A Ramble About Patience

We bought a PC game for our girls today with some Christmas money. The girls were there when we bought it, so it was kind of pointless to wrap it and make them wait until Christmas morning for it. It was one of those Sims games with a Pets expansion included. Our girls love the Sims games and were excited about being able to create the pets with the expansion. I wasn't entirely sure whether our main desktop would meet all the graphics requirements for it, but everything else checked out, and the graphics card requirements were just vague enough to give us some hope that it would run.

We got it home, unwrapped it, and installed it onto the computer. Everything looked like it checked out during the installation, and then we tried playing the main game a bit. Everything looked good, so we installed the expansion disk. That's when we ran into problems. The pets wouldn't show up right, and the game occasionally crashed.

A few inquiries into Google via our cell phone, and we found out that our graphics card is the problem. It happens to be on the extreme low end for this particular version of the Sims to run. Further, while it will in fact run the main game okay, the Pets expansion refuses to cooperate with it, or so say all the forum comments by people who have had the exact same problem we do. All of our other computer hardware checks out as either adequate or above, but Dell went cheap on the graphics processor.

Needless to say, our girls were disappointed, my middle daughter in particular. She really wanted to play this one because she could make horses with it. I found myself then calmly explaining to her several times about patience.

If it is one thing I have learned over time, I told her, it is that if there is some book I want to read, some movie I would like to see, or some game I would like to play, then, in all probability, I will eventually be able to do so. It may not be right now, or tomorrow. But I have learned that it will happen if it is important that I do, and it may happen eventually even if it isn't important. Prices come down, games become abandonware or open sourced, movies eventually wind up broadcast on network TV for free, and computers eventually get upgraded. Sometimes it takes months, years or decades, but it does happen. I have learned that God doesn't withhold good things from us, and those things He does withhold aren't good for us right in that moment. The same thing might be bad for us at one point in time, but later on He allows it at just the right moment when it can be good for us or do the most good for us. I went on like this for some time until she seemed to understand.

As I was talking to my now twelve year old daughter, I realized that it wasn't really I who was talking per se, but God was talking through me. And I also realized that I wasn't the one explaining, but I was the one it was being explained to just as much as my daughter was. He was answering some of my own questions and disappointments I had posed to Him just the other day through my own words and experiences which I was relating to my daughter.

It's not the first time He's answered me in this manner, and it likely won't be the last. It's a humbling reminder as well that whatever wisdom which I think I possess really comes from Him.

A Ramble About Salvation

I am Orthodox Old Catholic, but I wasn't always. There was a time when I came from a non-denominational bible church in California, and attended a non-denominational missionary bible school in Wisconsin. The bible school, like the church I attended, was one which taught that, if you accepted Christ as your savior and truly believed in Him, you were saved, and nothing could take that away from you.

One day, the question was raised, as a part of the class, “how much does someone have to know and believe in order to be saved?” As an answer, and a tool for evangelizing, we were given a system called the “Three Crucial Issues.” The first crucial issue is that everyone has sinned and can do nothing to earn their way into heaven. The second is that Jesus Christ died for our sins and paid the price for us so that we don't have to. The third is that it's our responsibility to believe this and act on it. This was considered the bare minimum standard of faith and understanding necessary for salvation.

As I was thinking about this lately, I also thought about the Catholic/Orthodox faith, and how it is perceived by Evangelicals, and even by many Catholics and Orthodox, who see it as somehow requiring us to work to earn our salvation or somehow do enough penance to become “worthy” of our salvation. What a load of rubbish. The writings of the Saints are replete with the understanding that there is no way for us to make ourselves worthy of Him, but that He is also capable of saving even us, unworthy as we are. Time and time again, the Saints write about how unworthy they are of Him, and the closer they draw to Him, the more intense this sentiment becomes and the more vocal they become as to their inability to save themselves. They did not presume on their final salvation, but they did entrust it to God as they grew in their understanding and knowledge of Him.

The truth is that if, as was taught in my old school, these three crucial issues represent the bare minimum of understanding for salvation, then according to this, all professing Catholics and Orthodox who understand their faith are saved. Furthermore, so are all Mormons (at least insofar as the Book of Mormon itself teaches). For that matter, any professing, devout Christian, of any stripe or denomination, Orthodox or not, falls under this category because these “crucial issues” are the most basic understanding of Christianity there is. They are understood as true by everyone who understands what their Faith actually teaches, and this is the key point.

