Mon 8 Mar 2010

Christianity is a Celebration of Free Will

Posted by Jim Marks under Uncategorized
[4] Comments

For some weeks now I have been struggling to find a response to a comment I read on a book selling website which was aimed at the book “Christ the Eternal Tao” by Hieromonk Damascene.

Taoist thought is not based on supernatural dieties [sic] and hope of groveling to some harsh and mythical judemental [sic] diety [sic] in order to get accepted into a fictional after-life.

Ignoring the fact that this person clearly is not actually as smart as they think they are, their underlying sentiment is widely held by non-Christians about Christians. The fact that this reviewer went on to reference the film “Jesus Camp” as being a window into normative Christianity gives you a sense of just how poor a reputation we have in the World at this point. [1]

So, I wanted to post here and write a response to this pervasive notion that Christianity is nothing but groveling in an attempt to avoid been smote by a vengeful god. Because it is not. Christianity is the celebration of free will; the celebration of choosing to do right instead of wrong. But I lacked a really solid way of phrasing this. I just found that solid phrasing in the book “Encountering the Mystery”:

In his Letter to the Romans, Saint Paul describes freedom as the power over death and as the triumph over mortality (see Rom. 8:10-11). This relates freedom to the grace of the Spirit, who is the “treasury of all good things and giver of life,” to quote a favorite prayer of the Orthodox Church to the Holy Spirit, recited at the commencement of almost every service. Satisfying one’s needs or desires is identified not with freedom but with captivity. In Orthodox ascetic terminology, it is in fact identified with submission to the passions.

Sin is not merely making evil choices, but in fact the result of an inability to make rightful — or righteous — choices. It is the state of captivity to compulsions or passions, where one is quite literally passive and not subjective, controlled and not creative, fallen and not free. It is subservience to the force of hardened habit. In contemporary language, it is called addiction. If I eat or drink whatever I want whenever I want, I do not gain my freedom but in fact forfeit my freedom. For, in that case, I am constrained by the tyranny of passion, identified with the instinct of my nature. My “life is held captive; it is enslaved by the fear of death” (Heb. 2:15). ~ His All Holiness the Ecumenical Patriarch BARTHOLOMEW in the chapter “Faith and Freedom” in the section “Freedom to Live”, page 129, emphasis mine

There is a growing movement in our culture which realizes that not all choices are real choices. Zizek speaks often that a real choice is not total choice, but a choice from a very small set of genuine, meaningful options. Cultural figures advocate highly structured meal routines and daily routines which at first may seem “confining” but over time radically reduce stress by eliminating the endless question in our culture of “what should I do now?” for which we rarely have a very good answer if our life lacks any structure at all (the illusion of total freedom). And as we read above, the Church teaches us that total freedom is not liberation, but a complete capitulation to our passions, our appetites. The compulsive need to take advantage of the opportunity to choose at every possible opportunity to choose becomes a prison.

We are slowly but surely realizing that our pig-headed insistence that liberty means that free choices do not have consequences is a load of nonsense. Freedom to choose is not freedom from cause and effect. Freedom just means the choice is not made for you — but you pay the consequences whether you choose freely or whether the choice is made for you. We want to pretend that tyranny is the insistence on consequences, but we are wrong. Cause and effect are the fabric of the universe.

And so this is really what it boils down to, for me. I look at my life, and I see the truth of it. Certain liberties I have given myself in the past and in which I have allowed myself to indulge whenever I chose, have become addictions, habitual choices, with which I now struggle to choose to put aside the pretense of liberty and to become truly free by choosing righteousness.

This is something I do not think people can be convinced of via argument. I think you have to reach a point in your life where you can examine yourself and realize that your liberty is not making you happy the way you thought it would, and that you, in fact, find yourself trapped in the routine, the habit, the addiction of liberty.

I have rarely been a fan of the NIV or TNIV translations, but for 1 Corinthians 10:23 they have Saint Paul’s words as these:

“I have the right to do anything,” you say—but not everything is beneficial. “I have the right to do anything”—but not everything is constructive.

And so there it is. Christianity is not the abdication of free will, groveling beneath the lash and under the yoke. Christianity is the celebration of freedom with the knowledge that choices always have consequences, and some consequences are simply not worth paying.

[1] As an aside, if you have not seen this film, it is actually really excellent and is a great window into American Evangelicalism, although certainly not a window into Orthodoxy. The reviewer apparently didn’t realize that Evangelicals don’t have Hieromonks and thus the author of the book has more or less nothing to do with the people in the film.

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Thu 25 Feb 2010

G-d’s Timing and Humanity’s Willfulness

Posted by Jim Marks under Uncategorized
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I have often wondered, and I assume I am not alone in wondering about this, why it is that there is so much human history that takes place between Genesis 3 (The Fall) and Matthew 1 (The Incarnation). We know and believe that G-d’s plan to redeem humanity and all of creation spans all of time and is outside of time, and we know and believe that the necessity of the incarnation was apparent not only at the moment that Adam and Eve chose sin, but even before that moment. Why, then, are there 42 generations from Abraham until Jesus (not to mention the generations from Adam to Abraham)?

