Are we asking HOW or WHY?

Many of us have grown up in the Church. Our parents grew up in the Church. Their parents grew up in the Church. You get the idea. We have always been Christian and we may not know any different. Yes, we have questioned our faith from time to time, but we have always fundamentally believed that God exists, and that He wants a relationship with us. Some of the seeds of doubt that are sown in our hearts and minds are the questions: "What if it is all imagined? What if we are just starting with a set of assumptions that are simply self-validating? What if it is not so much the existence of God but rather the idea of God that really matters?" This is the position of some atheists who now practice a "Religion Without God". When our fundamental belief in God is challenged we may look for validation and are overjoyed when we hear that "Science Increasingly Makes the Case for God." The reality is that this is not in any way a new question - for centuries people who don't believe in God have been using science to "disprove Him" and people who believe in God have been using science to "prove Him." Neither one really makes any sense.

The reality is that the existence of God is non-falsifiable. There is no way to design an experiment that will tell you that He does or does not exist. This puts the question outside the realm of science. Period. End of story. Any attempt to prove or disprove God using science is not scientific - this inexorable paradox puts us in the position to either believe that God exists or that He does not - either way it is an act of faith. To illustrate the futility of science in telling us anything about God's existence let us look at two extreme positions. 

The first extreme is the extremely simplistic person's view of the world - the one with really no science. You can make this as simple as you can imagine. Take away the internet, airplanes, electricity, sanitation, and even fire if you like. This prehistoric cave man existence may be seen by some as the perfect breeding ground for the ignorance that is necessary for someone to believe in God. Since this person cannot explain anything about the world then everything must be left to "the hand of God." This is what Newton did with physical phenomena that he could not explain so this cave man who can't explain anything will have to use it to explain everything. Yes? Well, I don't think it's that simple. Isaac Newton understood enough about the world to know that there are things that are beyond his understanding and in some cases the more we know the more we are in awe of the improbability of our existence. The cave man, who knows nothing about the world, has no concept of how complex the world is and has nothing that is in need of explanation. The world just "is what it is" to use a tired modern colloquialism. Therefore the lack of knowledge does not in any way impart a tendency toward theism. 

The other extreme is the current or even future understanding of the world. We currently have a great appreciation of the world that includes command of our physical world (aeronautics, modern medicine, computer science, etc.), a deep understanding of the creatures that occupy that world (biology), an ability to manipulate the invisible properties of matter (chemistry), and even the ability to "create" matter with high energy colliders (particle physics). In the future we will understand even more and with new theories and discoveries that may 1) integrate all known physical phenomena and obviate the need of the "hand of God" cited by Newton and others, and 2) address the mechanism of creation of our complex world and thus question the very need for God in a probabilistic sense. While I find these scientific discoveries very interesting and illuminating I take issue with the assumption that if I understand HOW something happened then I also understand WHY it happened. If a car is driving down the road, the designer of that car can tell you in great detail about how the engine works and how it is that the car is able to get from point A to point B; however, the designer can tell you absolutely nothing about why the driver is going to point B in the first place. 

My goal here is not to convince you to believe in God because He can't be disproved by science. Similarly my goal is not to make you doubt in God because science can explain how everything happens even if God doesn't exist. My real goal is to clarify that science can only explain the HOW but not the WHY of our existence. God is my answer to "why?" Someone else may have a different belief of why we are here but that is still a belief that is only true to them because on a faith that is often based on a priori assumptions (Abolition of Man by CS Lewis). May we all act in faith and in love allow others to do the same.

On Imperfection

We live in a world that values perfection. We idolize people that look perfect, act perfect, and seem perfect. We watch sports and entertainment events that instill in us a reverence for a perfect score, a perfect game, and perfect records. Why then are we surprised when we feel dissatisfied? The standard has been set for our psyche to refuse to accept our lives, which rarely meet this unrealistic standard of perfection. 

What does God say? He tells us to strive for perfection but accepts us despite our imperfection. So what is the requirement? Are we good enough as is or are we expected grow? The answer is "yes" ... we are both good enough as is AND we are expected to grow. In Mere Christianity, CS Lewis teaches us: "As a great Christian writer (George MacDonald) pointed out, every father is pleased at the baby’s first attempt to walk: no father would be satisfied with anything less than a firm, free, manly walk in a grown-up son. In the same way, he said, 'God is easy to please, but hard to satisfy.'" So at once we must strive for perfection and at the same time accept an intermediate stage that serves as a stepping stone on that path to perfection. We see this concept in Christ's healing of the blind man in Mark 8:22-26, who is healed in stages, first seeing "men, like trees, walking" before his sight is completely restored.

At every point in our spiritual warfare, our own personal Wormwood (Screwtape Letters, by CS Lewis) will try to keep us from striking an appropriate balance between accepting ourselves and striving for better by constantly trying to push us either to complacency (wallowing in sin) or misguided perfectionism (beating ourselves up and falling into despair). In either case the end result is that we find ourselves focusing on the sin by saying it is either too much for us to handle (despair) or that it is manageable enough as it is (complacency). In either extreme we are becoming "sin-centric" and taking our eyes off God, which is exactly what happened to Peter when he "saw that the wind was boisterous" and began to sink (Matthew 14:22-33). Peter was doing fine when his eyes were on Christ and it was only when he took his eyes off Christ that he became afraid and began to sink. So we need to constantly ask ourselves what is tempting us to take our eyes off Him - at this moment are we feeling overwhelmed by sin and being pushed to despair or do we feel ok and are thus being pushed toward complacency?

We sometimes struggle with despair when we have trouble accepting ourselves the way that God accepts us. We should stop and ask ourselves a very important question - do we accept his acceptance? Oftentimes we hold on to guilt because we don't feel that we are worthy of his acceptance. Sometimes we even feel that this guilt is from God because he wants us to be better and he (like maybe our parents) uses this guilt to "encourage" us to improve. I still remember when I heard for the first time that "guilt is not from God." This was a mind-blowing revelation and it took me years to fully process it. Soon after hearing that phrase I heard And Can it Be by Church of Rhythm, which I listened to over and over again, trying to convince myself to accept that God is looking to love me much more than I am letting Him.

