Withdrawing from the Wrestling Ring

           A war has been raging for a long time now.  This war has nothing to do with the so-called “culture wars” raging in North America.  This war rages within the lofty towers of Academia, and consists of the pitched battle between biblical conservatives and biblical liberals.  The bombast accompanying the conflict reminds me of the old World Wrestling Federation; the ferocity, of the Ultimate Fighting Championship.  And like those conflicts, there are two protagonists.

            In one corner, there is The Liberal.  The liberals have been hard at it since the days of David Strauss and F.C. Baur, criticizing, debunking, and deconstructing the Bible, both Old Testament and New.  They delighted to point out historical errors and inconsistencies in the sacred text, dealing with Scripture as if it had no more authority than any other set of documents from antiquity.  They threw around words like “myth” and “legend”, and denied the historicity of pretty much everything in the Bible.  For them, miracles did not occur, and any part of the Bible that reported one was thereby discredited from being historical in any sense.

            This provoked the contrary response.  In the other corner there appeared The Conservative.  These were men who stressed the authority of Scripture as the Word of God, and focused on its fundamental truths.  This gave birth to the name “fundamentalist”, though the early defenders of the fundamentals had more scholarly sophistication than those to whom the label would later be applied.  They rushed to affirm everything that the liberals denied, and were committed to the historicity of the Biblical text.  Their (modern) understanding of historicity meant that every story and detail in the Scriptures were read as if it were modern history, with all the factual and mathematical rigour which modern historians use. 

            This commitment to read Scripture as if it were modern history led the conservatives into some sticky situations.  To take one example among hundreds of possible ones, we may look at the number reported in the Book of Numbers for those who left Egypt.  In a census taken soon after the Exodus by Moses (Num. 2:32), it was reported that the total number of men twenty years old and upward was 603,550, making for a total population of about a million and a half people who passed through the Red Sea.  This figure has long given even conservatives pause.  For consider:  the number of the Egyptian army at that time has been estimated at between 10,000 and 20,000 soldiers.  Ancient records report that much later in 853 B.C. King Ahab managed to muster an army of 10,000—considerably more than his nearest ally and neighbour, the king of Syria, who only managed to field an army of 7000 men.  It was estimated at the time of David, about 1000 B.C., the total population of all the Israelites in Palestine was only about 100,000.  Looking at these numbers, an army of over 600,000 is unbelievable.  Why flee before Pharaoh?  An army that size could have easily taken them on without even leaving Egypt or breaking a sweat.  Clearly this figure of 603,550 fighting men cannot be taken literally, as if they were figures provided by Stats Canada or a modern western government agency.  Nonetheless, those in the old conservative corner of the ring felt morally obliged by their belief in Scripture as the Word of God to defend the mathematical accuracy of the large figure.  Some said, “What does 'thousand' mean, after all?  Perhaps it means simply 603 fighting units.”  Others simply declared, “The Word of God says there were 603,550 men, and that settles it.”  But everyone in the conservative camp felt themselves on the defence and defensive. 

            There was a time when I found myself firmly in the conservative camp, dedicated like my fellows to defend the Bible against all comers.  Like my fellows, I read the Scripture through the embattled lens of the polemicist.  For me, the Bible was not just a sacred text, it was also a battlefield, and I had to tread carefully through it lest I step on any landmines and find myself blown up by liberal attackers.  Though I scarcely knew it at the time, my way of reading the Bible had been dictated to me in advance by this struggle to the death between liberals and conservatives, and was conditioned by the liberal challenges.  I was not a Bible reader so much as I was a Bible defender, and the awkward things pointed out gleefully by my liberal opponents summoned me to the confessional barricades.  Though I would not have admitted it at the time (or even recognized it), polemics had replaced devotion.  I was not so much a student of the Scriptures as its champion. 

            Since becoming Orthodox, I have withdrawn from the wrestling ring of Protestant polemics.  I still confess the Scriptures of both the Old and New Testaments to be the Word of God, fully authoritative in the Church of God.  But I have come to see that I don't have to play along with the approach or take sides in the pitched battles occasioned by liberal attacks.  My view of history is more consistent with the historical method of antiquity than with modern history (that is, it is less anachronistic).  I no longer feel required to affirm everything denied by the liberals in order to confess the Church's belief in Scripture as the Word of God.  God's Word can be contained in history as written in antiquity, and in parable, historical fiction, proverb, and poetry—even erotic love poetry, such as the Song of Solomon.  Since withdrawing from what was essentially a stupid (and losing) battle, I have been freed to read Scripture as it was originally meant to be read—as appealing to the heart and the will, as literature meant to awaken, shock, enlighten, to steel the nerves, and enthral the heart. 

