t you going to answer? See how many things they are accusing you of.” But Jesus still made no reply, and Pilate was amazed. (Mark 15:3-5)

Jesus was on trial for His life and made no effort to refute the false accusations against Him. Given our “natural” impulses to right the wrong offenses against us, Jesus’ silence is most extraordinary. But, I find it remarkable for still another reason. Jesus was about to be the victim of a horrible injustice, perhaps the worst of injustices: to be tortured and executed for something of which He was innocent. It’s not only that Jesus was an innocent victim, He was the only “pure victim” who ever existed. That is to say, not only was Jesus innocent of what He was being accused, Jesus had never committed any wrongful act that added to the overall sinfulness in the world.

Let’s talk about this.

When unjustly wronged or offended, I am quick to pronounce my innocence, even if only to myself. However, in truth I am never a pure victim. An example: Out of my impatience I cut off another driver in traffic. That driver takes home his anger at me and is critical of an action of his wife. In her hurt, she fails to recognize her daughter has had a bad day at school. On it goes. My sinful thoughts and actions radiate outward from me into the world. I bear some responsibility for all the evil that happens because my sin contributes to the overall condition of the world.

There is a story about the writer/theologian G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936). It is said that he was asked to contribute to an article explaining what was wrong with the world of his day. He responded with two words on a postcard: “I am.”

This is not to say that I deserve whatever bad things might befall me; I am only asserting that I am never a pure victim in my own circumstances. Consequently, because of my sinfulness I must take some responsibility for all sin in the world.

So, how should I live in this world and bear some responsibility for the evil around me? Accept the responsibility. Below are radically counter-cultural approaches by two saints:

If a murderer somewhere murders, it is my fault for not being a saint and not having prayed effectually for his repentance, the murderer’s “nature/nurture” background makes him blameless, and mine actually makes me blameworthy.
—St Paisios the Athonite

For all the history of mankind from Adam to me, a sinner, I repent; for all history is in my blood. For I am in Adam and Adam is in me.
— St Nikolai Velimirovic

In his classic novel, The Brothers Karamazov, Dostoevsky’s Father Zossima says,

There is only one salvation for you: take yourself up, and make yourself responsible for all the sins of men. For indeed it is so, my friend, and the moment you make yourself sincerely responsible for everything and everyone, you will see at once that it is really so, that it is you who are guilty on behalf of all and for all.

I don’t do any of this very well. Here is an ancient “test” I came across (based on St John Climacus’ Ladder of Divine Ascent):1

What is your reaction when you are insulted?
1) I restrain my heart not to answer back, then I have put my feet on the first rung of the ladder;
2) I restrain my heart and I pray for the one who has offended me; then I am on the second step of divine ascent;
3) I not only pray for, but I feel sorry that my offender has suffered harm to his soul by insulting me and I feel compassion toward him. My feet are on the third rung;
4) I rejoice that I have been humiliated for the Lord’s sake. this is the fourth rung of the ladder.

Applying this test to myself, I admit that my feet are usually firmly anchored to the ground; I feel unable to lift even one foot to the lowest rung.

To again quote St Paul, “Who will save me from my wretchedness?” Jesus, of course.2

In an often quoted passage from the Bible, Jesus said, “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life; no one comes to the Father except through me.”3 We Christians often use this as proof that the gate into Heaven is belief in Jesus. However, it is easy to overlook the first part: “I am the Way.”

As mentioned above, the Way of Jesus was silence before His accusers. It was facing (with joy!) the shame of the humiliation of executioner’s cross; it was descending into Hades to draw everyone who had already died to Him; only then did He ascend into Heaven.

His way must be our way: to go down into Hell with Jesus before we go up with Him into Heaven. To go down is to strive for the humility of Jesus Who could stand silent before His accusers. To voluntarily go down into Hell with Jesus is to become immune to the accusations of Satan who wants us full of pride.

