Parenting for Faith (Part Two)

In a recent article, I shared some reflections on how we can offer our children a sound and living example of faith, one that they may readily choose to follow in their own adult lives. I would like to conclude now with a few suggestions on how to formally catechize your children at home.

Without belittling the dedicated and hardworking folks who weekly devote themselves to Christian education in their churches, I would suggest that effective catechism must primarily be rooted in a living relationship between parents and their children in the home. After all, if the primary witness to a child is his or her parents’ own lived example, shouldn’t the “talking” come from the same person who does the “walking”?

“Yes,” you might say, “but I am no expert the tenets of in my faith. I am not equipped to teach my kids doctrine!”

Let me share some of my experience as a professional teacher in this regard: kids can smell B.S. long before you hand it to them. What they really want to see is someone who is honest about what they know or don’t know. It’s quite okay for your kids to see that you too are a student. All that they really need to know is that finding the answers is important to you.

Whatever you do, therefore, don’t pretend you are more well-informed than you really are. I guarantee they will discover your lie and your claim to be representative of the truth will be seriously undermined.

So don’t worry about how expert you are. Simply embark on your own journey of learning, and having learned its lessons as thoroughly you can, pass them on as directly, honestly and as completely as possible to your children.

But what material do you choose and how do you actually teach it? With a bewildering variety of denominations, congregations and churches, not to mention claims to absolute truth throughout the Christian world, the task of finding a catechesis is overwhelming. However, it need not be so. Assuming a generally Christian context (the only one I am familiar with), I would suggest that the foundation for sound doctrine of any sort is a complete and deeply-rooted knowledge of the Old and New Testaments.

Don’t get me wrong here: I am not saying that Scripture should be sole source of a child’s doctrinal knowledge. As I have said before, Scripture is not self-interpreting and must be read and understood within a living framework of worship and spiritual practice—what Eastern Orthodox Christianity would call tradition.

Before a child can appropriate the proper interpretation of Scripture in tradition, however, he or she must first grasp what is being interpreted—the scriptural material from which tradition is wrought. To put it briefly, we can’t understand who Christ is “according to the Scriptures” unless we first know the Scriptures that ultimately point to Him!

In this view, I am not alone. The great 4th century preacher and teacher, John Chrysostom, offers similar advice in his homily, Address on Vainglory and the Right Way for Parents to Bring Up Their Children. Comparing the soul of a child to city and parents to lawmakers and rulers, Chrysostom emphasizes the importance of one of the city’s “gates”—the ears—by which “thoughts are corrupted or rightly guided.”

How to protect this particular gate in the soul of a child? Chrysostom’s prescription is twofold. Firstly, protect your child from stories that teach vices. He offers one example: “Such and such a girl kissed such and such a man, and had no luck and hanged herself.” In other words, Chrysostom urges us to prevent our children from hearing stories in which people are involved in the destruction of their souls.

For us, this means setting clear and firm boundaries about what books our children will read, what movies or TV shows they will see, what web sites they will visit, or what music they will listen to—itself a daunting challenge.

Secondly, Chrysostom urges that we offer our children stories from the Scripture. He tells us specifically how this should be done:

1. Establish a context in which to establish a family storytelling tradition. Chrysostom advocates for an evening meal at which the whole family is gathered.
2. Choose a story, such as that of Cain and Abel and having learned it thoroughly yourself, begin in the classic way: “Once upon a time.” At this stage, you need not insist on chapter and verse. The point is to teach the stories first, and only later to teach how they relate to one another in the wider scope of the Scriptures.
3. Elaborate the story with relevant and appropriate details to engage the child’s mind. Include probable character motivations, as well as interpretations true to basic doctrinal teaching, e.g. Abel was received into heaven.
4. Draw out simple, clear lessons from the story, e..g. the futility of Cain’s attempts to conceal his sins from God.
5. Repeat the story for several nights and then ask the child to tell you the story in his or her own way.
6. Provide the child with an opportunity to hear the story read and preached on in Church. In the Orthodox tradition, this would also involve them hearing hymnography that would interpret the story in the light of doctrine.

Whether we are able to follow Chrysostom’s prescriptions exactly is not of vital importance. The larger point is clear. If we make a start at living lives of faith for our own salvation and as an example to our children, if we establish with them a foundation by which they can understand that life of faith through the regular telling of stories from Scripture, then we will have already gone a long way to parenting children who will hold fast to Christ, not just until their dying breath, but beyond, into the age to come.