The error in what I was taught in that bible school lies with the misunderstanding of how to evangelize and not proselytize. Evangelizing is spreading the Gospel. Proselytizing is trying to convert people to believe what you believe. There is a wide gulf between them, but they are too often confused. Evangelizing seeks to give Jesus Christ to people. Proselytizing seeks to grow local churches and denominations (and, need I add, increase revenue from tithes).

If such Evangelicals truly wish to Evangelize other Christians of different traditions, then the best thing they can do, according to their own belief system, is to teach these other Christians about their own faith traditions, and not try and force them to leave the Churches they know. If you teach a Roman Catholic about his own faith from the official Catechism of the Catholic Church, you will certainly inform him enough about the Gospel to ensure his salvation according to the Three Crucial Issues. If you teach an Orthodox Christian about his own faith from any of a number of good Catechisms (I like “The Orthodox Way” by Kallistos Ware) you will most certainly fulfill these Crucial Issues. Even if you teach a Mormon from the Book of Mormon itself, once again you will run directly into these Crucial Issues again and again within its pages. If a sincere belief in these three tenets alone ensure one's salvation, and not a belief in other doctrines, or actions or practices associated with the faith tradition in question, then it is better to make the foundation of their salvation more secure by working within their faith tradition and not against it. If you work against it, you run the risk of ruining their faith and pulling up the wheat with the weeds, so to speak.

I am no longer a Protestant Evangelical, but I still understand the theology underpinning it. There is no logic, in this theology, in the attempt to draw Christians of other faith traditions out of their own churches in order to save them when it can already be demonstrated that the tradition in question already meets the bare minimum understanding for this purpose. The only purpose to trying to convince them to leave is to grow one's own church for either that church's financial gain, or personal glory. This is the root of heresy, and what the Apostles and their successors were trying to combat relentlessly. The question which an Evangelist must ask himself is this, “am I trying to truly give Jesus to this person, or am I trying to get him to join my church and leave his?” The person who does the first is a true Evangelist. The person who does the second is a true Heretic.

A Ramble About Getting Older

I woke up one day recently and made the realization, “hey, I'm almost forty.” I then thought “how the heck did that happen?!” I think these thoughts had something to do with my having a birthday a few months ago. Suddenly I went from the middle of my thirties to my later thirties and forty didn't seem as far away as it should have. Something inside me shouted, “no, wait! I can't be nearly forty yet! I couldn't possibly be!” But, here I am. And, with the realization of my impending four-oh, I realized that most likely, I'm in the middle of my life now.

No, thirty-seven isn't generally considered middle-age, that's true. But both my grandfather and great-grandfather died when they were in their early to mid seventies, and my dad isn't doing so hot right now being in his late sixties. That doesn't improve my odds at longevity past my early seventies.

Be this as it may, it doesn't bother me that I may die in another thirty-seven years like my forefathers. I know it's going to happen at some point in time. To be honest, I'd rather it happen with all of my faculties intact. I suppose it struck me more because it means I most likely only have a little less than forty years left. Forty years seems like a long time at first, but seeing as I wasn't prepared for the last thirty-seven to blaze by as fast as it did, it seems a lot closer now than it used to.

The question then becomes, what have I done with my life for the last thirty-seven years? I suppose it depends on whom you ask. I'm fairly certain there are people who would swear that I've totally wasted it. Others might say that I spent it chasing after a fantasy. Still others might be kind and point to my family, my wife and kids, and the people the Lord has used me to work with and say that neither is true, as rough a road as it has been.

A wise friend once told me that God isn't so much concerned about the work of a worker as He is concerned about the work in the worker. He later told me that God's work is the worker himself. I've come to understand that more and more. Everything He's allowed me to do and be a part in has been done with the goal in mind of making me one with Him. Every failure, every success, every slip, and every re-direction. When God said “no” to something, it was because it wasn't in my best interests as much as it wasn't in the best interests of everyone else who would have been impacted. When He permitted something, it was because it would further that goal with me, and with everyone else involved.

