Telling vignette

The other day at work I noticed a co worker gazing upon my 2013 Porsche Cayman.  He approached me later on and said, "Wow, that car has some beautiful ashtrays." I thanked him for the compliment and walked away confused. 
At this point you may be questioning my co workers sanity, and rightfully so.  But fortunately, that conversation never happened and I don't drive a Porsche, I drive an 84 Toyota pickup.
So while that conversation never happened, one very much like it actually did.  A co worker approached me the other day and said, "Hey, I met your wife. Man, she is really pretty, I mean really pretty.  How did you manage to snag her?"  While I wholeheartedly agree with him, my wife is very beautiful, his saying so is comparable to the Porsche comment.  Why mention something as trite and shallow as external beauty when other things are so much more valuable?
Marrying a woman for her looks is comparable to buying a Porsche for its ashtrays.  While it very well could be that a Porsche does have nice ashtrays, who cares?
To find a godly wife is more valuable than gold.  To find a vain wife is a grief that will last a lifetime and worsen as time goes on.
The vanity of the world and the love for things temporal will not satisfy or lead to joy.  Why build up what so quickly disappears?  Why spend so much time and energy on something so short term when the state of our eternal souls needs so much work?  Why polish the ashtrays when the engine won't even turn over?

Comfortable being comfortable

The longer I am Orthodox, and the more I read the early church fathers and the desert fathers, the more this question comes to mind.  It seems that in America, the presumption is the pursuit of comfort, wealth and ease.  "Of course we should be wealthy and comfortable, that's the American dream."  But that is not the mind of the Church.
When we remember that our souls are darkened and corrupted by sin, that the church is the hospital for our salvation and that our tendency is towards the flesh and temporal, we should remember to orient ourselves towards living as if these things are true.  Far too often we live as if all is fine.  We've heard the saying, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it," but that is not the case here.  Our souls are corrupt, we live according to our flesh and we are selfish. 
The nearly unquestioned attitude is that of striving after wealth and comfort.  We strive to have a comfortable retirement, relaxing and enjoying a permanent vacation.
Our eternal state will be determined by the state of our souls and if we spend eighty years feeding our souls temporal, earthly, even sinful things, will it be any surprise when our eternity looks the same?  The point I am making here is simple.  If we love God, we will strive after Him.  This means putting away and rejecting those things that are contrary to Him.  If we love those things that are contrary to Him, then why would we want to live for eternity with Him?  Heaven is not the ultimate pleasure and thrill.  Heaven is getting to be with God and eternally drawing closer and closer to Him.
The pursuit of wealth and comfort is radically different that the pursuit of holiness and communion with God.  We have to choose one, we cannot have both.

Wrong western thinking

I am getting really tired of the media and their spin on world events.  I don't know why I even bother reading the news especially when it comes to Russia. 
If I remember correctly, the fall of Soviet Russia brought about the dissolution of the unity of the numerous "states" that made up the Soviet Union.  Again, if I remember correctly, the unity that all of these enjoyed was very long term, long before the fall into communism.  The Ukraine even used to be called "little Russia".  So it's maddening to read the western nations speak of Putin as a bully trying to take over independent Ukraine.  The West needs to stop thinking as if Russia is just another country.  Russia is eastern in its thinking.  Russia has been Christian for 1000 years, minus the blip of communism.  These two things make Russia different than anything the USA has ever known or understood.
In my opinion, the West and President Obama need to listen and learn from Russia.  Is Putin perfect? Of course not. No one is.  But as one with a Christian worldview, he is light years ahead of the US.
What will be the end result of this conflict between Russia and the Ukraine?  I don't know, no one does, but I guarantee it will go much smoother if the US and EU stay out of it.
I would not encourage anyone to join the EU or to shift their thinking to be more like the West.  In fact, being more Eastern in thinking is the very thing I am trying to do.  To put a finer point on it, eastern thinking is far more Christian than western.  Western thinking is the result of 1000 years of Roman Catholic scholasticism.  That's a bad thing.
What can we do at this point?  Pray for God's mercy and work at taking on the mind of Christ. All the political action in the world will accomplish nothing without the heart of Christ leading us.  And that means the leadership of the Church.

Progress and sanctification

I want to begin by emphasizing that everyone is different and my thoughts on how this applies will be different for everyone. So here goes.
As conscious and active human beings, our life is about movement.  I've heard it said that life is never stagnant, we are either growing or shrinking.  We are either developing or diminishing. 
We all go to school for the first 18 years of life (some maybe more) and the common life after that seems to be routine, a decline towards retirement.  It seems that far too many sludge through school, to finally finish it and get on with life.   This shouldn't be our attitude.
Regardless of what piques our interest, we should be making some sort of progress.  Whether it's academics (my choice), the arts, financial, humanitarian or something else, we must be progressing.  God did not give us minds and abilities to waste them on mere distraction.  Far too often we spend all our free time on distracting trifles.  We don't think about anything valuable, but distract ourselves with toys, games or entertainment.  Obviously, none of these things are wrong in and of themselves, but only when we elevate them and allow them to distract us from what is actually valuable.
How are you progressing?  What are you doing to make your life truly better? What are you doing to make someone else's life truly better?
Beneath all of this is our responsibility to progress in our sanctification.  We must spend whatever time/money/energy it takes to become more holy.  More often than not, we spend a large portion of our time doing the exact opposite.
Give this some consideration.