The Sanctity of Human Life

This week, many Christian churches throughout North America will celebrate the Sanctity of Human Life in protest of the ongoing prevalence of legalized abortion in our society. My goal in this article is not to enter into this controversial debate, but simply to present the Orthodox position on the moral and legal issues around abortion.

The Orthodox Christian Church has always asserted that life begins at conception. Numerous written proofs aside, the Church calendar celebrates both birthdays and conception days. Most well-known is March 25th, when Christ was conceived by the Holy Spirit of the Virgin Mary at the Annunciation. Significantly, this celebration takes place nine months before Christ’s birth on December 25th... In addition, we also celebrate the conceptions of Saint John the Baptist (September 23rd) and Mary the Mother of God (December 9th).

The sanctity of conception flows from the Orthodox teaching that God creates all of us in His image and likeness from the beginning: “For You formed my inward parts, You knitted me together in my mother's womb.” (Ps. 139:13) Our dignity as human beings does not primarily derive from national citizenship upon birth. Rather, we possess inherent value and worth because God loved us and cared for us and called us His children from the very instant He granted us the spark of life at conception.

Following on this logic, the Church has always condemned the conscious and wilful act of destroying the foetus as the taking of a human life. Basil the Great, a Church father writing in the 4th century, puts it very bluntly: “A woman who deliberately destroys a foetus is answerable for murder. And any fine distinction between its being completely formed or unformed is not admissible among us.”

No doubt many of you have by now labelled me a hard-line conservative, placing me on one side of a battle in which clear lines have been drawn. On one side are those who argue for the legal precedence of a woman’s rights over that of the foetus she carries in her womb. They assert that the state is not subject to the morality of the Church, but must represent the interests of all its citizens, religious and non-religious alike.

On the other side are those who affirm basically what I have said, but go on to argue that the laws legalizing abortion should be repealed on the basis that they condone murder. They argue that both the United States and Canada were founded on Christian principles, the laws must reflect those principles if they are to be true to their identity.

As morally conservative as I am, I would like to take a “third way” on the issue of legislation. The Orthodox Church has always held that, in the words of one prayer, the state exists to “provide peace that Your holy Church and all Your people may calm and ordered in all godliness and sanctity.” As long as the Church and its members are able to continue “working out their salvation” (see Phi. 2:12) in peace, the state can use whatever political system is expedient to meet the needs of its citizenry.

It is for this reason that the Orthodox Church has been willing (if not always able) to exist under the Roman and Ottoman Empires, in Tsarist Russia, under Communism, not to mention socialism and democracy in their various forms. Although the Church has always welcomed Christian impulses in its civil authorities, it has never demanded that they institute a theocracy of any kind. It has simply asked them to provide a space of peace in which it can conduct its life of faith and worship.

The Orthodox Church in North America now lives in a democracy, which has as its basic mandate equal representation for all citizens, believers and non-believers alike. If our civil leaders wish to be elected to office, they must guarantee such representation, regardless of their personal creed. This is the dilemma of Christian politicians in a democracy. They must champion the will of their constituency, even if that will contradicts their own fundamental principles. Otherwise, they must forfeit their office.

The simple reality of democracy is “majority rules.” And the majority of Canadian citizens are not opposed to legal abortion. As a Christian, I may vehemently disagree with them, but I accept the democratic process as the least imperfect system for the attaining peace and harmony in 21st century. So as long as democracy allows the Church to continue to live in faith, I will continue to live with democracy, if uncomfortably and with a sense of outrage at its many moral failings, including its failure to protect its unborn citizens.

Am I failing my duty? Should I not be fighting every day to build a Christian nation through political and social lobbying? While such events as the “March for Life” taking place this Sunday in Washington, D.C., serve as a important voice of conscience for a society increasingly deaf to the suffering of its most vulnerable members, I do not believe that marches and other similar social actions alone will bring an end to social evils like abortion. Nor, as an Orthodox Christian, do I believe that my primary purpose is to establish a theocracy and legislate my beliefs for all to follow, or else suffer the consequences. Why? Because the Kingdom of God cannot be legislated into being. Like that other Law of which Saint Paul says, “By works of the law shall no one be justified,” mere legislation at best cuts off the poisonous flower of evil; it cannot reach its dark roots, which feed off our society's basic spiritual ailment: the devaluation of the human person created in the image and likeness of God.