            To take the example of the 603,550 who left Egypt:  as someone fighting to the death with the liberals, it was all about historical credibility, because I felt that if I admitted the number was not historically accurate by our modern standards, I was thereby selling the farm to the unbelievers, and agreeing that Scripture was not the Word of God after all.  Now I can admit that the figure was inflated.       
             But I no longer care what the liberals conclude from this; I have left them and their shrill voices behind.  The issue now is:  what is God by His Word telling me by this figure?  The answer:  God is telling me how exalted He is, in bringing a mighty host out of the house of bondage by His upraised hand.  He had promised Abraham that his descendants would be as numberless as the sand on the seashore, as the stars of heaven for multitude—and here He has fulfilled His promise.  The Biblical author is using numbers poetically, not mathematically; he is writing theology, not demographics.

            The issue is not about ultimately about numbers; it is about faithfulness and the power of our God.  For the God who brought Israel into their inheritance is strong enough to bring us into ours, and to see us also safely through all trials to enter our own Promised Land in the Kingdom.  In leaving behind the shrill and sterile debate of liberal with conservative, I have found the Word of God is richer than polemics, and more satisfying.  My task is no longer to win an argument; it is to feed upon the living Word, and find eternal nourishment for my hungry soul.

            

Leaving Footprints

           I would like to tell you a sad story, the story of a single man, solitary and secular.  We were playmates at school together when I was young, both of us being the only children of our respective parents.  We got on well enough in the early days of public school.  In high school, our paths diverged:  he continued in his secular path, while I became caught up in the Jesus People Movement.  After sowing the usual wild oats of his day, he settled down to a respectable job, working in the school system as a janitor like his father.  He had work mates, of course, but no real friends.  After his father died, he continued to live at home with his aging mother.  But even so he lived a solitary life, and would go straight from work into his little basement apartment, taking his meal and spending the evening alone, while his mother ate her meal upstairs by herself.  She was lonely, and concerned about him, of course, and would've liked his company.  She was concerned that he was depressed, and that he said that he couldn't see any reason why he continued living.  She pointed out to him his good job, and his nice car, but to no avail.  He had no friends, no girl friend or wife, no “significant other”, and of course no children.  When he died, he died alone in his basement apartment, and was buried by his mother, his funeral attended by her.  Later, after several years, his mother also died.  He lived and died, leaving no footprints; it is now as if he never existed.

            Such a life is a tremendous tragedy.  Most people leave footprints—people who will remember us after we die and will bless our memory.  Children will remember their parents, pupils remember teachers who taught them wisdom, people remember friends whose love and laughter enriched their life.  The poor bless, even if just or a moment, those whose help and financial aid they receive.  But my old playmate never had children.  He never served as mentor to other younger men, never lit up the life another friend with the warmth of his love.  He attended no church or social group.  As far as I know, he never gave money to the poor or to any charity.  His refusal or inability to reach out means that his death effectively deleted every trace of his life from the world.

            The tragedy of such a life finds its echoes in the Scriptures.  One psalm laments that such men, even though they “name lands their own” and call their property after themselves in an effort to ensure some sort of immortality, still cannot abide, despite all their pomp.  They are “like the beasts that perish” (Ps. 49:11-12).  And by “beasts” the Psalmist does not refer to animals like our modern pets, named and loved their owners, but to the wild beasts, unnamed and unknown, who die unnoticed and unlamented, their bodies lying as carrion in the wilderness.

            While we yet live, we retain the ability to leave footprints.  Whether we are married or unmarried, single or divorced, whether we live alone or with others, we can reach out to those around us.  We can speak words of comfort to those in need; we can support a child through charitable agencies; we can cultivate friendship; we can learn the names of those asking for spare change as we put the money into their hand and ask them to pray for us in return.   Ultimately, of course, it is not about how many people remember us after we are gone, but whether God remembers us, making our memory to be eternal in His Kingdom.  But God asks us even now to reach out to others, and give ourselves according to ability and opportunity to the people He puts across our path and in our life.  There are many opportunities; we walk through soft sand.  In such sand, we can, if we choose, leave many footprints.

