Kepler's Eye

The Kepler NASA Mission, due to launch in 2009, will place a telescope in solar orbit specifically to look for near earth sized planets orbiting other nearby stars. This has to be (in my book) the singularly most exciting development in our exploration of the Cosmos since our decision to send humans to Mars. Please do visit the Kepler web site here.

For all of you (including myself) who want to participate in a small but significant way, NASA is offering an unlimited opportunity for the public to place their names and short messages on a DVD that will be launched with the telescope. This is what I have said ...

Kepler will open up the possibility of detecting earth-sized extrasolar planets. The scientific, social, cultural, spiritual and (eventually) economic implications of this new Copernican endeavour cannot be underestimated.

So long as humans think of themselves and their world as unique they will remain impoverished and myopic in the Cosmos. Evidence of earth-like planets will translate a well founded supposition into reality. The resultant transformation in understanding of our place in the Cosmos could, arguably, both unite humankind and provide that necessary spur to move offworld and explore.

May we not repeat the same mistakes in the Cosmos as we have on earth but rather develop those finest and highest qualities of which our species is so eminently capable. I am a theist, so may God "make it so."

Revd. Fr. Gregory Hallam

Orthodoxy is Scary!

“What a strange idea Father!” some might say. Well it’s not as strange as you might think. Such a huge gap has now opened up between Christianity as practised in the Orthodox Church and other Christian traditions that I regularly encounter a certain “culture shock” from those who encounter Orthodoxy for the first time. This is much more pronounced amongst those who already have some Christian background. “Why such long services?” “You don’t have any of the songs that I love in your church.” “I am just confused; there’s simply too much to absorb,” and so on and so forth.

On the one hand this distinctiveness is useful for it marks out Orthodox Christianity as something quite different from what one usually encounters and not just another rather unusual “flavour.” On the other hand if we don’t help people gently into the fullness of the truth we stand accused as those who “bind heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on men’s shoulders; but they themselves will not move them with one of their fingers. “ (Matthew 23:4)

It is instructive to observe what that great Orthodox Christian pastor and Enlightener of Japan, St. Nicholas (Kasatkin) required of his converts ... principally four things only before baptism: a familiarity with the Nicene Creed, the Lord’s Prayer, the Ten Commandments and regular attendance at Church services and meetings. This was sufficient for the neophyte. Good as though it is, they didn’t have to read Metropolitan Kallistos Ware’s “The Orthodox Church”, stand in the nave for three years or learn Russian.

If we have to be restrained in what we “serve up” to converts, in like manner we must insist in our dealings with enquirers that NOBODY finds out all that there is to know and understand about Orthodox Christianity, even in a lifetime. The idea that it must be all “understood” first is erroneous and heavily conditioned by western heterodox ideas about Christian truth.

It is far more important that Christian living keep pace with Christian learning and for the two to interact in a mature and spiritually guided way. For this to happen the neophyte has to “unlearn” not only what he thinks Christianity is all about but also how a living faith is acquired and deepened. Some are simply just not ready for that change in perception. Some are. The wisdom of a pastor and a catechist is to recognise this and to know the practical difference with its implications for an individual soul.

True Hope

People often assume that Christians believe much the same thing about the death and resurrection of Christ. Of course there may be differences of emphasis but it is much the same story with much the same meaning.

Actually there is some truth in that .... IF it is only the Roman Catholic and Protestant traditions that are under scrutiny. Since many people in the west are only aware of these traditions and assume that this is all that there is, the witness of Orthodoxy never shows up on the radar.

So, what is this fundamental commonality between most non-Orthodox traditions and where does Orthodoxy differ? With Pascha (Easter) approaching in the Orthodox Church it is crucial that we acquaint ourselves with these issues because they touch upon the whole meaning of the gospel, its preaching and celebration.
In the "west" the Christian story goes something like this. It doesn't matter on this score whether you are a Protestant or a Roman Catholic. The story and the meaning are much the same.

In Eden humans disobeyed God and broke their relationship with Him. For this they were cast out of Paradise as a punishment and suffered death as a consequence of their sin. This fall corrupted (more - Calvin or less - the Scholastics) human nature thereafter and made reparation with God a human impossibility on account of the gravity of sin (which includes the transmissible guilt of Adam and Eve), its disabling power and God's judgement upon man's transgression. Only God Himself could put humanity back into a right relationship with Him (justification) and impart holiness (sanctification). This He did by suffering the punishment for our transgressions - death - in the sacrifice of His Son for the salvation of the world in our place, propitiating God in respect of the offence of original and subsequent actual sin. By this means Man was restored to a right relationship with Him and was accounted worthy of eternal life made available to him in and by Christ's resurrection.