And so this Christian will continue to fight the war against the evil of abortion and build the Kingdom of God, not primarily on Parliament hill, but first and foremost on the more fundamental and essential battleground of my own heart, where I strive to repent of the sins that devalue me as a human being. Only then can I begin to offer a vision to those around of me of what it means to be real human being—God's precious child from conception to grave and beyond, to resurrection and eternal life.

Parenting for Faith (Part One)

As a priest and father, it is one of my greatest hopes that my three children—Lily, Gabriel and John—would grow up to be faithful Christians. Indeed, for me, this hope exceeds all others. At this moment, I don’t care what kind of work they will choose, whether they will marry or stay single, what their socioeconomic status will be—as long as they are faithful to Christ and His Church, I will be happy.

I am sure that many of you share, or have shared my aspirations in regards to your own children. And I am certain also that you have asked the question that I ask myself almost daily: how is this to be accomplished? How do I, as a parent, live and interact to ensure that my kids mature into adults of real and lasting faith?

I would be misleading you if I said that there was any sure-fire answer to that question. The very nature of Christian faith presupposes a fundamental freedom in the human person, freedom to choose or reject a relationship with Christ. Without this freedom, both God’s love for us and our love for Him are meaningless.

This means simply that after we have made our best efforts to direct our children along the Way we have chosen, they must make a choice of their own, and they must continue to make that choice daily for the rest of their lives. Faith, in the Orthodox view at least, is a dynamic and continuous reality. Faith is bound up with daily faithfulness. Faith is clinging to Christ, moment by moment, and our children, once they have matured, must cling to Him by themselves, without our help or intervention.

That being said, what is our “due diligence”? How can we “speak the truth in love” (see Ephesians 4:15) to our children in the hope that they will accept our proclamation? In future articles, I will offer some guidelines to formal catechesis. Today, however, I would suggest above and beyond all educational strategies or resources, the most important factor in bringing up children as Christians is your personal example as a parent.

One of the biggest mistakes that Christian parents often make is to confuse catechism for education. We begin with the externals. Isn’t there a book I can read and teach to my kids? Isn’t there a curriculum I can implement? Isn’t there a moral system that I can somehow drill into their little minds? We want solutions in a box, simple equations into which we can feed our kids, from which they can emerge as believers.

Now, I have nothing against formal education, curricula, moral systems, rules and so on. They have their place and I hope to discuss them in future articles. My point is, we need to get our priorities straight. Educating our children in their faith doesn’t go from the outside in, but from the inside out. The words of our catechism can only be meaningful to our kids if we first demonstrate their meaning in our own lives.

How we can be witnesses to our children of a living relationship with God on a daily basis? Before I answer that question, I must make a basic point: being an effective witness to our children does not necessarily mean that we have to be paragons of moral perfection. What we do need is an attitude described best in the “Big Book” of Alcoholics Anonymous: “We are willing to grow along spiritual lines... We claim spiritual progress rather than spiritual perfection.” This fundamental mind-set will be crucial in determining whether or not our children will uphold us as spiritual role models and follow our path of faith.

Seeing Us Pray
Having resolved on a path of spiritual progress rather than perfection, our children should witness two basic activities in our lives. First and foremost, they should see us praying. This doesn’t mean we need to be overtly pious. Even someone who is fumbling towards the very existence of God can be a model of prayer as they cry from the depths of their soul, “If you are out there, reveal Yourself to me!”

As long as our kids see us involved in this kind of real, consistent and honest conversation with God, we will succeed in offering them a strong witness of faith. They will come to the accurate conclusion that Dad and/or Mum are sacrificing time and effort to reach out for God, which must mean that He is somehow important...

Of course, none of this will be effective unless the optics are correct. By this I mean that we should not only be involved in the effort of regular prayer, but that our children must also see us in the effort of regular prayer. It won’t hurt for them to “discover” you praying on one or two occasions. And if you set aside times for regular prayer, it is worth saying that you are “going to pray” within the reach of their little ears.

You may feel a bit self-conscious about exposing your prayer life like this, but remember that being a parent is a public role that involves a certain amount of staging for the good of our children. Think of all the conversations you avoid having in front of them and ask yourself why it is should be so strange to make personal prayer a matter of family discussion. Then consider the goal: to inculcate in your children the awareness that you are engaged in a living relationship with God. In the end, isn’t it worth a little discomfort?

