An interesting article from First Things regarding hypocrisy.

A little history on the song of a million Bible camp fires.

For whatever is born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world – our faith. Who is he who overcomes the world, but he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?

The sun is shining this morning but they say that rain and snow are on the way. So I’ll take advantage of the moments to write a bit about the days past and those to come.

On the longest scale of things I remain, like Christianity, optimistic. The shining city of God with the beauty and purity of a bride remains within my sight and the political junkie riding the emotional roller coaster with every newscast has long ago slipped away into the night. I slept well on November 7th and last night as well.

I’m not naive or locked in some pious delusion. I read the papers and know it’s a troubled world. I’m tempted sometimes, like everyone else, to seek refuge, to hide away, to go to some far away place where the world can’t get at me but I know it’s no use. I feel bombarded sometimes and sometimes I even envy those who are already asleep in the Lord. But that never makes what is here and now less then what it is and somehow I and we have been providentially ordered to be in this time and place.

I know, too, that the world has always been troubled. It is our lot since the first broken day of exile from Eden and only the technology, and not the human propensities, have changed. The Romans would have used tanks if they had them and the Babylonians would’ve have had porno movies in hotels if they could. The biggest difference, I suppose, is that in our modern media age we are force fed a bigger portion of it all and find less and less of what is good and right and pure in the cultural hog wallow.

As the larger and superficial supports in this society that have propped our vision of the world up in at least some lip service sort of way are weakening and collapsing I wonder if God is asking us a simple but profound question in all of this. “Do you believe in me?”

Sometimes all the passing things in which we have placed our hope need to be taken away, or at least threatened, before we see what matters most. And in thier departure we see ourselves as we really are and whether what we claim to believe really matters or was all just fluff.

The ascetics knew this, those holy people of long ago who left the world to pursue God. And perhaps this time, this epoch of history, is a time of asceticism for the Church, a time when God is making for us the choice the desert fathers and mothers made for themselves, and bringing us into the wilderness so we, stripped of everything else, have only God and in realizing that come to understand that we have everything we need, aways did.

Just a thought from a sinner pondering things to vast for him to understand.

For the past day, and for many more to come we will hear pundits and pollsters, spin doctors and bureaucrats, politicians and columnists, experts and insiders, winners and losers, and a million more voices on every little piece of everything.

They don’t matter.

What is God saying in all of this?

That’s what matters.

Thoughts on hypocrisy…

In a few hours we here in the United States will know who we’re referring to when we pray for the “President of the Unted States, all civil authorities, and our Armed Forces everywhere…”

And pray we will even as St. Paul admonished his fellow believers to do for people as dark, pagan, and corrupt, as the Roman aristocracy. We do this because we only see moments but God sees the whole span of history and so we believe.

Only those who have forgotten that our national motto is “In God We Trust” will succumb to fear today.

I’m suspicious of the timing, of course, but the news of the possible involvement of Rev. Ted Haggard, pastor of a large evangelical church in Colorado and a leader in the National Association of Evangelicals, with a male prostitute has been front and center in the news.

The media love this stuff and a lot of readers/listeners/watchers do as well. If a prominent person seeking to speak out on moral issues falls (and there is no final word yet on whether or to what extent this may have happened) it allows people to justify themselves and avoid answering the questions posed by those speaking out about the moral decay of our culture. If every accusation provided to date is 100% true how would that affect the truth of the problems associated with the “do everyone you want” sexual mores of this society? Would it make the disease and death go away? Would the broken homes vanish? Would it mean that somehow the attitgude and actions which are making this all a reality are now okay? Or would it mean that one more person, one more family, and a whole congregation are added to the long and growing list of those broken by the sexual sickness of our times and, in effect, prove the point at a terrible cost?

Of course those of us who are serving in ministry are painfully aware of the nature of these times. We bathe in the same cultural waters as everyone else and wearing a collar is hardly a protection from the darkness. We are humans and we make mistakes, sometimes terrible ones. Our hearts are broken when we see one of us fall and we pray to God that it won’t happen to us and sometimes just hang on by our fingernails in the face of it all. We know that the standards in these things are at a different level for us and a plumber or business man accused of seeking out gay sex wouldn’t even merit a single line of newspaper copy while the mere innuendo of clergy scandal ends up above the fold on the front page. We know there are people who delight in exposing us and relish the idea of tripping us up. And its all complicated by the reality that deep inside, behind the faces we present on Sunday morning, are the common struggles of all Christians against the darts of the Evil One and the power of our own brokenness.