            One last thing:  I invite you to light a candle and say a prayer for my old playmate, for he has no one else to do so.  His name is Rick.

What's Wrong with Westboro Baptist Church?

                In answer to this question, one is tempted to ask rhetorically, “Where to begin?”  Westboro Baptist Church, as my Wikipedia friends tell me, is the independent Baptist church in Topeka, Kansas that has become famous for (in the words of Wikipedia) “its extreme ideologies, especially those against homosexuality, and its protest activities, which include picketing funerals of American servicemen and desecrating the American flag".  A Google search easily reveals their abundant use of protest signs, which declare, among other things, “God hates fags”, “Pray for more dead soldiers”, “God hates you”, “God hates Jews”, and “Israel is doomed”.  There is more, but you get the idea.  The general message is one of hate.  Given this insanity of what is essentially a cult, it is not surprising that Baptist organizations such as the Southern Baptist Convention have taken pains to distance themselves from them, and to stress that they have no connection with Westboro Baptist.  

Westboro Baptist is part of the American culture war.  As a Canadian, I am happy to sit out the culture war raging south of my border, though I sometimes find myself being read as if I am taking part in it.  By “culture war” I mean the highly politicized dichotomy in America, which pits conservative against liberal, Republican against Democrat, and insists upon dividing all people into one of these two camps on the basis of certain issues, such as their stand on gun control or gay rights.  In this war, if one says something against gay marriage, for example, it is assumed that one therefore votes Republican, opposes public health care, and belongs to the NRA.  As a Canadian writing in a very different environment, I resist such a dichotomy, but often am still slotted into one of the two opposing camps.  This in itself sometimes makes me want to write next to nothing, and only offer up recipes for making prosphora. But my mandate as a preacher and presbyter compels me to speak the truth according to our Orthodox Tradition, even if my words are sometimes misunderstood as contributions to a political quarrel in which I am happy not to be involved.  It means looking at many things in our culture, trying to understand them, and to offer an Orthodox perspective.  So, what’s the deal with Westboro Baptist?

Their main message seems to be that America is involved in sin, and that therefore God will judge the nation for it.  It is true, of course, that God does judge a nation for its sins, and that events on the international stage represent in some way the outworking of God’s judgments.  We see this is Scriptures such as Amos 9:7:  “Have I not brought up Israel from the land of Egypt, and the Philistines from Caphtor, and the Syrians from Kir?”  That is, God was not only involved in the fortunes and founding of Israel, but also in the fortunes and establishment of the pagan Philistines and the pagan Syrians.  He was thus not only the God of His covenant People Israel, but also the God of all the earth, and whatever happened on the world stage reflected in some way His over-arching purposes.  

Moreover, the prophets declared that the judgments and disasters experienced by Israel were the result of His judgment on their sin.  Isaiah declared, “Your land is desolate, your cities are burned with fire, your fields—strangers are devouring them in your presence...If you consent and obey, you will eat the best of the land, but if you refuse and rebel, you will be devoured by the sword” (Is. 1:7, 19-20).  It is true, therefore, that God does judge a land, any land, for its sins.  The prophets have said so.

This is just the problem with the Westboro Baptist sign-carriers:  they are not prophets.  Amos, Isaiah, and the other prophets could declare to Israel that this or that disaster was the result of this or that sin, because God had told them so.  They could declare that the Assyrian victory over Israel was the result of northern Israel’s idolatry and Baal worship, because that was what Yahweh had said.  They could declare that God had brought the Philistines from Caphtor (i.e. Crete), because God told them that He had.  They could declare the Word of the Lord, because they were prophets, and had received the Word from the Lord.  But so far as anyone can tell, the Lord has never spoken a word to Westboro Baptist as He spoke to His prophets, and so they have no inside track on whether or not (for example) the deaths of American soldiers abroad represent the judgment and punishment of God.  They only have their own private opinions, and cannot presume to speak for God about matters of international or national judgment.  It seems to this writer that the Westboro Baptist people are expressing not the inner counsels of God, but rather only their own right-wing frustration with certain events taking place in America.  Rather than public protest, I would advise private (very private) prayer, and perhaps switching to decaf.  

