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.