As soon as we find ourselves comfortable in accepting God's love, our spiritual warfare immediately shifts to pushing us toward complacency, with our Wormwood telling us "good job, God loves you, relax and enjoy yourself a bit," which unfortunately sometimes means that we get dragged back into our former sins by "the remembrance of evil entailing death." When St. Paul struggled with this question he felt the need to stop and ask if God's unconditional love means that we are allowed to sin, to which he immediately answers himself: "certainly not!" (Romans 6:15) So then if we are loved unconditionally then what is the point of avoiding sin? Stop and think about that for a second. If we are loved unconditionally, then there is a natural temptation there to say "well, that's great, now I can do whatever I want." Clearly this idea does not hold water, and I can't give a better explanation than St. Paul did in Romans 6-9 or St. James in his epistle. The answer there is "you don't avoid sin because you want a reward or to avoid a punishment - you avoid sin because you don't need sin anymore because you have Christ." I am a sinner. I am imperfect. God loves me anyway and that love is unconditional. This should make me love God and avoid sin not because I want to impress God but because sin is no longer on my agenda ... or is it? 

The reality is that despite the grace of God's forgiveness I still find myself sinning. Despite Christ freeing me from the bonds of sin I still find myself going back, sometimes to what feels like square one. However, it is important to figure out whether I am actively struggling with sin or I have given up and let myself become someone who accepts sin. In The Great Divorce, CS Lewis gives us the example of the woman who grumbled so much that she ceased to be a person because she had become "a grumble." We each have our personal sins, but as long as we are struggling against sin then we agree with God that the sin is bad and we hope and pray and wait for Him to give us the strength to get rid of the sin. It is when we give up the struggle that we are at risk of sliding so far into the sin that we are no longer "people who do a a certain sin" and become "people who are that sin." Part of our spiritual warfare is to resist the temptation to submit to a sin simply because we constantly find ourselves falling. Would it be better not to sin? Yes, of course, but God accepts the effort that we make as long as it is genuinely and sincerely our best effort. We must embrace this intermediate stage where we "see men like trees, walking," not because it is good enough forever but because it is good enough for now. If we do not accept this intermediate stage then we fall into despair and if we accept it too much then we fall into complacency.

The next question I want to ask is "does this fixation on guilt and misguided expectation of perfection affect other things in our life?" Let's look at how the complacency-despair problem affects how I look at forgiveness, prayer, and unity in organizations.

Imperfect forgiveness: In dealing with others, we should strive to forgive others as God forgives us fully and unconditionally. I'll be the first to admit this is hard. There are people that I have "forgiven" in that I am not willfully holding a grudge against them, but no matter how hard I try to forgive, I still feel a twinge of resentment. This emotional remnant is an indication that my forgiveness is imperfect. How do I react to this? Just as we discussed with sin, there are two mistakes I can make: 1) complacency - "I can't fully forgive so this halfhearted forgiveness is good enough," or 2) despair - "I am a terrible person because I don't know how to forgive." In reading Romans 12:19-20 I was always confused that St. Paul was telling us not to avenge ourselves but rather forgive because this would make it worse for the person we are trying to forgive, "For in so doing you will heap coals of fire on his head.” This flies in the face of Christ's words on the cross that we should forgive completely and unconditionally. To me this is, once again, evidence of an intermediate stage of forgiveness that is only acceptable if that is the best we can do. In the end, I may eventually be able to truly forgive, or maybe I will not be successful. The result is not as important as the process of continually struggling and asking God to help me forgive as He forgives. 

Imperfect prayer: I was recently asked to comment about the practice of asking for a saint's intercession with the promise that if the request was granted a donation would be made in the name of the saint. This phenomenon is quite common, so I will first start with the bright side that there are positive elements here in that the believer is 1) praying in some way, 2) developing a relationship with a saint in some way, and 3) making a donation or performing a good act. The discomfort some people have with this practice is that it is a bit of a "genie in a bottle" type of magic trick and not reconcilable with the idea that we should not be praying for our will but rather for God's will. In the Great Divorce, CS Lewis says that “There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, 'Thy will be done,' and those to whom God says, in the end, 'Thy will be done.'" So, yes, I completely agree that holding a donation ransom for a certain outcome is not ideal, but I hope we can see it as an intermediate stage that will hopefully eventually lead to a true relationship with the saint and with God that is not predicated on "what have you done for me lately?"

Imperfect unity: We are all part of multiple organizations in some way shape or form, and for many of us the Church is one of those organizations. The relationship that we develop with God and each other within the Church is called fellowship, or koinonia in Greek. This unity through the Holy Spirit has guided the Church through the ages and continues to bind us on multiple levels: individually to God, individually to each other, as a group to God, as a group to each other, etc. So now you may be thinking, "ok, so if the Holy Spirit is supposed to be unifying us perfectly, then why are people constantly disagreeing and arguing about things in church?" Once again, we are asked to accept an imperfect unity as an intermediate stage that may be the best we can do ... for now. We must not be complacent but rather strive towards a more perfect unity, and the Church in its wisdom reminds us of this every morning when we pray that we "Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace" (First Hour Prayer excerpt from Ephesians 4). We also should not fall into despair, questioning the presence of the Holy Spirit, but rather work with Him to wage war against this disunity. 

In conclusion, when we struggle with sin, imperfect forgiveness, imperfect prayer, and imperfect unity we must find a balance between the frustration of things not being how we want them and the complacency of accepting something as a final product that should just be a work in progress. This is even true in how we approach how we follow the rules of the Church, which are set before us as a guide to help us get to know God but are not a goal in and of themselves. Sometimes we fall into despair because we can't follow all the rules or become complacent feeling that we "follow enough of them to get by." To quote a recent Sunday sermon, "the teachings of the Church are clear, but in teaching the teachings I have to know what is my intention." If following the teachings of the Church becomes a system of checking boxes then I am missing the point because it will never be about how many boxes are checked but rather whether or not checking those boxes is bringing me closer to Christ. Keep struggling. Keep forgiving as best as you can. Keep praying as well and as much as you can. Keep working towards unity. God loves us in our imperfection and will bless our effort to be perfect as our Father in heaven is perfect (Matthew 5:48). 