Westboro Baptist in fact offers us all a cautionary tale.  Our task as a Church and as members of it is to proclaim the Gospel, by word and deed.  And the Gospel is not “God hates sin” (though He does), but rather “God so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten Son that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life”.  Our basic message to the sinner and outsider is, “Jesus loves you.”  All are called to embrace this Gospel message through repentance and faith, but the focus of our preaching is not on the heinousness of sin, but on the love of the Saviour.  All sin is sin, but who is to say whether or not God finds the sins of the homosexual in Hollywood more grievous than the sins of the greedy on Wall Street?  Not being a prophet myself, I have no idea, and the question itself has, I suspect, no meaning.  For the whole point of acknowledging the heinousness of sin is for me to repent of my own sins, and to help those committed to my pastoral care to repent of theirs.  As St. Paul says, “What have I to do with judging outsiders?” (1 Cor. 5:12).  Our task is to tell the outsiders that God loves them, that His kindness may lead them to repentance (Rom. 2:4) and that they may join us and become insiders, and heirs of the love of God.

Being On the Front Line

         From the days of St. Paul, the Church has been compared to an army.  Paul regularly used military language to describe the Christian life, talking about “taking every thought captive” using “the weapons of our warfare” (2 Cor. 10:3-5), and about “putting on the armour of God” in their “fight against principalities and powers, the spiritual armies of evil in the heavenlies” (Eph. 6:11f).  All this martial imagery reveals that the Christian Faith is not simply a philosophy, requiring of us nothing more than reciting timeless truisms and uncontroversial bits of moral advice.  Our message to the world is not “A little hard work never did anyone any harm”, or “A stitch in time saves nine”.   Our message is “Repent, for the Kingdom of heaven is at hand”, and delivering this message requires our involvement in conflict.  As St. Paul and the martyrs who came after him all knew, preaching the truth is a bloody affair.  We are involved in a warfare, requiring spiritual weapons and armour, and when we preach the truth, some people are not going to like what we say.  There is nothing for it:  accepting baptism means enlisting in an army, and soldiers in an army are called to fight.   

That is the difficult task given to all of us as we give our witness around the office water-cooler or at school—to fight, but to be inwardly gentle, to speak the truth, but to do it in love, to be at the same time both serpents and doves (see Mt. 10:16).  Sometimes we find the task too much for us, and we cannot keep the proper balance of both truth and love.  We err on either one side or the other:   we speak the truth boldly, but with anger, or we keep a gentle attitude, but compromise our proclamation of the truth for fear of offending someone.  It’s hard to get the proper balance (as many websites prove), but that remains our task nonetheless.  And the first step in fulfilling the task is to acknowledge that we are involved in a war, requiring of us both truth and love.

Many Christians, dear gentle souls that they are, are simply not up for it.  They look at the controversy swirling around them in our society with all its sound and fury, its anger and denunciation, and want out of the whole thing.  I do sympathize.  Reading certain websites or blogs sometimes makes me also want to opt out of the whole mess and find a monastery garden somewhere to hide in.  But this temptation must be resisted, for it involves going spiritually AWOL.  The war is not over, and we do not have the luxury of laying down our arms before it is.   Regardless of how the others at the office or in the classroom react, we have to stay in the battle and continue to speak the truth in love.

The first question to be answered is:  What truth?  What challenge needs to be answered?  That is, in what areas might we be called upon to give our witness?  What is the main issue with which the Church must grapple today? Where is the front line?

The front line varies from age to age.  In the second century, the challenge came from the Gnostics, people whose rival systems of thought incorporated the person of Christ into their own essentially pagan view of the cosmos.  People like Irenaeus were on the front line to answer them (he was recognized as “Saint Irenaeus” after the battle was done).  In the fourth century and after, the front line was the Christological question of the nature of Jesus of Nazareth, and the main opponents to be answered were the Arians, who said that Jesus was not truly divine.  Later on the front line was drawn over the question of the legitimacy of images, and the iconoclasts were the ones who needed answering. 

