It’s sad that we have become so lazy, sedentary, and fat as a society that they have to warn you not to exercise until you first consult your doctor.

It used to be that everyone everywhere did physical activity all day long, and probably wouldn’t even dream of “exercising”. Exercise was a way of life. Now if you need to run a mile for any reason this is considered abnormal, and you should probably talk with a professional or you might fall over dead…

(yes the title is satire… No it is not directed at anyone in particular…)

This post is a response (to a response) to a post on Paul’s blog. I spent an hour writing it when I should have been working, so forgive me not going back and making it less rambly (a lot of it is actually just me “thinking out loud”). Hope you can wade through it ok (and hopefully I actually ever got around to fully making my point)…

The problem with “following biblical teaching as consistently as they know how” and finding it “doesn’t square” is that you are looking at the bible from a vacuum.

It’s all well and good to read the bible and try and follow what it says, but a problem comes in when you take it outside of the context of The Church.

It seems to me, especially in the protestant world, there is a lot of biblical debate going on right now. But when you look at what is being debated, you find that it has already been debated a thousand years ago.

Old heresies seem to be springing up in a new way more and more because people don’t take the time to read old church writings and study the fathers of the faith they are trying to practice.

I have several times myself fallen into this trap. I think a lot, while I drive and while I work (I have a tedious job). Sometimes I start to contemplate various aspects of Christianity and begin to come to different conclusions that I (naively) think are “new”. Then when I share my “revelation” with my Dad or my priest, they usually end up saying, “yeah, that’s such and such heresy” and then they pull out a book and show me where one church debated this very thing with another church 1,200 years ago. They then are able to show who “won” and why…

The point is, (to me at least) The Bible is almost like a cliff’s notes version of itself. There is more that could have been written about Jesus than would fit in every library in all of the earth. In fact, it even says so at the end of one of the gospels. That stuff that was left out, has been passed down over the generations in the oral tradition. That’s the icons, the liturgy, and the hymns.

The church as the body of Christ has kept it alive, which is why you need the church to fully “get” the Bible.

Sure you can “get” it, and if you are a native on a desert island and a Bible washes to shore and you are miraculously able to read it, you would definitely get enough information to be saved.

Look at the thief on the cross, he didn’t know anything. All he knew was God when he saw him, and he repented and was saved.

So, the Bible is enough to get you saved, but if you are really going to be serious about devoting your life to learning all of the nuance about all of the nitty gritty details of The Church, and all of it’s beliefs, you are going to have to study more than just The Bible. You are going to have to study the writings and teachings of The Church that have been passed down from the followers of Christ themselves. This means, even if you are not a member or follower of the Orthodox church, you are going to have to seriously study it. Otherwise you are going to end up reinventing the wheel all by yourself, and fall into pit’s that have been around for almost as long as the church has. Except you are not going to have the rest of the Christian church to pull you out of those pit’s like the early church was able to for it’s brothers and sisters that fell into them when they first arose centuries ago.

The icons are just as much a part of the teachings and history as the Bible is. They are strictly regulated and everything that is on them is on there for a reason. You must remember that all people being able to read is a new thing. The icons are able to convey most of the story through pictures for those people that cannot read (and for children). They are crammed with information. Even the color choices are very deliberate and symbolic.

The liturgy that is practiced has been handed down for centuries. In one year the entire story of the bible is told through the liturgy so that even if you have never read the Bible, by the end of that year, you would know the story. The hymns that are sung and the prayers that are prayed are all part of this “lore” or “dogma” that defines the church, and is used to help understand what is actually being said in the Bible. Every Sunday when a scripture is read there is a teaching on that scripture to help understand what was actually being said there.

No one is infallible. No one is perfect. You are never going to find a church or make a church yourself where every belief held is 100% correct. You just have no way to know. There is just way way too much to ever know everything. Especially with God, and especially since “His ways are not our ways”. We cannot fully know the mind of God, but He has revealed Himself to us (this is the entire foundation of Christianity, that God has revealed Himself to us). Even if you don’t think that the Orthodox church is the right church for you because… Maybe you don’t understand fasting Sunday morning until after church (which, by the way, isn’t required, it’s just recommended) and you just can’t be a part of a church that does that. It is still important not to throw out the baby with the bath water. You can’t throw away 2000 years of tradition and teachings just because you disagree with a few key things.

Here’s the problem though, if you decide that you do disagree with a few key things, and that the Orthodox Church is wrong on them, what’s the point in keeping the rest as well? Why NOT start over from scratch? If they got a few things wrong, how do you know they got anything right? My answer to that is that this is the church that was started by Christ. It was the church that was founded by His followers who were filled with the Holy Spirit. God sent the Holy Spirit to create and nurture and KEEP this church. If God is not powerful enough to keep his church for a measly 2000 years, what sort of God is that?