What has occurred to me is that the apparent lack of urgency may not be on G-d’s part, but on our own. How many did G-d call who refused before Abraham obeyed? How many did G-d call who refused before Mary obeyed? How many times did Jesus say “come, follow me” before twelve did so?

We can slip into a kind of thinking that makes the inexplicably remarkable acts of faith that the people of the Bible engage in somehow inevitable. The thinking that if G-d called, of course we would listen. But we need to remember that G-d calls us every day. How often do we listen? We need to remember that Free Will is a two edged sword. It is the instrument of both our salvation, and our damnation. We chose the actions (and inaction) that demonstrate our obedience to G-d, and we chose the actions (and inaction) that demonstrate our disobedience.

We do not venerate Mary, or Peter, or Paul because they were chosen. We venerate them because they said “yes”.

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Tue 23 Feb 2010

Behavior Modification

Posted by Jim Marks under Uncategorized
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Those of you who have known me a long time know a few things about me are very true. I am not afraid of confrontation, and I can be quite defensive. During the roughly 20 years of my journey of faith, that defensiveness got pretty extreme at times. Not really knowing exactly what I believed felt like not really knowing exactly who I was. Anything that struck me as someone questioning my integrity made me lash out. Also, a number of events along the way produced in me a deep anger and bitterness and confirmed for me the suspicion that everyone really was out to discredit me in some way. The result was that I drove a great many people out of my life.

I have struggled the last five years or so to rein in this problem. However, I have really only settled my journey of faith onto a known road within the last six months, and so results have continued to be mixed. Every person whose bridge gets burned I say “that is the last one”. But it continues to happen. Less and less frequently, but it still does. There has been, however, a change. Over the last two years, these intense confrontations have taken a very different tone.

Now that I know my faith, and therefore to some better extent know myself, I know which things require standing up for and defending, and which do not. And I have also recognized that in our culture, it has become completely socially inappropriate to insist on anything (except getting your own way and putting yourself first). To assert a truth is to be rude. To insist that idea A is superior to idea B, and can be known to be so, is taken as imperialistic or insulting.

Also, in a culture of ever shrinking vocabulary, we force words to mean more and more things. Nuance is completely lost as any given word may have to shoulder the definitions of ideas that used to span a half dozen other words, now all since abandoned. In addition to shrinking vocabulary, our hyper-individualistic culture makes it perfectly acceptable to use words “in your own way” — with personal definitions no one else may know or use. These two things can contribute to a massive amount of miscommunication. People love to chalk this up to “the internet is not very good for communicating”. This idea is absurd. Print is print. Humans have been communicating with print for millennia. People insist you need facial expression and inflection to be truly understood. But both of these can be used ineffectively or disingenuously. Are we saying we cannot really understand Plato, or Shakespeare, or The Bible because they are only “flat text” without the supporting context of tone and delivery? I sure hope not.

So in addition to being willing to insist on certain truths, I also insist on using words narrowly. I have a relatively broad vocabulary (and know how to look words up when I do not know them), and I see no reason to over load words and destroy their nuance. It is that loss of nuance and the careful crafting of sentences that causes miscommunication in print, not the print itself.

Language is a tool to allow thoughts from one mind to reach another. It only works if it is used in a mutually consensual manner. If the rules are not universally adopted, the system breaks down and miscommunication results. Much of late 20th and early 21st Century philosophy is about just how difficult it is to reach that state of universal consent to the rules of language. The casual way in which most of us speak compounds these already deeply complex issues.

The upshot of all this is that I think to some extent conflict, confrontation and the burning of some bridges may be unavoidable. It is a very popular tactic in our culture to step into someone else’ space, offer unsolicited advice or opinion, and then to accuse them of being insulting if they do not agree with our point of view. This happened over just the last few days. A commenter, thinking that he was helping, responded to my entry When Institution Becomes Impediment, the entry in which I discuss the shameful way the Catholic church treated me with regards to my past, failed, marriage. The upshot of his help was “I am sorry that the way this was articulated to you was painful, and it may seem stupid, but it is deeply necessary and it is important that you submit yourself to it for your own good”. Given the way that entry was written, and what it prompted me to do afterward, it may not surprise you to learn that I did not hear this as particularly helpful. When I made it clear that I did not agree, did not find this helpful, or welcome, and in fact found it rather insulting, this commenter immediately turned the conversation into a series of attacks on me and my treatment of him. A month or so ago while working through my thoughts on the Orthodox Church’s position on women in the priesthood I had a similarly bizarre experience in which someone kept insisting I had said things I had not said, and then kept presenting defenses of why those things I had not said were incorrect. This eventually devolved into patronizing that I was in a “vulnerable” place because of the newness of my conversion.