It is important for the church leaders to know where the front line is today.  It is no use for them to keep on telling the modern World that icons are okay.  The front line has shifted, and icons are no longer the issue.  Leaders must identify the current area of challenge to Christian faith in order to successfully commend that faith to the world.  If we refuse to engage the world, fewer from the world will be converted to Christ, and we will lose our children, for the world is asking questions that our children are listening to, and we must provide both the world and our children with the answers.

Whether we like it or not, today these questions center around sexuality and gender.  The front line today is not drawn over questions of Christology or icons, and our children are not in danger of becoming Arians or iconoclasts.  The world’s frontal assault on our Faith is no longer theological.  Movies and magazines and columns and blogs do not revolve around the question of the homoousios or the Filioque clause in the Creed.  They do revolve around questions of sex.  Is gay marriage acceptable?  Is casual sex okay?  Is virginity unnatural?  May women be ordained to the priesthood?  Is homosexuality a valid alternative lifestyle?  What about trans-gender?  What about the explosive growth of the pornography industry?  What about the pervasive use of sexual images around us?  We may duck these issues and refuse to meaningfully engage in the debates, but the debate will continue in our society nonetheless, and will eventually make inroads in the Church, whereas we have been called to make inroads in the World. That is why this debate is not just a debate, but also the front line in a battle.  If we refuse to deal with these issues, the enemy will push us back and our children will fall prey to an alien ideology and a harmful way of life.

One thing is certain:  if we speak the truth, people will get upset.  Being upset, they will stigmatize us as narrow, talk about us behind our backs, and exclude us from the “cool” parties.  Depending upon the situation, they may also write letters, make phone calls, send emails, start Facebook groups, write blogs, and argue in online forums.  There is no use bemoaning this, or trying to speak in such a way that no one will be offended.  Truth always offends, and it always divides.  It divides those who are teachable from those who are not, those who respond to the call to conform their lives to the Gospel from those who refuse.  Ultimately it will divide the sheep from the goats.  But it always divides.  A Church which never says anything divisive or anything offensive is a Church which has failed its duty to speak the truth, and a Christian who is afraid of controversy is like a solider who is afraid of the sound of gunfire:  he may be a swell fellow, but he needs to get off the battlefield and stop calling himself a soldier—or a Christian. Before we open our mouths to speak, we must settle it in our minds that if we speak the Gospel faithfully, someone somewhere will be offended.  It is sad when our message offends the World.  But there is one comfort we may take from it—the offense taken confirms that we have said something worth saying, and that we have been heard.

In Praise of Powerlessness

       I am, I can cheerfully attest, kept far from the levers of power in the church. (My dear Matushka and others who love me can further attest that this is a good thing.) My situation can be described in the words of the old children's hymn written by Susan B. Werner and published in 1868: “Jesus bids us shine with a clear, pure light, like a little candle burning in the night; in this world of darkness, we must shine, you in your small corner, and I in mine.” That is, I live in my small little corner of the world, as you do in yours.

       While I sit in my little corner, however, I have access to the internet. That means that I can look far afield and find out what is happening in other little corners. I can learn about the resignation of Metropolitan Jonah, about what is happening in the Orthodox Midwest, about what is happening on Mount Athos, in Russia, and in other Orthodox jurisdictions. I can even learn about what is happening, if I become very bored, in American politics. All of this learning can give me the impression that I now know The Big Picture, and, since I am in fact the fountain and source of all wisdom, I can have an opinion about pretty much everything and pontificate about how everyone can fix their problems.

       This impression that I have The Big Picture would be erroneous though, since I am like the blind man in the story of the elephant. You probably recall the parable: there were several blind men, each standing beside an elephant. One blind man felt the elephant's leg and concluded that an elephant was like a tree. Another blind man felt the elephant's tail and concluded that an elephant was like a snake. You get the idea—because each blind man could only experience one part of the elephant, his conclusion was flawed because his experience was partial. His experience was true as far as it went, but needed to be supplemented by the different experiences of other blind men before it could be of any use. My internet research gives me access to facts and opinions, but these are only partial. To be of any real use, they would need to be supplemented by all the other facts and opinions of all of the other people involved. My researches on the internet, interesting as they are, cannot in fact supply me with The Big Picture.