Notice here that death is both a consequence and a punishment for sin; that someone must bear the punishment justly due for our transgression and that only when Christ has appeased the Father is eternal life possible. The resurrection has no saving significance beyond that which has already been achieved on the cross. The life of the redeemed at best bears the hope of fellowship with God or perhaps (for Roman Catholics) the Beatific Vision. Any transforming union with God can only be characterised by spiritual contemplation not an ontological change in our human nature.

In Orthodoxy however we have a very different account.

In Eden humans chose a demonically inspired autonomy from God and by that choice death entered the natural order and human life specifically. God in his mercy and love removed them from Paradise into this world lest this physical death be compounded by an eternal spiritual death. Now subject to suffering and death, human alienation from the divine life becomes the raw material for Satan's attempt to subvert humanity finally from God. This corrupting influence of the fear of and flight from death makes of sin an ever present reality for the children of Adam and Eve. However they remain free to choose between God and Satan and this outworking of salvation in history eventually enables a Virgin to conceive by the Holy Spirit the Saviour who is both God and Man. This incarnation which includes the whole dispensation of Christ from his birth to his resurrection unites our human nature to God and redeems it. As we repent and live ascetically for God in the power of the Holy Spirit the resurrection victory of God over the opposing powers (which led to the death of Christ), we partake of the divine life of the Trinity, the energies of God, and are transformed in an ontological union with God from one degree of glory to the next, (the ascension of our humanity). This salvation process starts in this life and is consummated in the next.

Notice how death is not a punishment from an outraged God in Eden, nor is our banishment. Everything is done out of love. There is no divine anger to placate, no debility of our will, no meaning in the death of Christ without the resurrection (but every meaning with it!). All of the life of Christ saves us and this is by the incarnation gathering everything that is ours into God where it is transformed into the divine image and likeness. Moreover the Holy Spirit is the divine personal agent of our transformation and everything is a coordinated work of the Holy and Blessed Trinity. The Ever-Virgin Mary becomes the model of what it is to be a Christian. She broke down the wall of opposition to God in her own life and womb and by her own gracious response to God. This is what it is to be saved in the Orthodox Church, to be an Easter people.

Finally let us consider the consequences of a faith lived in the first (non-Orthodox) and second (Orthodox) instance. For non-Orthodox Christians the resurrection is something of an afterthought, not in itself as such but in salvation terms. It's difficult to see how the resurrection of Christ actually saves anyone if the death alone has healed the breach between humanity and God through a vicarious (if not substitutionary) punishment. God becomes a threat to be averted in the condition of sin. Of course this is always characterised as an initiative of love but it is the wrath of God that HE HIMSELF must first avert ... which rather begs the question... "Why does God place Himself under such an exterior necessary constraint?" He literally CANNOT forgive without the shedding of blood but notice that it is not death which is addressed here but the offence of sin. In the second Orthodox account is the CAUSE of the disease (death) that first must be addressed if there to be BOTH forgiveness and an enduring change, (regeneration).

When we consider that in the first account humanity has to carry the burden of Adam and Eve's guilt as well as their actual sin it is little surprising that western culture through off this guilt ridden morbidity in the Enlightenment. However, without the saving Incarnation and Resurrection, the spiritually eviscerated remnants of Christianity in the West could offer little more than humanism with a Christian veneer. When faced with bondage to the devil and the corruption of death (the unacknowledged realities here) non-Orthodox Christians eventually either rejected God altogether as an intolerable psychological burden or settled for a truce, an uneasy peace punctuated by the occasional radiance of a religious revival in which something once lost was dimly remembered and partially recovered. for a time at least.

We are now at the end of this degenerative process in the Christian west and I doubt whether anything of the former Easter glory can be recovered. The future for all Christians in the west lies in recovering something of the grandeur and hope of the original Christian vision ... a world utterly transformed by the resurrection power of the divine love. Many have hung onto this paschal hope outside the Orthodox Church. It is now time for the Orthodox Church in the west to put her own own in order and get ready to welcome these scattered and disorientated western children of God both inside and outside the other Christian traditions.

Why do the Innocent Suffer?

The law of "how it should be" is a God implanted sense that all humans have of life's beauty and triumph. Yet we live in a good creation where hurricanes do not discriminate, where evil befalls the good as well as the wicked, where all that is beautiful is in some sense marred. It is as if some spanner has got stuck in the works.