In both conversations, the very act of not agreeing was heard and responded to as if it were in and of itself openly antagonistic. It was clear in both cases that any attempt at reconciliation was impossible unless I capitulated to their point of view.

In an even older post, Civics vs. Politics vs. Punditry, I talked about my increasingly strong opinion that the way we engage in political discussion in this country is futile and a deliberate tactic by those in power to keep the rest of us distracted and impotent. I do my best to avoid political debates and discussions. In this age of Facebook and the like, these things are sometimes hard to avoid. At the very least, I become aware of the views of people I know, whether I want to debate them or not. There are some views that I believe are genuine deal breakers. Some political views are, straight up, unacceptable. Views which breed a desire to disenfranchise others, views which cultivate contempt for other people, views which become so important that they lead us to support utterly contemptible politicians, views which amount to discrimination against all religion, essentially anything which boils down to either bigotry or a tolerance of the status quo (which is deeply corrupt). I continue to struggle with whether or not it is living in Christian love to refuse to be friends with people who are either bigoted in some way, or who are so caught up in a cause that they are supporting tyranny. I continue to struggle to know how to confront them in love with a chance to reform before burning that bridge.

Now, I am not claiming I have handled any of the recent cases well. In fact, I am sure I have not. But I can say that I am genuinely struggling to strike the balance between drawing lines in the sand where they must be drawn, which will mean, I believe, at times, ceasing to speak to some people who insist on being on the far side of the line, versus simply lashing out at people in an unloving manner. This struggle is greatly complicated by the fact that so many people hear disagreement as inherently unloving. Dialog can escalate rapidly.

So, if you find me offensive, or have found me offensive in the past, forgive me. I am trying. I am struggling. But also please know that I cannot accept our culture’s insistence that everyone’s ideas are equally valid and deserve respect. They do not. If you look at history carefully you will see the obvious ways in which this must be the case. When we disagree, I will rigorously defend my point of view. There are a great many things about which I do not mind disagreeing with someone. A great many things. My own wife and I do not see eye to eye on quite a few things. But there are some things which are simply deal breakers. If you remain entrenched in our world’s culture and within those ideas, we cannot continue to speak. I am sorry. Forgive me.

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Mon 25 Jan 2010

New Creed ~ Actually the Old Creed

Posted by Jim Marks under Uncategorized
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I am going to stop labeling entries “Journey into Orthodoxy”. It is not very informative, and at this point could go on indefinitely.

I have created several entries in the past about Creeds (one, two and three) and my capacity to claim genuine belief in them. In fact, it was this process that repeatedly confirmed for me that while I had a genuine desire to believe and a heart that yearned for belief, Western Christianity was not instilling in me anything like belief at all, but rather an ever-shrinking pool of certainties that I knew, rather than believed. This series of posts was originally inspired by Sister Joan Chittister’s book “In Search of Belief” in which she completely deconstructed the Apostle’s Creed from the point of view of a contemporary, feminist, progressive Catholic.

I have made one substantial decision with regards to Orthodoxy. I will not formally enter into membership if I cannot speak the Nicene Creed (The Apostle’s Creed is a purely Western tool) and mean every single word of it. Based on the wrestling I have done over the past couple of weeks with a few topics which are relevant, I want to get a sense of how close I am to being able to do this and what, if any, roadblocks remain. To that end, here is the text as it is spoken within the Antiochian church, in English:

I believe in one G-d, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible.

And in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Only-begotten, Begotten of the Father before all ages, Light of Light, True G-d of True G-d, Begotten, not made, of one essence with the Father, by Whom all things were made. Who for us men and for our salvation came down from heaven, and was incarnate of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary, and was made man. And was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate, and suffered and was buried. And the third day He rose again, according to the Scriptures. And ascended into heaven, and sits at the right hand of the Father. And He shall come again with glory to judge the living and the dead, Whose kingdom shall have no end.

And I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, and Giver of Life, Who proceeds from the Father, Who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and glorified, Who spoke by the Prophets.

And I believe in One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church. I acknowledge one Baptism for the remission of sins. I look for the Resurrection of the dead, and the Life of the age to come. Amen.

There are, of course, four sections: Father, Son, Holy Spirit and Church.

Because of my recent wrestling with the subject of gender, I can now say that I believe in G-d “the Father” without reservation (in contrast to my emphatic avoidance of the masculine when engaging the Apostle’s Creed). And while I do not necessarily believe in a literal interpretation of Genesis 1 & 2 in terms of a “young earth” kind of Creationist science, I do believe that existence is a creation of G-d. So, I can speak this first passage without qualm, and I do believe it.