Seeing Us Repent
Along with seeing you pray, your children should see you repenting daily. As I said earlier, they will not ultimately care about your imperfections, as long as you took an attitude of willingness to grow and progress along spiritual lines. Inwardly, such growth and progress involves the effort to pray; outwardly, it involves the effort to say sorry and make amends.

A story from early Christian literature tells of a traveler in the desert who came upon a monastery. Observing the monks, who were hermits, he finally asked one of the brothers, “What is it that you do every day in your cell?” The monk replied, “We fall down, we get up. We fall down, we get up. We fall down...”

Such is the spiritual life. What counts in the end is not whether we have fallen, but whether we are struggling to rise again. As parents, this means that the most powerful witness of our faith will depend on whether or not we have the humility and the courage to “get up” by repenting of our mistakes in the presence of our children.

This is perhaps the most difficult parenting challenge that we will face. It means apologizing to our spouses, our colleagues, friends, acquaintances and even strangers—in plain sight of our kids. Most importantly, it means making amends to the children themselves—a humbling and even terrifying prospect.

Difficult as it may be, however, we must answer the call to be witnesses of repentance to our children. If they do not see this key piece of our spiritual life, all our prayer, all our Church attendance and external piety will count for nothing with them. They will simply dismiss us as prideful hypocrites, and rightfully so.

According to Jesus, love for God and love for neighbour are the two benchmarks of faith (see Matthew 22:36-40 and elsewhere). The extent to which you and I respond to these benchmarks will be all-important in shaping (if not determining) what path of faith our children will choose to follow or abandon.

If, as parents, we can manifest a love for God in a willingness to live a life of prayer (however imperfectly), and if we can demonstrate a love for our neighbour in a willingness to say sorry and make amends for our wrongs to those around us (especially in relation to our families), then we will have set in place a sound image of faith before the little ones who have been entrusted to us, and for whom we will give account on the Last Day.

More next time on some ways to go about catechizing your children at home.

Great Blessing of Waters 2012

Theophany 2012

How Do We Pray?

See if you can empathize with the following scenario. You are at a public, faith-related gathering, and someone is asked to say a prayer. Perhaps they are praying for someone who is present, or someone who is absent. Perhaps they are praying for a situation. Perhaps they are simply blessing a meal. It doesn't matter: they start to pray.

Ten minutes later, the 'prayer' winds its way to a close, and if you are like me, you breathe an inaudible sigh of relief and suppress a faint sense of irritation. You are forgiven. After all, you have just suffered through a monologue that was part sermon, part theological lecture, part advice-giving to God, part history, part wish list, part thanksgiving for stuff no one really cares about, and part talking to hear the sound of one's own voice...

Now, don't get me wrong. I am not judging the intentions and goodwill of folks who desire to offer up themselves and their lives to God in prayer. I just seems to me that the long, rambling self-talks that we so often hear being presented as 'prayer' are simply an indication that as people of faith, we have really forgotten what prayer is and how to pray, at least in the way that monotheistic believers have prayed for thousands of years.

What is prayer? That's the basic question. Many answers may be given, but one fundamental truth remains, best summed up by C.S. Lewis: “Prayer doesn't change God. Prayer changes me.” By definition, God knows everything and has absolute power over everything. Whatever prayer may be, it cannot tell God things that He doesn't already know, or make Him do things that He doesn't already want to do. If we believe in an all-knowing, all-powerful God, our prayer must be simply our humble way of harmonizing our hearts and minds to His will and purpose and intention for the world. Prayer can be nothing more or less than a human way of entering into God's Presence, to do His will. Whatever the specific words we may use, we are always affirming the same thing: “God, be who You are and do what You do.”

Interestingly enough, God's people have taken this exact approach to prayer for centuries. Beginning with the traditions of Judaism and continuing with the Christian Church from its inception, prayers to God have simply expanded on the two-part statement above—“Be who You are and do what You do”—in many and various ways.

Classically, prayer begins by reminding ourselves who God is. In ancient Judaism, a typical prayer would identify God as “LORD, God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob...” In the New Testament, Jesus fundamentally redefined our relationship to God in prayer when He instructed us to begin by saying, “Our Father who is in Heaven...”

