On Teaching An Old Blog New Tricks

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On Responding To The Call of God

God called to him from the midst of the bush, and said, "Moses, Moses!" And he said, "Here I am." - Exodus 3:4

One main temptation for many of us Christians is to seek the end result of a life in Christ. We look for various ways to utilize the gifts that God has given us; we look toward a life that has been freed from sin; we look for the ways that we can become the people God "intended us to be." Somewhere in our subconscious, we believe that we are Christians as a means to self-actualization. Of course, we shroud this in language about "being open to the call of God" or "seeking the will of God." After all, we are told by Christ himself to pray, "Thy will be done." These are all important parts of the Christian life, but they are hardly the point. What we must remember is that, foremost, God has called us into relationship with himself through Christ. This is the nature of our Christian life.

One of my New Year's resolutions was to read through the Bible this year, and as I have been making my way through Genesis and now Exodus, a certain pattern of human/divine interaction has been showing up all over the place. Time and again, God calls out to some particular human (be it Abraham, Issac, Jacob, or Moses), and his response is, "Here I am." He does not ask God, "What should I do? Where should I go? Who am I?" When God calls to him, the only response is, "I'm here." He gets present before the Lord, and the Lord doesn't hesitate to give instruction and guidance.

Even in the New Testament this happens. When Christ calls Matthew, he follows. Matthew hardly finds himself in the middle of an existential quandary, but rather, he is merely who he is before the Lord, yet he hears the call of the Lord and responds. This is not because Matthew reasons within himself saying, "You know, this tax-collector gig is alright, but somehow I'm just not fulfilled. I'll bet if I follow this guy, he'll show me who I really am and what I'm meant to do." None of the apostles had any paradigm for such thought. Indeed, they were some of the most simple people to exist in society – fishermen and tax collectors. What capacity for philosophical or religious thought do they seem to possess? To me, the answer is pretty clear: little to none. Matthew, as well as the rest of the apostles, responds to the call of Christ simply because it is Christ who is doing the calling. They live their lives for what they are, and Christ meets them in the midst of it. The Pharisees, on the other hand, do not hear the call of Christ because they have become obsessed with their place in the religion of their fathers. The Pharisees were the educated men who should have been the first to identify Christ as the Son of the Living God. They knew the Scriptures inside-out, yet the love of God passed them by (it did not exclude them, they simply missed it) because they were constantly searching for the fulfillment of their lives. They were looking to climb the ladders of religiosity in the eyes of men (and perhaps thereby become impressive to God (as if anything we do could ever make God say, "Oh, wow! Check out that guy!")), and as a result, they missed out on their own humanity and true lives. How fitting it is, then, that the Lord would call people who are nothing more than what they are. After all, it is hard for a fisherman to appear to be anything but a fisherman; if nothing else gave him away, the perma-stench of fish would. The call of the Lord comes to all, but those who hear it are those who try to be nothing more than who they are before the face of God. As I've said before, this is humility; humus means "ground; low, lowly," and what else can the ground, the earth be but what it is? The apostles do not heap judgment on themselves, nor do they exalt themselves before God, but they hear the voice of Christ say, "Follow me," and they do so just as they are, covetous, smelly, and uncertain. The response of the Old Testament saints and the apostles is, "Here I am."

The nature of our response to the call of the Lord must be the same. We must come before him without any pretense, and we must stand, sit, kneel before him as we are. We don't have to put on a show for God. We can bring before him all our uncertainty, our anger, our irreverence, our disbelief, our love, our pain, our joy, our fear, our ugliness, our beauty, our beer-bellies, our overdeveloped biceps, our lethargy, our ambition, our desire, our despair, and he can handle it. The call is always coming forth from him, "Christian, Christian!" (not me "Christian," but the word for the disciple of Christ...sometimes it really is confusing to be named such), and the only fitting response is, "Here I am. Here I am with all my doubt. Here I am with all my desire. Here I am." We must come before the Lord as we are. Broken. Confused. Hopeful. Our religiosity will not save us. We can get so obsessed with the implications of the call (i.e., go to Africa, become a priest, get married, etc., etc.) that we neglect the Caller whose chief desire is to enter our lives as they are and transform them from the inside. The call is there, our trouble is showing up for it. When Moses asks the name of the Lord, the Lord responds, "I AM WHO I AM," not, "I will be who I will be." The Lord IS. Present tense. If the Lord exists in the present, where else will we encounter the call of the Lord but in the present? What else can we be in the present except for what we are? When we get present before the Lord who is, we show up for our lives for real, and responding to the call of God is no longer a worry about "what I'm going to do when I grow up," but it is a true relationship with and a true response to call of the eternally present, loving God.