This second section is surprisingly long compared to the other three, but when you look at history and see that almost all the primary heresies over the centuries were about Jesus and who he was, it becomes less surprising. So, one sentence at a time. I must confess to being a bit confused about the word “begotten” and how it is somehow different from being “made”. But I do believe that Jesus is Lord, Christ, Son of G-d, True G-d, eternal, of one essence with the Father, and carpenter of creation (John 1:3). So, at some point I just need to clarify with someone in authority how it is that one can be begotten without being made and I will be all set here, as well. I know that “begotten, not made” is tied up in Jesus’ eternal nature as True G-d, and I believe that, but I would like clarification if I can get it. And again, recent wrestling with gender renders Son of G-d no longer a problem.

Second sentence is also no longer a problem. If I believe in the miracles Jesus performed, if I believe in the miracles the Apostles and Saints performed, if I believe in the possibility of contemporary miracles, I can believe in the virgin birth. Miracles are “when G-d bends the rules out of love”. And this is interesting, because it suggests that G-d is not in the business of intervening in Creation on a regular basis. In fact, it implies that G-d ought not be doing so; that there are rules (of nature ~ physics, chemistry, mathematics) which are there for a reason and that on the whole ought to be permitted to run their course. In fact, if we look carefully at many miraculous events in the Bible, especially in the Old Testament, we find G-d working through exceptional, but natural, phenomena rather than actually bending the rules. And G-d never breaks the rules. There are saints whose remains do not decay. They still died, however. Jesus even raised a few from the dead, but we are given no indication that they did not die, again, later on. We must find a balance between trying to “explain away” all miracles via science, but at the same time we should not be so credulous that we are not critical when a suspect miracle is claimed. Anyway, with my new understanding of Mary and Jesus as the second Adam and Eve, I now understand why it was crucial for Jesus to come through virgin birth. Not to avoid somehow being soiled with original sin through sexual genetics, or through some prurient idea about sex and ensuring it had no part in The Incarnation, but rather so that every aspect of The Trinity is involved. The Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father so that Mary miraculously conceives The Son. I believe Jesus was a man, fully human. I believe that his being fully human is crucial both to his ministry and to his cosmic role as the second Adam.

The third sentence is more or less a matter of historic record. There was a man, now known as Jesus Christ, who was executed under the rule of Pontius Pilate.

I believe Jesus rose from the dead (sentence four). The first Adam brought death to humanity; both spiritual and physical death. The second Adam brought salvation from both. We will still die physically, but not permanently, and our soul is no longer forfeit.

I believe Jesus’ incarnation was for a finite time, in the past, and that he has returned to his place which he occupied outside of space-time prior to his incarnation (sentence five).

I believe that at some point, possibly not until the laws of nature bring about the ending of this world on their own, we will be reawakened and brought to account for our lives so that a determination can be made about the nature of our own existence outside space-time (sentence six).

The section on the Holy Spirit is very straight forward. I have read an extensive explanation of why the “Filioque” clause (“Who proceeds from the Father and the Son“) is theologically problematic. In order for our understanding of The Trinity as one G-d and yet three Persons to be sound and intact, the three must be united in essence, but distinct in energies. Anything which two share, all three must share, as an aspect of their united essence. Anything that is not shared must be unique to only one as an aspect of their utterly distinct natures. If both the Father and the Son are the source of the Spirit then they share something which the third lacks. This unbalances the structure of the Trinity and suborns the Spirit to the other two. But all must be co-equal as G-d the only Divine. I also believe in special revelation to and through the Prophets (which I take to include the authors of the canonical texts, not just the Old Testament prophets). We can see marvelous examples of intuitive revelation through the writings of such great minds as Lao Tsu’s “Tao Te Ching” and his articulation of “The Way”. Yet, clearly the special revelation of the New Testament texts gives us not only “The Way” as an abstract, unknowable concept, but as a concrete, incarnate being. The belief that Jesus’ revelation through his life and teaching, and through the help of the Spirit, is complete as understood, lived and passed on by The Apostles is crucial. If it was not, then many generations lived an incomplete faith in spite of belief in Christ. However, an unavoidable consequence of a belief that what has been spoken through the Prophets by The Spirit is complete is that there can be no doctrinal innovation. None. Wordings can be clarified, translated, articulated in new ways as wisdom grows and new cultures manifest, but the meaning cannot and must not change. This is the core of Orthodoxy and the core of why schism over doctrinal differences is abhorrent and antithetical to The Church. I have believed this most emphatically of anything for quite some time now.

As a result I can speak into the last paragraph not only with conviction, but with relief. I do believe in one Church. I believe that baptism is the initiation the life of faith. I continue to have concerns about notions of “heaven” and eternal life insofar as these can drive us to become selfish, self-centered and callous about the concerns of the here and now. However, as I come to learn more about this idea that we should think more in terms of being restored to the Garden of Eden rather than “going to heaven”, and through this new understanding that this is a struggle to be achieved, in which we must cooperate together not just contemporaneously but through the communion of saints throughout history, not just a moment in time contract with G-d, I become increasingly comfortable once again with the idea of “an afterlife”. We were created to be immortal, perfect beings. G-d’s plan and covenant all along has been one of restoration. We were never heavenly beings. We are not angels. And so to believe we are restored to Paradise makes much more sense than being ascended into Heaven.

