Therefore we also, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us,looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. (Hebrews 12:2)
An acquaintance of mine, a Protestant woman, who was well disposed towards Orthodoxy once told me that she had no problem at all with Orthodox theology except in two areas--the veneration of the saints and the kissing of icons. She said that no matter how hard she tried to understand it, it still looked idolatrous to her.
I responded by asking her what she felt when she looked at a picture of her (long deceased) parents.
She asked me, in turn, whether I had misunderstood what she had said. I said, "No, I heard you just fine, but in order to really answer your question I need to know what you feel when you look at a picture of your parents--or for that matter your grandchildren."
"Well, love, I suppose--but what has that got to do with saints and icons?"
"When you look at those pictures do you find yourself thinking about the paper and ink?"
"No, of course not! But what are you trying to say?"
"When you look at those pictures and feel such strong emotions toward the people represented in them it isn't because they are printed on Kodak paper or were taken with a digital camera or whatever. The medium that was used to print them is the last thing in your mind. It is what they re-present that matters. It is the reality behind them that draws your attention and inspires those feelings of love. Well.... that is exactly what icons do for us Orthodox. They remind us of people we love, members of our family who have gone before us but who are still very much with here with us."
"I never thought about it like that before.... That's quite interesting. But still, you pray to those people in your icons!"
"No. We ask them to pray for us. There is a big difference between praying to someone and asking their prayers. We Orthodox pray to God alone, but we freely ask for the prayers of the Mother of God and all the other saints."
"That's not scriptural. You can't expect the dead to hear you....why it's almost pagan!"
"I think Jesus put an end to that when he spoke of in St. Mark's Gospel where He said that God is the God of the living, not the dead."
"But wasn't He speaking of the Resurrection?"
"Yes, but He was also speaking of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob--who had not yet risen from the dead. The point is that the dead are alive in the Lord. And I think that it is safe to say that the veil between this world and the next is much thinner than we sometimes think. At any rate, our relationship with the saints and our kissing of their images in icons is a family relationship--a communion between those of us here on earth and those who have gone ahead of us. The saints we venerate are great examples of Christian virtue and faith, but they were--and are--human just like us. We ask for their prayers in the same way that we ask for prayers from one another in this world and we love them in the same way that we love one another here. It is all very real to us. Those icons are not idols--they represent real people--and the God who became a human being for our salvation."
"Well, I'm not convinced...but it certainly puts things in a different light to think of it that way."
"That great cloud of witnesses that St. Paul writes about in his letter to the Hebrews really are all around us--those are the very words of scripture. So, when we paint them on the walls of our churches and put them on our iconostases and put them up in our homes--all we are doing is confirming what the scripture itself teaches."
"Maybe I'm half convinced--but its hard to forget a lifetime of being taught that icons and statues are idolatrous."
"Just look at those pictures of your parents and grandkids when you get home....you'll understand."
Saturday, June 13, 2009
Tuesday, June 9, 2009
Seeing but not perceiving, hearing but not understanding
"Therefore they could not believe, because Isaiah said again: "He has blinded their eyes and hardened their hearts, lest they should see with their eyes, lest they should understand with their hearts and turn that I should heal them" (John 12:40)
We just finished studying chapters 40-57 of the prophet Isaiah--by far the most quoted prophet in the New Testament. I have also just finished reading the prophet Ezekiel in my own course of readings and what has struck me in both these prophets is their use of blindness and deafness as a willful spiritual quality of human beings when they are confronted with God's truth. It doesn't matter whether we are speaking of the ancient Israelites, or the Pharisees of Jesus' day or the purportedly Christian leaders of our society today--when confronted with an inconvenient truth that goes against the prevailing cultural prejudices they choose blindness. It isn't that they can't see--they choose not to see.
For instance, our self avowedly Christian president chooses to ignore the massive preponderance of pro-life teaching in both the Old and New Testaments in order to support a woman's right to "choose" to destroy her child before it is born. All the prophets cite one of the most heinous crimes of Israel before it was finally punished with exile into Babylon was the killing of innocent children. Why were these murders committed in Israel? In order to assure the well being of a household, a community, a harvest--in other words for the same reason the murders are being committed today (a woman's future, education, vocation, emotional health, earning power, independence--and also for a man's freedom from responsibility, independence, earning power, and so on). The justification for the immolation of infants in ancient Palestine was psychologically and spiritually exactly the same as it is for the immolation of infants today. But our "Christian" leaders choose to blind themselves to the facts and to deceive themselves into pretending not to understand.
