Responding to a sinful culture

In the mid 200's, when Christian monasticism first started, it was in response the the growing popularity and subsequent watering down of Christianity.  In short, those Christians who were working very hard to make every aspect of their lives be in agreement with the faith, felt forced to flee from the growing worldliness and temporality of "pop" Christianity.  Their response was to run away.
What then should we do?  It seems that while arguably, the United States was started as a Christian county, the US has become a melting pop of easy believism and ecumenism.  It is very easy to be a very passive and milquetoast Christian (if there is such a thing).  Do we follow the example of the monks of the Egyptian desert and flee from this bastardized American version of the faith?  What is the right response?

Passions

The church fathers speak of the passions.  These could be thought of as "the energy that moves us to do things."  What this really comes down to is that we so often, or even usually, do things because we "feel" like it.  What we eat and how much.  What clothes we wear.  What things we say.  The entertainment we choose to take in.  In most cases, we choose these things because we feel like it.
This is a problem.  It has become such a part us and in fact, it is the way we are inclined to live and move, because of our sinful nature, that it seems "normal".  But living by the passions is anything but normal.  It is not the way we are supposed to live.  Living by the passions is like a fish that wants to live out of the water, it only leads to death.
We must learn to motivated by and live by love for God and love for man.  Doing things because it is the right thing to do, because it is the loving thing to do, or both.  As we continue forward in our path of sanctification we will continually move towards being more like Jesus Christ and less like Adam.

Static vs Dynamic

     The church fathers have commented that someone is either increasing or diminishing, in regards to their faith.  That someone is never static, or at a plateau.  Our lives as believers ought to be dynamic, we should always be growing: in our love for God, in our love for others, in our understanding of who God is and our relationship with Him.  We should be growing in our understanding of others and our relationships with them.  This is not to reduce our faith to merely an academic exercise.  I am talking about love for God and love for man.
     But there certainly is an academic side to all of this.  When you love someone else and spend time with them, you automatically come to know them better, and this includes all kinds of details, some important and others trivial.  The wonderful thing about God is that no detail about Him is ever trivial.  We ought to be striving to know him better, including in an academic sense.  Knowing the text of Scripture and knowing church history are two ways that we come to know God by seeing how He has interacted with and treated His people through time.
     One more very important point.  Learn to read Scripture and history by imitating the saints.  We can fabricate all kinds of novel and interesting ways of reading, but that is really not helpful.  Learning to read and understand in the right way makes all the difference in the world.

Update on Maaloula

Here is a really good, short video on what the Islamic rebels are doing in Maaloula and how the Syrian army is trying to protect this Christian village.

http://rt.com/news/syrian-village-maaloula-fighting-555/

It is definitely worth watching.

Just like heaven, sounds like hell

People often use these kinds of phrases, in a semi-literal sense, as if they have some sort of idea of what heaven or hell are like.  One time, upon exiting a rock concert, I overheard a parent say to a small child, "You hear that?  Its straight out of the pit of hell."  Think about what is being said.  As if there is any music, of any kind, being created in hell.  Or when people see something beautiful, they say, "Its just like heaven."  This is, at best, silly, at worst, blasphemous.  Sadly, our thoughts and ideas about heaven and hell have been formed by things like Dante's Divine Comedy, fire and brimstone preachers, and our own passions.
We must strive to have our thinking be in agreement with the Scripture and the Church.  I encourage you to do a study of Scripture and see what it actually says about heaven and hell.

Correction on Syria

After listening to a talk given by an Archbishop of the Syrian Orthodox Church, I learned that Syria is technically not a "Christian" country (contrary to what I said in a previous post), but is a secular country.  What this means is, two things, while the government led by President Assad is not pro-Christian, it is not anti-Christian either.  I have heard from numerous sources from Syria that Christians have been allowed to live and worship in peace under Assad.  Which will not be the case if the US takes Assad out of power.  If the rebel groups are empowered by the US and topple Assad, then pro-Muslim (read: anti-Christian) groups will make life and worship very difficult for Christians.  But this is no different than what has happened in every other Middle Eastern country that the US has gotten involved in and aided Muslim rebel groups in.

Please pray much for this situation and tell your Senator that the US should not strike Syria.

Update on Syria

The news on Syria only continues to get worse.  I have to ask why no one seems to have a problem with the US government supporting a rebel group comprised on militant Muslims.  See this article concerning Gen. Salim Idriss, leader of the Free Syrian Army.  As the Washington Post was speaking to Gen. Idriss, his group was preparing for an attack against the Christian mountain village of Maaloula, north of Damascus, which has remained loyal to the regime since the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad erupted in 2011.  The US involvement in Syria is boggling to the mind.  Have we completely lost all sense of right and wrong?  And even common sense?