       This is means, sad to relate, that I am not in a position to pontificate or fix everyone's problems. This does not mean that I cannot do anything. As the child's hymn reminds me, I can still “shine with a clear, pure light”. And part of this shining involves praying for all the problems I read about on the internet. I can pray for the Metropolitan. I can pray for the bishops. I can pray for Mount Athos and Russia and the other Orthodox jurisdictions. I can even pray for politicians and the regions they aspire to govern. Of course this is not as much fun as blogging and pontificating and wading into internet forums to offer my tremendously valuable wisdom. But given the partial nature of my wisdom, it is likely to be the more valuable contribution.

       In short, part of my shining with a clear pure light involves accepting my own powerlessness. I cannot really fix great problems by my words because I lack the wisdom to do so. I can add my voice and make my little contribution to ongoing debates which concern me (assuming that they really do concern me), but I must do so realizing that I lack The Big Picture. At the end of the day, I remained confined to my small corner, as you do to yours. But that is okay, and the realization of it can be liberating. For on the Last Day, the Lord will not demand of me why I did not weigh in on every single debate going and fix His world, but rather how clearly I shone, and how fervently I prayed.

Meditation on Fornication

Our present secular culture has fixed a great gap between people of my generation (i.e. those from the Jurassic period) and modern young people.  And this gap is most easily observed when looking at our divergent understandings of fornication.  Indeed, I remember once giving instruction to a young (chaste) catechumen, and casually mentioning that the Church opposed fornication.  The eyes of the young’un glazed over a bit before asking me what fornication was.  The person wasn’t asking for a more precise definition; rather, the person had no idea what the word meant.  The word had effectively vanished from modern vocabulary and could only be recovered by looking it up in the Oxford English Dictionary.  The current phrase used to describe the practice is, I am told, “hooking up”.

            So, the question remains, “Why does the Church oppose ‘hooking up’?”  Why does the Church insist that sexual congress (I told you I was from the Jurassic period) be reserved exclusively to married couples?  What’s the problem with having sex with someone to whom you are not married and have no intention of marrying?

            It will not do to simply quote Scripture, for its authority has long since ceased to function effectively as far as our secular culture is concerned.  If things in Scripture (like the commandments, “Love your neighbour” or “Take care of the poor”) find an echo and confirmation in secular culture, that is fine—and entirely coincidental.  But Scripture can no longer function to inform or correct our secular culture, and people who quote Scripture to worldlings as if the Scriptures were an effective authority are simply wasting their breath and blowing their credibility.  If I were to respond to the question “Why should I not hook up?”, by saying “You should not ‘hook up’ because Scripture forbids it”, they would simply respond in turn, “Why on earth does it forbid it?”  Young people are looking for inner rationale, and for a real and sensible reason, not for proof-texts.  And, given our present culture, they have a point.

            The answer is:  the Church forbids fornication because fornication gets in the way of one of the main purposes of authentic human sexuality.  It frustrates the first intended goal of sex, and is a dilution of it.  I deliberately use the phrase, “authentic human sexuality” to differentiate it from animal sexuality.  Obviously, “hooking up” presents no moral problems for animals.  Cats and dogs regularly “hook up”, and that is pretty much the beginning and end of it.  All things being equal, lots of feline and canine hooking up produces lots of kittens and puppies, but apart from the release of the moment and the eventual birth of offspring, nothing more is involved.  Cats and dogs do not feel the necessity to exchange phone numbers afterward, or to call in a few days to see how the other is doing.  There is no emotional baggage, and no psychological or spiritual connection.  In other words, there is no possibility for love, self-transcendence, sacrifice, or growth.  After the moment is concluded, Fido and Mitzi go their separate ways, and that’s about it.

            Looking at the (limited) components of animal sexuality (or “mating”, as most people call it), gives us an opportunity to better understand the components and possibilities and goals of authentic human sexuality.  The tragedy and glory of being human, of course, is that nothing is automatic with us, as it mostly is for the animals.  We are not compelled by our human natures to grow, or to become holy, or even to become nice.  We can become self-sacrificing and loving, or we can refuse.  We can use our sexuality as a vehicle to grow in authenticity, or we can choose otherwise.  Animals have no choice.  Moral choice (and with it, the possibility of sin) is peculiar to humanity.  We can treat our sexuality as a part of what separates us from the animal kingdom, or we can simply “hook up”.  But God invented sex as a pathway to human growth, and merely hooking up does not set us upon this path to authenticity.  (People tend to forget that the Church teaches that God is the One who invented sex, and that He thought it was a good idea.  Read Genesis, and the Song of Solomon.)

