A soldier is claiming he was punished and denied promotion because he’s an atheist.

It’s important to remember that whenever you read about a lawsuit the coverage will be about the initial charges, the claims of the plaintiff packaged to make the most emotional impact possible. It’s a strategy to gain publicity, sympathy, and in effect make the opening arguments of the case long before it actually comes to court. This effort is enhanced by the fact that many defendants, unlike plaintiffs, are bound by privacy laws which don’t allow them to divulge information that would exonerate them before trial or the simple fact that a news story can come into play before a defendant has even read through the first documents of the case.

My guess is that in a couple of years when both sides have been heard the claims, as they often are, will be much less dramatic, hammered down to size by the cool process of law.

Give your loyalty to your job, a fair day’s work for a fair day’s pay with a little extra in remembrance that in working well we, in a mystical way, also serve our Lord. But never give your job or your company your soul. There is no treasure of earth that is pay sufficient for even a fragment of it.

Had a co-worker bring out the old “more people have been killed in wars over religion…” chestnut today and having grown tired of hearing stuff like this over time from folks who’ve combined over confidence and under thinking into the toxic soup of slogan I decided to answer back.

First, in the matter of sheer body count its probable the officially secular and athiestic regimes of the 20th century probably have the honors. The mechanized and systematic killing of the century past simply has no counterpart in human history and resembles something more like an epidemic illness in its gross killing power then the battlefields of even the prior century and certainly less then the supposed “dark ages”.

Second, one needs to do some critical thinking and analyze the actual causes of war. There are many cases where religious belief was used by the prevailing authorities as one way to legitimize a particular war, and certainly people who were personally devout have fought in wars and perhaps even seen their involvement as a form of devotion, but not nearly as many cases where religion itself was the actual cause of the conflict. It is probably a fair criticism to say that too often religious groups have lent uncritical support to governments as they embark on wars but even that support does not mean a given war’s source is religion, just that religion has allowed itself to become a tool of the larger effort to support a war. A small bit of rational investigation yields the conclusion that war is the sad result of many causes and effects and rarely is it so simple to say that “religion” is the single source of any conflict and often its not even a contributing cause.

The point in this is to help a person think beyond the sound bite and if you can they usually see the complexities of history and discover that a phrase like “More people have died in wars caused by religion…” is simplistic and functionally useless. It’s also good for Christians to not be afraid of people making such claims because many who make them are simply regurgitating something they’ve heard over and over and assume that the repetition of an idea is related to its veracity. A little information beyond the sound bite can sometimes make all the difference.

As for the antagonist who just like to throw things like that in your face to justify whatever it is they’re thinking at the moment just remember pearls before swine and such and walk away. That they feel this is some kind of conclusive argument against religion indicates a kind of shallowness of thought that should only be encountered if there is some reasonable hope of growth. If not, you just argue in circles and time and energy go to waste. Let your life do the debating and the Holy Spirit do His work. The harshest critics of our faith often make the best proponents when grace comes calling.

An Israeli academic suggests that Moses was high on drugs when he saw God.

And, oh by the way, he bases this in part on his own chemically induced experiences. Are you suprised?

I remember when IPods first came out there were articles where famous people were asked about what was on theirs. The music they chose, it was presumed, was a kind of window into their life, the unguarded place behind the public persona. There’s a truth to that.

This past evening I was reformatting and loading my own IPod, a 30gb U2 signature edition I purchased because it had a last generation price. A quick look at the playlist shows I have a lot of Mozart, a whole bunch of Orthodox chant, and then anything goes from the Ramones to Janis Joplin, the Allman Brothers, and Nat King Cole. What does that say about me? Maybe I’m a bluesy sort of classical chant guy who every once in a while likes to rip it up with best punk band ever. Who knows?

Some things, though, are certain. I find the playlists on most commercial radio to be garbage, whiney pop singers or rap music, country singers who haven’t a clue and millionaire rockers complaining about the darkness in their lives. So I like the ability to pick and choose, to not have to take what they think is best for me and like it. Perhaps its that, and not the songs per se, which reveals the most about me. Somewhere in all the craziness of the world I want at least some little world where I call the shots and control the switches. Maybe that’s why IPod s are everywhere.

March is here and in these northern climes it means that snow is coming, but winter is not forever. The days are just too long and the Earth is inevitably moving its way through space to the end that sunlight with all its affects cannot be denied.

And so it is with the Kingdom of God.

Waves of information wash over our personal shores every day. Our world is a world of millions of simultaneous electric conversations flowing through wires, in and out of space, and typed into the glow of computers everywhere there is power. Everyone seems to have 200 channels and yet nothing is on and wading through it all is a kind of martyrdom for the faithful, the running of a profane gauntlet who’s blows are as unavoidable as they are unexpected and uncontrolled.

Although the solitude of a monastery beckons in such times it is not and cannot be the world for all, not even most. Those days ended when message and electricity were harnessed at the beginning of the century past and only catastrophe would bring us back to a simpler time. And while we have choices to make and actually have more power in all of this then we think we still participate, in one way or another, in the inevitable media culture.

But we can participate with discernment, in fact we must. As with everything there are larger principles at play and when we understand them we can navigate through these times and how the story of them is presented to us with a kind of insight that leaves us able to survive it all with our soul intact and our realities undistorted.

