The 14,000 Holy Innocents

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Abortion, Christmas, death, suffering

As a way to wrap up this annual exercise of spending time with one of the Church Fathers in preparation for the Nativity, I would like to follow up on yesterday’s post with a reminder that St. Gregory isn’t the only one who brings up suffering and death at Christmas time. On December 26th, the day after Christmas, the Orthodox Church reads the story of Herod’s anger and his slaughtering of all the male children two years and younger in the environs of Bethlehem. Three days later, on December 29th, the Orthodox Church officially commemorates these victims with the Feast for the 14,000 Holy Innocents.

It is a reminder that though we are called to leap for joy, sing praises to God and stand in awe of all that will be accomplished by Christ through His Nativity, the world continues to be filled with suffering and death. There are those who are today slaughtered by their fellow man for no good reason what so ever. Every year we have far more than 14,000 innocents who succumb to a death brought about by their fellow human beings.

Thus, in the midst of all this joy and all this celebration — for we Orthodox Christians do not stop celebrating Christmas on the morning of December 25th — we must remember all of those who died before ever knowing Christ. Remember all of those who died before they really ever had a chance to live. Remember all those whose lives that were cut short through the selfishness and cruelty of fallen humanity.

This is our burden and also our hope. During the liturgy, the priest says these seemingly innocuous words:

Remember also, Lord, those whom each of us calls to mind and all your people.

Then, as the priest is placing all of the crumbs that are left from the Body of Christ on the paten into the Cup he prays:

Wash away, Lord, by Your holy Blood, the sins of all those commemorated through the intercessions of the Theotokos and all Your saints. Amen.

By these two prayers, and our active participation in them we have the opportunity to ask God to not only remember but to forgive and grant everything that He gives us, His children, to those whom we bring to mind. Thus, the Church lifts up to God all those babes killed by Herod before they ever had a chance to live life or to know Christ. In turn, she invites us to lift up to God all of the innocents who have been killed throughout the ages.

May God, through our prayers, be as loving and merciful as we dare to hope. Indeed, may He marvelously exceed all of our expectations. Amen.

Bible Study Notes: The Prodigal Son

Tags

Abortion, death, Environmentalism

I must apologize for not maintaining this blog for quite a while. Due to weather, my own health and a conflict in scheduling, I have been unable to do Bible Study for a couple of weeks. Fortunately, we are back to a normal around here and were able to have a small study for this upcoming Sunday — the Prodigal Son.

I must preface this (as I prefaced the study) with the confession that I look forward to preaching on this parable every year, but not without a little trepidation. This is one of the most beautiful, beloved and bountiful pericopes in all of Scripture. It is so deep and so wide that it is intimidating to try and narrow one’s focus enough to do this passage justice in a sermon. The flip side of this coin, of course, is that I do not foresee a time when I run out of things to focus on.

We began our evening by briefly touching on the Epistle (1 Corinthians 6:12-20)

• St. Paul doesn’t pull any punches. He reminds us that we are members of the Body of Christ and that to commit adultery is to join Christ (ourselves as members of the Body) to prostitutes.
• This calls to mind the reality that the Prodigal Son finds himself in — he was a child of God the Father and united himself to “wasteful living.”
• There was some confusion over verse 13, where St. Paul reminds us that both food and our stomachs will be destroyed by God (in reminding us that eating anything we want is lawful, but not necessarily helpful, he reminds us of the usefulness of the Fast that we are about to undertake in the coming weeks). God will destroy both in that He will renew all of creation. The fallenness of the food and our bodies will be destroyed.

We spent the rest of the evening focusing on the Gospel Reading (Luke 15:11-32)

• We prefaced this study with the knowledge that the hymns of the Church very clearly identify us with the Prodigal Son.
• We briefly touched on the importance of the Prodigal coming to himself. We are not created to be separated from God. Our proper place is to be with God — even as a servant.
• We also noted that while the Father killed the fatted calf (something that takes time to prepare — it must be nurtured, cared for, fed and protected), the elder son asks for a young goat — something that takes little time to prepare in comparison to the fatted calf. Even when we are in the arms of the Father, we can still be tempted by the instant gratification that drew the Prodigal away from the Father.

We spent a lot of time with the image of the Prodigal working in the fields with swine.

• As a Jew, working to raise and feed swine is a fool’s errand. He cannot eat the food he is caring for.
• This is a natural outcome of a life separated from God. Everything we try to do sans God will eventually decay, collapse and disappear from the world. We may have some apparently good times, but the famine will eventually come.
• The Prodigal finds himself in a situation where the pigs are of more value than he is — though he would be willing to eat pig slop, no one gives him any. There are many places in our own culture where animals, objects and lifestyles are valued more than human life. There are strains of environmentalism that place the life of an animal above a human being. Much of the pro-choice movement is predicated on valuing a type of lifestyle for women over the life of the unborn.