            The reality is that sex involves what was once called “becoming one flesh”.  This mingling occurs whether one is married or not, and whether one intends it or not.  Presumably those deciding to casually hook up have no intention of becoming one flesh with the partner, or of having any real long-term relationship.  But becoming one flesh (or “one organism”, to use more modern language) occurs anyway, even if the hooking up is simply with a paid prostitute.  St. Paul informs us that this is the case in 1 Cor. 6:16:  “Do you not know that the one who joins himself to a prostitute [Greek pornē] becomes one body with her?  For He says, ‘The two will become one flesh’.”  One can deny St. Paul’s assertion all one likes, but the heart and the emotions know differently.  “Casual sex” is a contradiction in terms.  All sexual union involves opening up parts of one’s innermost self to another at a tremendously intimate and vulnerable level.  That is why one instinctively seeks to “get a room” for privacy.  That is why one feels the obligation afterward to say, “I’ll call you”, even when there is no real intention of doing so.  Our secular culture does its best to deny this, and bombards us with movies, celebrity examples, books, and magazines which insist that casual sex is possible, and that no such inner connections are established by the sexual act.  The secret inner history of young people, however, tells a different story, one of heartbreak, misunderstanding, and longing.  In this as in so many other areas, our secular culture is lying.  Any sexual act unites on a basic and lasting level.

            As said above, nothing is automatic for human beings.  The sexual act establishes an inner emotional connection with the partner, but one is not forced to nurture it.  One can choose to instantly sever the connection, to pretend that it was never established and does not exist, and so to go cheerfully from partner to partner.  But there is a cost attached to such pretending, and by this I do not refer to the possibility of unwanted pregnancy or sexually-transmitted disease, though these should not be discounted.  I refer to the secret cost to the inner ability to make connections, to the creeping insensibility to the other, and the denied possibilities for growth.  When it is used the way God intended, repeated sexual union opens up the possibility of mutual long-term enrichment.  By having sex with one’s marital partner, one has the possibility of investing in the other person, so that each is strengthened by the other, moulded by the other, given deeper identity by the other.  Of course this is not automatic, and can be thwarted by selfishness and sin.  But the possibility remains, and this is the goal of sexual union.  (Having children is of course another goal, but I am speaking now merely the unitive power of sexuality, not its ultimate fruitfulness in creating other persons.)  Even our culture recognizes this to some degree, in its fascination for couples who have been married to each other for many years and retain their love for each other. 

            Casual sex, therefore, involves sundering the act from the relationship and from love.  Love is almost completely misunderstood in our culture.  We define it as a feeling, an emotion, and speak of infatuation as “being in love”.  In fact, love is not an emotion, but an action.  We love the other not by feeling strong emotions of attachment, delight and infatuation (lovely as these emotions are), but by serving them and meeting their needs.  If we love someone, we refuse to abandon them, but will stay with them despite the cost.  This is the definition of marriage—to commit oneself to another in service and self-sacrifice, “for better or for worse, in sickness and in health, for richer or for poorer”.  This commitment provides the framework and the possibility for love to endure.  Love says, “Even if you become old, and sick, and wrinkled, and poor, I will not abandon you.  Nothing but death will drive me from your side.”  Since we may become poor, and certainly will become old and sick and wrinkled, this assurance and the promise are necessary if love is to endure.  Sex is meant to serve this love, and to bring the two lovers closer in a continually-reinforced emotional bond.  That is why the Church insists that sex be reserved for marriage, for sex was created to lead the couple to this lasting fulfillment.  Fornication short-circuits the real purpose of sex.

            One last word about sex:  the center of Christian morality is not here.  Fornication is a sin, since it takes sexuality and wastes it on lesser things, and lessens our capacity for lasting joy.  (That is partly what St. Paul means when he says in 1 Cor. 6:18 that the fornicator sins against his own body.)  But there are worse sins than the sexual ones, and these involve the spirit and its temptations to pride more than they involve the body.  To quote C.S. Lewis, “a cold, self-righteous prig who goes regularly to church may be far nearer to hell than a prostitute.  But of course,” he says, “it is better to be neither.”

