Celebration

On this culturally important holiday, I wanted to make a few comments that have recently passed through my mind.  I'm afraid that most people will celebrate this 4th of July without a whole lot of thought behind so much of it.  Why are we celebrating?  What are we celebrating?  What does our involvement in this celebration say about us?  Do we actually agree with what this celebration communicates?
Obviously, this holiday is not celebrated by any other nation, especially those of the Natives of this land.  I would suppose that they see this as a day of mourning, similar to the 9/11 situation, as of late.  Does our celebration of this holiday mean that we agree with everything that our country has done or believes?  Probably not and most people would not think in these terms.  But our celebration does mean that we rejoice at the formation and continuation of this nation.  And I'm not too sure that celebration in this regard is really that good.  We have legalized the murder of our own unborn children.  We have recently legalized gay marriage.  We have murdered countless thousands in illegitimate wars and operations.  Obviously, any kind of anti-American activity is out of the question.  That is not appropriate for a Christian.  We do not fight against flesh and blood.  But on the other hand, we should not actively support, encourage or celebrate the state of our nation either.
There really is no conclusion to this thought, just an encouragement to consider what we are doing and why.

The beauty of Orthodoxy

     In all my years of theological, doctrinal and spiritual study, I have come to understand something wonderful.  After many years of hard work in ancient languages, philosophy and hermeneutics, I finally came to the point of realization that just about any doctrinal position could be taken by the manipulation of logic, philosophy and Scripture.  This left me bleak.  This situation leaves one in a position of final authority.  This realization left me even more bleak.  Being the sinner that I am, I had no faith in my own ability to see and understand enough to feel myself on a solid foundation.

     Then I found the Orthodox church.  Jesus Christ established the church through the apostles and their successors, with the guarantee that it would be led by the Holy Spirit, forever.  The historic Christian church has existed since day one, moving and growing and healing people into free willed beings in loving communion with God.  We all have free will but we are all under the God established authority of the church.  This takes away the terrible problem of final authority.  That authority is found only in Jesus Christ and through the Holy Spirit led church, we can be certain that, upon our obedience, we will grow in our relationship with God.  We do not depend upon our own feelings, our own wisdom, or our own education.  God leads us through the church.

     That is beautiful.

A goal

The last several decades have formed the mind of popular culture to see religion and religious figures in a poor light.  Priests and television preachers and Christians in general, are mocked, held in contempt and mistrusted.
How about this for a challenge?  What could we do, as Orthodox Christians, to form the mind of popular culture to associate "Orthodoxy" with "love"?
Really, this is what God calls is to in Scripture, "they will know you by your love." (John 13:35)

Remember

Many people need to be commended on their recognition of, and response to, immodesty.  In our day and in our culture, immodesty is a huge problem and usually is not recognized or addressed.  But there are some groups, Christian or otherwise, that see immodesty as a problem.  This is a good first step.
It is sad that some people critique or mock the followers of Islam for their wearing of burqas.  This choice of attire is, for all intents and purposes, modest.  While the worldview behind it is all wrong, at least it's modest.
The next step though, in this line of thought, is the addressing of vanity. Far too often, someone may be modest, but incredibly vain. While of course it is bad to be immodest, it is just as bad to be vain.  Someone who is wallowing in vanity is really in the same mindset as someone who is immodest. 
This really is about the heart and not externals.  When the thinking is right, right actions will follow.  It is fairly easy to see what someone thinks about appearance by looking at how they attire themselves.

The center of things

The thought came to me today how do often, in our thoughts, in our actions and in our prayers, we practically function as if all reality can and should center upon us. 
When we pray, we typically ask for things that we think would be good or right.  We pray for things that we believe would make our situation better or more comfortable.
Both the foolishness and the arrogance of this is astounding.  What makes us think that we have any idea, whatsoever, of what would be best?  Our understanding is so extremely limited and narrow, that to presume anything but ignorance is crazy.
This is why the church teaches us to simply pray, "Lord have mercy."  When pursuing a new job, a purchase of a home/move, where to go to school, or anything else, we simply cry out to God to have mercy on us and do what He thinks is best.

Proper?

I have written before about how, regardless of our intent, our appearance communicates a message to those around us.  And that message is defined by the culture in which we live.  Thus it is our responsibility to try to make that message as honest and accurate as possible. 
The question came to mind, what is the "proper, young man"?  What message is being communicated by the young man who looks "proper"?  There is a look that young men can carry that communicates a sense of proper and nice.  The kind of guy a parent would want to meet.  But what kind of person is that?
Coming from an Orthodox perspective, I would suggest that, while this "proper" look is not negative, it is contrary to the Orthodox faith.  "Proper" usually carries with it the attribute of "successful" in a worldly, temporal sense.  The American dream and the Protestant work ethic have created a culture that, albeit prosperous, is very worldly.  The proper, young man is very temporally focused.
So the next question, what does a spiritual minded Orthodox youth look like?  This is worth pondering, as we are raising up the next generation.  And the culture around is doing a very poor job.

Experience

Over the past while, I've been reading about DMT, a relatively new, hallucinogenic drug that is quite popular right now.  The thing that is so intriguing about this stuff is the subtitle, "the spirit molecule."  It is strongly suggested/believed in the DMT circles that the ingestion of this naturally occurring drug opens one up to a different reality.  It is suggested that the drug reveals the foundational, universal reality behind and beneath the visual, temporal reality in which we currently live.
While I am not going to go into the validity of this argument, I do want to explore the idea of this experience.  There are many experiences that occur across the board.  So it is suggested that the experiences that people have are actually an objective reality. 
My question is this: in the living out of an experience like this, upon what do we base our interpretation of those experiences?  Because the things being experienced are from a different reality, we have nothing to which to compare them.  This is the real danger.  Because we are talking about a non temporal (spiritual) experience, the potential for deception is very high.  And beings or entities that one may meet in this kind of experience are going to be safe or dangerous.  They will be honest or they will lie.  And how can we know to trust them or not?  From a Christian perspective, one must presume that these beings are malevolent (demonic).
This is about presuppositions and worldview.  How do we interpret our experiences?