Mon 25 Jan 2010

New Creed ~ Actually the Old Creed

Posted by Jim Marks under Uncategorized
[6] Comments

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.

Tags: ,

 

Thu 21 Jan 2010

Journey Into Orthodoxy ~ Entry the Sixth

Posted by Jim Marks under Uncategorized
No Comments

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”.

Tags: , , , , , ,

 

Sat 16 Jan 2010

Journey Into Orthodoxy ~ Entry the Fifth

Posted by Jim Marks under Uncategorized
1 Comment

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.

Tags: , , , , , ,

 

Thu 14 Jan 2010

Journey Into Orthodoxy ~ Entry the Fourth

Posted by Jim Marks under Uncategorized
[9] Comments

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.

Tags: , , , ,

 

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.

Tags: ,

 

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.

Tags: , , , ,

 

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.

Tags: ,

 

Sun 13 Dec 2009

More Thoughts Inspired by ‘Planet Earth’

Posted by Jim Marks under Uncategorized
1 Comment

Back in May I was inspired by watching various episodes of the BBC mini-series ‘Planet Earth’ to write some comments about eating meat. At that time, we were watching the series with my brother at his place. We’ve since moved from Chicago to Houston and we recently acquired our own copy of the blu-ray discs so that we could finish it up on our own. Over the course of several recent episodes another thought about the human condition has bubbled to the surface for me. I think one of the great dangers of divorcing our origins from the animal world too completely (taking Genesis 1 & 2 too literally) is to miss these kinds of lessons that we can learn from the cycles and systems of the (supposedly/apparently) non-sentient world around us.

There are basically two kinds of drama in nature documentary — Predator vs. prey (which spawned my post about meat eating) and territorial disputes (with two sub-types here, disputes between males for breeding, or disputes between groups of animals over water or feeding grounds). Watching chimps battle for fig tree territory makes me think a great deal about what our president said recently in his acceptance speech for the Peace Prize about war being, possibly, impossible to completely eradicate. We think too much about “being nicer” I believe, and not enough about correcting the real economic inequities that are at the heart of almost all wars. This is not just politics or civics, but is, I think, at the core of what The Kingdom of G-d is all about. We are called to feed and clothe and heal, not because social justice is an end unto itself, but because peace is impossible whilst some are starving.

As I have said repeatedly, I find politics, increasingly, to be a distraction, and a source of incivility. The absurdity of nominating a man for the Peace Prize within days of taking office aside, the absurdity of presenting the prize to that man when, after only a few months on the job, it has become clear that he has no radical devotion to peace as an ideology aside, the absurdity of a speech in acceptance of the Prize which had, as its core thesis, in essence, the assertion that the USA had acted correctly in starting two wars prior to this man taking office (and his complete side step of the completely unjustified nature of the second of those two wars (the justification of the first being at least debatable, the second not so)) because war is simply part of the human condition and on some level is unavoidable aside, the speech was, I think, an important one. (Mr. Obama is brilliant at delivering very important speeches with near perfection. It is a shame there was no way to keep him in the public eye with an aura of importance to give such speeches without making him president. It is already clear he is not going to be a great president. There is, I think, reason to fear already, that he may not even be a good president. But as a spokesperson and speaker, he is the best we have seen in a long, long time. Ambassador to the UN might have been a better idea.) The world needs to be reminded about the real roots of war. The world needs to be reminded that war is as ancient as we are, perhaps older. The natural order certainly seems to suggest it is older. I am certainly not in any way suggesting that the natural order, or that chimpanzees fighting over figs somehow justifies war mongering. It absolutely does not. But it is an insight into the real root cause. It is not that we are “evil” or that we are “hateful” or that we too easily are swept up in the emotions of supporting a cause. The root cause is that when you have more than I do, or when I am convinced that you have more than I do, resentment will be born. If my own lack reaches a critical stage, that resentment becomes the supposed justification for violence.

The solution, of course, is for the increase in charitable impulses. If we were more inclined to correct inequity, and to correct the perception of inequity when there is none, if we were inclined not to become so attached to a patch of good dirt that we were willing to spill blood on it to fertilize it, mankind might be a less aggressive species. But some hippie-dippy idea that we simply need to “all get along” or that “love is all you need” or if we’d all just link hands and chant for peace it will actualize ignores the gross reality. When I am starving, and you are not, sooner or later, I’m going to do something about it. On the other hand, this is not simply a call to re-embrace the Social Gospel of historic, liberal, Mainline Protestantism. The Social Gospel was dangerous for two reasons. The first is that the passivity that it bred made believers too willing to tolerate imperialism as they sought to simply love it off the planet. The second is that it ignored the state of people’s souls and their capacity to join into the living of the Kingdom of G-d and focused only on feeding, clothing and healing them. The point, at the end of the day, is not for everyone to be fat, warm and healthy. The point, at the end of the day, is to find ourselves living in the Kingdom of G-d, surrounded by The Church — our fellow believers.