So, all things considered, I am very, very close. There are a few minor points I need clarification and guidance about, but on the whole, I believe that when the time comes, months from now, or a year from now, I will be able to speak these words without reservation, hesitation or fingers crossed behind my back. This comes as a bit of shock to me, honestly. Just two and a half years ago I was throwing almost all of it out the window. Even just this past June I still could not bring myself to use the precise wording of the Creed even though I had returned to much (but not all) of its essence. This gives me deep hope that my journey into Orthodoxy is not merely “seeker”ism or the pursuit of novelty, but that there is something fundamentally real going on here which is transforming me in a way I have not known for a long, long time.

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Thu 21 Jan 2010

Journey Into Orthodoxy ~ Entry the Sixth

Posted by Jim Marks under Uncategorized
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If you have not read Entry the Fourth and Entry the Fifth, those are required reading for this Entry the Sixth.

There remains, then, this question of why it is that G-d is revealed to us as Father and not Mother and not Both and not Neither. My understanding of this came suddenly, after having put it aside from my mind for a few days. I have written in the past about a useful analogy from popular culture to understanding the way in which G-d is aware of our space-time reality. And so it is very important in this conversation that we remember that for G-d, all human history is laid out like a scroll.

In Entry the Fifth I pointed to the source that helped illustrate for me the need for Jesus to be male, so that through his relationship to Mary, his mother, they might be the second Adam and the second Eve. And be clear, I do not use the word “need” lightly. This is crucial. Jesus could not be brought into this world through a human father and a divine mother. The implications are problematic on many levels, not least of which is that it would have required Jesus birth to undo the natural order of things rather than to work through it. Some kind of super-natural birth from a divine mother would have thrown the fullness of Jesus’ humanity into doubt. Virgin birth, on the other hand, perfectly captures both the fullness of Jesus’ humanity and the fullness of his divinity. Thus, Jesus, the incarnate divine, could not fill the role of the second Eve, he must be the second Adam. He must be male. And so we see that we have Son, and Mother. What is missing? Father. Near as I can tell from an admittedly limited attempt at searching, G-d is not referred to as “Father” in the Old Testament, only the New. Through the birth of the Son through the Mother, G-d is revealed as Father.

But, G-d exists outside of space-time. Thus, this necessity of a divine Father in human history is known not only prior to the Nativity, but prior to Creation itself. This is why G-d is still referred to in the masculine throughout the Old Testament, although not as “Father”. The time for the fullness of this revelation is not yet ripe, but revelation in part is made. G-d is “he”, not “she” or “it”. And so it is that we have G-d the Father, Christ the Son, and Mary the Mother working in perfect cooperation for the salvation of humanity by the undoing of the work of Adam and Eve.

The more I think about these three entries, the more comfortable I become, more comfortable than I have been in years, with language such as Father and Son (to get a sense of this, read through my archives and notice the occasionally highly tortured sentence structure used to avoid ever using “father”, “son” or masculine pronouns). And, if I wish to claim belief in The Creed of The Faith of The Church and participate in the sacramental life of The Church as the core of my struggle towards salvation, I must therefore take seriously the claim that the priest acts as an icon of Christ in The Eucharist, and therefore this necessitates male priests. I can take this seriously with the knowledge that within Orthodoxy there are many female voices which are honored as teachers of great wisdom and piety and that one does not need to be a priest to be a teacher.

What remains then, is where I began. We are equal, but different. For women, the struggle in our contemporary age of equality understood as interchangeability and power equity is a struggle to accept The Church’s rejection of these assertions. For men, the struggle is to ensure that we do not allow this revelation of G-d’s nature and G-d’s plan to become a tool that we use for domination and subjugation. Truth be told, I think men have the greater struggle, there. I am reminded of what I wrote about Ephesians 5. We are called to love our wives as Christ loved The Church. Christ died for The Church. In romantic literature, men often wax poetic about the feats they would perform in the name of their love of a woman ~ cross the oceans, move mountains, harness the moon, slay dragons, face whole armies, you name it. In a less poetic sense, however, this is really to what we are called. Yes, our wives are to submit to us as the head, but with this comes the responsibility to do anything and everything that we can in the name of our love for her, even to the point of our lives. Not so that she is spoiled, or even just happy. But so that she might be holy and without blemish. Her honor is our life.This is not about power, this is about sacrifice.

And in the same way, then, is the priest’s headship of The Church. Not control, not power, not authority, but sacrificing any and all to ensure that The Church remains holy and without blemish. Given that I have already re-referenced Dune, I am tempted to succumb to a second pop culture reference and say “with great power, comes great responsibility”.