Generational Sacrifice

Our parents sacrificed more than just their home countries but rather even their identities by leaving Egypt and becoming less Egyptian, more American and thereby becoming really neither one. They identify most, not with Americans or Egyptians, but with fellow Egyptian-Americans who know what it means to be in a watershed of cultures that would otherwise never coexist. 

The first generation has the benefit of being more congruous with our environment but, as even pop culture seems to understand, we do not quite fit in with our moussaka into the white bread world around us. This has more than just simple effects on our social comfort but rather far reaching implications on our choice of schools, careers, spouses and other major decisions that are both consciously and subconsciously affected by our upbringing in an immigrant household. 

The real assimilation does not happen until at least the second generation of immigrants who are raised by parents who (somewhat) understand the world that their children are growing up in. Rather than simply reacting to one new "foreign demand" after another, these parents can anticipate the challenges their children will face and help them navigate them accordingly. This is a complex undertaking that requires more than a simple checklist of items like making sure to apply for scholarships for college - rather, this requires the parents to decide a priori what values they want to instill in their children, ideally picking and choosing the best traits of the two cultures that they have known as part of their own identity. 

This is where the Coptic Church being self aware becomes critically important if the Church is going to be part of that value-molding process. I think we all agree that not all Egyptian values are Christian values, but we may not necessarily agree on which ones are which. Furthermore, the more fuzzy we leave it the more room we leave for even first and second generation Coptic Christians to be confused as to what values they really need to pass along to their children. I'm not saying we need to have a papal decree or a referendum or some kind of official document that says "these are the values we have decided to actually mean something." What I am saying is that everyone from the bishops to the clergy to the servants to the parents needs to be mindful of this cultural gap and thoughtful about what it is that makes us "Us." If we know who we would want to be then we will know who to teach our children to become*. 

Footnote:

*Please note that I do understand that the simple answer is "be like Christ" but everyone seems to have a different caricature in their heads of who He is so it seems more straightforward to engage in a personal and communal discussion on actual values. 

The eye cannot see ...

"The eye cannot see what the mind does not know." This is a common adage in medical training, during which doctors see things over and over again many times so that when it comes up "in real life" it is not missed. One corollary to this comes when a clinician says "I've never seen that" and the response is "yes, but has it seen you?" In any field of expertise the first challenge is not to learn but rather to gain insight into the scope of the burden of knowledge. The dangerous doctor is not the one who says "I don't know" but rather the one who doesn't know that he doesn't know. Similarly for us in our spiritual lives the challenge is not so much that we make mistakes but rather that we don't recognize them; likewise it's not so much that we are often erroneous in our interpretation of God but rather that we are unjustifiably confident in our false understanding. 

Someone can ask "how can we be in error if we have the Church and the fathers to guide us?" My response is that St. Paul himself recognized the necessary limitation of his own understanding while in the earthly body (1 Corinthians 13:12). This does not mean that we should give up on growing or lose sight of the value of mentorship. However, why is it that we often neglect to seek counsel and even when we do it may be difficult to see the situation with the same clarity as our mentors? The answer is that learning is always preceded by a recognition of one's ignorance. When we, like the Phari
sees in John 9, overestimate our own understanding, we are in danger of hearing from Christ "If you were blind, you would have no sin; but now you say, ‘We see.’ Therefore your sin remains."

This self righteous ignorance is the first stage of learning, which is called by educators the stage of unconscious incompetence. Simply seeing our limitation moves us into the second stage of conscious incompetence, during which we can start to work on closing the now recognized deficit. Eventually we can hopefully reach the fourth and final stage of unconscious competence, characterized by an effortless expertise that does not require constant attention and mental effort, such as a baseball player who can hit a 90mph fastball. Before this final stage is the third stage, conscious competence, in which the student needs constant effort to demonstrate competence, which at times can be dangerous; for example, if someone is consciously competent at doing a complex task like surgery, it is easy to make a mistake if he takes his mind off the task to think about something else. At times, the distracting thought is along the lines of "wow I'm getting really good at this" - I warn you that if this thought crosses your mind your are about to make a mistake because you are consciously competent and taking your mind off your task. 

So what is the solution? First we need to recognize that every one of us has a bias and our personal experience affects our interpretation of any situation. On the most basic sensory level what we "see" is not just a function of what light pattern hits our retina but rather how our it is perceived by our visual cortex, which is really more of an interpretation and not just a reception of a stimulus. If you doubt this look at this optical illusion that should prove to you that you and your brain are an active participant in what you think you are passively seeing. "So what? Maybe my eyes can be fooled but I know I am not biased when it comes to important things." How can you be so sure? What are the odds that a simple stimulus like vision can be subject to bias but a complex stimulus like "do I like this idea" is immune?  Indeed, there is a tremendous amount of social science research that supports the idea that how we perceive and react to a situation is highly dependent on our previous experience. 

If you come away with nothing else from reading this I hope you at least stop to question yourself and ask: 1) do I really know as much as I think I know?; and 2) am I sure that I am formulating an unbiased opinion? If the answer to either of these questions is potentially "no" then you need someone to give you another perspective. Ideally this is not just someone with more experience but also someone with a different enough background that there is at least a chance that this person will have a dissenting opinion. If all we do is discuss ideas with peers who have a homogenous background then we can't be surprised if it seems like we are "always right" and never hear correction. 

You either know exactly what I'm talking about because you have made enough mistakes to know your own limitations or you think I need to speak for myself because this does not apply to you. Let us pray for God to help us find ourselves in the first category. Let us see that when we are facing trials and tribulations it may be God teaching us that we are always going to be limited and we need to rely on our mentors and the guidance of the Holy Spirit rather than on our own understanding. May God help us to see our blindness so that we may begin to see. 

Why so many rules?