Christians have some funny ideas about “being good”. As a young man growing up in a relatively Evangelical family, like many young men growing up in Evangelical families, there was a great deal of pressure from family, church and (fellow believing) friends, to focus a great deal of energy onto right living. There was a great deal of striving and struggling to muster the power of will to overcome temptation, and the level of one’s faith was seen very much as growing from this self discipline. The problem, of course, is that this is dead backwards. I don’t become a stronger believer in the saving grace of the Incarnation of the Divine by managing to avoid carnal relations with my girlfriend on our fifth date when I’m seventeen. That is works based religion. Do good works, become more “good”. Sin too much, and your faith is in trouble. No no. The way to manage the discipline necessary for right living is through stronger faith. We must tend to the heart before we can attend to the body. We are not saved by The Law, but good works flow from faith. It was my growing frustration with religion as moral, right living and nothing else, that began my journey out of conservative Evangelicalism nearly 20 years ago.

This is not a tangent. If our goal is only to feed and clothe and heal, and if we see this charity as a discipline to be developed, then all will doubly fail. Without faith, deep, abiding faith, we will lack the cooperation of the great Helper, the Divine dwelling within us, The Holy Spirit. Without this cooperation, good works are impossible, for there is no faith from which they will flow. And even if we do manage to eek out a small quantity of charity, what have we really accomplished? We raise the station of a few, too few, but all of us remain in the Spiritual desert and not in the fertile land that will sustain us. Interestingly enough, in his own flawed way, Ken Wilber knows this truth very well and very deeply. He speaks explicitly about the necessity of “tending to one’s own house” before presuming to dare to be capable of “helping” anyone else. He speaks explicitly about the arrogance of believing that one has any means of offering help from a place of spiritual ignorance. Now, his ideas of spiritual knowledge and of how to tend to the house of that spirit are very different from any ideas Christians are likely to have (with some exceptions I expect). But the seeds of truth are there.

Too much of the contemporary Church seeks to tend to the soul and not the body, gathering souls for heaven before the body housing that soul starves to death on the Church’s doorstep. Too much of the contemporary Church seeks to tend to the body, and not the soul, mistaking social justice as the core of Jesus’ message, rather than “come, follow me”. The balance is in realizing that in order to follow Jesus, social justice will be compulsory. Our journey through the rehabilitation of our own spirit will require of us an ever increasing concern for our fellow man. But neither are possible without the other.

And this is how The Church can be an agent for peace, real peace, lasting, meaningful peace. By training believers to tend to their own house, to become peaceful beings unto themselves (as Thich Nhat Hanh asserts in “Being Peace”), and then to go out into the world and live that peace amongst the dirty, cold, starving masses of the world and to cut out from under them the root of war. We do not need more enlightened hermits. We do not need more Docetic evangelists. We do not need more humanist soup kitchens. Peace begins with me. Not because my peace will ripple out to those around me through some kind of positive vibes, but because my peace will compel me to do what needs to be done to prevent the cause for war. And if each and every one of us did this, that would be the way to truly distance ourselves from our apparent, shared history with the bands of chimpanzees fighting and killing over the most fruitful fig trees.

Tags: , , , , , , ,

 

Fri 11 Dec 2009

Journey Into Orthodoxy ~ Entry the First

Posted by Jim Marks under Uncategorized
[5] Comments

I have been attending Saint George Antiochian Orthodox Church for almost a month now (will be this Sunday) and have continued to be deeply impressed with their sense of hospitality and fellowship. I am in the process of attempting to meet with one of the priests to discuss what the obligations of conversion would involve, and what the process looks like from that point.

In the meanwhile, one of the sub-deacons of the parish has pointed me towards a series of podcasts that I have found immeasurably valuable, and I wanted to pass them on to any readers I may have left in spite of my ever increasing absence and ever increasing distance from the more obvious aspects of post-modern Christianity.

“Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy” by Father Andrew Stephen Damick.

Be warned. This is decidedly from the Orthodox point of view. If you have strong feelings about the validity of your denomination, sect, movement or group, you are likely to be offended by what he has to say about you.

But try to hear this as an exercise in articulating what the Orthodox Church believes, rather than an exercise in what everyone else believes. This is a walk through church history and the history of church doctrine as a vehicle for delineating what is and is not permitted within Orthodox belief and praxis. Sure, he oversimplifies and overstates some positions held by some groups. But encyclopedic accuracy is not the intent of the exercise. It is a demonstration of why the Orthodox draw the lines where they do.