Worthwhile for eternity?

I came up with an interesting thought experiment.  We all have different interests and things we either like to spend time on or need to spend time on based upon decisions we have made in the past.
This is a test we can do for ourselves, but only for ourselves.  We must never do this for someone else, as we cannot know someone else's heart, thoughts or past circumstances. 
Think through those things that you like to do, find appealing or enjoy.  Now ask yourself, will these things be in heaven / the new earth?  If we can answer "yes" to this question, then we can at least justify our involvement in or pleasure in it.  But if we answer "no", we had better give some serious consideration to why we like that particular thing/activity.  If we cannot envision this thing or activity in heaven, then our involvement is suspect.
Why do something now that is not possible or acceptable in the immediate presence of God?

One more thought...

A third step or level has just been suggested to me concerning the place of entertainment. This kind of builds on the appropriate response to any form of entertainment that promotes wickedness.  When we encounter that rare instance of entertainment that promotes evil (that was sarcasm), our response should be to flee from it.  In very much the same way that we respond to a sinful thought or temptation, we ought to respond to evil entertainment. When an evil thought comes to mind, we should not think on it or dwell on it. We must reject it outright or it will take hold of us, making the later rejection that much more difficult.
Now in terms of entertainment, it becomes a little more tricky.  Because there is no such thing as evil music or evil painting or evil statues, that which is evil, that is, the content, must be separated from the medium in which it dwells. 
Movies, for example, are not in themselves evil.  What can be evil is the message that is being communicated.  What is evil is when a sin is promoted or shown to be good.  But even in that instance, if someone recognizes this error, but finds value in the overall movie, is it wrong to enjoy the film?
Again, we have to question what it is that we are enjoying. 
A further question can be asked about entertainment.  Is it worth the time?  But I'll leave that for another time?

What response?

The fourth century, in response to the legalization and subsequent popularization of Christianity throughout the Roman empire, saw masses of Christians fleeing to the desert to avoid the dilution and re-definition of the Christian faith.
They longer I live in America as an Orthodox Christian, the more I can sympathize with this response.  It is so incredibly easy to be a Christian in evangelical America.  A person can define their Christianity in just about any manner they wish, as long as it holds even a slight resemblance to Christianity.  All words can be re-defined and the current emphasis on ecumenism and being politically correct makes any kind of critique improper. We don't want to be judgmental now, do we?
The early Christians ran away from a watered down faith, to save themselves.  How can we not do the same?

Community

The concept of community really struck me in a very real way last Sunday.  I was standing in Divine Liturgy with my family and the rest of the congregation.  We were reciting the Nicene Creed and I suddenly had a great appreciation and feeling of community.  I believe that this is something that non- liturgical churches really miss out on. Especially those mega churches that appear to be more performance based than a community centered around the Eucharist.
The longer that I am in the Orthodox church, the more beautiful and comprehensive it becomes.

What is being communicated?

     A different perspective on how we come across in our interactions with others came to mind today.  In the past, I have tried to think through what constitutes modesty, humility, etc.  But I think I may have been missing a big element in this.  While I have given consideration to the idea of who defines modesty as the culture in which one lives, this new thought (new to me anyway), puts a wider aspect to the idea.
     Anytime we do anything in which someone else perceives us, we are communicating something.  We might believe that we are communicating one thing, but in reality we may very well be communicating something entirely different, possibly even exactly opposite.
The question then is, who's definition matters?  We can ask the question, what is being communicated? 
     As a teenager, I had long hair.  I was emulating the appearance of those I thought were admirable.  I genuinely liked my appearance.  I wasn't doing it because someone else was.  I looked the way I did because I liked it.  Being a relatively uneducated American teenager, I didn't give any thought to the negative impression this cast upon me. Now it may be wrong to judge someone by their appearance, but we do it all the time.  In both positive and negative ways.
     When we look or act or speak a certain way, that behavior communicates something.  What is being communicated differs, often drastically, from one culture to another, and from one time period to the next.  Consider the word "gay".  One hundred years ago, if someone referred to themselves as "gay", the message was communicated that they were happy.  But the use of that word today communicates a very different message.  The same can be said of "queer", "nice" and many others.
     In the realm is appearance, the wearing of tattoos communicates a message.  Tattoos were once the category of sailors.  A little later, Hell's Angels or other bikers claimed them as their own.  Any woman with a tattoo was probably of ill repute.  But that message has changed today.
     Or consider the wearing of earrings. Again, at one point, this was the jewelry of sailors.  Then later, if a man had one earring, he was probably part of the homosexual community.  But again, that message has changed.
     One may balk at the idea of the world or culture defining things.  It may be true that the church should be leading a culture, but here in America, at this point in time, the church is not leading, so we have to deal with it.  But if we are going to act in love, we need to be aware of what message we are communicating by our words, appearance and actions.
     Instead of merely following the words, appearance and actions of pop culture, we should give some thought to how we can communicate a message contrary to worldliness.  By looking, talking or acting mainstream, we might not be sinning, but is that really our only goal?  What about being a light to the world around us?  Is mere "comfortable imitation of the world" enough?
     Give some thought to the message we can communicate by our words, appearance and actions.  Give some thought to the difference we can make on those around us.  It's not enough to merely "be".  We should aim for being Christ-like.

