Justice and Winds of Change

I remember during the early period of my conversion coming across a quote by St. Isaac of Syria

Do not call God just, for His justice is not manifest in the things concerning you. And if David calls Him just and upright, His Son revealed to us that He is good and kind. ‘He is good’, He says ‘to the evil and to the impious.’ How can you call God just when you come across the Scriptural passage on the wage given to the workers?… How can a man call God just when he comes across the passage on the prodigal son who wasted his wealth with riotous living, how for the compunction alone which he showed, the father ran and fell upon his neck and gave him authority over all his wealth?… Where, then, is God’s justice, for while we are sinners Christ died for us!

It rattled me to the core, mostly because I didn’t understand it. In but one year of Orthodoxy I have found myself so thankful for this insight and the truth that it preaches to us. More revealing still is how sin interacts with this in particular.

St. Herman of Alaska on Sin and Life in Christ

“A true Christian is made by faith and love toward Christ. Our sins do not in the least hinder our Christianity, according to the word of the Saviour Himself. He deigned to say: ‘I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners, to repentance; there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine just persons who need no repentance.’ “

St. Herman of Alaska.

Fellowship, Family, and Faith

I have heard people say that the whole of salvation could be summed up in hospitality. That is to say, the whole faith is summed up in this “Love God and your neighbor as yourself.” On the surface of this it is true enough, but I have been reflecting lately on what this means for a person in the world. What does it mean in common daily life to be hospitable?

Asceticism and Love

I was just reading a short little article that talked about the “hard work” that it takes to acquire the mind of the Fathers, the mind of the Church, the mind of Christ. It is an apt description for certain. As a convert struggles with himself and battles his passions it is a constant 100% all out war at every moment. There is no break, no breather, no rest. There is only the labor of taking up the burden that one has packed for themselves and learning to put them down through repentance.

It has crossed my mind in my distant past that this was a contradiction of Christ’s promise that his yoke is easy and his burden light. As I reflect now I must ask myself, “Is it possible that ascetical Christianity has it all wrong because it binds on us burdens that neither us nor our fathers could carry?”

Theodicy

The cosmic question of why there is suffering in the world when a good and omnipotent God rules over all has long perplexed may, and I am no different. I thought David Bentley Hart’s Doors of the Sea was a brilliant discussion of the issue. And I know I am drawing from that book as I reflect (but, its been 2 years since I read it). Passion week and the subsequent Pascha season brought this a bit more to the front of my mind, and I wanted to post it here for safe keeping.

Walking the Fullness of the Faith

I remember when I was a kid working for a lawn care service that the first two weeks was always daunting.  The hardest part for me was getting my strength back in my arms and my legs for trimming and edging with a weedeater.  After an entire school year off, I was not as strong or fast as I once was and in order to trim well one has to have a steady hand and a steady pace.  So every year I learned to use my arms and legs again, as it were.  At the end of the day, if I raised my arm into the position that I had held the trimmer for edging my arm would begin to shake and even spasm sometimes.  What was natural for me became almost an impossible task.  Just raising my arm was a chore.

There is a connection here between this physical workout and the spiritual workout as I try to live out my life as an Orthodox Christian. 

Fullness of the Faith

My wife and I have an ongoing conversation in which we constantly agree by arguing. It often happens after reading someone like St. Silouan and I’ll say, “There is nothing about Orthodoxy that is the same as I believed before,” to which she responds, “There is nothing that we believe now that we did not believe then.” This recurring conversation is a constant reminder to both of us of a principle that my wife has expressed most eloquently, “Orthodoxy is culmination of our whole lives up to this point.”

Cities of Refuge

There is a Biblical story (Judges 19) that has had new meaning for me of late. Of course, the story says that there was a Levite with his concubine who was staying with the girl’s father for a time. When he was ready to leave and could no longer bear to stay there (as it appears) he insists on leaving. There are other details in the story, but in the end he constantly insists on his own will being done and ends up lodging in a city full of people consumed with lust for any new visitor. In a effort to save the man, the man with whom he stayed offers the concubine to the men in an effort to avoid the rape of the visiting levite. After they rape her and leave her for dead, the Levite, in a very unemotional and seemingly cold way, asks her to get up so they can get going. It turns out she died in the night. He cuts her in pieces and sends her to the twelve tribes in an effort to incite a conflict.

Buildup in the Calvinist Filter

There is a strange thing that I do from time to time.  Occasionally, when I am contemplating how I fell into some sin or am debating some theological topic, I will begin to imagine talking to my confessor priest about it.  In the course of this fiction, I will imagine what he would say in return.  Now, I am not under the delusion that this is confession or that my mental opinion of what he might say is as authoritative or meaningful as his actual words to me, but I am willing to say that I am blessed by this strange occurrence.  It always causes me to catch myself, and say “what am I doing?” It almost always leads me to prayer on the topic of my imaginary discussion.

This morning I received an answer to this prayer in the form of an article from orthodoxinfo.com.  Thanks God for this!  This article diagnoses me well, coming as I do from a Calvinist background, and helps immensely in the way of teaching me to acquire an Orthodox mind.

Holy Monday

How far into Jerusalem am I willing to go?

This morning I had an experience that is not uncommon in my life, it is uncommon however to repent of it while I still have time to do something about it.  I set my alarm for 5:45 which allows me to get ready for my work day and to make it to Matins by 7:00.  When my alarm went off this morning I turned it off without a second thought, and I am not entirely sure I gave it a first thought.  I was tired.  Without thinking of what this day signifies, I turned off the alarm and went back to sleep.  Forty minutes later I sat up thinking, “What did I do?”  I got out of bed and rushed to the Chapel for the morning Presanctified Liturgy.  Its at 9:00.

Okay, so I didn’t get to go to Liturgy this morning, but that is neither here nor there.  What struck me is that sin comes so easily for me that I do it as a reaction to stimuli, without a thought.  My eyes blink, my nose sneezes, and I sin.  Alarm!! Off!  Thats it.