The greatness of the successes and failures which we cling to and allow to define who we are in this life don't really matter much in the end. In a hundred years, no one except people interested in obscure history will remember them. Wealth, accomplishments, personal disasters, and poverty all end in this way for everyone. Even our memories which we cling to will fade as the brain fails, and we don't recognize even our loved ones. So what is left to aspire to then?

God does not fade. God does not end. And the purpose and goal of our lives is to become one with Him through Jesus Christ. Because, at the end, we will lose everything of this life we have worked so hard to achieve no matter how hard we try and hold on to it. But what cannot be lost through the death of the body is our upward calling to union with God.

A Ramble About Worldviews

I was teaching a history lesson to my daughter today on the Latter Day Saints and their migration to the Great Salt Lake. It actually surprised me that it was in the US history textbook which I was using, because it had never been in any of my textbooks when I was in public school before. But, there it was, with a whole chapter (all of about four or five pages) devoted to it. It was, in general, a generous treatment which I felt glossed over a number of the negatives of the early history of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. The picture it gave was of a sincere religious leader and his devout followers bravely facing persecution, and traveling westward to found a religious haven.

As a result, I had to spend a short time explaining some of the things about Latter Day Saint history which the textbook didn't cover. I had to explain that Joseph Smith was most likely a charlatan and his original six followers were in on it; and that the Book of Mormon was most likely a manuscript which had been stolen from a publisher before it was published and altered by Smith and his men to fit the scam they were trying to impose on sincere but uneducated people.

I then had to explain that while Smith and his original followers had lied to the people who followed them, the people who believed the lie and perpetuated it themselves hadn't been a part of it. They had believed what they were told and then told it to their children as the truth, who then told it to their children, and so on down to the present day. As a result, there are a large number of devout, Latter Day Saint followers who are, on the whole, good people. They do believe in Jesus Christ, and practice their faith with sincerity. When they go out to evangelize others into their Church, they do so with no ulterior motives except to bring salvation to them as they understand it. But for all their good intentions, the things which separate Mormon Christianity from Orthodox Christianity are based on a lie, and there's no getting around it.

Modern Judaism is in much the same position. Almost two thousand years ago, the Sanhedrin which had illegally railroaded Jesus Christ into being crucified told a whopper to their people and said that His disciples had stolen His body after the resurrection. This story, like the Book of Mormon, was perpetuated from the liars to otherwise honest people who then perpetuated it unknowingly to their children and followers down to present day. This lie is what separates Orthodox Judaism from Orthodox Christianity. There are good, honest Jewish people who only want to follow God and His Torah as they've been instructed. They look forward to the coming of their Messiah never coming to terms with the fact that their Messiah has already come.

When confronted with the truth, in the case of either of these two groups, the usual response is disbelief. The first defense the mind has is to defend it and reject the contradiction. You're challenging a “truth” upon which the rest of their beliefs and faith are established. But if you succeed in convincing them, once that “truth” is eroded or removed, the rest of their belief structure can come crashing down and that's not something which the mind easily handles or recovers from once it has happened. Consider that a person's whole belief in Jesus Christ may rest on the belief in the veracity of the Book of Mormon and its origins. What happens when you destroy that belief? When you disrupt a foundational belief like this, how then is the person able to trust that what you're telling them is the truth? How do you keep them from spiraling downwards into a black abyss?

If you think about it enough, you realize that most of our foundational beliefs about our world, other people, and even (and especially) God are themselves based on erroneous assumptions and explanations. They are based on erroneous assumptions because we do not know the absolute truth about everything. Our very nature as created, limited beings precludes this kind of knowledge. We observe things, we theorize about why those things are the way they are, and then we test those theories to see if they have real explanatory power. This is a tried and true method of learning about anything, and the only method we have at our disposal. But if we have learned anything we have learned that the explanations which serve us today may be proven inadequate or completely wrong tomorrow. This is the nature of human knowledge. We must be satisfied with only partial and incomplete explanations on which to base our worldviews so that we can have a worldview that allows us to function. But we must be careful with it or else we run the risk of having it crash down around our ears and we being driven insane when new information contradicts the foundations of that worldview and that new information itself can't be contradicted at the time.