Atheists of course use this as argument against there being a benevolent creator God. With so much senseless waste and misery should we not rather charge this "God" with being a lousy and incompetent designer?

Let us consider this issue raised in that great novel "The Brothers Karamazov" by Fyodor Doestoevsky? Here is a short extract from Chapter 35.

Tell me yourself, I challenge your answer. Imagine that you are creating a fabric of human destiny with the object of making men happy in the end, giving them peace and rest at last, but that it was essential and inevitable to torture to death only one tiny creature -- that baby beating its breast with its fist, for instance -- and to found that edifice on its unavenged tears, would you consent to be the architect on those conditions? Tell me, and tell the truth."

"No, I wouldn't consent," said Alyosha softly.

That is the beauty of our humanity that we rage against injustice, that we storm heaven with our protests, that we in no way ever consent to the instrumentalism of sacrificing the one for the many.

Now look what God does.

To mend creation he sacrifices himself for all. He places HIMSELF in the breach of death, the place of horror ... and he vanquishes that, closes the breach, brings resurrection to the fallen.

So, slain we live - with our death in Christ.

Somehow, somewhere in the distant past or perhaps a "time" before time or in realm beyond this something became not as it should have been through the very freedom that God imparted to it. And so it is that everyone dies.

Be thankful though that everyone dies .... yes that even the innocent die, NOT because this is itself good but because the world has to be transformed and it cannot be transformed without eternal life exploding out of this merciless death. We scream that this should not be so. Our outrage though was born in a place from which we have been excluded. To see this longing and revolt resolved we need to return to God who can do nothing other than raise the fallen ... and with them creation itself (Romans 8:18-25).

So, why does not God or the angels lift us out of this? By now it should be clear that just as Christ did not call on legions of angels to deliver him, neither can we. VERY occasionally though, the devil oversteps the mark and uses natural death to try and subvert God's plan. This is when the angels intervene. If Christ indeed had faced death before his appointed "hour" (a continual refrain of St. John's Gospel --- "my hour has not yet come") then the angels would have intervened for Him as well.

No, we all have our God appointed hour and that is when we shall taste the bliss of resurrection and when one more piece of creation will be healed. The devil's tactic though is to encourage us to doubt God's wisdom in allowing innocent suffering. He insinuates that Christ should not have died. But when we lift high the cross the devil always scuttles away howling.

Faith is kicking him in the arse/butt as he so richly deserves.

Sharia? No thanks!

Under existing UK law Muslims are already allowed discretion in certain limited circumstances to use their own services and procedures; notably in matters of banking, stamp duty and divorce mediation. This is right and proper for primary legislation is not thereby being subverted. There is one law in Britain that covers all its people.

Sometimes laws are passed that pull against the consciences, religiously informed or otherwise, of some of its citizens. These tensions may be resolved by the democratic process and a sensitive application of derogation for certain groups ... Catholic and Orthodox medics opposed to abortion for example cannot be constrained to perform them.

What we certainly do not need though, in any shape or form, is the application of sharia law for a section of the population. This is divisive, inequitable and erosive of the common values that a singular law must uphold. Far from promoting social cohesion as the Anglican Archbishop Rowan Williams believes, this would fragment and antagonise disparate social and religious groups.

Moreover, that a Christian Archbishop should call for the introduction of any element of shariah beggars belief. He knows what happens long term in societies that cow tow to Islamic pressure for shariah. We see this going on in Nigeria right now, especially in the north of the country. Dhimmitude (social repression) of a Christian minority may not be on the cards just yet, but this move would be the thin end of a very long wedge.

Mercifully, judging the reactions of all parties in Parliament, this naive and dangerous suggestion will sink without trace. More worrying though is that the most senior cleric of the Anglican Communion should entertaining such crazy ideas. Sorry Abp. Rowan, I had thought better of you than this.

Hut Burning for God

In the Orthodox Church a fool for Christ is no jester or attention seeker, quite the reverse. Such a person feigns madness so that the curious and the flatterers will not poison the soul with self regard. The interior life of that person is far from
insanity. Radical Christian living has showered the soul with proven spiritual gifts of healing, good counsel and prophecy. Mostly these gifts remain hidden until God brings them out into the open for the benefit of others. Even so, such “fools” are disturbing people to have around. Amidst the insanity of the world one is forced to ask in the presence of such people:- “What is normal?”