In other words, I must work at becoming humble. I must strive to literally put myself in the Way of Jesus (think of being in the way of someone on a narrow mountain trail). Of course my attempts at finding humility will be puny, but I must try. Being in Jesus’ Way attracts the Grace of God, which is my only hope for true, transformative humility.4

Here is a concrete example of stepping in Jesus’ Way:

St Paul claimed to be the chief of all sinners. It is a statement repeated by each Orthodox Christian during the Divine Liturgy during the communal pre-communion prayer of St John Chrysostom. Only by repeating this prayer and through by the Grace of God can we begin to actually see ourselves as the chief of all sinners. We begin to recognize that others are as wounded as we are, and, as such, it slowly becomes possible for us to begin to truly love our neighbor and our enemy as commanded by Jesus.

Defending myself against offense comes from my pride; I want to be right, or to be acceptable, or to have my way…the list of consequences of my pride is long. Our pride, however, is in direct opposition to the humility of God Who willingly gave up His “rights” as God to become man and live among us and to be killed by us, His creation, so that He might offer us the Way to eternal life with Him.

On the night Jesus was betrayed, his disciple Peter tried to defend Jesus from the mob sent to capture Him. With a sword, Peter sliced off the ear of a servant. Jesus rebuked Peter for his violent resistance and miraculously restored the ear of the servant. In the words of one commentator, our resistance to an offense simply makes our “enemy” deaf to the message of Jesus. When I defend myself, I am cutting off the ear of my offender; in my angry reaction they cannot hear the love of Jesus.

So, what is the proper response to an unfounded accusation or insult against me? Here is what St Isaac the Syrian (7th century) says:

Let yourself be persecuted, but do not persecute others. Be crucified, but do not crucify others. Be slandered, but do not slander others. Rejoice with those who rejoice, and weep with those who weep: such is the sign of purity. Suffer with the sick. Be afflicted with sinners. Rebuke no one, revile no one, not even those who live very wickedly. Spread your cloak over those who fall into sin, each and every one, and shield them. And if you cannot take the fault on yourself and accept punishment in their place, do not destroy their character.

Christians often recall Jesus’ words as, “Love your neighbor as you love yourself” (in Leviticus). However, Fr Thomas Hopko relates that it cannot possibly be translated this way. Rather, it says, “You shall love your neighbor as being your own self.” In other words, your neighbor is your true self. You have no self in yourself.5

On the cross, Jesus prayed for the forgiveness of all. May we, too, be able to forgive everyone for everything. We will fail, but we try again. This is how we are saved.

It is the Way of Jesus.

____________________________________________________________________

  1. Paraphrased from Archimandrite Zacharias.  The Enlargement of the Heart.  p150.
  2. Romans 7:21-25.
  3. John 14:6.
  4. Following the commandments of Jesus do not earn us anything; rather, following them also puts in the Way of Christ.  Living a life as described by His commandments is sharing in the life Jesus lives.
  5. From an interview with Fr Thomas Hopko:  https://www.pravmir.com/living-in-communion-an-interview-with-father-thomas-hopko/ 

The Story of God and the Mud

03 Thursday Feb 2022

Posted by in All, Humankind

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , , ,

Christian Orthodox Icon–The Creation of the World

Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness…”  And the Lord God formed man of the mud of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being…and He put them in Paradise.  God said, “It is very good.”

Genesis 1:26, 31; 2:7-8

There is a story that is told of a visitor to an Orthodox monastery on the famous Mt. Athos in Greece.  Out for a walk, the visitor encounters a monk. Wanting to be friendly, the man says, “Hi, my name is Joe.  I’m visiting from America.”  Stopping, the monk raises his eyes, and, looking at the visitor, replies, “My name is Sin.  I come from mud.”  The visitor is left with his mouth agape.

Mud.  We rarely give it much thought unless we get it on ourselves, our clothes, or our shoes.  Mud comes in various types…some is as slippery as grease, another is as sticky as glue.  Mud isn’t good for much.  Kids make pies with it, play in it, and throw it at each other.  Once we outgrow childhood, we find mud has some limited use; however, mostly we try to avoid it.  By and large, mud is only a nuisance.