On Suffering

"We are not Christ, but if we want to be Christians, we must have some share in Christ's large-heartedness by acting with responsibility and in freedom when the hour of danger comes, and by showing a real sympathy that springs, not form fear, but from the liberating and redeeming love of Christ for all who suffer." – Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Bonhoeffer was an amazing man. Flawed, but amazing. His understanding of suffering as inherent to life is incredible. Even amidst waiting for his execution, he understands that the call of the Christian is to rise to the occasion for another as did Christ. He later says that Christ didn't suffer until he had to, but when the moment came, he embraced it and turned it into salvation. As we, too, enter into the suffering of another, we begin to understand the truth of Christ's love for us. That's why Bonhoeffer suggests we should view others according to what they suffer and not just by what they do or do not do. If we fail to see people in the light of their sufferings, we do them a great disservice because we have failed to see one of the fundamental elements of their humanity.

Christ unites himself to fallen humanity through suffering. If we think, as Christians, that the way we develop important and lasting relationships is through corrective measures without first noting the basis of deviant behavior, we are reduced to moralistic theists at best and judgmental hypocrites without compassion at worst. How can we preach the love and condescension of our Lord on the one and, while on the other we demand faux righteousness from others? The Lord understands our weakness and enters into it, assuming its entirety on the cross and making it the doorway of his grace. It's not wonder that young Christians are turning from their faith as they find each encounter with the Lords people and the church to be nothing more than a cataloging of past misdeeds. Indeed, they often feel marginalized, unseen, unheard, and unable to be known. We are not the summation of our deeds; they come from a place within us that needs to be seen and known. As Christians, we must enter into this place with others and hold their hands as they come to realize the truth of their inner world. This is precisely what Christ did for us, and his heart contains us. We, too, must open our hearts, eyes, and ears and join the suffering of those around us.

On Holiness and Christ's Great Mercy

It has been a long time since I have given direct thought to achieving holiness. I normally like to think of things from a safe, theoretical distance. I would much rather discuss what it means for someone to be holy, or how, theoretically, an encounter with a holy man or woman might be (i.e., clairvoyance, miracles, etc.). This sort of postulation does little good when it comes time to actually grow in holiness oneself. I suppose it’s good to do some preliminary thinking about what the course of holiness might entail, but it really isn’t what it takes to achieve holiness. Things become much more rigorous, tiring, and important when one considers the practical aspect of self-denial and practicing the virtues.

I recently endured some great pain in my life as a result of something I did, and the great degree of separation from God that I experienced was nothing short of demoralizing. I came face to face with my own frailty, though even this is not entirely true as I still manage to hide from it in some weird sense of pride. I’m not sure what “entitles” me to this pride considering the sheer depravity of my mind, heart, and soul, but it exists regardless. The path that I must walk now is one that embraces the suffering and the truth about myself. It isn’t much different, I suppose, than what someone who suffers from a borderline personality must undergo in DBT. Though the philosophy of “You’re perfect. Now change,” is paradoxical and admittedly confusing, it carries with it a truth; one really cannot change until one accepts oneself. I can’t move on until I recognize where I am. I guess it’s sort of like a map. It doesn’t do a whole lot of good to just have the map, but in order to use it to find your final destination, you have to know precisely where you are currently. This is much the same with the spiritual life.

I suppose this is what Christ is talking about when he says, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” We are all poor in spirit, but few of us actually recognize this simple truth. We come to the Lord bearing nothing of worth. It is just us and our hearts that we present to him, and as we do so, he opens our eyes to our lives and shows us the way to his divine life. For this reason, the Church cries out to Christ during Great Lent, “Open to me to gates of repentance.” We can only come to Christ in our desperation for him to show us the way home. He presents the way, which is, of course, himself. We present our darkened hearts to Christ that he may fill them with his light everlasting. I have always had this strange idea that Christ somehow wants me to show up already cleansed, but it is simply outrageous to expect that I can wash my own heart from the multitudinous sins that plague my existence. That is why we cry out to the Lord our God to purify us in his compassion.

As Alcoholics Anonymous tells us, the first step to recovery is admitting that you have a problem. Precisely the same is true in our lives in Christ. We cannot be filled with grace from above until we admit that we are devoid of anything good. We bare our wretched hearts before Christ, asking that he will have mercy upon us in his goodness for this is what he does for those who ask. His mercy endures forever. This is our suffering; we are plagued by our willing separation from the Lover of our souls. We are hardened to his grace and love, but he continually pours forth his abundant goodness despite our continual rejection of it. There is a certain brand of Christian theology that claims that once one is saved, one cannot lose this salvation. I suppose that makes sense within the paradigm from which this belief is generated given that much of the language used is legal in nature. Imputed righteousness takes a front seat in this; Christ dies to remove our sin debt, and in return we get to live in his righteousness. For Orthodox Christians, however, the conversation is about Christ’s work removing the barriers between Man (humanity) and himself.