We also spent some time mediating on the words of the Father, “your brother was dead, and is alive.”

• It is possible to be dead, though we live. Expending the kind of time and energy that the Prodigal does in fruitless labor (caring for swine) is a kind of living death. Where do we invest our time, our treasure and our talents? If we are busying ourselves with selfish things, we are living in the pig sty with the Prodigal. We are busying ourselves with a living death. Rather, we should be investing in the Kingdom, endeavoring to see that our time, treasure and talents are aimed at doing those things God wants us to do and be.
• God is the Giver of Life. When we separate ourselves from Him, we embrace death.
• The Father wants us to live. He is constantly watching out for our return. There is no watchmen at the gate. There is no messenger looking for the Prodigal to ask him to come back. It is the Father Himself  looking towards the horizon.
• When the Father sees his son, he runs. In the Middle East it is shameful for old men to run, yet the Father does. This calls to mind the shame of the Cross. This is how far God is willing to go in order to give us life.
• The Prodigal comes to the Father in humility, asking only to be a servant. The reward for this humility is a seat at the table where a feast with a fatted calf is prepared. In context of our own life, the banquet prepared for us is the liturgy, and the fatted calf is the Body and Blood of Christ.

St. Anna’s Conception of the Theotokos

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Abortion, Conception, Immaculate Conception, Sex

All the world celebrates Anna conception on this day with festive joy, because it came to pass through God; for by divine grace as has conceived her that beyond words conceives the Word of God. — Kontakion for the Feast of St. Anna’s Conception of the Theotokos

Today is one of my favorite feasts of the Church. It isn’t one of the major feasts, but there are some major implications because the Church does observe it. This is a celebration of marriage and the marriage bed — both are given to us by God and have salvific value. Without the marriage of Joachim and Anna and without their marriage bed we aren’t saved. The Virgin Mary never gets born, and Christ does not take on flesh through her. In other words, marriage and the marriage bed are integral parts of the history of salvation.

Indeed, the institution of marriage is seen as a means by which we learn how to love as God loves and thus it can become for us a foretaste of the Kingdom. In the Orthodox Church, married couples are crowned as martyrs during the marriage service. This is done to remind us that the successful marriage is one where we sacrifice ourselves for our spouse.

Note how the Kontakion of the feast declares that the conception of the Theotokos comes to pass through God. This is true of all conceptions. God works through us and through the marriage bed. This is a powerful condemnation of the pro-abortion stance that currently enjoys legal acceptance in the United States. More than being a human being from the moment of conception, every aborted child is a gift given and created by God.

Note the beauty of today’s Apolytikion:

Today the bonds of childlessness are loosed; for God hearkened to Joachim and Anna. And though it was beyond hope, He clearly promised that they should bear a divine child, from whom was born the Uncircumscribable One Himself Who became a mortal, and through and Angel commanded them to cry unto her: Rejoice, you who are full of grace; the Lord is with you! — Apolytikion for the Feast of St. Anna’s Conception of the Theotokos

Joachim and Anna conceived Mary in their old age. Anna had been barren and childless. Their ability to have a child had long since come and gone. It was beyond hope, yet, nothing is impossible with God. We should never give up hope, even when the world tells us there is none.

Finally, a note about the word “immaculate” which was added to this feast by our Catholic brothers and sisters. Orthodox Christians have rejected this dogma because it is unnecessary. Though we believe in ancestral sin — we live with the consequences of the Fall — it is not an inheritance of guilt or stain. I would go further and challenge the dogma from the perspective of our humanity. If the Theotokos was immaculately conceived, does not that mean that her conception was radically different than ours? And does that not mean her humanity is different than ours? And would that not mean that the humanity taken from her by Christ is different from ours? Ultimately, doesn’t this call into question the salvific function of the Incarnation? If we accept St. Gregory the Theologian’s dictum that what God has not assumed, God has not saved, does not the Immaculate Conception render all of our humanity, which would be different from Mary’s humanity, not assumed and therefore not saved?

An Exercise in Critical Thinking

Tags

Abortion, Atheists, Bill Maher, Communism, Cross, equality, George Bernard Shaw, Martin Niemöller, Resurrection, Science, Secularism, Virginia Ironside

I have a confession to make. Bill Maher gets under my skin. I once was a big fan of his, and this is exactly why he reminds me of the person I used to be. At one time in my life I used the same arguments, the same logic and the same reasons Bill Maher uses in order to attack the faith I now hold dear. If not for God’s gift of reason, critical thinking and a good dose of humility, I would still be a pale imitation of Maher and miserable for it. So, when Bill Maher appeared on the O’Reilly Factor last week and made the facile observation that faith is the “purposeful suspension of critical thinking” (at about 19:00 in the this video) it really bothered me.