Where we see nuisance, God saw the possibility of sharing Himself.

God brought a pile of mud to life; He gave “non-being” mud the gift of “being.”

It is hard to imagine why God would animate a pile of mud by breathing the life into it.  What’s more, He gave the mud not just simple life, but He breathed the life of His Spirit into it.  He made the mud into His image and likeness by giving the mud the ability to create unimaginable beauty, the capability of engaging in complex reasoning, and the desire for selfless love and sacrifice for other lumps of mud.  He gave the mud the ability to contemplate and love God Himself, to become one with God as lovers do.  And He put the mud in a Garden and walked with the mud.

There is another group to whom God gave the gift of being: the angels.  We are never told whether they, too, came from mud, from something else, or were made out of nothing.  Despite being in the presence of God and enjoying the gifts of God, some angels wanted more.  But, surely they must have known they could never overthrow God.  Perhaps they thought they could get at God another way: by throwing mud at Him. 

These demon-angels were able to convince the animated mud that it could have “being” on its own, without God.  So encouraged, the mud seemed eager to strike out on its own, beholding to no other being, to stand on its own two feet, to pull itself up by its own bootstraps, to become its own man or woman.  So, the mud turned away from God, and God allowed mud to act as mud.

Throughout the centuries, the mud has made remarkable progress.  The mud has advanced from existing as hunter-gathering mud to gaining the knowledge and ability to put mud on the moon.

However, the rebellion against God came at a cost to the mud. 

Everything became harder for the mud.  It was harder for the mud to survive; the earth, of which the mud was once a part, did not yield its fruits and grains easily to the mud.  In fact, the earth itself often rebels against the mud as the mud tries to subdue it.  And, mud throws mud at mud, sometimes causing mass destruction of other mud.  What began as a paradise for the mud became, well, a muddy mess.  You see, when the mud decided to go it alone, without God, the mud turned its back to God.  This gives great pleasure to the demon-angels who continue to whisper to the mud, “You don’t need God.”

But, the mud has never really been apart from God.  What the mud doesn’t know is that even in rebellion against God, it is God that sustains the mud, preventing it from returning to inanimate mud, to “non-being.”

Something else the mud does not know: there can be no status quo.  Over the centuries the consequences of the rebellion are slowly hardening into stone the hearts of the mud; the mud is slowly returning to its original non-being existence.  With no intervention, the mud will once again become just mud.  But because God so loved the mud, He has refused to allow that to happen.  Something had to be done to restore the relationship between God and the mud.  And it can only be done by God.

So, like a comic book superhero, God came to the mud’s rescue, swooping in to offer the mud a way to be saved.

Here is what the Church tells us about the rebellion: God knows that the mud’s rebellion was inaugurated by a trick of the demon-angels.  He knows it was not a rebellion perpetrated and sustained by mud law-breakers.  Further, God knows that the mud was and remains badly wounded by the rebellion and continue to live in a world deeply scarred by the rebellion.  Therefore, God knows that the mud does not need a lawyer but a physician.

So, God sent us a physician.  His Son.  Who became mud.  The God-mud.  the God-mud lived among the mud and told the mud why He came:

[My Father] has anointed Me to preach the gospel to the poor; He 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; to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.

—Jesus, Luke 4:18-19

But, sending His son, the Great Physician, came at a cost, a sacrifice, to God.

No, God’s sacrifice was not a sacrifice where God substituted Himself (His son) and took the punishment due the mud because of the mud’s rebellious act.  The mud’s rebellion wasn’t an act that required the punishment of someone, either the mud or God’s Son.  Remember, the mud are not law-breaking criminals.

And, no, neither has God viewed the mud’s rebellion as an insult to His honor requiring “satisfaction” like the olden days in which people dueled over matters of honor.  The God-mud Jesus was not sent to substitute for the mud to give God “satisfaction” and restore God’s honor by dying on the cross.  Remember, God is humble.