Three things stand between us and God; our nature (that of flesh), sin, and death. Christ, becoming man, breaks the first barrier in that he shares our nature. In the Nicene Creed, the fundamental statement of Christian belief, the faithful assert that Christ is of “one essence (homoousious) with the Father.” In the 14th century (I believe), a certain saint whose name eludes me used the same word to describe Christ’s relationship with Man: “of one essence.” In this, man is no longer separated from his creator. In his great kindness, Christ takes on our mortal nature, uniting it to himself eternally in the bosom of the Father. Secondly, Christ, in his fleshly existence, lived a sinless life that ended on the cross. By his sinless life, the burden of sin was lifted from Man – second barrier obliterated. Finally, Christ’s Resurrection from the dead on the Third Day destroys the power of Death, and Man is fully united to God in life, death, and, ultimately, resurrection. Each barrier Christ set aside in turn.

With the barriers broken, Man, myself included, is able to enter into relationship with the Lord no matter what the circumstances. He has made his divine life available to all who would come to him in faith. Nothing stands between God and Man anymore. The legality of the sin problem is not an issue. Indeed, it never was. It merely presented a hiccup in the reciprocating relationship between God and Man. It kept us from him because we were enslaved to it. Christ, the Door, has cleared the path for open relationship that can never be broken because God has eternally united Man to himself in his infinite mercy, opening the gates to repentance at all times in every place. Having lived the life of Man, there is nothing that Christ cannot heal for he himself has become the cure. The door to holiness is Christ our God, and as we stand before him, we must acknowledge that which has kept us from coming to him, admitting that nothing good exists within us. This is the heart of holiness. We say, “Lord, I am lost and needy.” We sit in that, understanding that God’s love is unending despite our sinfulness, and as we hold those truths in tension, the only natural request is, “Lord, have mercy!” This can seem like a desperate plea for release from condemnation, but it is a cry for true relationship. Since we come before him admitting what we truly are (lost and needy), we ask him to be what he is (merciful), and the beginning of true relationship occurs. This is our faith. This is our hope. This is our holiness.

On Peace and Repentance

I recently visited Chicago, and the trip was fantastic. Of course, the reason for the visit was a truly worthy one; a buddy was becoming Orthodox over Pentecost weekend. He took the name Silouan, whose story is one for the ages. St Silouan the Athonite lived a marvelous life in many ways, but what's most astounding to me is that three weeks after joining a monastery on Mt Athos, he was given the gift of unceasing prayer. Illumined by the light of the Holy Spirit within him, he prayed ceaselessly for the world, counting all others' sins as his own. Even still, his heart remained peaceful. I can't help but wonder how this could be the case, especially considering that the Lord Himself appeared to the Saint. The only thing that I can see being the answer to such a mind-boggling situation is that Silouan knew who the Lord was and who he was in relation to Him. I suppose this is the true nature of humility, at any rate – knowing who God is and who we are in relation to Him and His purpose. It is only the illumined heart, however, that is able to see things with such clarity.

When I consider this, I have to think of it in terms of my friend's experience of becoming Orthodox – or, at least in terms of how I perceived his experience. He was chrismated on Saturday, and it was beautiful to behold. We went through the service as usual, "The seal of the Gift of the Holy Spirit," and at the end we were encouraged to welcome him into the Holy Orthodox Church. When he turned around to give me a hug (I was standing nearby as playing his godfather), his face looked like that of an angel. In the several years that I have been friends with this man, I have never once seen him so full of joy. I could have sworn that he was going to sprout wings and go flying through the stained-glass windows at the top of the church. The joy I beheld on his face was only surpassed by what I witnessed the next day, Pentecost, as he approached the Blessed Sacrament, the Body and Blood of our Lord. As we waited in line to receive the Holy Eucharist, he began to well up with tears (what I imagine to be tears of anticipation and joy). After Communing, he stood in the corner of the church quietly and serenely crying. There was no show to it. No whimpering. Just tears (and a couple sniffles). What I saw may have just been the three years and a half without Communion finally coming to a head for him, but I believe that what my godson experienced was nothing short of Divine Illumination and a true sharing in the peace of the Lord.