God knows this and understands this about us, far better than we understand it about ourselves. When He works with a person to draw that person closer to Himself, He always works within the worldview of the person in question, and gently leads the person into a better understanding of Himself over time as the person is able to handle it.

Jesus taught “Don't judge so that you won't be judged.” We can all only make sense of the information about the world around us when we filter it through the worldview we each of us possess, and we react to that information based on that worldview. When we pass judgment on another, we run the risk of unraveling that person's worldview, which could then unravel the person beyond recovery of his faith, or even of his sanity.

St. Paul wrote, “Now accept one who is weak in faith, but not for disputes over opinions,” (Romans 14:1,WEB). In his letters to the Romans and the Corinthians he addresses the problem of eating something which has been sacrificed to an idol. For some of the Christians of the time, it wasn't an issue. They realized that the idol was just a carved piece of wood or stone and it didn't bother them in the slightest. For others, however, who had converted from the pagan religions, their worldview saw these idols as being representative of very real and powerful demons. Eating the meat of an animal which had been sacrificed to one of them was the same as taking part in the sacrifice yourself. Paul's instruction regarding this was to respect the worldview of the other, saying “who are you to judge another's servant?To his own Master he stands or falls.”

We should always work to bring a person into a more full knowledge of the truth, but we must always do so with humility, recognizing that our knowledge of the truth is limited at best. And we must always do so with compassion, seeking to recognize the limits of how much “deconstruction” of their worldviews the person we're working with can handle at any point in time. It must always be their choice to make those changes, and they may not be able to safely. Sometimes as in the parable, we must allow the weeds (false teaching) to grow alongside the wheat (faith) until harvest time so that we don't lose the wheat when trying to pull the weeds.

A Ramble About Two Kinds of Death

I've recently been reacquainting myself with Battlestar Galactica, the most recent version done a few years ago. Truth be told, I've been a BSG fan since I was three or four years old, when it originally came on television, as well as the Galactica 1980 spinoff. I never missed a rerun of the original series on Saturday afternoons when I was growing up either. The original series was far more kid friendly than the recent series, yet the recent series is far more realistic in terms of human characters, responses, and relationships under the extreme stress and trauma of having your whole world destroyed and having to rebuild everything from scratch (literally). This, I believe, is what made it do so well, even though it is also what makes it difficult to watch and unfit for kids of any age.

In one of the episodes from season four, a leader of rebel Cylons (Cylons generally being the bad guys) addresses the Colonial Quorum (the government of what's left of the good guys). In her address she expresses that humanity's greatest flaw, being mortal and subject to death, is also what makes humanity whole. When the Cylons had the capacity to download their consciousnesses into new bodies, time was pretty much meaningless, and so was their existence. But when they lost that ability, when they became mortal, suddenly every moment of life became precious to them because they knew those moments were now limited.

In the book, and later the movie, The Bicentennial Man, the android Andrew Martin spends his life, from the time he is switched on, pursuing a goal of being human, and being accepted as an equal among human beings. In his journey he underwent radical physical upgrades so that his robotic body began to resemble and function like a human body instead of a machine body. As he spends his two hundred years making every change imaginable, he watches his human friends and “family” grow old around him and pass away, much to his grief. In the end, the thing which held him back from the recognition he sought was his own inability to die. It's when he takes steps to allow the circuitry in his positronic brain to permanently corrode over time that he finally wins the recognition, and peace, he had spent so long in search of.

The Bible says that death entered the world through sin, and death was one of the punishments for Adam for doing what God said not to do, “but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you may not eat; for in whatever day you eat from it, you shall die by death.” (Genesis 2:17, Saint Athanasius Academy Septuagint)