I have written previously on finding a balance in the personal application of rules in our spiritual lives. The question I have today is - why are the rules there in the first place? Rather than taking a passive role in simply accepting the idea that "of course there are rules, that's the way that it is," can we instead engage in actively thinking and asking "why did God's Wisdom dictate that there must be rules?" If we look back at the Old Testament we find reasons and explanations there that are surprisingly modern and applicable to our current situation.

First let's start with a time where there were no rules - a time in which there was only a relationship between one man and his God. Abraham became the father of many nations because he believed God and it was accounted to him as righteousness (Genesis 17; Romans 4; Galatians 3; James 2). We have heard it explained elsewhere that it is natural that if we choose to be away from God then this will naturally create death in us because God is the source of all life (sermon link here). Here we see Abraham actually does the opposite of what Adam did - he chooses God, he chooses life, and it is accounted to him as righteousness. This is not complicated - it is a simple relationship based on trust and mutual affection.

Fast forward five hundred years or so and now God approaches Moses. It is quite evident that the intimate, fatherly relationship that Abraham shared with God was also experienced by his physical and spiritual descendant Moses. When Aaron and Miriam rebelled against Moses, God rebuked them and reminded them that Moses was the only one who at that time spoke to God face to face (Numbers 12). So what was the nature of that relationship that the rest of the Israelites had with God? Clearly it wasn't the same face to face, intimate relationship that Moses enjoyed. However, it is clear that God wanted them to be his people and wanted them to know Him.

What we see is that rather than approach each person individually, He approached Moses as a leader and used him as a mediator to the rest of the people. Doesn't this make more sense than each individual person getting his own individual message and essentially his own separate religion? We can maybe imagine what that could have looked like in a parallel universe where there were hundreds of thousands of burning bush-like stories. Would that make sense? To me, this would defy the scientific principle of Occam's Razor and unnecessarily complicate the situation. It certainly would not make sense to run a modern organization this way, and you see in any company there are layers of organization and delegation. You can say "yes, but God is infinite and omnipresent so He, unlike a human CEO, could effectively communicate and interact with each individual person." My response to that would be that yes of course He does, but he doesn't need a different set of rules for each person in order to be able do so.

What was the first rule? We may mistakenly think that the first rule was "do not eat of this tree," but the first rule God gave Adam and Eve was to eat of any tree in the garden (sermon link here). Yes, of course, in order to be human and not robots we must have one forbidden tree to allow for free will, but why dwell on that one tree when there were hundreds if not thousands of trees that were permissible? Even this one simple rule, we as a human race were not able to follow. 

When did the rules start to expand? When the Israelites left Egypt, Moses was left with the task of leading hundreds of thousands of people through the desert to the promised land. This would have been an unmanageable task if it weren't for the rules given to him by God. Many of the rules related to sanitation and interpersonal relations are common sense to us today, but some of them seem completely arbitrary for any time period. Why wear tassels? Why not trim your beard? Why the Sabbath? The key to all of the law - the rules that make sense as well as the ones that don't - is it gives people the choice to follow God ... or not. God made a covenant with the people of Israel that was contingent on their willingness to accept Him as their God and their genuine desire to be His people. Time after time God told Moses to tell the people to do something, simply because the following of the rule was a confirmation of this covenant. If we squint just the right way, we can see through the Levitical rules and see the relationship behind the rules that God wanted to establish with Israel.

Why do we still have so many rules if we have Christ? There is an argument based on Romans 6-8 and the entire book of Galatians that supports that we should not be subject to the law if we live a life in Christ. This argument holds water if what we mean is to echo the words of St. Augustine that we are to "Love God and do whatever we want." We have the freedom in Christ to dwell on the relationship with Him rather than on the rules, but this does not make the rules of no value. We can imagine a situation where God is a CEO who tells everyone in the company that they all have to wear bowties on Thursdays; clearly, it would be understood that the point is not so much the bowties but the unity of the company that He is trying to promote. 

The rules put us all on the same page. When we throw the rules away we are creating unnecessary disorder. If all at once we abolish the traffic laws, it may be fun for about 10 minutes to drive 100mph on the highway, but very soon it will be impossible to get anywhere without getting into an accident. I am not going to rehash the utility of each of us following every rule (previous entry), but I need to call attention to the difference between saying "I do not think it is beneficial for me to follow this particular rule right now," versus saying, "this rule is stupid and we need to get rid of it." One example is fasting with abstention and the effect it has on the length of the Great Lent - whether you follow the rule or not is between you and your father of confession but whether the rule exists or not is entirely the prerogative of the Church. 

Whether or not we want to submit our will to God's will becomes then the central issue. Will we bow down? Will we follow? Will we allow him to tell us what to do? Once again, (broken record) I'm not advocating for a blind following of the rules! I am simply saying that in order for God to have a relationship with more than one person at one time in a meaningful way that is not entirely haphazard, the two (or more) people need to agree in the Spirit to follow the same rules so that they may be one in the Spirit (Ephesians 4). The important thing is that in distinguishing the tradition from the Tradition we follow the latter with all of our hearts and recognize that at least some of the former is necessary simply to keep the unity of the congregation. For example, we cannot legitimately argue that our Faith will fall apart if the deacons do or don't wear tunics - clearly lower case "t" tradition; however, does that mean we get rid of the tunics because they don't matter? No, of course not. There is no reason to - this is something that can continue to be done simply because "that's the way we've always done it" without a real downside. 

The final layer of rules is the category in which some may argue and say there is a real downside that affects the unity of the congregation. Without getting into much detail and diatribe we can all quickly come up with a short list in our heads. Perhaps some of us have a long, laminated list with cogent theological arguments. My hope and dream is that the leaders of the Church are taking these arguments into consideration and will make a decision that preserves the sanctity of the Tradition without losing the forest in the trees of tradition. That being said it is their decision and not mine. I do agree that we as the laity have not the right but the responsibility to ask "why this rule?" and maybe even "is this really necessary?" That doesn't mean, however, that we necessarily need to personally dwell on these issues and make them a stumbling block. There are so many positive rules in the Tradition and even some nice traditional ones. Rather, "whatever things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report, if there is any virtue and if there is anything praiseworthy—meditate on these things." Philippians 4:8

So hopefully we can agree that we need rules. Hopefully we can agree that some of these rules are central to our salvation and we consider those the Church Tradition. Hopefully we can agree that at least some of the rules that we consider non-essential lower case "t" tradition are valuable simply as a glue that holds together the organization that in its heart is dedicated to the Tradition. Hopefully we can agree that we can at least to try to find a balance in our questioning and accepting of the controversial rules. May God give us the grace to submit to the rules of his Church that He has established for us as the vehicle of our salvation and the place of meeting Him in the Spirit and in the Flesh.