College Days and Yesteryear

          I recently came across a description of a theological college which I know and love.  Because of my love for the college, I propose to withhold its name in these reflections.  A professor who had been with the college for many years was writing a piece in the college’s magazine comparing new and old days, and in particular the college’s transition from the old to the new.  He wrote that a certain person “moved into what we now call the Principal’s Lodge in 1975 just as [the college] was leaving behind a past where single men trained for the priesthood, and was entering its future as an inclusive theological community of clergy and lay, male and female, single and married, young and old…[The college] was quite unprepared for this new reality.  [The Principal’s] predecessor was a widower; the Dean of Students was a bachelor; and all the rhythms and regulations of college life were rooted in yesteryear”.  There is certainly no denying the accuracy of the professor’s observation about a change from “yesteryear”:  photos provided in the rest of the magazine showed a student body where many of the graduates were older than they were in my day, and at least half were female.  One photo of recently ordained clergy consisted of “Pam, Beth, Rachel, Pam, and Leslie”—all women.  This is indeed a change from yesteryear.  The church which this college serves, like the college itself, is an “inclusive theological community”.

            It is also a shrinking one.  There is one thing about the church of “yesteryear”—it was considerably fuller than the one now, and spent less of its time angsting over its identity.  Ironically, the first article in the magazine dealt with a conference organized to help repair crumbling unity and recover a common identity, saying, “What is an Anglican? This is a big question…Our church is changing, and so is its identity…”  The church or college of yesteryear, whatever its flaws, did not feel the need to hold conferences to try to answer questions of fundamental identity.  It knew what it was about, and got on with its job, aided by its widowed Principal, its bachelor Dean of Students, and its single men being trained for priesthood.

            The piece quoted above celebrating the change from the old form in yesteryear to the present bright form as an inclusive theological community struck me as all the more poignant in view of another piece I read the same day—namely, a piece written by Ross Douthat in the New York Times Sunday Review, entitled Can Liberal Christianity Be Saved?  In this piece, Mr. Douthat quotes the statistics that the Anglican/ Episcopal Church church attendance figures dropped 23% in the past decade, and that no American Episcopal diocese saw churchgoing increase.  To quote Mr. Douthat:  “Both religious and secular liberals have been loath to recognize this crisis.  Leaders of liberal churches have alternated between a Monty Python-esque ‘it’s just a flesh wound!’ bravado and a weird self-righteousness about their looming extinction.”  

The transition and changes from yesteryear to today were doubtless undertaken to help the church become more “relevant” (that wonderful ‘60’s buzzword, now wonderfully dated, like the hoola-hoop).  It was expected that making the church more “inclusive” (our ‘90’s buzzword), would enable it to more effectively reach the unchurched population with the Gospel, so that untold multitudes would again darken the church door.  Our liberal inclusivism has not worked, as the depressing statistics reveal.  Douthat again: “Instead of attracting a younger, more open-minded demographic with these changes, the Episcopal Church’s dying has proceeded apace.”   It is almost as if the perceived solution for the raging fire consuming the church is to pour on more liberal gasoline. 

This should offer a cautionary tale for us Orthodox.  We are not immune to the same forces which currently afflict the liberal Protestant churches and threaten them with extinction in the decades or century to come.  Unfaithfulness to the Holy Tradition brings its own price.  Liberal Christians may rejoice in the changes and tell themselves that this is all for the better (the presiding bishop of the Episcopal church in a 2006 interview rejoiced in the low numbers of Episcopalians, saying that Episcopalians valued “the stewardship of the earth” too highly to reproduce themselves), but the prospect eventual self-extinction is not a cause for celebration, but for self-examination and penitence.  Ultimately, the slow extinction of a church reflects the judgment of God upon a community which has lost its way.  The word which Christ offered to the first-century church of Ephesus He offers to us as well:  “Remember from where you have fallen, and repent, and do the deeds you did at first; or else I am coming to you and will remove your lampstand from its place” (Rev. 2:5).  When we Orthodox are tempted to become “relevant” or “inclusive” or whatever will become the buzzword of the next decade, and abandon our Holy Tradition, we must remember this word of Christ.  We must remember “yesteryear” from where we have fallen, and do the deeds we did at first.  Otherwise we too may experience a disastrous decline.  We do not possess any immunity from God’s judgment.  Our North American lampstand can also be removed from its place.