We know from modern science, that natural death was in the world millions if not billions of years before human beings, modern or otherwise. Death on its own is a part of life and the processes of life. As something dies, it contributes to the nourishment of the life of something else. In fact, life can't exist without death, be it the death of a plant or of an animal. In order for one form of life to be fed, another must die and this is true whether we are talking about a plant or animal or single-celled organism. Something must die and decompose into the soil in order for a plant to be nourished and grow and bear fruit. The bread you may use in a sandwich was made of the seeds of the wheat plant. Those seeds, the embryonic young of the wheat plant, had to die in order to feed you and sustain you. Every hamburger is a heifer or steer that died so you could eat fast food. In the human body cells are continuously dying in order to make room for new cells. The uppermost layer of our skin is made up of dead skin cells, which are constantly shedding off as new skin cells are born from the bottom and grow their way to the top. It's a fact that the human body itself completely replaces itself every seven years as the cells within the body die and are replaced with new cells. Cancer, one of the most heinous diseases, is a malfunction in the cells where they start reproducing out of control and don't die like they're supposed to. There is no life without this kind of death. If this process were to be interrupted, biological life on this world would end. It is so important that it's built into our very genetic coding as telomeres.

But the death which came as a consequence to Adam and Eve's disobedience was something else entirely. It had to be. Everything God created was good, and the natural cycle of birth and death is necessary for that creation to function correctly. The death which came about by Adam and Eve's sin is destructive. It feeds no one and nothing but itself.

“Adam” means “human being” in Hebrew. Whether the Scriptures are speaking of a literal Adame and Eve as the ancestors of all human beings, or if they are speaking in general terms of Adam and Eve as representative of the human beings at the time, this destructive death spread to every human being then and now. Instead of a continuing cycle of life, death, and rebirth, humanity would continue on in a cycle of death and destruction which would end in the death of humanity as a whole, and the destruction and suffering of many other forms of life on earth in the process.

Often, “eternal life” is seen as a synonym for “living forever.” But consider, would living forever really be a reward or a blessing? Would endless life in our current physical bodies really be something to look forward to? If it was only a select few, we would have to watch friends and family pass away until we were alone, and would be afraid to make new relationships for fear of losing those to death as well. If it was everyone, the Earth wouldn't have the resources to sustain an immortal population if it continued to grow. It is likely every other species on Earth would be pushed out and go extinct as we made more room. If it didn't continue to grow it would stagnate and people would eventually begin to despair that there was nothing new, and quite probably wish for death. No, there is something perverse about living forever under these circumstances. It is a selfish desire born of a fear of something which is a natural part of life and the cycle of life. We're so afraid of the possibility of not existing that we're willing to sacrifice everything else to keep it from happening. This is not the eternal life talked about in the Scriptures. It isn't even the proper translation of the Greek phrase.

In order for there to be life, death must come first. In order for us to take our natural place in the creation, we too must die and be able to die. It was through Christ's death and our joining to His death through baptism which bring us our salvation. And in order for us to be raised with Christ as undying just as He is undying, we must first die to the life we now have. We must not interfere with its natural course, either in trying to avoid the death which comes naturally to us (which is an exercise in futility), or in trying to take control of it ourselves and hastening it (which is murder and damaging someone else's property). But this is not the destructive death, which nourishes nothing and only causes more destruction and death.

That kind of death is produced by fear, greed, and selfishness. This kind of death can be seen easily enough as one selfish action produces a chain-reaction of pain and misery within the person who committed the action and especially with those who surround the person who committed the action who are directly and indirectly affected by it. This kind of death is futile and accomplishes nothing positive or beneficial.

In reality, our natural ability to die can be one of God's greatest gifts to us. It allows the human race, as it is, to continue without overtaxing our resources. It allows us to move on into greater union with God through Jesus Christ unencumbered by the malfunction which plagues the human race. And it gives us the chance to be at peace regardless of who we are.

A Ramble About Ascension

Daniel Jackson: “Maybe I've done something good every now and again, but nothing I've ever done seems to have changed anything.”

Oma Desala: “These tasks of which you speak were great challenges, perhaps even impossible to achieve.”

Daniel Jackson: “Does that absolve me?”

Oma Desala: “Do you feel you journey must continue until you have found redemption for these failures?”

Daniel Jackson: “Nope. Not anymore. Not if I'm dead.”

Oma Desala: “Exactly true.”