The illumined heart is one that is able to look at its shortcomings without anxiety, fear, or despair. This is the crucial part, I think, to walking in love and light of Christ. Just because we can see our failings doesn't mean that we have experienced the Divine Light, rather, it just means we are highly perceptive and prone to self-loathing. The Divine Light points us toward the Sun of Righteousness whose rays and warmth are ever-inviting. We do ourselves a great disservice if we continue to dwell on our failings. Instead, we must turn our hearts, sinful and dark as they are, toward the Compassionate and Merciful God. In our minds, we often spend too much time thinking about ourselves as is, and we can even see this in much of the way we speak about salvation in the Western traditions of Christianity. Much of the time when the question, "Are you saved?" is asked, it implies that the one who needs saving has a say in the matter. We believe too much in our own capacity to answer such questions, regardless of the "Salvation is God's work" language we may be able to add to supporting theology. Rather, in the Eastern tradition, we come to understand who we are before God, and in spite of this, draw near to Him emboldened by His compassion. For this reason, the Church continually prays, "Lord, have mercy." We are basically asking God to be Himself, and to recognize us amidst that.

When we understand who God truly is – the Compassionate One who became like unto us, taking on our fallen nature, submitting to death, and rising again on the Third Day – we have no questions about whether God will receive us in love. When we fail to understand who God is or who we are, relationship with the Divine ceases to be a possibility. Much the problem is that we consistently fail to see clearly on either side of the situation. Here repentance, a change of mind, is of the utmost importance. When I look at the majority of my life so far, I realize that most of the time has been spent letting my own wants and perceived needs dictate the course of my actions. I have put my own self in charge in a feeble attempt to sit on God's Sovereign Throne. Life in Christ is a complete reversal of this. It puts God back in His Throne, and keeps me as a servant of God on earth. Indeed, it is a life that embraces humility – earthiness. We can think wrongly about humility if we consider it as mere lowliness. Yes, it is lowliness, but not in the sense of its relation to how bad we are, but in the sense of it being exactly what we are in the light of Christ. In Genesis, God fashions man from the dust of the earth and breathes life into him. Subsequently, woman is fashioned from man's rib. In this, we can understand that for man to embrace a humble life is an attempt for man to embrace who he really is – fashioned by God from the lowly dirt. Moreover, we see that man and woman are a part of each other. One is not exalted above the other, but they are truly flesh of each other's flesh. We cannot for one second in our life in Christ think that we stand alone as judge and overseer of our lives. Even speaking of "my life" as mine is a disservice to myself. My life is God's. It's sort of like how parents say, "I brought you into this world, I can take you out of it." This reflects a great deal of truth – my life is a gift of God that must be resubmitted to Him for His glory. This gift of my life also belongs to my neighbor. To embrace humility – recognizing who God is (the Creator) and recognizing who I am in relation to Him (His beloved creature) – leads directly to the path of peace, because actively embracing humility is truly an act of repentance.

By God's grace we continue to understand who He is and who we are in His love. If we try to walk away from the truth of the nature of this relationship, we walk directly into a life of anxiety and discord. Only a life filled with the Holy Spirit is able to stand before God in true humility, and pray for others' sins as though they were one's own. Though this manner of life is not always sustainable, it is at least worth praying that the God who created the world and breathed life into man will make Himself known to us. When this happens, the light of God, if only for a moment, shows us who we are, and we are able to repent and walk briefly in peace.

On Pressing In

There is less than a week left of the Holy Fast, and it seems like I have made no progress in it. My spirit is weary, and I continue to just come face to face with my insufficiencies, failings, and weaknesses. The struggle is relentless, but instead of just backing out, it is necessary to press into the remaining days of the bright sadness. I sin with such frequency, but God is merciful.

It's funny, the struggles that I am coming up against in the remaining days of the Fast are not turning out to be the ones that I would have expected at the beginning of the fast a month ago. There is something deeply engrained in each of us, I think, that rears its ugly head at this point in the journey toward Pascha. We must deal with these things. I guess I am only speaking in really vague terms right now, and perhaps rightly so. As I said, my spirit is weary, and my body too. 

I think it's God's will that we end up being brought directly into conflict with the things that are worst about ourselves during periods of extended fasting. It is up to us to decide whether or not we are going to do anything about it or do the necessary work to even see the things we struggle with when they are before us. We must, in the remaining time of Great Lent, push further in so that we may see with truly illumined eyes. We need to know what we are repenting of, don't we? The fast does not save us, it merely prepares our hearts for our imminent salvation. We must, however, be like the virgins who wait for the Bridegroom. He is faithful to his word, appearing as he says he will, but in his time. We must be vigilant in the days before Pascha if we wish to taste of the Resurrection. We must see what in us must be crucified so that we can rise into true life in Christ.