Having identified God, the next step is to expand on this identification by remembering what He has done for His people through the ages. The examples are too numerous to list, but one Eastern Orthodox prayer for repentance and forgiveness refers to God as the One who “pardoned David through Nathan the prophet, Peter who wept bitterly for his denial, the woman weeping at Your feet, the harlot, the Publican, the Prodigal...” If we are praying for healing, we remind ourselves that God is the God who heals the infirm. If we are praying for safe travel, then He is the God who led His people through the wilderness, and so on.

We then ask this God to do what He has always done. Again, I will share one example from the prayer with which Orthodox Christians bless water: “You are our God, who have drowned sin through water in the days of Noah. You are our God who cleft the rock in the wilderness: the waters gushed out, the streams overflowed, and You have sanctified Your thirsty people. You are our God who by water and fire through Elijah have brought back Israel from the error of Baal. Do You Yourself, O Master, now as then sanctify this water by Your Holy Spirit...”

The point is, before we ask God to accomplish certain things in our lives, we remember that He is the kind of God who has done those mighty acts before. This should automatically exclude certain requests from our prayers. I am reminded, for example, of Janis Joplin's famous tongue-in-cheek song: “Lord, won't you buy me a Mercedes Benz?”

And let me just say to those 'prosperity Gospel' crazies out there that God may have bestowed a 'Mercedes Benz' on people in the past, it was never as an answer to prayer. Earthly riches were always a consolation for particular people (Job, for instance) who lived faithful lives despite great suffering and tribulation. Prayer has always been, first and foremost, an alignment of our hearts and minds with God's will, whatever the earthly results.

At this point you might protest, “Who are you to say that prayer must be anything? Who are you to dictate how I am to pray?” Or you might say, “Well, maybe they prayed that way in the olden days, but this is the 21st century. Times change!”

To both these objections I would simply respond that you are quite free to embark on any monologue you desire, and address that monologue to someone you call God. What He chooses to do with your words is His business, not mine. My only question is, what is the ultimate purpose of your words? Are you trying to impress someone, convince someone, scold someone, make someone feel better, argue someone into something? Or are you simply trying to be united—mind, body and soul—with the One who is all-knowing, all-powerful, who is “the same yesterday, today and forever,” (Hebrews 13:8) and to whom prayer has been offered in the same way (regardless of the specific words) for as long as human beings have spoken to the One God?

The Professional Spirit

Suppose you were standing in line-up at McDonald’s, and the person ahead of you started to lambast the little old lady who was about to take his order. The subject of his tirade? Not her service skills, but McDonald’s business practices, the nutritional value of its food, and its contribution to the greenhouse effect.

Wouldn’t you feel sorry for the poor employee? After all, she can hardly be held responsible for the McDonald’s corporate sins. As a reasonable onlooker of this scene, you might well say, “Lay off, will you? She just works here!”

In the context of our secular life, “I just work here” can be used as an excuse not to take responsibility; it can be a reneging of citizenship, a refusal to have a stake in the life of your community. In the spiritual life, however, “I just work here” is essential to relating to God and one another in the proper spirit.

This spirit, which I can only describe as “professional,” is well described in the “Big Book” of Alcoholics Anonymous:

We had a new Employer. Being all powerful, He provided what we needed, if we kept close to Him and performed His work well. Established on such a footing we became less and less interested in ourselves, our little plans and designs. More and more we became interested in seeing what we could contribute to life. As we felt new power flow in, as we enjoyed peace of mind, as we discovered we could face life successfully, as we became conscious of His presence, we began to lose our fear of today, tomorrow or the hereafter. We were reborn. (Alcoholics Anonymous, p.63)

For alcoholics who have based their entire lives on themselves and the needs of their egos, the refreshing solution is to live more professionally, that is, as if they were merely employees of the universal “Employer.”

Spiritual professionalism gives birth to freedom. The McDonald’s employee is responsible for providing the best service she can and doing her work well, but beyond that, she cannot be held responsible for McDonald’s corporate vision.

Similarly, if I as a human being “work” for the heavenly Employer, I am truly liberated from the responsibility of guiding my own destiny. All I need to do is perform the Employer’s work well, that is, be dedicated and faithful to whatever task is set in front of me. The rest I can happily leave in God’s hands.