Stargate: SG-1, “Meridian”

This dialogue is from what is perhaps my favorite episode from the series “Stargate: SG-1”. The episode is also my wife's least favorite because in it a much loved main character dies horribly from lethal radiation exposure. But in those moments before death he is visited by someone he had met before, an old friend you might say. She is a member of a race of people that learned to shed their physical form and “ascend” to a higher plane of existence as pure energy. This particular ascended being had then spent thousands of years helping others to do the same thing when they were ready to die and leave their mortal existence behind, and now she was here for Daniel in his final moments to help him. In other words, she was there to help him ascend and become like her.

But Daniel doesn't believe himself to be worthy of it. Part of the journey of ascension for him is that he must release his burden, and for him, this means letting go of his guilt and perceived failures as well as letting go of the mortal life he clung to so he could follow her in ascension. Eventually, she does guide him to the understanding which allows him to let everything go and follow her, becoming a being of pure light.

This idea of the need to die and release everything you're clinging to in order to achieve salvation isn't new, and it isn't confined to science fiction:

“Because whoever would wish to deliver his psyche will destroy it; and whoever would destroy his psyche for mine and the Gospel's sake will deliver it.” (Mark 8:35)

This saying is found, almost word for word, six times in all four Gospels. Twice in Matthew (10:39, 16:25), Twice in Luke (9:24, 17:33), once in Mark (8:35), and once in John (12:25). By anyone's definition of textual criticism, liberal or conservative, this would mark this as something that Jesus Christ not only actually said, but that it was so important to them, the Gospel writers repeated it again and again. (Though not well known, “psyche” is the transliteration of the Greek word used in all six occurrences, and is the most accurate translation of the word as well because, in its strictest sense, it encompasses the emotions, the reasonings, the soul, the memories, and the physical being of the person, and not just the mind or the soul.)

Submission to death and the letting go of the things of this mortal life are fundamental concepts of the path of Jesus Christ. St. Paul wrote about it several times in his epistles, beginning with the letter to the Romans:

“Or are you ignorant that, as many of us as were baptized into Christ Jesus, were baptized into His death? We were therefore entombed together with Him through the baptism into His death, so that just as Christ was awakened from the dead through the glory of the Father, so also we should walk in newness of life. Because if we have become grown together in the resemblance of His death, but also will we be of His resurrection; knowing this that our old human being was co-crucified so that the body of the sin disorder would be abolished, for us to no longer be enslaved to the disorder; because the person who died has been acquitted from the sin disorder. And if we died together with Christ, we believe that we will also live together with Him, knowing that Christ having been awakened from the dead is no longer mortal, death has dominion over Him no longer. So also you figure yourselves to be dead indeed to the sin disorder yet living to God in Christ Jesus.” (Romans 6:3-11)

Death acquits a person from sin. The dead man no longer worries about the guilt and failures in his life. He no longer worries about what he did wrong or right. The sentence for his mistakes in life has already been carried out. Death has absolved him. As Sirach says in 41:4 “There is in Hades no inquiry into your life.” (SAAS) Yet in spite of this, the dead man must still face the natural separation from the things of life he clung to, being unable by nature to sense or recognize the God who surrounds him with His love. Thus Jesus Christ, and His death and resurrection.

St. Paul's argument is this, those of us who were baptized were grafted into His death on the cross. We therefore shouldn't continue in the way we lived before this baptism, being subject to the sin disorder, because we died when we were baptized, and the person who died has been acquitted from the sin disorder. But his argument goes further in that just as we were joined to the death of Christ, so would we be joined to His resurrection. Just as Christ was raised immortal, so would we be raised immortal, if we died with Him; if we accepted our death, and let go of this world and stopped clinging to it.

This thinking was central in St. Paul's understanding of what the path of Jesus Christ was all about. In his letters to the Galatians and the Colossians, he brings it up as the lynchpin of his arguments which all of his instruction hangs on:

“I was co-crucified with Christ; and I live no longer; but Christ lives within me; and that which I now live in the flesh, I live by the Faith of the Son of God who loved me and gave Himself over for me.” (Galatians 2:20)

“But let there be absolutely no boast for me except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom the world is crucified to me and I to the world.” (Galatians 6:14)