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Sat 16 Jan 2010

Journey Into Orthodoxy ~ Entry the Fifth

Posted by Jim Marks under Uncategorized
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I ended Thursday’s entry with some questions which bubble up out of an understanding of why the Orthodox church will only ordain men into the priesthood (again, an explanation which is limited in scope, it is not intended to be a universal defense with meaning or value to those outside Orthodoxy, not to exclude them, but merely to limit the scope of the explanation). These questions have to do with how we can understand the meaning and value of G-d the Father and Jesus the Son without getting caught up in the very messy, very human business of gender power politics. What I was most specifically curious about, given that Jesus came in a deeply humble incarnation and then set about to subvert his cultural context so thoroughly, was why it would be that he came as a man and not a woman (given that within that cultural context, coming as a woman would be even more humble and disenfranchised)? The silly thing is, just shortly after publishing that entry, I heard a podcast which addressed that very point. Well, not directly, but the answer is there quite clearly. OK, maybe that is not silly, maybe that is Providence. At any rate, Father Joseph Huneycutt, one of the priests of my parish, has a podcast on Ancient Faith Radio, and one of the back entries is relevant here:

http://ancientfaith.com/podcasts/orthodixie/el_paso_pale_gaso_defeating_sin_north_of_the_border_-_part_2

The most relevant bit begins at 10:09 but not only is the entire episode valuable, but this entire series is entertaining, informative, inspiring and enriching. But if you are pressed for time, jump to that time.

The upshot here is that Adam and Eve and their story is directly tired up in the Virgin Mary and Jesus and their story. The “bodies” that Adam and Eve had before the Fall are thought to perhaps have been like the body that Jesus had after the Resurrection. The body that Adam and Eve are given after the Fall is then the human flesh which Jesus takes on through Mary in order to enter human experience and prepare for us The Way (Tao) to Salvation. So we have two Adams, two Eves, two Trees, two Commandments, one Sin, one Sacrifice. The first Adam and Eve are given access to the two Trees, and are given one Commandment, a fasting commandment — “do not eat” from one of the two. They sin. Their sin is not eating the fruit. Their sin is disobedience. The consequence of their sin is mortality — death, their access to the first tree (of Life) is taken away because of their partaking of the second tree (of the Knowledge of Good and Evil). The second Adam and Eve, through faithful obedience and sacrifice, reopen the Gate to Paradise, overcoming Death through death, and we once again have access to immortality by parking of the fruit (Jesus’ sacrifice, his flesh and blood, The Eucharist) which grew on the tree of Life (the Cross). Thus the second commandment, a feasting commandment, is “take, eat”. Two Adams, two Eves, two Trees, two Commandments, one Sin, one Sacrifice.

So, it was necessary for Jesus to be born a man, because his purpose in being born was to become the second Adam. If Jesus had been born a woman, we would have had two Eves, which does not work.

As an aside, the above is also part of the reason why it is necessary to believe that Jesus was divine, not just a “good man”, “teacher” or “prophet”. There are other reasons why it is necessary to believe that Jesus is divine, but this is a central one.

Answers to the question of why G-d the Father not G-d the Mother and what “father” means decoupled from human gender and biology are still forthcoming pending my capacity to get some reading done.

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Thu 14 Jan 2010

Journey Into Orthodoxy ~ Entry the Fourth

Posted by Jim Marks under Uncategorized
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The only topic, issue, doctrine, dogma, whatever you want to call it of Orthodoxy that has given me any real pause up to this point is the position of the Church that only men shall be ordained into the priesthood. I know this is a big topic for many Americans within Christianity broadly, but truth be told, it is a topic I have only begun to even feel the need to think about quite recently. I grew up in a UMC church that, for a time, was co-pastored by a husband and wife team. I knew that Catholics only had male priests, but I only learned recently that quite a lot of Protestantism still refuses to accept women in pastoral roles. If I were still Protestant, I think I would be vehement on correcting this. It was one of the things that made me uncomfortable about being Catholic. So what does this mean for me within Orthodoxy? I went searching for some explanation of their refusal. It could not be simple paternalism or chauvinism, could it? That would be so out of keeping with everything else I have learned so far about the Church, and especially out of character with the deep commitment to humility and service I have heard and seen in Church leadership. I found a very helpful article, but before I get to that, I want to stress my views on gender, in general, so that this is known throughout the rest of what I write here, and any conversation that arises from it.