I believe that we could use more spiritual professionalism in our world. We are a society largely dedicated to the cult of personality. We value the larger-than-life men and women who stand above their fellow human beings in the realms of art, science, politics, and entertainment, regarding them as the ancient Greeks regarded their gods on Mount Olympus. And even when an accomplishment is clearly a group effort, our first impulse is to isolate and identify the individual genius on whom we heap our adulation.

Consider, for instance, Canada’s hockey victory at the Olympics. Who could doubt that the gold medal was won by the entire team? And yet whose name resounded most loudly in the stadium that afternoon except that of Sidney Crosby? We might pay lip service to the team, but do we not worship Crosby as the current hockey god of Canada?

Whatever its value may be in the secular world, the cult of personality is the source of ultimate death and destruction in the spiritual life. The fall of Lucifer came directly as a result of his attempt to style himself as God’s equal—his own cult of personality. Spiritually, our attempts to make the ego the centre of our lives is nothing less than an imitation of Satan’s prototype, with the same destructive results.

One of my seminary professors once told me, “God is the only valid ego.” Like it or not, this is the very definition of spiritual reality. In the end, only God can say, “I am,” which is why pious Jews never spoke the Name of God (which means “I am”) out loud, for fear that “I” might be applied to the speaker. Their point is well taken: God’s personality is the only one worth building a cult around. The most everyone else can say is that we are His representatives, sent by Him and accountable to Him for everything.

As long as we go on building our own cults of personality, the burden of orchestrating our universe will continue to crush us, and we will continue to be victims of what recovering alcoholics call “self-will run riot.”

Instead, I propose that we try looking at our lives more professionally, viewing the challenges of being parents and children, spouses and friends, colleagues and neighbours, as simply a part of our human job description. As long as we do our work well, when some equivalent of the irate customer comes along to lambast us for something beyond our control, we can just say, “This is not about me. I just work here.”

The professional spirit does not mean we cannot be passionate, dedicated, involved and intimate with the realities of our lives—spiritual and material. It just means that ultimately, Someone else is sitting at head office, and His is the final word. Knowing that truth is the real secret to the freedom, peace and joy of a life reborn.

The Suffering God

Over three years ago, a helicopter crash in Cranbrook killed four people, including the crew and a young pedestrian named Isaiah. Such events often provoke us to wonder how could a loving God allow suffering? How can God even exist in a world where suffering can come so suddenly and so randomly?

The little group of mourners on a hill outside Jerusalem two thousand years ago must have asked the same questions. Watching the beaten body of one they had called “Lord” and “Master,” now racked with pain on the cross, Jesus’ mother and the other women, along with the disciple John, must have asked themselves the same question we all do when faced with devastating sorrow: how could this happen?

In the face of these questions, and all platitudes aside, Christianity can offer no propositions, statements, arguments, rationalizations to explain events that engulf us in flames and tears, and leave us empty and desolate.

What Christianity can offer is something at once unsatisfying (on an intellectual level) and more profound, radically satisfying on the level of human experience. Forty days after the crucifixion, Jesus’ disciples returned to Jerusalem and were to be seen in the temple daily, praising and glorifying God. (Luke 24:52-53) What had happened? Ten days later, at the feast known as Pentecost, the disciples began to proclaim in many languages that Jesus had risen from the dead and ascended into heaven.

The implications of the Apostles’ preaching took many centuries to make themselves felt, but felt they were. The most important of these implications is expressed in the Eastern Orthodox hymn for the Ascension: You ascended in glory, O Christ our God, granting joy to Your disciples by the promise of the Holy Spirit. Through the blessing, they were assured that You are the Son of God, the Redeemer of the world!

“The Son of God.” In the language Jewish scriptural thought, this means Jesus is “of the same kind as God,” a quality rendered in the Greek of the Nicene Creed by the phrase “of one essence with the Father.” Which means simply that the man who suffered and died before the eyes of his mother and his friends on Golgotha was, according to the Apostles’ preaching, none of other than eternal God present in the flesh.

But there is a more profound implication to this statement. If the man who suffered on Golgotha is God, then human suffering is somehow a part of who God is. The eternal, unchangeable God is a suffering God. And since God created the world in His image and likeness, His own suffering was built into the very fabric of the universe.