“If you died together with Christ from the basic elements of the world, why are you dogmatizing as living in the world? Don't handle neither taste neither touch, all of which is for the decay to consumption, according to the commands and teachings of human beings, which things are a word indeed having wisdom in self-made religion and humility and severe discipline of a body, not in anything valuable against the gratification of the flesh. If then you were awakened together with Christ, look for the things on high, where Christ is sitting at the right hand of God; be mindful of the things on high, not the things upon the ground. Because you died and your life has been hidden together with Christ in God; when Christ your life is made to appear, then you will also be made to appear with Him in glory.” (Colossians 2:20-3:4)

In his letter to the Philippians, this death is implicit in his rejection of all the benefits of status which his ancestry and formal education brought him as he says:

“But the things which were profit to me, I lead these things loss because of Christ. But rather I also lead everything to be loss because of the superiority of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, through whom I lost everything, and lead it crap, so that I would profit Christ” (Philippians 3:7-8)

St. Paul knew that it is absolutely important that we accept the sentence of death which has been carried out on us through our union with Christ in baptism, and which is brought to completion in the death of the physical body. We must live as though already passed out of this world. It is nothing less than accepting the original sentence passed on Adam instead of futilely trying to fight it. We must be as a corpse is to the things of this world: unfeeling, disinterested, detached, unmoved, and focused upon the center of our existence, our God and Savior Jesus Christ, paying only the attention we have to in order that Christ might live His life out through us. Accepting that we no longer live, and releasing the things of the world we cling to so tightly is the only path to being joined to His resurrection.

If we reject this sentence of death and cling to our life and things of this world, we incur judgment to ourselves, not because God is cruel or because He wants to condemn us, but because after death the object of our clinging has ceased from our experience and we go insane, or rather our insanity is brought to its culmination, total separation from everything else but God, and unable to welcome or recognize God Himself.

Jesus Himself pleads for this and warns about it in the Gospel of John:

“Stay in Me, and I within you. Just as the branch isn't capable of producing fruit from itself except it should stay in the vine, so neither you if you don't stay within Me. I am the vine, you the branches. This person who stays within Me and I within him produces a lot of fruit, because without Me you are not capable of doing anything at all. If anyone doesn't stay within Me, he has been thrown out as a branch and has been withered and they gather them together and throw them into the fire and they are burned.” (15:4-6)

We see this acceptance of death in the lives of many if not most of the lives of the recognized saints. The more one accepts this death with Christ and turns away from the things of the world, the more Christ-like one becomes and the closer to His resurrection one gets. The more one welcomes the things of the world, clings to them, and fights against death, any death, the farther from Christ one becomes, and the farther from His resurrection. It is movement one way or the other. If you welcome your death with Christ you are absolved of your disorder. If you turn away from it, your disorder grows with all the consequences thereof.

The only path to ascension, as Daniel discovered, was by letting go. The only path to resurrection is by accepting one's death.

(Except where noted, all translations from Scripture are mine.)

A Ramble About Knighthood

I was browsing the shelves at Goodwill the other day and came upon an old friend. It's a small paperback volume called “The Legend of Huma,” which is a part of the “Dragonlance” series of books published by TSR. I loved these books when I was in early High School, although I later gave them up when I felt I needed to for a while in order to concentrate on Christian things. I read “The Legend of Huma” during a time when the Lord had really started to call me towards Him, and Huma, the main character, had become a kind of hero for me when I was fourteen because of his devotion to his god and his beliefs. I remember consciously almost praying at that time that I wanted to do or be for my God what Huma had done for his.

The story of Huma is set in the fantasy world of Krynn, where there are gods, monsters, knights, elves, dwarves, and most of the familiar personages and characters you would find from contemporary epic fantasy. Huma, in the story is a Knight of Solamnia, a holy order of knights which was established by the god Paladine (the chief god of good), and his sons Kiri-Jolith and Habbakuk. The knights live their lives by a strict religious code of chivalry, loyalty, honor, and virtue which had been given to them by their gods in order to hold back the darkness of the evil gods of Krynn.

As I became acquainted with this old friend again over the past couple of days there were a couple of lines which caught my eye and set me thinking. In the passage, Huma's friend and love interest is torn between her duty and her love for Huma. She must lead Huma to a set of trials which, if he fails he will die, but if he succeeds he will find the key to defeating the armies of darkness which have overrun his world:

“Were it not Krynn itself that would suffer, I would tell you to turn from here now, before it is too late.”