On Mentorship

We all have mentors. This is either through deliberate effort (article link) or unintentional osmosis, but we as humans naturally look up to other human beings for guidance. We see people that we regard as successful people and, even potentially subconsciously, say "I want to be successful, too, so I will do what they do." If we have direct access to these people the relationship is stronger, but even if this person has no idea who we are they may have an influence on us simply through their public persona. This happens both in a positive way (Warren Buffet pledge) and, unfortunately more commonly, in a negative way (any entertainment news website - link, mercifully, not provided). 

Before we talk about mentorship, I first need to ask: what are your priorities? If we have a vision of where we want to go, we can then see where we need guidance. Then and only then can we find a mentor for each aspect of our life that we have consciously decided to value - if we don't seek this mentorship, how do we expect to find our way? Yes we can try to bumble along and try to figure out the way on our own, but it is much easier to identify someone who has demonstrated that they know the way and say to ourself - "yes, I want to be like that person because they have already been there and can show me how to get there." 

The next point is maybe a little obvious but, unfortunately, often missed: make sure the guidance you are getting from your mentor is in his or her area of expertise. If we want to grow spiritually we need a spiritual mentor. If we want to grow professionally we need a work mentor. Some people may be multi-talented and serve as mentors in multiple facets of your life, but if someone has no experience with something why would you take their advice about it? You wouldn't go to a mechanic for legal advice any more than you would you go to a lawyer for an oil change. We can very easily get caught up idolizing our mentors and just assuming that because we hold them in such high regard that they must be infallible. We may look at work mentors as role models for life, failing to recognize their personal shortcomings as red flags to warn us against doing everything in our lives just like them. Similarly, our spiritual mentors should be guiding us spiritually, not telling us what pair of shoes to buy and what hat makes our head look too big. If you get bad advice or you go astray following a mirage, this may be a result of having a good mentor but for the wrong problem.

So what if we do have the right mentor for the right problem, but we still get steered in the wrong direction? This happens all the time and is simply a function of the fallibility of all human beings. Just as in the previous point we see that no individual can be perfect in every facet of life, we also know that even in our areas of strength we will often encounter weakness; the only exception to this rule is Christ. He is the only one without blemish because He is the Son of God Himself, showing us an image of perfected mentorship when He says in John 5:19 - "Most assuredly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of Himself, but what He sees the Father do; for whatever He does, the Son also does in like manner." In addition, we can look to mentors who are better reflections of Christ than ourselves, who we can imitate as they imitate Christ (1 Corinthians 11:1). 

Ultimately, I think our imitation of Christ and our mentors is a reflection of our love for them. With Grace, our love for God and for each other grows with time but will not be perfected until we are perfected at the last trumpet and are able to see God face to face in His Glory (1 Corinthians 13:12). Until then I pray that we first prioritize our life in a way that reflects God's will for us - then and only then can we see how great is the expectation that is set before us and the dire need we have for our mentors. May God give them the patience and wisdom to guide us, and may God give us the commitment and humility to follow them.

Cultural Orthodoxy

Culture (Wikipedia) is a somewhat vaguely defined term that describes an integrated system of behavior between people that share a similar experience. For a sense of culture to be personal it cannot, as a rule, be someone else's culture. For example, parents often try to tell kids what their culture is, but it is impossible for people separated by a generation to truly share the same exact culture. Times change and, even if they share the same place of birth, genes, and social structure, two people will have a different cultural experience that is unique to the time they live in. A father who grew up in the 60's would be quite different from his (even if otherwise identical) son who grows up in the 90's. 

I think it is safe to say that while culture is shared by a group, the perception of that culture is both individualized and multifactorial. Each person is affected by many different cultural factors, some of which they share with some people but not others. To me the best description of culture is this Venn diagram of all the different cultural influences on a given individual:

In this very simplified example, this individual is influenced significantly by his race, somewhat by his family values, and to a certain extent by his religion. There is even some room left for entirely idiosyncratic individualism, whose perceived extent is in and of itself quite cultural; a Western minded person with a more independent spirit would be much more likely to make this space in the Venn diagram much larger than someone from an Eastern culture that is more collectivist by nature. It might be a beneficial exercise for all of us to sit down and think about what cultural influences we have and to what extent we are influenced by them. If we did so, each of our Venn diagrams may not be completely different, but they also will never be identical. Like a snowflake, our Venn diagram will be as unique as we are.

Now the next layer of complexity comes when these unique Venn diagrams start interacting with each other - except we don't exactly wear buttons that identify our biases and cultural influences. It would be nice if we did, but we don't; we leave each other to figure it out for ourselves, and quite frankly we may not even understand the true nature of our own inner selves. What you find is that these complex beings with varying degrees of self-awareness end up having to interact with each other and needing to find a way to sort out their differences. We may see two people with a nearly identical Venn diagram in that they grow up in the same geographic region, with a similar cultural environment, family structure, etc. that are unable to coexist peacefully simply because of a difference in religion (the Middle East presents us ample examples). In contrast, you may see two people who may otherwise seem completely different from each other that are able to manage to get along very well, simply because they go to the same undergraduate university and have learned to tolerate and maybe even celebrate cultural differences.