For Orthodox Christians in a media culture the first of these principles is to understand that our Faith and its object, our Lord Jesus Christ, are more than just ideas or rituals to which we give homage but a matrix through which we screen all the information that comes to us through the course of our lives. The success of any media is rooted in redirecting the way its consumers “see” things, to change the lens through which information and reality itself is perceived. The commercial first wishes you to become aware of your breath and then, in the awareness of it, purchase their mouthwash. For Orthodox it is crucial to understand that our Faith is, among its other attributes, a way of “seeing” ourselves, the world, events, and everything that is with a kind of vision transformed by the Holy Spirit. We understand that as this transformation happens we see things with clarity, observing everything, including ourselves, both for what it truly is and what it could truly become.

Perhaps this is why so many of the saints and ascetics of the past seem to have a kind of holy indifference to the things that trouble us so, the times, the events, the images that push us this way and that. After much struggle they began to acquire a vision of the world as the Holy Spirit would see it and with it came a kind of wisdom and peace that allowed them to see the world and care for its ebbs and flows but not be swept up in it. When eternity is part of our perception of things everything changes.

And in these times this kind of vision may be the most valuable commodity of all. All of the darkness of our culture is presented to us in never ending living color, it’s materialism, its wars, its values, its panic, its hungers, and its false hopes. And if our own vision, like St. Peter’s on the swirling seas, is captured by it we too are caught in its storm and at peril. Our hope lies in one thing, that the illumination promised to us in our baptism and sealed in our chrismation is made real in us and that as we cultivate it we can stand in a room of televisions and still see the Light.

I was serving the Liturgy yesterday and I stood in the Royal Doors extended my hand for a blessing and said “Peace be with you all…” at which point a young girl of about 3 or 4 in her father’s arms in the back of the church flashed me a peace sign.

Gotta love it…

I received my Orthodox Study Bible last Sunday and have been busy opening it up, taking a look around, and seeing how it works.

The Bible itself has been a long time coming and it definitely fills a need. Orthodox Christians seeking a Bible of their own, as it were, in a sea of study Bibles ranging from the sublime to the ridiculous had really nowhere to go until now. Prior to its arrival Orthodox woud need to read these other Bibles with a kind of internal editor in their head, a basic sense of the Tradition of our faith that could filter through the various notes and maps and comments to sift the wheat from the chaff. It could be done but this is so much better because now you can read for the sake of it and with more focus because that editor has a whole lot less to do.

Among the things that many Orthodox will find new is the use of the Septuagint for the Old Testament and what has been called the “Deuterocanonicals” books such as Maccabees and Tobit which, of they existed at all in Bibles were often put in a separate section between the testaments. In the Orthodox Study Bible they are placed where the Septuagint placed them and so they flow right with the books more familiar to many, especially to Protestants who have come to Orthodoxy. For example First Maccabees is right after Esther and Tobit follows Nehemiah.

The order and naming of the more familiar books is also restored to the original flow of the Septuagint so if, for example you’ve been used to seeing Isaiah right after Song of Solomon you might be suprised to find it after Malachi which many of us had simply assumed was the last book of the Old Testament. It will take some time to get used to but it does illustrate how great the need was for a Bible that reflected historical order and the Orthodox context. Some of the names of the books are slightly different as well. What many of us had learned as 1 and 2 Samuel are named 1 and 2 Kingdoms according to the Septuagint’s usage. 1 and 2 Kings are identified as 3 and 4 Kingdoms in the study Bible. The New Testament bookd retain their familiar titles.

I was fortunate to have purchased an Orthodox Study Bible in advance at a discounted price but I would still reccommend the leather bound which is initially more expensive, just under $70, but if properly cared for (which for Orthodox means opened frequently but never abused) should last for years. I never mark up my Bibles or use highlighters first because individual verses, while emotionally and spiritually significant, should never be divorced from their context and second because it just cruds things up. It’s also good to keep the Bible is a safe, dry, place appropriate for the storage of a fine book.

It should be noted that there are two great pleasures with owning a new Bible. The first is that initial opening up of the book, the new book smell and gently separating the gold leafed pages. Even if you’ve read the Bible many times there’s something about a new one. The second will come over the years as you and the Bible share your life together. It, and you, will wear with age but those age marks in your Bible are the marks of how the precious things inside have journeyed with you over the years. An old Bible is like an old friend and when the new is gone everything valuable still remains.

There is a myth out there that the Orthodox church and Orthodox clergy don’t want you to read the Scriptures. This is simply untrue. For many centuries Bibles were not widely available to the masses because they were hand copied. At times widespread illiteracy also played a part as did the oppression of the Orthodox Church in Muslim and Communist cultures. Sometimes, too, it was simply a matter of Orthodox being spiritually asleep. But the truth is that our faith is a biblical faith and if the opportunity is open each and every Orthodox Christian should be well versed in the Holy Scriptures, interpreting them in the larger context of their Tradition, and applying it’s truth to their lives. I would dearly love for my entire parish to read, understand, and live the Bible, the book of books, even as I work to do so myself and I am convinced that the Orthodox Study Bible is an amazing gift for times such as this.

You can get the Orthodox Study Bible at http://www.concilliarpress.com/