I believe 100% wholeheartedly in two things: the genders are equal both in the eyes of G-d and in relation to one another, but/and the genders are neither identical nor interchangeable. In Genesis 1:27 it says, “So G-d created man in his own image, in the image of G-d he created him; male and female he created them.” As I have said many times, we should not think of G-d as a big, old man on a cloud because this verse makes it quite clear that G-d transcends gender — both male and female are “in the image of G-d”. In Genesis 2:18 it says ‘Then Adonai Eloheinu said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.”‘ Adam needed help. Adam, man, could not do what needed to be done, on his own. Even as an immortal being prior to The Fall and Sin, Adam needed help. Rather than thinking of this as G-d giving Adam a secretary (and thus, women are somehow secondary to men), I think both genders are better served thinking of this in terms of Adam being, like G-d, inherently and fundamentally relational, and needing a partner to be complete. Without getting into the (in)validity of homosexuality, it should be not under-emphasized that we were created, from the beginning, prior to The Fall, in two distinct genders intended to compliment and support each other. The gender divide is not part of the consequences of The Fall. The gender divide is good. It is how we misunderstand it that is bad. The way some men treat women as inferior is bad. The way some women insist that there is no distinction at all between the genders is also bad. We are equal, but we are different. Man alone was not good, which makes it clear that women bring something to the party that men lack. Since men and women are equal, this means that men also bring something to the party that women lack. Equal, but different.

Now, here is the article I found discussing the Orthodox position on ordination:

http://www.stpaulsirvine.org/html/priesthood_ware.htm

It is quite long, and I think some of the better explanation comes at the end, but if you are serious about this topic, please read the entire document in full. I am not going to do disservice to the information presented by trying to paraphrase it. Take the time to read it if you are genuinely serious on this issue.

I have to say, I found it rather compelling, in spite of myself. I resisted quite a bit as I read, but by the end, I think I understood. At the same time, I know that by answering this question, it raises another which is even less easily understood, which I will come back to at the end.

But two things have to be said straight off the bat about this series of explanations. The first is that clearly this explanation is only valid within Orthodoxy. Neither the Catholics nor the Protestants see their ministers as icons of Christ. And so, I can say that, were I still Protestant, or even if I desired to remain Catholic, I would remain convinced that there is a moral obligation to open up ordination to both genders. Protestant pastors are de facto the heads of their church, the final authority and often the only authority in terms of providing instruction to anyone other than children. To retain that as a male-only institution is the very definition of misogyny. But this is not the role that an Orthodox priest is fulfilling, and so we must be honest about what women are, and are not being excluded from. Which leads directly to the second primary point to make, which is the statements near the end of the article with regards to teaching and leadership by laity. Unlike Protestant church services, divine liturgy is not primarily about the “sermon”, not primarily about instruction. Yes, there is a homily, but it is quite short, and is far from the focus of the liturgy. And, I have attended an orthodox service during which the homily was given by a deacon, not to mention that one of the chanters for Orthos each week is a woman. But most of the instruction within Orthodoxy happens outside of weekly services. In fact, the two most active priests in my parish have specifically encouraged me to use that same deacon as an instructional resource, due to their incredibly busy schedules. I have met with both priests and had meaningful conversations with them, but they were not primarily instructional conversations. So it is not merely a dog and pony show to trot out the idea that women can become deaconesses and teach and lead. This is not some second-best offering with no real meaning or meat. At the end of the day, in Orthodoxy (unlike Protestant churches on the whole), being a priest is not about power, leadership, control and influence. It is about sacrifice and service.

Now, I do not in any way want to suggest that there are not power hungry priests in Orthodoxy. I do not want to suggest that there are not misogynistic priests in Orthodoxy. I do not want to suggest that there are not misogynists in general in Orthodoxy. If you look at the global cultures were Orthodoxy has remained strong, many if not all of them have a strong patriarchy and tend to be prone to machismo. But these are not problems that will be solved by ordaining women. Women will not be perfect as priests any more than men are not perfect as priests. Giving misogynists something to be reactionary about will not root out and remove misogyny, it will entrench it. The fallen state of the people within the church is not, in and of itself, a condemnation of the doctrines of the institution. It merely proves the core of the Gospel which is that we all fall short of the glory of G-d.

But if we accept this defense of male priests as icons of Christ, then we must ask the question “why was Jesus born male?” I do not yet know the answer, and I suspect that the deep, meaningful resolution of the way we misunderstand the gender divide is caught up in the answer to this question. The common response I have always heard is that it was necessary for Jesus to be male in order for him to fill the earthly role of a Jewish rabbi and prophet in 1st Century Palestine. The idea being that if Jesus had been a woman, he would not have been “taken seriously” by anyone. But there are two problems with this explanation. The first is that Jesus very specifically did not attempt to conform to the mores of his cultural context, in fact he went out of his way on many occasions to subvert them. His views on contemporary Jewish leadership and on Sabbath law were radical if not out and out reactionary. What would be the motivation to subvert some of the culture and yet respect the patriarchy? The original question remains after this explanation. Secondly, if we must concede the point that it was necessary for Jesus to be male in order to be taken seriously, does this not then beg the question of why he did not appear in an even more impressive form so as to be taken even more seriously by even more people? Why come as a Jew from the line of King David during an era when that monarchy had been abolished, rather than as a crowned prince? Why not at least come as the son of a priest as John the Baptist did? Why not fulfill the prevailing Jewish expectations of the day and come as a political hero prepared to accept political glory? No, Jesus came not as the son of a king or a priest for a reason. Jesus speaks often of humble service to others and condemns the urge to lead or rule. And so we know that Jesus came not to confirm any cultural context, nor to fulfill any political role, and yet, in spite of these things, he came as a man and not as a woman. A humble man from a humble family, but a man nonetheless. I do not yet know why. I believe that the answer to this question will also answer the other big, fundamental question which is “If G-d is not a big, old man on a cloud, why is it essential we refer to him as Father and not Mother?” The two are intertwined. After all, we rarely hear the Holy Spirit referred to as explicitly male except in the most overtly male dominant church cultures, and this article suggests that it may even be appropriate to use the female in reference to The Spirit.