My prayers go out to Pastor Haggard, his family, and his parish, and doubly so if these accusations are in fact not a political stunt and have some merit. I hope yours do too because there will be suffering either way and perhaps a long road home if they are true. How we treat this man, this pastor, in the coming months will reveal the reality of who we are and the Gospel we proclaim. How we treat his accuser will as well.

In a few days millions of Americans will travel to their local polling place and vote for those they wish to lead them in these times. Orthodox Christians, too, will join their friends and neighbors, as they should, and make decisions with an impact that can reach forward for generations.

But for too long there seems to have been a silence from those who are trusted to teach the faith as to how to approach our role as citizens and live as Orthodox Christians in the civil environment. In this silence we have abdicated the development of attitudes about politics and the political aspects of culture to the whims of popular culture and their septic mouthpieces in the media, and not by our faith. The result has been a decided lack of understanding about how our Orthodox faith, a faith which claims to touch all of who we are, speaks to the political life.

And perhaps there is where we should start, the idea that Orthodoxy is not simply an addition to life or an accessory but a unified vision, a participation in a reality that touches all of who we are and reaches out to transform the culture as well. We have too often created neat little compartments in our lives, with names like politics, business, religion, and family, and put a wall between them as if they are unconnected from each other. But to be Orthodox is to have all those neat little compartments demolished in favor of a life where all is directed towards Christ and the reality of who he is transforms those parts into a new kind of wholeness. To refuse to talk about faith and politics is to say there are areas in our lives that are off limits to the power of the Gospel, that what we seek to know, proclaim, and live is only for certain small parts of us and not the whole, and that is a small and powerless Gospel.

As Orthodox Christians we live in the hope of a day, we seek the transformation of our selves and the world in the knowledge that all things will be changed. We believe that one day the humble Jesus who came to us as a child in Bethlehem will return as King of Kings and rule the world with perfect justice, peace, and harmony. We believe that one day the government, as the prophet Isaiah said will be “on his shoulders” and our Creed affirms that Jesus will be the one to “judge the living and the dead” the ruler of a Kingdom that will never end, one that even now exists wherever hearts are turned towards him and people worship in spirit and truth. We understand that this rule will be one in which even the natural order itself will be returned to its pristine state and the lion will lay down with the lamb and people will turn their hearts to God and each other and reshape weapons into peaceful implements of agriculture.

Until then we understand that civil government has been given by God to ensure, as best as is possible with fallen humans, the good of all, the restraint of evil, the stewardship of the earth, and as our Founding Fathers would say “the general welfare”. We are called, as Orthodox Christians, to render honor to the state and its officials and live by the laws of whatever land we find ourselves to the extent they do not conflict with the higher moral law of God. We are called, as well, to participate on those same terms in the greater civil life of our country as we can.

In that light we also understand that there is no one form of civil government that can lay exclusive claim to encompassing the fullness of the Kingdom of God. There are better or worse forms, and even evil ones, but they all are shadows and are good only to the extent they reflect the perfect Kingdom of God. We also understand that nations are not permanent entities, but human constructs necessary for civil order but not an end in themselves. Our passports as Orthodox Christians, come from many countries, but our final hope is still in that heavenly country, the new Jerusalem.

So knowing this how do we live and act as Orthodox Christians within the political processes of our times? Here are some practical thoughts.

First and foremost the greatest political act of all is to know and live our faith in the world. Too many Orthodox simply do not know the essentials of their faith or practice them on a continual basis. We are people who have often drunk too deeply at the wells of our culture and occasionally sipped the living waters of Christ and we cannot know what is good and right if we have not sought it out ourselves and the world will not see it if they have no examples to observe. Imagine how different the world would be if just the Orthodox actually practiced Orthodoxy!

We also need to understand that what matters is not so much power or the attaching of ourselves to a single person or party but a commitment to unchanging truths and values.
Political structures change, truth does not, and our involvement in the political process should first and foremost reflect our witness to truth. If we believe that the Christian vision is the first and best destiny for humanity it is to that vision we must be true and understand that political structures are means and not ends. We are to be salt and light seeking the best we can in a world of imperfect structures and people.