So why have I not yet mentioned Christ in a spiritual blog? Because this, unfortunately, is what may happen in a culturally oriented church. There is a clarity that the parishioners are Christian, but nobody in life wants to be "just another ..." anything really. Would you want to be just another "lawyer" or would you rather tell people you are a "corporate attorney, specializing in tax law, with a subspecialty in executive compensation?" It may not sound exciting, but it sure does sound more impressive. Christians acknowledge other Christian sects by their profession of the creed, but we have a tendency to say or at least think "yes, I am a Christian, but our sect is special because we have [fill in the blank]." Rather than do what CS Lewis does in Mere Christianity and focus on the core foundation that we all agree on, we have a tendency to rather focus on the window dressing that, forgive me, to a great extent doesn't matter.

When does this become a problem? Well, first, we know that in the medical field there is such a thing as an asymptomatic problem. High blood pressure and high cholesterol are two well known examples of medical conditions that people have without knowing. In time these problems may result in symptoms, but at that point the treatment is more difficult and potentially irrelevant in the face of larger problems created by these previously treatable issues. Similarly, the cultural undertones of an Orthodox Church are not necessarily bad - my father of confession calls them the "salt and pepper" that add flavor to the Church. However, when these cultural undertones begin to take a primacy in the identity of the Church, it becomes difficult to figure out what elements of the perceived dogma are Christian and which are cultural. Once again, these may not even be noticed and may remain asymptomatic as long as the group is homogenous and everyone involved accepts and even embraces these cultural elements of the Church. The problem comes when there is a culture shift that challenges the status quo - this can be a change in the cultural mileu that the Church resides in, such as the so called Arab Spring; this can be a change in the location of the parishioners who bring their religion to their respective land of immigration; and this can be challenge for an individual who does not personally identify himself as the same culture as the majority of the people with whom he shares Communion.

The question I am (finally) building up to asking is: what matters more? The Church or the church? Is it the Bride of Christ that is our vehicle to heaven, or is it the physical building where the people go to pray? You may say they are equally important but to me that is like saying that an engineering firm's building is as important as the engineers. What about the rules of the church, are they important? Again I need to question whether these rules are related to our relationship with God or our relationship to our cultural heritage. For example, the use of a certain language may have a cultural significance but is of no intrinsic theological or spiritual value. Does that mean we should get rid of everything that is cultural in favor of focusing only on the spiritual? No, I don't think so. There is no reason to say "I love chicken so much that every time someone cooks chicken it needs to be made the same way." Yes, there are certain tenets that most chefs follow when making chicken, like the temperature of doneness, but these general rules allow for a great deal of flexibility that allows for us to appreciate the genius of each individual chef. The Christian Church has many churches, each of which has a special flavor and nuance that adds to the complexity and character of the Church as a whole. Trying to sweep away and remove all the cultural elements is not progress but rather oversimplification; in the other extreme, when we dwell on the cultural and miss the spiritual we have then turned the church into a country club or special interest group.

For those of us that are in a cultural Church I pray that we understand the difference between our Church and our church. I pray that we try to focus on the Church and our relationship with Christ, and try not to fall into the trap of letting the cultural cart lead the spiritual horse.  For the people visiting or joining a cultural Orthodox church I ask for your forgiveness - we really do want to welcome you, we really do want to share in an Ecumenical Spirit of Christianity, and we really want to focus ourselves on Christ - but we are also humans with very complex Venn diagrams and multiple influences that we do not always understand about ourselves. May God help us all to increase our self awareness and even more importantly help us to lose ourselves in Him so that we may find each other.

Why did they go to the grave?

In the week after the Resurrection there are myriad contemplations that we have left unresolved in the wake of the events we experienced with Christ last week. One question I was recently asked is: why did the women go to the grave in the first place? They knew the stone was there. They knew they were not strong enough to move the stone. They brought spices with them - why? What were they going to do with these spices if the tomb was sealed?


My contemplation is that I don't think it was a rational decision that they made by weighing the pros and cons. They were devastated. They wanted to see Christ in any way possible. They had a desperation that trumped logic, so it's not possible to really ask "what were they thinking?" because they really weren't thinking. For our purposes now we can ask ourselves if we have the same sense of urgency. Do we seek Christ in this irrational, unreasonable way that these women did on Sunday morning? If we do we will find Him in the same miraculous, impossible to expect way that they did.

Finding Your Puzzle Piece

So you're looking for a mate. Someone to be your Eve. Someone to be your Adam. Someone whom God created for you and said "you are perfect for each other." Not like your friend says you and so and so are perfect for each other because you go to the same school and have the same color hair. No, like, really perfect, like, in a way that I can't really explain but, OMG, just so perfect. The question is how do I look for this person and how do I know when I have found him/her?

First we must know who we are. If I don't know who I am then how do I know whom I should be looking for? If I am making a puzzle and I am trying to find two matching pieces what makes more sense: 1) looking randomly through the box, or 2) holding a piece in your hand and carefully checking all the pieces to see if they fit? You don't necessarily need to force the pieces together to make sure they don't fit but even holding two pieces up next to each other should make it easy enough to determine incompatibility. So the first point is to know what your puzzle piece looks like and to keep it close at hand in the process. 

Next we must know what attributes we have that are important to our identity. At any one moment we can think of 100 different nouns and adjectives that we can use to describe ourselves, but my question is which of these things really defines who you are? You are holding the puzzle piece and looking at the other pieces, but what are the cues that you are using to find a match? Is it the shape, is it the color, is it the pattern? What is it about the adjacent piece that you think will be so important to help you find "the one?" Being quite deliberate, albeit flexible, about these inclusion and exclusion criteria will make it easier to spot the right person when he or she comes along. 

The next point is to know that it's not "one person out there" but rather many people that could potentially work if you are both committed to the process. Even the corner piece in any puzzle has two possible mates. Yes it's not just anyone that could work for you but it's statistically impossible for anyone to ever be in a happy marriage if it were only one possible person that God was expecting you to find. Then you say "yes but God can do the impossible" to which I respond "yes that is why I am still happily married even though I am such a pain."  Marriage is hard. It takes effort. Love is a commitment not an emotion. Many of the core values of a strong marriage have deep implications in how we look for a mate but surprisingly they often lead us to realize that we often place too much emphasis on what attributes the other person has that we find acceptable when in fact we should be more concerned about what attributes the other person has that will help us grow. The goal of marriage is not to find the perfect person but to be perfected together in God's love. 