Consider for example a 17 year old youth who becomes a “hut burner.” No this is not another lamentable example of anarchy and pyromania! Introducing St. Maximos Kavsokalyvia who died on the monastic holy mountain of Athos at the ripe old age of 95 in 1365 AD ... but not before he had burnt down quite a few of the rudimentary poor huts that he built, destroyed and rebuilt for himself. They thought him mad of course. “There goes that old fool the hut-burner” they would say; so much so that he became known as Maximos the Hut Burner (Kavsokalyvia, feast 13th January). Of course this was part feigned madness, part straight forward sanity only appearing as madness. It is this last aspect that interests me.

Jesus said:- "The foxes have holes and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head." (Matthew 8:20) Our Lord wasn’t complaining. This was his choice, not to be encumbered by even the ordinary good things of this world, most would say basic necessities. Why? So he could single-mindedly do the Father’s will.

The minute we can become attached to anything it lays claim on us. Subtly at first and then with great momentum we let “things” come between God and us. It’s more comfortable that way of course. We like security, absence of want, the ability to plan and rely on those plans. But what, if like Job, all these are snatched away? What then? What will save us when we have lost everything?

Some people choose to lose everything to gain Christ, to throw away even the roof over their heads in order to put him first. This is madness to the world of course but radical Christians like St. Maximos remind us that the world is not saved by conventional living but only by costly personal self sacrifice.

Each Christian has quite a lot of “hut burning” to do. Ask yourself, ‘what matters to me most?’ If you can lay that aside for God you have burned a hut. You will warm yourself by its embers for a while but then there will be another hut to be consigned to the flames: and so it goes on until there is only God and a radiant life.













This is a Synchroblog where bloggers exchange links on the same topic. The current subject is “God’s call to the fools.”

Select one of these posts from the pop-up list and click “Go read it!”

"The Foolishness of God and the Foolishness of Christians"
by K.W. Leslie

"Fools Rush In" by Sonja Andrews

"The Power of Paradox" by Julie Clawson

"That Darn Ego" by Jonathan Brink

"Won't Get Fooled Again" by Alan Knox

"Strength on the Margins" by Igneous Quill

"Foolish Heart" by Erin Word

"A Fool's Choice" by Cindy Harvey

"Quiet Now, God's Calling" by Jenelle D'Alessandro

"Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right..." By Mike Bursell

"Ship of Fools" by David Fisher

"Hut Burning for God" by Father Gregory

"God Used This Fool" by Cobus van Wyngaard

"Fool if you think its over" by Paul Walker

"Blessed are the foolish -- foolish are the blessed" by Steve Hayes

"What A Fool I've Been" by Reba Baskett

"What a Fool Believes" by Sue at Discombobula

"My Foolish Calling" by Lisa Borden

"The Holy Fool" by Phil Wyman

Christ is born. Glorify Him!

An old story is told about a drunk who fell into a pit. The sides of the pit were so steep and he was so inebriated that he could not get out. He cried in alarm to anyone who would hear him.

A Jew walked by, stopped, took out the Psalms and quoted:-

“I am reckoned among those who go down to the pit; I am a man who has no strength” (Ps 88:4)

“My son,” he said, observe God’s Law and you will not stumble.” With that he walked on by.

A Muslim walked to the edge of the pit, peered over and declaimed: “You are a drunk, an unbeliever. First submit both Allah and to his laws, then you will know Paradise.” In disgust, he also walked away hurriedly.

A Hindu approached, a sage. “Your karma is now set by this deed. There is nothing you can do. Accept death and on your next rebirth perhaps your soul will make more progress.” The sage calmly walked away.

A Buddhist monk approached and with compassion he looked down on the man and tried to teach him to meditate. “Try to extinguish your desires … for earthly freedom, even for life itself. With desire comes suffering. With the right mental attitude you too can attain nibbana.” The monk retreated from the pit with a beatific smile on his face.

The drunk man grumbled noisily to himself in the pangs of his pain that all men were the same. With much difficulty he slumped and forward and fell into a fitful sleep.

Suddenly he was rudely awoken by a rough fellow gently shaking him. This man had let himself down into the pit with a rope.

The descent was so difficult beset with sharp stones, briars and obstacles that his hands and body were bleeding.

He took a spare rope, tied it round the drunken man’s waist who fell silent in disbelief. The drunk felt himself dragged to the side of the pit whereupon his rescuer strapped them both together and raised them up on a pulley fixed into the edge of the top of the pit for that purpose.

As they both stood out of the pit into the sunshine, unshackled, the drunken man, who was now a little more sober, looked round. The stranger had gone but there was a rather odd charge that lingered on in the air. He did not feel alone.

He looked back into the pit and thought thankfully about the great sacrifice this Man had made to save him.