May the Lord grant us the eyes of faith to see.

On Stewardship

My relationship with my parents is continually changing. I think this is good, but it often feels like a bad thing or like I am somehow evil for not turning out to be the person they quite expected or think that I should be. I’ve recently been hearing a lot of different things from them, most of which seem intended to precipitate crisis in order to force me to make some changes that they deem necessary. I can understand why they think that I am at a vital point in my life where some really important choices need to get made or my will needs to be adjusted even more severely. I think, however, much of the criticism I am receiving from them is rooted in their fundamental distrust of me. I know that I acted very foolishly as a child and teenager, often scorning their help and failing to hear the lessons that they would teach me, and while I still don’t necessarily think that I’ve learned the lessons that they think I need to learn, I do think I’m in process of learning a different set of lessons that will have a similar effect on my life.

I have real difficulty making myself get up and search for work. My parents have been convinced all along that if I worked more then my life would be complete and I would have it together as a person. This makes sense to me immediately. When I think about it, however, it makes less sense because of the life I had before I moved back to California. I was working all the time when I lived in Wheaton, making plenty of money, but foolishly making excuses to justify my lifestyle. I was drinking, buying lots of stuff that I didn’t need (like a Nintendo Wii), going out to dinner all the time, going to movies, etc. I had no concept of the provision of God. More and more I realize, that the Lord will continually provide for me. He has until now, and I remain confident that if I walk in his will, he is going to provide me only with what I need. I don’t think that I will ever have enough to travel (unless he wants me to), to support a family (unless he wants me to), or to go back to school (unless he wants me to). The point is, however, that the Lord will provide for me what I need and no more than that. If I choose to spend it wastefully, however, that is up to me.

I look at my parents, both of whom are extremely successful and good at who they are, and it makes perfect sense to me why my previous negligence drove them nuts, and why they perceive my current state as similar. Marianne and I have been talking about my life (obviously) and she has been saying that it seems like I have the “vow of poverty” on me. I guess I understand that. I am not someone who is impressed by wealth or turned off by a lack of it. Money is just not something I really have a way of thinking about. Trying to do so stresses me out. I don’t mean that it stresses me out in the way that studying for a test or something necessary might give a normal degree of anxiety, but in a way that is filled with satanic influence. This is not to say that I think money is evil or anything like that, but only that I’m not someone who needs to think of it in a concentrated way. It will come if I pursue God. The closer I draw to him (which is of the utmost importance, and ultimately the only thing that is important), the money will come in. What’s more important is that I learn to pray, work, love God and others. Fr Patrick said something interesting to me today, and I guess I never had really thought of it the way he put it before. We need to work because we aren’t angels, we aren’t just spirits. We have bodies, and work is to the body what prayer is to the soul. We tame our souls through prayer and discipline our bodies through work. Without either we fall easily into the passions. We work for our salvation. It is for that reason that I find myself wanting to pursue work. The conversation before of how I needed to work because I needed to make money so I could one day become a father and support a family is useless to me. I firmly believe that the Lord will provide whatever he needs to for me to be where he wants me to be. As I seek to love him above all else, both in and out of the workplace, he will make the specific steps of my life more clear to me. The Lord provides. I can’t provide for anyone. I can only manage what the Lord provides for me.

I guess part of the thing about this time in my life where I don’t have a job is that I feel like I really need to take advantage of it. I had fallen so far away from the Lord and his Church, that I couldn’t even see straight. In this time, though, he has given me freedom to seek him alone. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the economy failed right before I decided to come home. Again, I was doing fine in Wheaton in terms of amount of money I was making, but because I had no foundation in the Lord, I was squandering my life. I came home because Christ pretty much led me to the doorstep of my parents, and they opened their house to me. I’m grateful for this, and firmly believe that the four months that I have had minimal employment have been the Lord’s way of reminding me that I need to pursue him alone, whether or not I have a job. If I don’t have a job to work at, I need to find or make work for myself. I’m not going to pretend that I have used all my free time to pursue God and his mercy, but I understand now that this is what it was given to me for. I become increasingly convinced that the Lord is preparing me for a life of minimal income and intense service to him and those whom he loves, and really, this is all I want to do anyway. The hard part of this is going to be maintaining that desire, and remembering that I have time and again asked the Lord to grant it to me. He has, but in the same way that he provided enough money for me in Wheaton, it is my duty to put it to proper use. If I do, he will continue to provide enough for me.

My trust is in the Lord.