In fact, Jesus’ sacrifice was not something required of the mud by God but a gift to the mud from God.

God’s sacrifice was the sacrifice of a lover for the beloved, for without sacrifice between lovers there can be no love at all.  Jesus, the God-mud, showed God’s True Love for the mud.

The God-mud gave up the prerogatives of being God and came to live in the mud and among the mud, experiencing heat and cold, love and hate, joy and sadness, pain and delight…all that mud experiences.  And then the God-mud died as mud dies.  In fact, the God-mud so loved the mud He allowed the mud to kill Him so that the mud might know the depth of God’s True Love.

And then…

After three days the God-mud returned to life.  Death, which has held the mud captive was defeated.

This is the sacrifice of Jesus (to paraphrase St. Athanasius, from over 1700 years ago): God became mud so that by His grace the mud could become like God.  Jesus was born as mud, lived, died, and resurrected in order to defeat the mud’s greatest enemy: death.  Jesus freed all mud-kind to enter into a loving relationship with Him.  This is God’s great gift to all mud-kind.  Jesus the God-man is the prototype and the “telos” of all mud.

Curiously, though, when Jesus’ closest mud companions first saw Him again, they scarcely recognized Him.  He looked somehow…different.  It seems that although the mud was originally made in God’s image, when the mud first rebelled against God all those years ago the mud’s appearance changed, the mud began to look more mud-like than God-like.  The companions struggled to recognize the God-mud because when the God-mud returned to life He was no longer the God-mud; no, He is now the God-man.  The God-mud, now God-man,  is now the first “fully human” being: a human properly joined in oneness with God.  And that is how the mud was always meant to be.

The glory of God is a human being fully alive!

—St Irenaeus, c. 1st century

A fully human being is a being whom will one day emerge from the mud.  In this life all we can do is strive toward the fullness of being human; however, we remain mud, but  infused with God’s Spirt, who striving moment-by-moment to love God, to be one with Him and with other human beings.

Our hope is that one day we will be resurrected as fully human beings.  And this is eternal life in  Paradise, which is not so much a location but a state of relationship, of being one with God and other fully humans beings.

It is an easy transition from being mud to becoming a fully human being, but one that will be the hardest thing you have ever done.  You will spend the rest of your life wallowing in and battling your muddy nature as you cooperate with God Whom will transform your mud into the fullness of humanity.

If you want to start, just say to God, “I no longer want to be mud.  Make me a fully human.”  Then, hold on…God will say to you, “Let us make a human, it is very good.”

Humanity and Humans

10 Tuesday Aug 2021

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

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

, , , , , , , , ,

 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

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

, , , , , , , ,

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.

Image and Likeness

08 Monday Sep 2014

Posted by in All, Humankind

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

, , , , , ,

Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness…”
From the story of creation, Genesis 1:26

I’m sitting in a small beach house on the Gulf of Mexico and calling it work. Really, I am working…you will have to trust me on that. It is just that right now the work involves waiting on a client.

While I’m waiting I have these few minutes to enjoy God’s creation and to ponder what it means that we are made in God’s image and likeness.

Some biblical commentators have suggested that image and likeness are the same, that the writer of Genesis says the same thing twice and in two different ways to make the strong point of our value as humans.

I recently came across another explanation that I find more theologically satisfying.

“In the beginning…” as the Book says, God and the first humans were united; humankind was by Grace what God is by nature. All was “good” until our first parents fell for a lie. The consequence of their disobedience of God changed humanity; our respective natures, God’s and man’s, were no longer united. Without God’s Spirit within us we became bound to the dust out of which we were created rather than bound to our Creator. To speak like the late Carl Sagan, we became the stuff of the creation rather than the stuff of the Creator.

God’s words from Genesis 3:16–

For dust you are, and to dust you shall return.

Our union with God now broken, there was no way for us to remain in the Garden of Eden, the garden of perfect harmony with our Creator. We had to leave. It remained that way for us for untold years, and, left to our own devices, there was no way to return, no way to reunite human nature with Divine nature. Separation of our nature from God’s, and being nothing but dust, would have been our eternal fate had God chosen not to act on our behalf.