It’s a little mind-boggling, and undoubtedly difficult (if not impossible) for the intellect to grasp. That’s why Eastern theology calls it a “mystery”—something that does not satisfy the mind, but works on another, deeper level, one that can be understood by anyone who has suffered in their own life. For if the man who suffered on Golgotha was God, then the converse is also true: God suffered as a man. God suffered as we do when tragedy, pain, illness and sorrow overcome us. The silence of Jesus on the Cross is our silence in the face of circumstances that defy all reason and explanation.

This is the only ‘answer’ that Christ can offer us in times of suffering: he suffers with us. No rationalizations, explanations, propositions, arguments or theologies can be offered because none exist. Suffering cannot be explained, because suffering just is—the fifth dimension of the universe. In response, all we have is the silence of One who is walks with us through the valley of the shadow of death.

This may not be enough for intellects that crave explanations. But to those who are suffering and mourning at this time, I would ask: what is more comforting for you: a trite ‘reason’ offered by someone who has no idea what you are going through? Or the friend or loved one who says nothing, but simply spreads their arms to embrace and weep with you?

On the Cross, the eternal God spread His arms to embrace the pain and sorrow of this world. It may not be the answer our minds want, but it’s the only one our hearts really need. And it’s the only one we’re going to get.

December 25th: A Date With Eternity

We sometimes hear that December 25th is not originally a Christian holiday. According to this argument, the Emperor Aurelian instituted a pagan holiday celebrating the birth of Sol Invictus, “the Invincible Sun,” in A.D. 274.

In this view, the Christians appropriated this date in an effort to uproot and supplant pagan beliefs with their own. The December 25th date, we are told, is actually nothing more than Christian propaganda, one more example of just how oppressive the Church can be to groups who disagree with them.

A bit more investigation, though, shows this argument to be only skin deep. Most scholars now agree that Christians chose December 25th as Christ’s birthday long before Emperor Aurelian instituted his pagan feast.

According to an ancient Jewish belief (which Christians inherited), a prophet died on the same day as he was conceived. Early Christians, who held that Christ was crucified on March 25th, therefore assumed he was conceived on the same day, when the angel Gabriel announced his birth to the Virgin Mary.

Indeed, both Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches still celebrate the Annunciation—Jesus’ conception by the Holy Spirit—on March 25th. By ancient logic, then, Jesus would have been born nine months after March 25th, on—you guessed it—December 25th.

But the quarrel over actual dates misses a bigger point. By associating Jesus’ conception and birth with his death, the ancient Christians affirmed something crucial about the good news of Christianity. We find this fundamental truth articulated in one of the Orthodox Christmas hymns:

Today the Virgin comes to the cave
Where she will give birth to the Eternal Word.
Hear the glad tidings and rejoice, O universe!
With the angels and shepherds glorify Him who reveals Himself:
The eternal God, a little child!

The Nativity of Christ is the beginning of God’s great work among His people, a work completed with His death on the Cross and resurrection on the third day. Taken together, the conception, birth, life, death and resurrection of Christ constitute the very heart of the joyous Christian proclamation: that in Jesus Christ, the eternal God—transcendent, unapproachable and all-powerful—has come to unite Himself to us and so unite us to Himself, freeing us from death and sin, and making us “partakers of divine nature,” (2 Peter 1:4) As St. Athanasius the Great declared most boldly: “God became man, so that man could become God.”

December 25th, then, is not just another example of Christian oppression. It is not just a date to remember a past event. Rather, December 25th is another opportunity bring into the present time the eternal reality of Immanuel: “God with us” from birth to death and resurrection. This Christmas, we can all rejoice in that joy once again, celebrating the moment when God Himself broke into history, in the final act of His mysterious, incomprehensible, infinite love for us.

Found in Translation

Several days ago, my wife and I were having a “disagreement” on the subject of Christmas trees. I won’t bore you with the details, except to say that after several minutes of bickering, we came to realize that the source of our enmity lay in our differing understandings of what the phrase “Christmas tree” actually meant.

By this I do not mean that we were fighting about the dictionary definition of “Christmas tree” i.e. a tree of the evergreen variety, traditionally decorated and kept in the house or public places around December 25th.

No, our problem did not lie with the surface meaning of the phrase “Christmas tree,” but rather with its deeper associations.

You see, when my wife thinks of “Christmas tree,” she remembers those special days of childhood and youth when her family would drive out into the woods, cut down a 15 foot Noble fir, bring it home and decorate it to the accompaniment of Christmas carols, hot apple cider and cookies.