In response, I’d like to do a little exercise in critical thinking and see which does better — human secularism or a faith in Jesus Christ. First watch the following video:

Note the shocked expressions of both the host and the other guest (who I presume is an Anglican pastor). For a moment, let us imagine a world where Maher’s point of view holds sway. Christianity is deemed a relic of the past whose proper place is in the dust bid of history. What exactly is it that would justify the host telling Ironside that her willingness to suffocate a child is horrible? What argument does human secularism have? Indeed, by getting rid of God, does it not reduce morality to human will? And since human beings do not have wills of equal strength, does it not then fall to whoever has the strongest will? Do we not inevitably arrive at some variation of the following (courtesy of the playwright George Bernard Shaw and author of Pygmalion — later adapted into the musical My Fair Lady):

I am reminded of the quote attributed to Martin Niemöller:

They came first for the Communists,
and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist.

Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew.

Then they came for me
and by that time no one was left to speak up.

Without God — particularly a Christian God — by what standard would anyone be able to speak up? Indeed, It was Niemöller’s own Christianity that allowed him to speak out against the Nazis.

Ultimately, Maher’s views lead civilization down a road that ends in death on a massive scale. We have seen this pattern played out over and over again throughout history, most recently in the horror of the twentieth century when tens of millions of people paid the price for human arrogance.

Christian anthropology does not allow for the kind of rationalization of murder employed by Ironside and Shaw. Not only has God created each and every one of us in His image and likeness, but He, in the person of Jesus Christ, has taken on our humanity as His own. He shares our human nature. Thus, no matter how we might try to rationalize it, those few cells Ironside is so happy to do away with shares its human nature with God Himself in the person of Jesus Christ.

Get rid of God, and all we have left is a morality based on who is strongest. The result of that will always be death on a massive scale.

It’s Not Christianity vs Science, It’s Christianity vs Scientism

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Abortion, America, Anne Rice, Atheists, Environmentalism, Science, Scientism, Worship

When I was doing research in order to write yesterday’s post about Anne Rice’s claim that Christianity is anti-science, I also came across this bit of wisdom from Catholic Apologist Fr. Barron:

He makes a very important distinction between science and what he calls Scientism. The former is the practice of doing science — hypothesis, observation, analysis and application. Due to its limitation of dealing with the empirical and observable, science is not suited for answering the kinds of questions philosophy and religion play around with. Scientism is the belief that science can answer these questions. In order to do that however, one must reduce the world, human experience and knowledge to the empirical and observable. This path is fraught with danger.

In the Orthodox Vespers service, we pray the following:

Blessed are you, O Lord, teach me your commandments.
Blessed are you, Master, grant me understanding of your commandments.
Blessed are you, Holy One, enlighten me with your commandments.

In other words, in God there are three ways of knowing: doing, understanding and transformation. Science concerns itself almost exclusively with the second — understanding. Scientism thus radically reduces knowledge and what knowledge is and can be. When we do this, we necessarily limit what is a human person. When we limit what it means to be human, we necessarily tolerate discrimination and eventually violence against those persons who fall outside our artificial definition. There is a reason we de-humanize our opponents in war and call them derogatory names like Yankee, Bourgeoisie, Jap, Gook, etc. It allows us to remove them from our artificial definition of “human person” and thus making them more easy to kill, imprison, torture, etc. Need I remind anyone yet again that the unborn in the U.S. fall outside Scientism’s definition of “human person?” They cannot reason nor understand, therefore it is perfectly legal to kill them.

Scientism also poses a threat to science itself. Since Scientism exaggerates what kinds of questions and problems science can answer, it has a tendency to lose sight of what the purpose and methodology of science is. A good example of this is the recent Climate Gate scandal. A good number of those advocating man-made global warming are not scientists, but rather adherents  to Scientism. Having made the assumption that science can answer questions like, “what is the purpose of human kind?” these advocates of man-made global warming not only ignored empirical data, they manipulated it in order to reflect a pre-determined outcome. The purpose of science was no longer to observe and analyze, but to determine human behavior. When the data didn’t cooperate, they changed the data. This has the potential of damaging real scientific work for years to come.

Thus, the mythic dichotomy of Christianity vs Science really doesn’t exist (nor can it, as I explored yesterday); however, there is a dichotomy between Christianity and Scientism.