At the moment of our separation from Him he announced that He had a plan for our restoration to Him, a plan to rescue us from being bound to the dust which is the world. Then one day, over two thousand years ago, Jesus was born and God’s rescue operation was made evident in the person of a baby.

One of the central beliefs of Christianity is that Jesus was both God and man, both human and Divine. I think we so often focus on Jesus’ death that we forget the significance of His birth. At the moment of His conception and manifest in His birth, human nature and Divine nature were reunited. Jesus became, as the Bible tells us, the second Adam. This has the most profound implication for us! Because of His birth it became possible for each of us to be reunited with God. With the birth of Jesus, the potential now existed for us to return home.

This potential is how the early Church Fathers came to understand our being made in the “image” of God: it is the potential for our “sanctification,” for our two natures, God’s and ours, to be united (called Theosis). And it is this potential that gives us value as humans over any other living thing: we are created in the image of God. Each of us humans has the potential to have our individual nature united with God’s nature. There are some who would try to confer “personhood” on apes or dolphins or other creatures based on intelligence, language use, etc.; however, no other creature has the potential to be united with God; humans alone are created in the image of God.

With this understanding of “image,” here is a great quote from the late Archbishop Dimitri of Dallas I want to throw in at this point:

The greatest danger in the modern world is the attack on man as the image of God. That God became man in order to unite man to God is the only sure Divine underwriting of human worth. We have value because of the image we bear.

If this potential of united natures is “image of God,” then what is “likeness?” It is simple, really. If “image” is the potential of union with God, then “likeness” is the actualization of that union. To actualize the potential, we must do two things. First, we must give God permission to begin drawing us into His life.

There are a lot of fancy theological words bandied about regarding Christianity. The bottom line is that God wants to invite us into His life, an unimaginable life of unconditional love. The ancients characterized this communal life of God the Father, God the Son (Jesus), and God the Holy Spirit, as a Divine Dance (perichoresis). God draws us into His life and wants desperately to teach us the steps of the dance.

This, then, is the second thing we must do: we must learn to cooperate with Him as He teaches us how to live life with Him, to dance the Divine Dance. And He is a gracious and patient dance instructor.

The most remarkable thing is that God wants this for each of us. After all, it is God’s desire that no one should spend an eternity dancing alone, disunited from Him. However, not everyone wants that sort of union with God.

So, look around you. Every human being you see bears the image of God. From the most kind person to the most hated terrorist, every one of us is an icon, an image of the living God. Every human being has inestimable value to God. Imagine a world in which we treated each other that way. Better yet, imagine a world in which this potential is fully realized. One day we won’t have to imagine this actualized world…it is God’s promised kingdom come. I pray that by God’s Grace within me, I will see you there.

Motionless and Silent

23 Tuesday Jul 2013

Posted by in All, Humankind

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

, , , , , , ,

After they had finished nailing him to the cross and were waiting for him to die, they whiled away the time by throwing dice for his clothes…From noon to three, the whole earth was dark. Around midafternoon Jesus groaned out of the depths, crying loudly…“My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?”  (Gospel of Matthew, c27, v45-46)

Christians believe that the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus is the central point of human history.  It is God Himself making it possible for those who believe in Jesus as God, who realize they need what He did for them in His death, and who accept Him as God of their lives to be transformed into sons and daughters of God.

The death of Jesus is of particular importance because it is there that Christians believe God took upon Himself the full weight of the sin of humanity and, in death, paid the price for it that we cannot fully pay.

There are many mysterious things about Jesus’ death.  This is what strikes me today: the motionlessness and silence of it.

Jesus was nailed to the cross.  He couldn’t move.  It seems that throughout His life He moved at a deliberate pace toward being motionless.  In the end, Jesus was nailed down and waited to die.  He couldn’t have had one more meeting if He had wanted to.  He couldn’t tweet the news moment by moment: “@SonofMan is thirsty on #thecross.”  The few things He could have done He chose not to: calling down angels to save Himself or making sure we understood this as an object lesson.