I have been overjoyed to discover that I seem to have taken the very long way around to end up back at The Beginning. Much of what I have been articulating here for the past several years aligns quite well with Orthodox thinking and belief. My concerns with Dualism, the anthropomorphism of G-d, the treatment of doctrine and theology as philosophy (rationalism) instead of as a distinct discipline (faith), the treatment of salvation as one-time purchase fire insurance, the inability to separate the active work of the fruits of the Spirit from Pelagianism and the over-willingness to speculate about the state of other people’s souls all immediately spring to mind as examples.

There are some crucial issues I will need clarification on before I can completely embrace them, but I am hopeful that I am given the chance to do that from within, rather than as a gate keeping exercise.

Tags:

 

Thu 3 Dec 2009

The New Face of the Religious Right

Posted by Jim Marks under Uncategorized
[8] Comments

Unfortunately, it is time to talk about politics a tiny bit, but this is not in spite of my blog post against punditry, but in further affirmation of it. It is time to talk about The Manhattan Declaration and how scary it is.

This thing really, really upsets me. This is a shockingly cynical attempt to take the old, worn out turd that is the imposition of the moral standards of one group onto an entire diverse society (a.k.a. the politics of the Religious Right) and to polish it into a gold nugget under the banners of “justice” and “the common good”.

There are three pillars to this declaration, and we can easily expose unpack them for discussion.

1) The sanctity of human life

This is clearly an umbrella to cover abortion, euthanasia and assisted suicide. If you read the FAQ on their website, they make no attempt to hide this. The clear implication is that if you believe that the sanctity of human life is central to justice and the common good that you must be anti-access with regards to all three.

I certainly could never argue that abortion isn’t morally repugnant. But, I don’t even know anyone who is a rabid pro-choice activist who thinks abortion is somehow “good”. But the part that is ignored by this declaration is that abortion is not a symptom of the disease of a lack of sanctity for human life. Abortion is a symptom of the disease of a culture that is heinously unrealistic about sex. We are the richest and one of the most developed countries on earth, and we have over three million unwanted pregnancies a year, roughly a third of which end in abortion.

If one is going to take an anti-access stance on abortion, a symptom of rampant unwanted pregnancy, then one must take a pro-access stance, not on other solutions to unwanted pregnancy (such as adoption), but on solutions to the causes of unwanted pregnancy. If you want to prevent abortions, you have to prevent unwanted pregnancies. Religious conservatives believe that this is accomplished by convincing people to not have sex. Or, if they cannot be convinced, then forced. They believe that by keeping teenagers ignorant about the realities of sex, except for the specter of STDs, STIs and pregnancy, that they can somehow stifle the pubescent sex drive. Statistics prove that this is beyond delusional. You cannot prevent people from having sex. Sex happens, right or wrong. It happens, and justice and the common good happen when step in to help ensure that the consequences of that are minimized. And so, preventing sex is not the answer. Promoting adoption is not the answer. If the anti-access movement wants to stake a claim to justice and the common good, then it must actively work to tear down resistance to comprehensive sex education, actively work to tear down resistance to giving young people access to birth control, actively work to deny pharmacists the “right” to impose their morality on their customers in refusing to sell birth control. This is the only just and moral stance one can take if one is going to insist that access to abortion must be reserved for only the most extreme of circumstances. But we see nothing in The Manhattan Declaration to indicate that this is their intent, only evidence that action to prevent access to abortion will continue as it has for 35 years or more.

Yes, all life is sacred. But life is not something to be clung to and preserved beyond all reason. Jesus allowed himself to be killed. He refused to allow his disciples to prevent it by force, and he refused to attempt a verbal defense for himself. He chose to die with dignity. One of the core tenants of our faith is that in order to save our life, we must lose it. Our treasure is not in this life, but in the next. Forcing people to suffer because we want them to cling to a life they believe they have reached the end of is neither just nor good. It is torture. We live in a world in which medical technology makes it possible to keep people alive long past the point of decency. It has recently been reported that a man thought to be a vegetable was kept alive for 23 years only to discover that he is fully functioning and conscious, and not in a coma, but merely paralyzed. He has been trapped in a frozen body, alert and functioning, for a quarter of a century, with only day time soap operas and the gossip of nurses to occupy his brain. I recently lost a friend who was kept alive on machines for nearly a week in spite of being completely brain dead. What is sacred about preserving the flesh with machines when everything about life that makes it sacred is no longer possible? For all we know, her soul left her body when her brain died.

It is time for Christianity to get over this intense fear of Gnosticism which forces it to take this indefensible position that the physical world is sacred to the point that we should fight tooth and claw to never leave it and that we should fight tooth and claw to prevent anyone else from leaving it, as well. Too many Christians live their lives like the only thing that matters is the here after while doing all they can to ensure that no one ever gets there a moment too soon. It is complete nonsense.