Finally, and maybe most importantly, is the friendly reminder that you are not looking for your clone. We want someone who is compatible not someone who is identical. Sorry to keep beating this puzzle piece thing into the ground, but this is probably the most obvious part of the analogy - the two interlocking puzzle pieces cannot be exactly the same. If I buy two identical puzzles and find two identical pieces that may give me a "match" but not the kind of match I'm looking for. It takes a great deal of introspection and discernment to know how much similarity you are looking for in a mate, but your self-evaluation may lead you to realize that you are looking for someone completely different from yourself. In any case no matter how similar he may be he must be different enough to be complementary. In a good marriage we are constantly learning from our spouse - how is that possible if our spouse shares not just the same strengths but also the same weaknesses?

In the end, finding a spouse is such a complex process that no contemplation, advice, book, or even personal experience can make it easy. Know yourself. Know what matters to you. Know that there is no perfect person out there. Know that your differences may be as important as your similarities. Trust in God that if you are with God then you will find someone in God. And when you do find someone then cleave to them, and bind yourselves so tightly to each other, with God as the glue, that when people look they no longer see two puzzle pieces but one. 

Finding a Balance

Let's accept as a given that we can err by either ignoring the rules of the Church altogether or by treating religious rites as the end goal rather than a means to an end. If someone wants to be a spiritual libertarian and argue against the value of the Church Tradition altogether or if in the other extreme someone insists on a Pharisaic interpretation of the Church's teaching on fasting and other rites, then I cannot address both extremes at once. However if we can agree that the spiritual ascesis that we aspire to is a journey that we travel under the guidance of a spiritual father, then we can agree for the sake of this discussion that there is a progression of which rules we follow at which stage in our spiritual life.

My personal litmus test in answering "which rules should I follow right now?" is first answering "why do I seek to follow this rule?" I say this to the person who says "no" to most of the rules in the same open ended manner as the person who says "yes" to most of the rules. If each of these two people share the same struggle as I do the answer is "I don't really know why I do or don't want to follow this rule or that." We struggle in our self-awareness as we have discussed with the elevator concept so this has a natural negative effect on our capacity for decision-making when deciding whether a certain ascetic act is personally beneficial.

How do I know if I am simply following rules to check a box without really ever experiencing or even expecting an effect of my actions on my relationship with God? For example, I may discuss with my spiritual father whether I should abstain from foods for a certain time as part of my fast. I will discuss elsewhere the effect of this question has on the length of the fast but for now the question is very simple: should I have a cup of tea in the morning on the way to work? I may do so as a result of an inflated sense of self thinking - be it consciously or subconsciously - "I am a good enough Christian to do so" rendering my intended act of asceticism a sin of pride. In contrast, if I follow the words of St. Anthony and do "what I find in my heart to do and follow God" I may still have that cup of tea in thanksgiving, reverence and maybe even acknowledgement before God that I am not strong enough to abstain in my fast. Therefore I argue that the following of a rule or not has no obligatory effect on my relationship with God and must be understood to be dependent on my intent.

The solution comes not when we focus on the religious act itself but on the relationship behind the act. Before I ask "should I do this?" I must first ask "does God exist?" If my answer is no then my doing or not doing of the act has become entirely irrelevant. If my answer is yes then the next question should be "does He want a relationship with me?" If I don't think so then it becomes clear why I don't feel so strongly about religion. Now if, as in the Orthodox concept, I see my religion as a means to engage God then I must ask "will this act bring me closer to Him?" Some may say "you don't know what will bring you closer to God, so you should just do everything and hope that something will work." To me that is like someone who wants to win the lottery and decides to buy every number combination to guarantee his success.

Personally, I don't think our relationship with God is a lottery game that we hope to "win" in the end. It is an ongoing dynamic struggle with ourselves to allow God to work in us. Just as the lack of existence of God renders the greatest sacrifice meaningless, the existence of God sanctifies whatever meaningless little sacrifice I make to be closer to Him. Once again, it really boils down to whether or not I believe He exists and wants a relationship with me. If not then nothing matters but paradoxically if so then once again nothing matters as long as I am sincere in my desire to find Him.

St. Augustine taught us that we can do whatever we want if we love God. The consequence of the Love of God is obedience but the consequence of obedience is not necessarily love. I pray that God gives me strength and helps me to grow in my Love for him so that I may pray and fast more strictly with joy. I also pray that he forgives me for my lack of joy as I follow some rules begrudgingly. But most of all I rejoice that despite my constant inability to follow rules for the sake of rules because of my weakness He is patient with me and allows me to grow in my relationship with Him at my own snail's pace.

Carrying My Cross

We are told to take our cross and follow Christ. What does that mean?

We know the basics of denying ourselves and practicing discipline through fasting and prayer. Is this the cross? I say no. This is merely the wood. Each individual's cross is more than just the generic raw material that God uses for everyone. My cross is very personal to me and is fashioned by God for me to carry to my personal Golgotha.

I prepare myself in Gesthemane asking for life to be different asking "why can't you make my cross less this or more that?" but the answer is always the same which is "My Grace is sufficient." He does not force the cross upon us but rather calls us as friends to take up our cross and follow Him. He doesn't say "a cross" but "your cross" with the deliberate message that we are not just unique in our gifts but also our struggles.

Do we know our cross? Do we understand what it means to follow Him? Most of the disciples did not. They thought they did. They thought they would see Christ through to the end of His life on earth but only one of them did. I wonder sometimes if that is why all the others became martyrs. I wonder if St. John's martyrdom was at the Golgotha of Christ. One thing I can say with reasonable certainty is that God does not need our martyrdom but rather our desire to put him above all else including our own life. If we can prove, not just to Him but also ourselves, that we are willing to give up our life then He may or may not ask us to follow through.

What keeps us from following him? Do we not want to pick up the cross? Do we put it down when we get too tired? Are we too attached to our Isaac to follow through on God's request? The essence of our personal cross is that it must cut to the core of our being. It can't be a superficial sacrifice like a practicing vegan following the rules of Lent. God knows what we are holding on to. What we don't want to lose. What may be permissible to us but not necessarily beneficial. He wants us to move away from these things and run towards Him. Without looking back. Without taking our hands off the plow. Without wondering what we are missing "out there."