I will make inquiries with my new found guides within Orthodoxy to any writings from the Tradition that address both why it is necessary to think of G-d as Father and not Mother, and how we can correctly understand what it means for aspects of G-d’s nature to be “male” when that clearly has nothing to do with mortal, physiological gender (G-d is not a big, old man on a cloud). My hope is that by finding an understanding of these core ideas, the fullness of the cited explanation for ordination will become clear as well.

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Thu 7 Jan 2010

Having Children ~ A Question

Posted by Jim Marks under Uncategorized
[38] Comments

Here is something not about Orthodoxy or even theology, if you’ll bear with me. And not only that, I’m asking a question instead of providing my answer to a question you probably didn’t ask anyway.

I have heard a sentiment expressed by a great many people, both religious and not religious, that in their eyes, the decision by a couple that the life they are choosing to pursue together does not include room to responsibly bear and raise children is “selfish”. That to plan to not have kids is “selfish”.

This implies that anyone who marries is somehow morally obligated to have children. On a planet once vast, empty and verdant with resources, I could see how this view would hold, especially when lives were shorter, infant mortality higher and the like. There was a larger sense of communal responsibility to carry on both species and cultural identity.

But in this world? Today? I’ll be completely honest, I find it selfish to have children. A judgment I rarely express to anyone unless I know with certainty they don’t plan to have children.

So, readers, if I still have any, if you have any insight into why this point of view persists so deeply in our society, most especially amongst religious people, I would greatly appreciate it. It is something about which I would prefer to stop feeling quite so defensive.

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Wed 6 Jan 2010

Journey Into Orthodoxy ~ Entry the Third

Posted by Jim Marks under Uncategorized
[9] Comments

One very important thing has occurred to me today, that I can share here. That notion I had? That “Layperson’s Lament”? That’s gone. Gone. The Orthodox church, unlike the Western church, has not fallen down on the job of giving parishioners something more than “donate your money to fund the church and be a good person”. The Orthodox church has three very specific pillars within the broader notion of asceticism which laypersons are called to use to shape their lives: Prayer, fasting and alms giving.

The Orthodox notion of fasting hinges around eating, essentially, vegan straight edge (no meat, dairy, eggs, alcohol or other fine/feasting foods) and if you look at the Orthodox calendar, we’ll be doing this about 51% of the year. I have been blessed with a strict vegetarian wife, for whom I cook every day, and so already consume very little meat as it is.

Prayer, as I have written about in the past, is a tough one for me. But today I had a great conversation with Father Joseph about this and he has started me on a journey to establish a rule for myself to correct this. Rather than dreading it, I am actually excited.

Liz and I already are continually looking for ways to pinch pennies as we both feel a strong commitment to be as charitable as we can be. The constant moving has set us back on this more than we’d prefer, but we’re hoping our mid-term stability here in Houston for most of this next decade will help correct that.

And so, my lament proved to be short lived, and I don’t have to write a book. There’s a relief.

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Sun 3 Jan 2010

Journey Into Orthodoxy ~ Entry the Second

Posted by Jim Marks under Uncategorized
[2] Comments

I’m realizing that I’m not entirely sure how to go about blogging about this process. On the whole, very little is really going happen from week to week or even month to month. The next cycle of catechism classes doesn’t begin for quite some time, and I need to attend for at least six months to a year before I can enter them, anyway. So, meanwhile, I kind of bounce up and down like a kid in the back seat of a car on a long trip.

“Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Are we there yet?”

Based on my initial conversations with Fr. John, it seems like my marriage will not present any complications or problems in terms of status, as it does within the Catholic church. I have a couple of doctrinal questions outstanding, but unless the answers are completely offensive (which seems unlikely), it is just a matter of learning stillness and patience until the time comes. Everything I’ve asked about so far has been answered in shockingly satisfactory manner.

I’ve been invited to join the choir, which is exciting because it means being more directly involved in the liturgy each week, which means a great opportunity to learn the details of the liturgy even before catechism starts.

I’m consuming a whole slew of podcasts and blogs at this point, and probably am running the risk of either becoming a complete annoyance to everyone or total burnout, one or the other. Hopefully neither. Stay tuned.

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