Category: The Journey of Faith
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Living the Paradox
The doctrines of the Christian faith are full of paradox. It is a reality that we sometimes forget – our familiarity can make us deaf to its jarring sounds: A virgin is a mother. Death is defeated by death. He who seeks to save his life will lose it. He who loses his life for…
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Waking Up
The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom (Psalm 111:10). This fear descends on us from on High. It is a spiritual feeling, firstly of God and then of us ourselves. We live in a state of awe by virtue of the presence of the Living God together with awareness of our own…
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The Problem with Lying
Anyone familiar with Scripture will be aware of the commandment: “Thou shalt not bear false witness.” Lying is treated as a problem from the earliest moments of Scripture. Adam and Eve fail to speak the truth in a direct manner when questioned about their breaking of the commandment and eating of the forbidden fruit. The…
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The Kingdom of Choice
This is a slightly edited version of a post from last June. I plan to use it as an introduction to a series on the choices we make – and don’t make. Part of the spiritual landscape of American religion is the sizable role played by choice in a culture shaped in the free market – with…
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Cynicism and the Goodness of God
I admit to being a child of the 60’s (which means I was born in the early 50’s). I have lived through a period in American history marked by assasinations, abuse of power, incompetence and unrelenting and outrageous pieties from the lips of the impious. As such, like many in my generation, I am tempted…
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Faces in the Dark
One of the finest short contemporary classics of Orthodox spiritual writing is Tito Colliander’s Way of the Ascetics. The following excerpt is from his “Chapter Thirteen: On Progress in Depth.” THE external rudiments lead us now to the welfare that goes on in the depths. As when one peels an onion, one layer after…
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The Death of Religion
In August of 2007 I wrote an article on Christian Atheism. At the time I was seeking to describe the strange phenomenon of modern Christianity – one in which life as we live it and life as we say we believe it are two separate things. This is not a problem of hypocrisy but of…
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In the Normal Course of Things
There is an expectation that most of us share – at least in its general shape – and that is that the normal course of things will largely remain the normal course of things. Each day much like another and though changes occur they are often of an occasional or casual nature. There are certain…
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That Which Completes What Is Lacking
St. Paul in speaking of the full responsibility that weighed on his ministry stated plainly, “Who is sufficient for these things?” This same thought has crossed the mind of the ordained ministry ever since, except for those who have not yet learned that they cannot do what has been given them to do. Yet again, yesterday,…
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When All Else Fails
I fail. We fail. It’s just how things are. It is not a conspiracy or the judgment of God or a universe arrayed against us – we simply fall short. At times falling short is nothing less than embarrassing. This is especially so if we have raised our own expectations as well as the expectations…
Dee, It is koine Greek, pronounced with contemporary Greek rules. The so-called “classical” pronunciation, sometimes called the “Erasmian” pronunciation has…