He chose to be motionless and, as far as enlightening us further, silent.  He had done what He came for and in the face of the ultimate injustice, humiliation, and taunting, was simply motionless and silent, content to allow this profound event of human history to occur in His stillness.

God, His Father, was also motionless and silent.  God the Father did not act to save His Son.  When Jesus cried out to Him, “Where are you?”, there was nothing but silence.  God could have made a show of it, ensuring that we all understood what was happening; after all, God had used special effects to gain the attention of His people quite effectively throughout history: lightening, hail, fire, whirlwinds, earthquakes, cedar trees breaking…

But, in this moment, this most profound event in human history, God the Father was silent.

The event, it seems, required no exclamation point of motion or noise.  This is in such contrast to our lives.

The event, it seems, required no exclamation point of motion or noise.

This is in such contrast to our lives.

We race around; multitasking is highly valued despite research showing that it decreases our performance.  We ask each other, “What did you do today?”  We measure our absolute and relative worth by our current performance and our past accomplishments–with emphasis on our current performance (“What have you done for me lately?”).  We are always on the move.  We are always trying to create, change, or fix something.

And we are always making noise.  We have something to say and we want to be heard.  We talk over each other in our zeal to be heard.  We are free with our advice to another.  Have you ever paused to take stock of the noise in the world?  Perhaps, like attending a loud rock concert, we find today that our hearing is failing and what once was loud is now acceptable.

There are certainly times to act and times to speak.  Aren’t there also times to be still and be quiet?  Imagine facing an important moment in your life or a tremendous injustice to you and responding as Jesus did by being motionless and silent.  Can we even conceive of that possibility anymore?  How would our closest relationships be transformed if we dared to be occasionally motionless instead of always trying to fix, to be silent instead of trying to advise?

In our deepest pain, the fundamental loneliness and brokenness of the so-called human condition, we too often act out or shout out trying to relieve our pain instead of persevering, motionless and in silence.  We hurry to alleviate the pain of others and miss the times when it is better to simple be with the other, motionless and silent.

To be motionless and silent when Jesus asks us, to persevere and suffer with Jesus in this way is the only path along which our character will be transformed into that of God’s.

Naked and Unafraid

20 Thursday Jun 2013

Posted by in All, Humankind

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

, , , , , , , ,

[All of creations stops, there is silence in the heavens and the earth…will they or won’t they?  The crunch of a stolen bite taken from forbidden fruit is deafening.  At the sound of the proprietor approaching the offenders drop the evidence and run.…] then the Lord God called to Adam, and said to him, “Where are you?” He said, “I heard the sound of You in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid myself.” And God said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?”

Paraphrase from the first book of the Bible–Genesis ch 3, verses 9-11 (New American Standard Translation)

God prohibited the first humans, Adam and Eve, from eating fruit from the tree of knowledge so that they would not know good from evil and become “like God” (Genesis 3:5, 22).  They took a bite anyway.  Then, realizing they were naked they hid from God in fear.

There is so much to think about in these few verses, so much explanatory power regarding the state of the world today.  However, one particular thing is on my mind: being naked and afraid.

I don’t know specifically what was in their respective minds to cause fear when they suddenly realized their nakedness; however, I know what is in my mind, and it is more than about a lack of clothes.

We throw around words of nakedness with ease: transparency in Government, authentic community, being real with each other.  Our language suggests we want such nakedness with each other, but do we really?  Yes and no.  Imagine standing before another human naked in the deepest sense of that word, no barriers at all.  Your most intimate thoughts, feelings, hopes, dreams, desires, fears…all that you are fully revealed, open for inspection by another.  I think we each desperately long for that kind of acceptance, but we fear laughter and ultimately, rejection, because to be accepted is to be loved; rejection is death.