The goal vs goals

In many Christian churches, the question of purpose and goals often comes up.  In the Westminster Catechism, first question, we read, "Man's chief end is to glorify God and enjoy him forever."
And amongst the church fathers we hear similar thoughts, "God became man so that man could become God."
They problem with pithy statements such as these is not the content or the intentions behind them, but the practical working out of them.  Easy to say, but very difficult to live.
This is something that every person needs to work out and think through for themselves.  It's not enough to merely recite the passage.  We each need to embrace the content and work it out in our life.
There is often a practical contradiction between the goal (singular) and the many goals we make and achieve over the years of our life. Do the little goals that we set and meet over the years help us in our pursuit of godliness?
Do the daily, little things we do help us in our pursuit of the one big goal of godliness? 
I would suggest that the smaller the detail, the less seemingly significant the action or plan, the less likely we are to even give thought to the long term ramifications that may follow.  There are many things we do and plan that don't receive any attention regarding their actual value or benefit, or even if they fit with our foundational beliefs. 
But this again leads us down the road of who defines what.

A consideration of influence from another perspective

My previous post considered the sources of influence upon women in regards to appearance and fashion.  Today it was suggested to me that the influence of  entertainment  should be examined.  Good idea.
I say good idea because at no time in the history of the United States had there been such an abundance of free time and extra money.  To complicate matters, the Protestant faith calls for an enjoyment of things temporal "all to the glory of God", to use their terms. So not only is the potential for abuse present, the excusing of such abuse is present as well.
I do not intend to go into what is valid, legitimate or valuable in terms of entertainment but only want to discuss the reality and undeniability of influence.
The main difference between the last post and this one is the state of the question.  In the previous post, I asked the question concerning the position of influence upon women attire and appearance.  In this post, the question is a little more complicated.  This is more of a question about what influence there is of entertainment upon the mind and soul.
As I did with the previous post, we need to consider the fruit of influence.  In the former post, the influence consisted of taking on the appearance of the one influencing.  In this post, I need to ask just what is the influence.  Once we determine exactly what is the influence then we can determine what is the fruit of that influence.
In regards to attire and appearance, one either consciously or unconsciously chooses a model to follow and then takes on that particular appearance.  In regards to entertainment, one hears or sees what is being articulated, and then either consciously or unconsciously accepts or rejects that message.  Much of this will be determined by the maturity and cognitive abilities of the hearer.
One cannot appeal to the idea of an unavoidable influence of a message being delivered.  We are told to live in the world but not to be of the world.  This presupposes the ability to make that choice.  This then articulates a difference between "being" or "seeing" something as opposed to "eating" something.  One cannot eat a cheese burger and reject the fat.  But one can read a book by Friedrich Nietzsche, for example, and reject his argument and conclusions.
The same can be said of movies and music.  The hearer or watcher must be diligent enough to recognize and understand the message being delivered and either accept it or reject it.  If one is not capable of doing so, one should not be viewing or hearing such a thing. It is not acceptable or wise to merely take in whatever is being said or shown and merely accept it without thinking.
It's really pretty straightforward.  If the message that is being communicated in the movie or music is changing your thinking toward unholy and sinful things, then the influence of the entertainment is negative.  This needs to be recognized and addressed. 
The other question that needs to be asked is in regards to what we find entertaining.  If we are entertained by something that is wrong or sinful, this reveals something about the state of our soul.  We have been negatively influenced by worldly culture.
The last consideration is the question of how any particular form of entertainment affects our body.  Did the music or the movie (or sporting event, play, opera, symphony, etc) move us to aggression or lust or depression? We should stop and give this some thought.  Ought we to be entertained by something that motivates our passions?

From where comes the influence?

The fact that we are influenced cannot be denied.  No matter what, something or someone or many factors will influence, direct or control how and what we think.  One of the largest struggles in our work towards holiness is the fact that ninety percent of these influences are worldly and vain.
The world, the flesh and the devil, as has historically been identified, are serious problems.  The vanity of the world is even a greater problem when it isn't identified as vanity, but is rather embraced, even by those in the church.
It is a really sad state of events when one goes to church and encounters women that look no different from the world. I challenge you to a little test.  The next time you are in church do a comparison.  Look at the way the women in the service are dressed and compare them to the women you see in icons.  Now, the next time you are in the grocery store, compare those same women in church to the women you see on the magazines in the checkout line.  Who looks like who?
The women in icons have their heads covered, their shoulders covered, their legs covered. You see no makeup, you see no fingernail polish, you see no toenail polish. 
It is at this point that the question can be asked, "Who is influencing who?"  An even bigger question is, "Why is this happening and why is no one saying anything about it?"  The influence of the world creeps into our lives far too often and far too easy.  Let's start paying attention.