By contrast, I am not greatly inspired by Christmas trees. I grew up on the Equator, where evergreens are non-existent. We never even had a real tree, let alone go out to cut one down. Our trees were decorated, but decorating them was just a practical task that someone accomplished at some point before Christmas.

For my beloved Jaime, “Christmas tree” is the embodiment of family, comfort, and joy. When I hear the same words, I think of a necessary object to be acquired and decorated by whatever means is most convenient.

No wonder, then, that my wife and I fought over the importance of Christmas trees. Although we were using the same words, we were actually speaking two different languages. Superficially identical, my wife’s “Christmas tree” and my “Christmas tree” referred to two profoundly different and opposed realities.

If you think about it, this petty domestic squabble points to a core problem in much of human life. How many national, political or social conflicts have erupted when groups use identical words—like “freedom,” “democracy” and “human rights”—in contradictory ways, all the while insisting that their definition is correct?

How often have we traded common words like “family,” “friendship,” or “love,” only to be hurt when others don’t seem to understand us?

As a pastor, I am only too aware of just how loaded are words like “father,” “righteousness,” “God,” “obedience” and “authority” in the lives of those to whom I minister. And as an Eastern Orthodox priest, I am often bemused at western Christian arguments over “faith” versus “works” and “Scripture” versus “tradition”—words that are superficially familiar to me, but whose definitions I do not share.

Whether in the realm of the national, the personal or the spiritual, the problem is the same: translation. People use words and as long as these words appear to mean the same things, they assume that they are communicating.

It just isn’t so.

Like my marital disagreement over Christmas trees, the problem lies in the deeper meanings. If people say, “We are fighting for freedom!” do they mean, “We are fighting so that your people can have the freedom to choose between Nike and Reebok,” or “We are fighting so that our right believing people can be free to worship Allah in a proper manner”?

If someone says, “I love you,” are they referring to a warm and intense emotion that can flicker and fade away in time, or a lifetime commitment to give themselves to another person, regardless of emotions?

If someone says, “We are saved by faith,” are they referring to a crucial moment in which we recognize certain propositions about God and His love in Jesus Christ, or a series of faithful choices, each of which brings us closer or pushes us further away from God? Or is it something in between?

You can see how so many conflicts come to be. Most of us don’t really ask ourselves what someone else means by the words they use. We just see common vocabulary and plough ahead, assuming that our definition is the one the other person is using, or worse yet, that our definition is right and theirs is wrong.

The answer to this pervasive failing in our human character lies in proper translation. By this I don’t mean better or more accurate dictionaries. I mean taking the time to understand what each person really means by the words they use.

As a husband, recognizing my wife’s associations with the phrase “Christmas tree” went a long way to healing the rift between us. As a pastor, recognizing the emotional and spiritual baggage that many people bring to the Church has been crucial to helping them find a true reconciliation with God.

Seeking and discovering these inner meanings takes time. It involves humility, openness and commitment. It is often painful and frustrating. It requires us to gain trust, which is reluctantly given and easily betrayed.

As difficult as this process is, however, it must be undertaken. We must make the effort to fully translate the meanings of each other’s words, spiritually, personally, culturally. If we don’t, we may be doomed to continue talking at without understanding each other, much less achieving anything like unity or agreement.

In Honour of Saint Herman of Alaska: The Elder Herman at Sitka

I
You returned to the Sitka springs,
An old man bound with chains to your
Humility, your eyes speaking
Only the language of angels.
Once God drowned you in these waters
And the dove who became a fish
Descended deep into your eyes.
Then you rose and flew away
Unburdened of your miracles
And certain that raising the dead
Was your only obligation--
And so you returned to the Sitka springs.

II
In your thin arms you held a child
Who would not fly above his life:
He nailed a dove’s wings to the sun.
In your thin arms you held a child
Who forgot the world had ended:
He buried all the fallen stars.
In your thin arms you held a child
Who suffered much from being dead:
He could not heal the bleeding stones.
In your thin arms you held a child
Who could not see a dove descend
To fill the rivers in his eyes with wings.

III
When the angel had veiled himself
In the clear waters, only you
Could see where immortality
Had disturbed them. So, kneeling,
You bathed us till we were transparent
And went back to the sacred cave.
You did not see the dead birds sing
Nor the stars rise into heaven
Nor the stones turn into mountains;
You did not see us look up and see God;
For your eyes were overwhelmed by
Visions of more immense simplicity.