We so yearn for acceptance and fear rejection that we consciously and unconsciously create a false self, a Glittering Image, so that we will find love in the acceptance from another.  Some of our falseness we are aware of, we call it The Mask behind which we hide.  Our talk of “being authentic” only refers to each coming out from behind our respective Masks.  However, our false identity is far deeper than The Mask; we are mostly unaware of it until something happens to bring it to light.  Our idea of an acceptable “normal” has been constructed by the influences of parents, friends, favorite celebrities, authors, teachers, the media, advertisers, businesses, our culture…we are helpless to see beyond what we have come to believe and the things to which we cling.

We are helpless, that is, until something happens that challenges what we believe about “normal.”  I recently had such an experience.  I now find my self with no status to hide behind because I’m not making any money.  I have no 40-hour-a-week job to define myself.  I have no office and co-workers in which to busy myself in and with.  I have no established church family to immerse myself.  I have no strategic goals to work toward to give me the illusion of self value.  It is a new kind of nakedness and through it more of my own Glittering Image has been revealed.  This experience is showing me more of what I cling too and use to define myself and find acceptance from you.

It is an uncomfortable place to be and questions swirl in my mind–

Where have I placed my sense of security?  In a paycheck or money in the bank?  What happens when I am no longer in control of that?

It is an uncomfortable place to be and questions swirl in my mind–

What does it mean to work?  What counts as “work”?  I now have a “job” as a Christian missionary.  God has to make connections with people, it is out of my hands.  I can only wait on Him, but what if I “work,” as I have previously defined it, less than 8 hours a day?  What then?

How do I measure productivity?  I’m not building widgets, and meeting with people produces little immediate, measurable results.  Am I just a drain on this society that so values results?

From where does my self-worth come?  “Missionary” is not as cool a job title as “airline pilot,” which I once had.  Am I defined by my title and job description?  From where do my real identity and value come?

God, it seems, is no respecter of my comfortable paradigms.

God, it seems, is no respecter of my comfortable paradigms.

I know most of the answers in my head; however, living as though I believe them is different.  The questions are no longer theoretical, they are real and immediate.

All of our answers are in some way illusionary.  We believe we know what it is to be “normal.”  We believe we can control our destiny and manage our own security.  We believe we can define ourselves by what we do or what we wear or what we have.  In reality, we have never been able to do any of these things.  Like Adam and Eve, we move through life relying on our own knowledge of good and evil, each putting up a Glittering Image for all to see because, in our fear of being seen naked, we hide from ourselves, from each other, and from God.

So strong is the pull of the Glittering Image that I can already feel the urge to use my job as missionary to fulfill my need to for acceptance.  I could quite easily begin to  define myself as “one of God’s people called into missionary life.”  It would be very easy to bask in the wide acceptance of my fellow Christians, perhaps even allowing myself to be placed on a pedestal because of the “great sacrifice you’re making for God” as a missionary.  I can easily slip in a casual comment that I’m more Jesus-like in my poverty.

Our need for acceptance tugs even more subtly and more tragically.  I’ve discovered that even trying to be like Jesus can become another form of a Glittering Image.  Before I’m burned at the stake, history shows us that people have outwardly tried to be like Jesus with the inner motive of power, greed, etc.  These are the obvious examples.  But even more dangerous to the Christian, one can strain and groan to be outwardly like Jesus (as we have constructed Him) because in some circles it is not acceptable to be a Christian struggling with real problems, wrestling with serious questions about one’s faith, battling despair…to be living a life that is not “fine.”  Sadly, in some churches it is simply not acceptable to be “naked and unafraid.”

With the God of the Bible we can find unconditional love in our nakedness.  We don’t have to cover ourselves and hide in the bushes.  But, and this can be difficult for us, it is love on His terms, not as we have distorted it.  His love casts out our fear.  God longs for us to become who we were created to be, more human not some false representation, and He wants to help; He sent us His Spirit to help us.  Even as we hide in fear at our nakedness–as if we could really hide from God–He is singing over us.  What else do we really need but Him and a group of friends similarly loving Him and trying to love each other in the same way?