Anne Rice & Secular Myths about Christianity: Politics

Tags

Abortion, Anne Rice, Church and State, death penalty, Democrat, Philemon, Politics

I quit being a Christian. I’m out. In the name of Christ, I refuse to be anti-gay. I refuse to be anti-feminist. I refuse to be anti-artificial birth control. I refuse to be anti-Democrat. I refuse to be anti-secular humanism. I refuse to be anti-science. I refuse to be anti-life. In the name of Christ, I quit Christianity and being Christian. Amen.

The above quote was posted by Anne Rice, author of the Vampire Chronicles, on her Facebook account. Continuing my series of posts in reaction to this quote, today I will write about Rice’s fourth complaint — that Christianity is anti-Democrat.

I am going to assume that since Rice capitalized the word “Democrat” that she is referring to the political party, as opposed to the form of government. In either case, Christianity has always had an intriguing relationship with civil power. On one hand, we are to render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s (Matt 22:21). This can be seen in both the liturgical practice of praying for our civic leaders — even those Roman emperors who were actively persecuting the Church. In the Apostolic Constitutions, it implores Christians to “Be subject to all royal power and dominion;” however, it does qualify this statement with these very important words: “in things pleasing to God.” Thus, when faced with the prospect of sacrificing to the idol of the Emperor, early Christians were compelled to refuse, thus breaking the law and choosing, in most cases, to be tortured and killed as martyrs.

Thus, in a Christian world-view, politics always play second fiddle to Christ. Indeed, Christ Himself demonstrated this in the sixth chapter of John:

Jesus, as He realized they were about to come and take Him by force and make Him king, fled back to His hills alone. (John 6:15)

Christ did not come to play politics. Thus, as Christians we should always be wary of politics and political parties and ultimately be willing to rise above them in order to be what God wants us to be.

Case in point, let us examine some very unChristian aspects of each political party here in the United States:

• Republicans tend to defend the death penalty for violent criminals. As Christians, we need to understand that even these vile examples of humanity are still made in the image and likeness of God and that they should be afforded every opportunity to repent and turn back towards God. The death penalty denies them this chance.
• Democrats tend to defend abortion. As Christians we see even the unborn as fully human, unique and unrepeatable. To destroy them inside the womb is murder, dehumanizes the unborn and ultimately denies humanity to an entire segment of the human family.

Thus, both parties fail to uphold a Christian world-view. That isn’t to say that they do not have redeeming factors, but we are called to transcend politics and do what is right in the sight of God. When we place our loyalty to any political entity — whether it be a party, a nation or an ideology — above God, disaster follows. One need only look at the early 20th century in places like Germany, Russia and China to see the outcome of party above God. It cost the world millions of lives.

For an excellent example of a Christian transcending politics, see St. Paul’s letter to Philemon. He is obedient to the law of the land — he sends back the run away slave Onesimus to his master Philemon; however, he calls Philemon to welcome back his run away slave, not as a slave, but as a brother. Thus, Paul, while obeying the law moves beyond the law to something greater — a vision of the world where:

by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body — whether Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free — and have all been made to drink into one Spirit. (1Cor 12:13)

Indeed, according to tradition, Philemon does welcome back Onesimus as a brother. Not only is Onesimus freed, but is eventually ordained as a bishop.

Thus, Christianity is not anti-Democrat. Rather it is beyond Democrat (or Republican).

Politics vs. Religion?

Tags

Abortion, Church and State, Health Care

This past week, as the debate over health care drags on, the issue of abortion came up again. Sen. Ben Nelson of Nebraska threatened to block the senate health care bill from moving forward because he was uncomfortable about the way the bill treated abortion as a health issue.

Fr. Robert Barron, a Catholic priest here in Illinois, expertly dismantles the pro-choice arguments from a political/philosophical perspective:

Though I don’t fault Fr. Barron’s logic (in fact I agree with him), his argument seems to condone the way some of the television coverage has portrayed Sen. Nelson’s delayed support of the health care bill — that religion and politics exist on the same playing field and that the issue of abortion as health care is religion vs. politics.

This is a false dichotomy in the same way the science vs. religion is a false dichotomy. Jesus Christ is more than politics. In John 6:15, after Christ has fed the five thousand,  we are told, “Perceiving then that they were about to take Him by force to make Him king, Jesus withdrew again to the mountain by himself.” There was an expectation that the Christ was to be a political figure that would drive off the Romans and return Israel to glory. Jesus thwarted this expectation at every turn because His was a much higher purpose with a much broader scope.

By voluntarily going to Golgatha, He defeated death by death so that we might enter into the Kingdom of God and that we might raise up all of creation with us into the glory of God. In other words, politics and religion are not on the same playing field. Christ is all and in all (Col. 3:11). Christ, therefore, informs every aspect of our lives, as we pledge at every Divine Liturgy, “let us commit ourselves and one another and our whole life to Christ our God.” This includes our politics.