But, like the guilty child slayers of Israel, they cannot really get away with it. They must either admit in the end that they support one of the most unspeakable crimes of all--the wanton destruction of innocent children, or they must altogether abandon the pretence of being Christians. The good news, if one can call it that, is that it is becoming less and less important to pretend to be a Christian in this society and I suspect that politicians will soon feel free to abandon such pretences altogether. So we wont have Presidents and members of Congress who fell obliged to tell us they are Christians while defending the most horrifying of all the crimes an adult can commit. It will be safe to just come right out and say that they understand very well what they are doing and can see very well where it is leading and they don't care one way or another about what Christianity and the Scriptures have to say about it. They will then have attained the refreshing honesty of the communists and national socialists of the last century who were willing to say they were hard hearted s.o.b's and be proud of it.
It is better for the Church to have to contend with sworn enemies than to have to endure the wolves in sheep's clothing who have been tearing apart Christ's flock for the past two generations.
Oh, yes, but when they finally go down--as they most assuredly will--you can bet they will say with all the good national socialists, "we didn't know what was happening....we were deceived...we didn't understand where it would lead...."
In the end, God is a respecter of freedom of choice....all choice....and He will permit the wicked to go to the uttermost extreme of their wickedness in order to manifest His righteousness, mercy, and truth. But no one can say--or at least no free adult in this country can ever say, "we didn't know....we didn't see....we didn't understand what was happening around us."
I would rather that the wicked would repent and be saved and that our civilization would turn itself away from the path we are taking. But if we will not repent then I pray that our leaders will stop pretending. One of the gifts of the current regime is that that day is fast approaching. The convenient mask of Christianity is fast being dropped in the face of a revolutionary attempt to co opt what little remains of an overtly Christian culture. The voices of the false prophets of atheism, abortion, euthanasia, and every perversion will finally attain their place as not only acceptable but true. And no one will have to be ashamed to be blind anymore--until the whirlwind comes.
We just finished studying chapters 40-57 of the prophet Isaiah--by far the most quoted prophet in the New Testament. I have also just finished reading the prophet Ezekiel in my own course of readings and what has struck me in both these prophets is their use of blindness and deafness as a willful spiritual quality of human beings when they are confronted with God's truth. It doesn't matter whether we are speaking of the ancient Israelites, or the Pharisees of Jesus' day or the purportedly Christian leaders of our society today--when confronted with an inconvenient truth that goes against the prevailing cultural prejudices they choose blindness. It isn't that they can't see--they choose not to see.
For instance, our self avowedly Christian president chooses to ignore the massive preponderance of pro-life teaching in both the Old and New Testaments in order to support a woman's right to "choose" to destroy her child before it is born. All the prophets cite one of the most heinous crimes of Israel before it was finally punished with exile into Babylon was the killing of innocent children. Why were these murders committed in Israel? In order to assure the well being of a household, a community, a harvest--in other words for the same reason the murders are being committed today (a woman's future, education, vocation, emotional health, earning power, independence--and also for a man's freedom from responsibility, independence, earning power, and so on). The justification for the immolation of infants in ancient Palestine was psychologically and spiritually exactly the same as it is for the immolation of infants today. But our "Christian" leaders choose to blind themselves to the facts and to deceive themselves into pretending not to understand.
But, like the guilty child slayers of Israel, they cannot really get away with it. They must either admit in the end that they support one of the most unspeakable crimes of all--the wanton destruction of innocent children, or they must altogether abandon the pretence of being Christians. The good news, if one can call it that, is that it is becoming less and less important to pretend to be a Christian in this society and I suspect that politicians will soon feel free to abandon such pretences altogether. So we wont have Presidents and members of Congress who fell obliged to tell us they are Christians while defending the most horrifying of all the crimes an adult can commit. It will be safe to just come right out and say that they understand very well what they are doing and can see very well where it is leading and they don't care one way or another about what Christianity and the Scriptures have to say about it. They will then have attained the refreshing honesty of the communists and national socialists of the last century who were willing to say they were hard hearted s.o.b's and be proud of it.
It is better for the Church to have to contend with sworn enemies than to have to endure the wolves in sheep's clothing who have been tearing apart Christ's flock for the past two generations.
Oh, yes, but when they finally go down--as they most assuredly will--you can bet they will say with all the good national socialists, "we didn't know what was happening....we were deceived...we didn't understand where it would lead...."
In the end, God is a respecter of freedom of choice....all choice....and He will permit the wicked to go to the uttermost extreme of their wickedness in order to manifest His righteousness, mercy, and truth. But no one can say--or at least no free adult in this country can ever say, "we didn't know....we didn't see....we didn't understand what was happening around us."
I would rather that the wicked would repent and be saved and that our civilization would turn itself away from the path we are taking. But if we will not repent then I pray that our leaders will stop pretending. One of the gifts of the current regime is that that day is fast approaching. The convenient mask of Christianity is fast being dropped in the face of a revolutionary attempt to co opt what little remains of an overtly Christian culture. The voices of the false prophets of atheism, abortion, euthanasia, and every perversion will finally attain their place as not only acceptable but true. And no one will have to be ashamed to be blind anymore--until the whirlwind comes.
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