If you disagree with the church on something, what are you really doing? You are saying that you are right where everyone else for 2000 years have been wrong. You are setting yourself up as a prophet who knows the truth. Welcome to the prophet club! Don’t look around or you might find you are standing next to Mohammad… Maybe your new religion can be as successful as Islam! Or as fun for it’s followers as Mormanism!

The point I am trying to make here is this: Be Careful. Know what you believe. If you don’t follow a dogma intentionally, you have just made a conscious choice to throw away your rudder and see where the winds will blow you. Why smash your compass? Do you think you will be able to invent a new compass? By the time you do, won’t you be so off course that it will be futile to use your new compass? What do you do to get back on course? Do you keep running forward hoping you will stumble upon the correct path (how would you even recognize the path. The word recognize even points to the fact that you would “re” “cognize” it, meaning you would have to have known it in the first place)? No, you retrace your steps and go back to your roots. Then you follow in the footsteps of the billions of people who have been treading this path for 2000 years.

Now, according to Orthodox, nothing has really changed much for the last 1,300 years. All of the major beliefs where pretty well established by that point, and it’s been pretty static since then. If you have some reason to agree with everything that the early church decided when it was still just one church, but NOT be Orthodox, I would be very interested in hearing what that was. Who knows, I might actually agree with you. But I definitely don’t understand how someone can rationalize believing 100000% what the Bible says, but throwing out everything that the men who WROTE the Bible have to say about the Bible.

No that wasn’t intended to be a protestant/catholic bash, I hope it is not taken as such. I believe that you can be either of those expressions and still “get into heaven”. It was more intended as food for thought, especially for those who are in to really studying scripture and trying to figure out what it all means. I definitely think you need to know what everyone else thinks it means and why before you go and try and re-figure it all out yourself…

By the way, if you came from Paul’s blog, and want to respond to this, feel free to do it there. Not that I will be upset if you respond here though. This post was meant as a comment to his post, I just wanted to have full editing control over it (I’ve already edited it 5 times)…

I hate chain-mail e-mails. I don’t ussually forward it, and I hate how the message patronizes you into doing so. In fact, alot of the time I would have forwarded it, but since I was guilt tripped, I just don’t on principle.

Besides that, everyone in my address book has everone else in my address book in their address book, so everyone ends up getting it like 5 times.

However, I got a piece of chain-mail today that I thought was interesting enough to post here minus the patronizing guilt trip. And no, I’m NOT going to forward it to anyone…

Billy Graham’s daughter was interviewed on the Early Show and Jane Clayson asked her “How could God let something like this Happen?” (regarding Katrina)

Anne Graham gave an extremely profound and insightful response. She said, “I believe God is deeply saddened by this, just as we are, but for years we’ve been telling God to get out of our schools, to get out of our government and to get out of our lives.

And being the gentleman He is, I believe He has calmly backed out. How can we expect God to give us His blessing and His protection if we demand He leave us alone?”

In light of recent events…terrorists attack, school shootings, etc. I think it started when Madeleine Murray O’Hare (she was murdered, her body found recently) complained she didn’t want prayer in our schools, and we said OK.

Then someone said you better not read the Bible in school . the Bible says thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not steal, and love your neighbor as yourself. And we said OK.

Then Dr. Benjamin Spock said we shouldn’t spank our children when they misbehave because their little personalities would be warped and we might damage their self-esteem (Dr. Spock’s son committed suicide). We said an expert should know what he’s talking about. And we said OK.

Now we’re asking ourselves why our children have no conscience, why they don’t know right from wrong, and why it doesn’t bother them to kill strangers, their classmates, and themselves.

Probably, if we think about it long and hard enough, we can figure it out. I think it has a great deal to do with “WE REAP WHAT WE SOW.”

Funny how simple it is for people to trash God and then wonder why the world’s going to hell. Funny how we believe what the newspapers say, but question what the Bible says

Are you laughing?

No.

So, I’m driving home from work Monday and I pass a church. It has a giant white sign with jagged red text.

It say’s “NO RACISM!”

Cool. I’ve never personally been to or heard of a racist church, but I bet there out there. That’s good that they aren’t racist, but why is that on their sign? Maybe it’s a church for minorities who are scared of going to a racist church… Whatever.

Then below that it says “NO JUDGING!”

Huh? How can you not judge? I will give them the benifet of the doubt and assume they are talking about pious judgementalism. No “holier than though” attitudes. But you have to judge. The fact that they said “no racism” and “no judging” shows that they judged those two things to be bad things they didn’t want to do…

Then it says “NO RELIGION!”

WHAT?!? How do you have a church without religion? This is just sillyness. Maybe they mean dogma… But even then, you can’t have a religion, without religion. If you stand for nothing, you will fall for anything. If you have no belief system to guide your belief system, it is an empty belief system. This is just sillyness.

At the end it says “JUST JESUS!”

Ah. So no Father or Holy Spirit then. Cool. So you’re like the jews, but at the other extreme. You only believe in the Son.

This church is just wrong… OH NO! I just JUDGED them!

I’m surprised it didn’t say something at the end like “only $14.95/month to join!”…