Abba Ammonas taught us that the narrow and hard way (Matthew 7:14) is to "control your thoughts, and to strip yourself of your own will, for the sake of God."  Every time we pray Our Father we say "Thy will be done" but too often we want Him to make His will our will. I pray that I allow my will to be broken through my struggles. I pray that He makes His will more clear to me. I pray that I may accept that will as hard as it may sound at first. I pray that He gives me the strength to carry it and follow Him to the end.

Spiritual Depth

In the study of physical motion, human beings can only perceive acceleration and are able to quickly accommodate to fixed velocity. An example of this is the constant motion of the earth which we never perceive because earth never slows down or speeds up. Another example, the motion of an elevator, can be likened to our spiritual lives. 

If an elevator had no numbers to light up and tell you what floor you are on you would only appreciate motion when the car is accelerating or decelerating, and you would only know that the elevator is moving by keeping track in your mind of the sequence of acceleration and deceleration events. If you put Dori from Finding Nemo on a long enough elevator ride with no numbers (because remember she can read) she would eventually think that the elevator is perfectly still even though it is still moving. In our spiritual lives we notice the acceleration events that stand out in our minds as "something that brought me closer to God." We also identify sins as deceleration events that either slow down our progress or if after enough deceleration events our direction changes to moving further away from God. This may be why in Revelation 3:16 we are warned about being lukewarm, a state where we are stagnant and not moving towards God (hot) but we do not have the wakeup call of a deceleration event that tells us we were actually moving away from God (cold). You know when you are trying to go up and accidentally get into a down elevator? Sometimes it's not until the elevator slows down at the bottom of the descent that you realize you are going to the basement.

Another challenge of our spiritual elevator is that it is infinite and does not have a "top floor" that we will arrive at in our physical bodies. Anthony Bloom explains this at the start of the Knocking on the Door chapter of Beginning to Pray: "we should think ... in terms of a progression from depth to depth, from height to height, whichever formula you prefer, so that at every step we already possess something which is rich, which is deep, and yet always longing for and moving towards something richer and deeper." There is also, unfortunately, no bottom floor. We say "hitting rock bottom" as an analogy but this is only a perception of deceleration at an otherwise arbitrary point in time. We didn't have to wait to stoop so low and we certainly could have come up with new and even more creative ways to sin - we stop not because it's truly the bottom but because God's Grace has shown us a glimpse of our true selves.

In our quest to be a relationship with God I commonly fall into two traps: 1) wondering why I am not growing spiritually and 2) comparing my spiritual growth to others. If we realize how little insight we have into our spiritual state (this infinite elevator with no numbers) we will avoid doing both of these things because if we cannot discern if our elevator is going up, down, or standing still then how can we even begin to comment on someone else's elevator? The only thing we can really do is pay close attention and not miss the awareness that comes with an acceleration or deceleration event, the former to encourage us and the latter to chasten us ... but this is not the best news.

St. Paul experienced the same struggle and contemplated in Romans  8:26 - "Likewise the Spirit also helps in our weaknesses. For we do not know what we should pray for as we ought, but the Spirit Himself makes intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered." The Holy Spirit is with us on the elevator. Even when we are going down. Even when we are jumping up and down to make the elevator go down faster. Even when we are curled up in the corner of the elevator hiding and pretending there is no elevator ride. He intercedes for us when we do not know how to do it ourselves. How much more will He help us when we are participating in the journey.

On living in the Present

One self-realization that I find difficult to swallow is realizing that I spend very little time in the Present. This is a topic expounded on by both CS Lewis in the Screwtape Letters  ("the Present is the point at which time touches Eternity") and by Metropolitan Anthony Bloom's chapter on Managing Time in Beginning to Pray ("be so completely in the present that all your energies and all your being are summed up in the word now"). Please follow the links to the complete passages as these authors illustrate the importance of the Present so much more profoundly than I can paraphrase them.

The question I'm struggling with is "how do I live in the Present if my attention span is four seconds?" You may just say this is just a simple ADD problem with no spiritual basis, but I am convinced that there is true spiritual warfare here as spoken of in Ephesians 6. That is the only way I can explain the fact that I'm able to study and read and do other things that require more than four seconds of attention, but when I try to follow Metropolitan Bloom's advice of doing nothing for five minutes (or even two minutes) I find my mind wandering in mere seconds. You may say "yes of course, like basketball or anything else, this takes practice" but at times I feel as though I am having trouble getting my shoes laced up to even get on the court.

Strategies I have tried before that sometimes work are turning off all stimuli (lights, sounds, etc) to be perfectly still in the Presence of God. Another exercise that has helped me is the recitation of the Jesus Prayer, but I have to be honest in saying that it does not always work in keeping my attention - forgive me - because I cannot simply conjure up a feeling of repentance out of thin air. It may be honesty or simple spiritual shallowness that prevents me from asking for mercy as an exercise without necessarily feeling like I mean it at that moment. I do understand Metropolitan Bloom's point that I am able to honestly say it if I don't "really mean" it at that specific instant but this truism does nothing to keep my painfully stunted attention span in the Present.

Today I discovered another exercise that I found helpful that I'd like to share. It's the "honesty prayer of the moment." For me today I was able to recite "thank you Lord for this moment of sanity." Just as I would repeat the Jesus prayer, I repeated this mantra of gratitude that helped keep my attention on the Present for a few minutes, despite a flurry of mental activity (mostly related to the thought that this is so cool, I'm so smart and I should share this in a blog). So here I am an hour later acting on my self-centered thoughts of distraction, which I know at face value is not the strongest endorsement. Even then, I do look forward to trying this again in those moments when I want to recite the Jesus Prayer but I simply feel too shallow to connect with it. My hope is that God will accept a lighter version that is focused on communicating with Him how I feel in that moment and pray that He will help me to stay in that moment and not allow the Enemy to drag me back into the future again.