Our Orthodox faith also gives us the hope of the Kingdom that is with us and that which is to come and so we have, despite the often chaotic nature of the world, an unchanging hope that should color all we do as Christians in the political world. If one only has this day, this election, or the current politics to provide meaning for their lives a descent into bitterness, anger, and violence will almost always result in the hopeless void that occurs when an election is lost or a process fails. But we have an eternal hope and our welfare can be affected by, but is not forever dependent on, the changing political world. We always keep eternity in mind and if we truly believe that one day Christ will rule with perfection then the anxieties of any given time lose their ability to terrorize us.

Yet we should also be cautious about as people used to say “Being so heavenly minded as to be no earthly good…” It is no act of piety to see the pain and struggles of the world and do nothing, or as some who claim Christianity do even rejoice in the sufferings as some sign of Christ’s return. We must be involved in the world as a sacred duty to serve and heal and witness and call the world to something better. If we do not our Lord will ask us, some day, why we failed to be who we were meant to be and claiming a pious detachment won’t count as an answer to the one who has said “as you have done this to the least of these my brethren you have done it to me…”

So what do we value as Orthodox Christians called to be witnesses in the political arena?

We understand that government should reflect, as best as is possible, the desire of God for the human good, the restraint of evil, the welfare of all, the care of the earth, and the pursuit of justice. In that light we are called to involve ourselves to transform all government forms and structures to those ideals.

We value all of human life from natural conception to natural death and even beyond and have always seen abortion, war, degradation, murder, and the desire of the strong to be predators on the weak as grave moral errors. People are never to be means to an end, are never disposable, and always have a dignity by virtue of being God’s creation.

We see the Earth not as a thing to be exploited but as a gift to be managed. We are all tenants and responsible to preserve and maintain what God has given us to the greatest extent possible.

We desire justice, to see evil restrained, the good promoted, and the power of law used for the greater good and without partiality. We see wealth as a divine call to charity and great power as a call to responsibility.

Our hope is always, first and foremost, for peace and we are called to eng
age in the destructive use of force always and only as the final option and then and only then with good reason and with mercy always in mind.

We believe morality ensures the well-being of society and that there is a natural order of family that allows for health, stability, and the well being of children. Orthodoxy, despite its accommodation of some divorce as a necessity in a fallen world, affirms only the union of one man and one woman for one lifetime or chastity in singleness as that arrangement desired by God, beneficial to the order of society, and promoting physical health. Orthodoxy would stand against any attempt to experiment with or transform this arrangement as inconsistent with the divine and natural law and the greater good.

Finally we believe that our first and foremost allegiance is to Jesus Christ and that all of our involvement in every part of our culture must be for the purpose of His glory, the salvation of our souls, and the transformation of the world. Power is for service, the ability to rule for the benefit of all, and our involvement in the world as the desire to enter the imperfect and call it to greater things.

That being said I simply ask you to pray always for our leaders, as we do in every liturgy, regardless of their party or whether they reflect your values. I encourage you to be involved as you can in the processes of our civil society with an informed Orthodox Christian mind and the heart of Christ. I ask you to stand, even as imperfect people, for those things that are always good, right, holy and perfect, not in the expectation of never ending success but because it is the good, right, holy, and perfect thing to do.

And in all things may God be glorified.

British scientists have created functioning liver cells from stem cells taken from umbilical cord blood. Once again the cures are to be found in science that respects life at all stages.

And therein lies a point. The promise of “embryonic” stem cells has been touted over and over again even though to date I am not aware of a single illness that has been helped, let alone cured, by thier use and there are already documented deadly side affects like cancers. Meanwhile people are being helped on a daily basis by the use of adult stem cells (bone marrow transplants) with other treatments already under way and further research showing real hope.

If this was actually about science the money, the research, and the flow of inquiry would have long ago left the moribund world of embryonic stem cell research to focus on that which has already proved itself, namely umbilical and adult stem cells. But it’s not about that at all. There are political elites who fear the humanity of the embryo and fetus because it challenges their world view on so many levels. Many elites in science believe only in science, it is thier religion, and they wish to practice it without moral constraints put on them by people they feel are thier inferiors, especially those who continue to embrace traditional and orthodox faiths.

How ironic that actual science is arguing for morality and against scientists! But why should that be suprising to those who seek the Creator?