The knight stiffened. “Even if you told me to, I would not. I cannot. Not—and remain what I am.”

“Is the knighthood so much to you?”

“Not the knighthood. What it teaches.” He had never thought of it in those terms before.

(p. 184, Knaak, Richard A. The Legend of Huma. Lake Geneva, WI; TSR Inc., 1988)

It's this last line which caught my attention, “not the knighthood. What it teaches.” It wasn't the fact he was a knight which meant something to him, nor was it the order of knights themselves. As with any organization, no matter how honorable or well meaning their intentions, there was often a difference between what they stood for and taught and the internal workings and politics of the order which at times actually went completely against the teachings of their gods. Fallible human beings remain fallible human beings, even in fantasy novels. It wasn't the organization of fallible human beings that meant anything to Huma, but the teachings of his god which that organization represented.

The priesthood of the Church is also made up of fallible human beings. It doesn't matter which denomination you look in you'll still find internal politicking, selfish ambitions, avarice, political interference outside of the denomination, and abuses of every kind. It varies from local church to local church, from diocese to diocese, and from denomination to denomination, but it can usually be found to some degree or another in just about any church you look in. It is because of these things that many have left the local churches altogether, switch denominations, and some leave the Church and even our Lord completely. They have lost faith in either their church in particular, or the Church in general and feel betrayed and lost.

It doesn't help the situation, and hurts a great deal, when churches and denominations “circle the wagons” and hide as much of these failings as possible from the general public. I have a dear friend who grew up as a missionary kid in Papua New Guinea with one of the largest, most well known and well respected missions organizations in the world for which her parents were missionaries. For a long time after meeting her we knew that something wasn't quite right. When other friends and I were finally able to get her to talk about why, she told us that one of her close friends had been raped by a gang of New Guineans who had broken into the Mission compound there. This was bad enough, but the Mission board had made her and everyone else who knew about it swear silence on the subject, and they weren't allowed to talk about it to anyone. It had so traumatized our friend that she became self-destructive.

Beyond this are the now well known cases of sexual abuse by members of the Roman Catholic clergy, and the subsequent denials and cover-up by the leadership of the various dioceses and possibly by the Vatican itself. There is also the merciless emotional abuse inflicted by certain, domineering evangelical churches upon their members. There is also the inconceivable avarice and vanity of some “pastors” living in wealth and luxury and plastering their picture and name all over their houses of worship to the point where you wonder who the congregation is actually worshiping. I could go on with more indictments against just about every church and organization I have seen, but it isn't necessary. Most people have only to look at their own local church with an honest and critical eye.

I have been finding it instructive to look back at the lives of the Saints as well. Though the Church hails them now as examples and heroes of the Faith, during their lives many were the targets of the local clergy for abuse and derision. St. Ignatius of Loyola was hounded by the Inquisition in Spain and thrown in prison on the suspicions of local priests and monks. Because of his extreme dedication to Jesus Christ and his embrace of a life of poverty, many people chose to adhere to his rule and practice his Spiritual Exercises which caused dramatic changes to their lives and devotion to Christ. It scared the local clergy and authorities who then reacted to try and re-establish the status quo. St. Ignatius was labeled a troublemaker and was verbally and physically abused for no other reason than he lived and practiced what Jesus Christ and His Church actually taught.

So then the question for many becomes, “Is the Church so much to you?” Another way of saying this question is, “Is it so important for you to remain within the Church that you are willing to risk all of this?” For many now, the answer has become “no.” They can only see what the visible Church is as the human beings within it practice it, and it is a great disillusionment and disappointment.

For St. Ignatius though, it wasn't the practical, visible Church itself, but what the Church teaches that meant everything to him. It wasn't the clergy who berated him which meant anything, but the God who established that clergy and the rule of Faith which bound them both. Much like Huma with his knighthood.

The greatest question, or one of them anyway, which we can ask ourselves is “why do we do what we do?” The answer to that question will either see us through the tests and trials which could cost us everything in this world, or it will trip us up and see not only our bodies destroyed but our souls as well. We can either dedicate ourselves to the fallible human beings in an organization, or we can dedicate ourselves to the teachings of the God who established it.