2) the dignity of marriage as the conjugal union of husband and wife

Sure. Let’s all fight for that dignity. Let’s stop marrying people we have no business letting get married. Let’s stop engaging in a culture that insists on impressive diamond rings and houses in the suburbs. Let’s stop engaging in a culture that insists that everyone should want to get married and that anyone who doesn’t is somehow incomplete. Let’s stop engaging in a culture that insists that all married people should want to have children and that anyone who doesn’t is somehow selfish and shallow. Let’s insist that marriage is between a man and a woman and G-d and stop trying to make it our business when ti is not. Let’s definitely do that. But that’s not what this pillar is about. None of the Religious Conservative action organizations is trying to reform marriage. None are trying to quell the tsunami of divorce in our culture. None are willing to see that the younger people marry, the more likely they are to divorce, and so are encouraging young people to perhaps wait a few years to be sure. They can’t! They know all these young people are straining at the leash to finally have sex, and so they want them married as quickly as possible so that they can start having legitimate babies via all that ignorant, unprotected sex they’ll be having. Babies who will bear the brunt of the suffering when that couple gets divorced.

No, this isn’t about the dignity of marriage at all. This is about the fact that Religious Conservatives don’t like gay people, and just like they think that making unwanted pregnancy as likely as possible will somehow prevent immoral straight sex, they think that making life as a gay couple as unpleasant as possible will somehow prevent gay sex. They want to ignore the fact that while it may be true that a child is better off with a mother and a father (although there is some doubt about that), that a child is also better off with a father and a father than with no parents at all. They want to ignore the fact that the cornerstone of civil marriage is the belief that stable households create a stable economy and a stable society. They’ve replaced the word household with family in an effort to appeal to a traditionally normative model on the grounds that this traditionally normative model is the only one which promotes stability. But this is easily disproved. Homosexuals in committed relationships, with legal status or not, are clearly more stable than homosexuals who are out every weekend meeting one another for anonymous one-time encounters. Just like straight people. We encourage civil marriage because we know that a culture full of single people spending their weekends in bars is bad for stability. Whether you’re gay or straight has no bearing on that.

They also want to ignore the fact that there is nothing they can do to prevent gay people from getting married. Gay people are getting married in religious ceremonies all over country, ceremonies that have no legal meaning, every day. The battle to “protect” the definition of marriage has been fought, and lost. The definition has changed. Waging a new war in the public domain to punish the people who changed it is neither just nor good — it is spiteful and vindictive.

3) the rights of conscience and religious liberty

This is hysterical, because what is meant here is that we’re going to continue to pretend that the whole country is out to prevent us from being Christians meanwhile we’re going to continue to do all we can to impose our conscience and religion on everyone else because we’re right and they’re wrong.

But moving beyond these flash point details, there’s a much more important lesson that Religious Conservatives need to learn: Trying to turn the USA into Judicial Israel is anti-Christian. Period. There is nothing in the New Testament that calls us to be seeking revolutionize our governments to reflect Christian morality. Nothing. In fact, Jesus said to render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s. Religious Conservatives are trying to render what is Caesar unto G-d. The very core of the Jewish rejection of Jesus as their Messiah is that they expected a political revolutionary to restore Judicial Israel and that is not who Jesus was. Not only did Jesus do nothing with regards to Roman occupation, he went out of his way to try to tear down the one institution the Jews had left: their religious leadership. (Which, by the way, is not a justification for insisting that The Church should have no respect for its own tradition and history and leadership, but rather is a warning that using religious leadership as a source of power instead of as an opportunity for service violates the office you occupy.)

It is wrong to try to make this into a Christian nation. Because there are only two ways to achieve this goal:

  1. throw out all the non-Christians
  2. oppress all the non-Christians

But our First Amendment, that clause you’re supposedly so concerned about protecting from erosion with regards to conscience and religious liberty, ensures that everyone has the right to pursue their own sense of morality to the extent that their doing so in no way imposes on the rights of anyone else. It is both un-American and un-Christian to impose the morals of our faith onto others. Especially in light of the fact we as a religion can’t even agree on what our morals are.

So, not only do I have no desire to sign something like the Manhattan Declaration, I am stating publicly that it is dangerous, counter to our founding principles as a country, internally contradictory, and that it turns everything about our faith entirely on its ear and seeks to punish “bad people” in the name of justice and the common good while wearing the robes of piety. It is Pharisee and Sadducee. It fundamentally denies James chapter 2. It is un-Christian.

Tags: , , , , , , , ,

 

Next Page »