An experiment in music

As some of you may know, I am a huge lover of music.  My appreciation of music covers a very wide range of styles, with the exception of county and marching band.  Other than that, I can see the skill, or lack thereof, in many didn't genres.
As of late, something has popped into mind.  I have noticed that my appreciation of Orthodox church music is in a completely different category than my appreciation of any other music style.  Initially, my thought was simply that, because church music is music for church, ones like or dislike would need based on one's view of church. In other words, I appreciate Orthodox church music simply because I am Orthodox.
But I think there is more to it than that.  I am starting to think that 99% of music is made from a very worldly, temporal perspective.  It seems that music is created out of one's passions.  This would explain why the "best" music (or even just art in general) is made by people who have done sort of issues, whether due to really bad childhoods or did sin/perversions in their life.
If this assessment is correct, then the conclusion we must draw is something painful.  If all music, with the exception of actual religious music (and I'm not talking about contemporary Protestant music, that's just bad all together), is based upon and created out of the passions, then listening to it would only move us into passion instead of into things godly and eternal.
I don't think I like where this is going...
Any thoughts?

Atheists

At a foundational level, the atheist denies the existence of deity based on the idea that because proof cannot be given for the existence of deity, they cannot exist.  But they are confusing categories.  They want a tangible, physical, logical proof for something that is not in those categories.  To use an illustration, they want to know the color of sound.  As a side note, it seems that many of them don't want answers, they just want to argue.

Part two

As i began in my last post, I'll try up finish here.  Having our priorities in proper place can only happen when we understand what is actually important.  We all have very many little things that are important for the moment.  This happens because of so many decisions we must make.  If we are not monks, then we live in the world and thus have wants, needs and responsibilities.
But not being monastic does not mean that we cannot be godly.  We all must strive after a path of godliness, regardless of how full our plate is.  The challenge is in discerning the plates contents.
Especially living in America, it is far too easy to get distracted with all that takes place, far too much of it is mere frivolity.  Not being a monk doesn't mean we can waste our time on foolishness.
In short, assess where you are, don't get distracted by frivolity and give up what keeps you from the pursuit of holiness.  Temporal life is very short.  Out eternal life will be determined by this short time here. What are you doing to form your soul into one that is pleasing to God?

The money trail

If I told you that if walked down a certain road, you would be able to find $20 bills for every ten feet you walked, I can guarantee you would be there immediately and would walk a long ways, probably to the point of exhaustion.
I'm sure you can guess where I am going with this. The illustration is a metaphor of the Christian life. And like it or not, it's a very small picture.  That which we will gain by walking the path of sanctification of far, far greater than a handful of cash. Personally, I think the metaphor is somewhat childish, but still true.  My point in bringing it up is that the truthfulness of the metaphor exposes just how little we actually believe it to be true.  If we truly believed it, our lives would look different.  We would not be drawn away by every shiny bauble the world throws at us.  We wouldn't be wasting so much of our time on such foolishness and distraction.
The fact that we waste so much time shows us where our heart is at.

Football, again

Despite appearances, I honestly have absolutely no interest in American football, or any football for that matter.  But another illustration came to mind, in this regard.
Every since the NFL began, no one could simply throw together a couple of dozen guys in football uniforms and call themselves an NFL team. And even more so, imagine if there was a team in that league and they decided that they should be in charge and be allowed to make the rules.  Upon being ousted from the league, then began calling themselves alone the NFL.  No one would believe them and they would be ignored.
Why is the church any different?
From the apostolic time forward, those who followed and submitted to the apostolic teaching and authority were part of the church.  Then 1000 years later (AD 1054 actually), the Roman Church decided to claim to be the sole authority over the Christian church.  Upon being rejected as such, they tried to excommunicate the other patriarchates but then were themselves excommunicated.
This has been the situation every since.  Yet somehow, they now claim to be "the" church.  Of course, the Lutherans followed suit and then the multitude of Protestant sects followed after them.  Now we have multiple thousands of separate groups not in communion with one another and not in communion with the historic church.  Why does this not seem to bother anyone?
I think a good place to start is to recognize the wretched influence of individualism from America, upon everyone's thinking. As well as the influence of politically-correct thinking as well.  We need to start thinking more like Christ and less like the world, political correctness be damned.

Thoughts on heaven

As I have, of late, been thinking through the reality of the spiritual aspect of man, it has occurred to me that we actually know so little in this regard.  This thought led me to consider how incapable we most likely are of conceiving what eternity will be like.  In other words, I find it highly likely that we do not understand (at best), or are actually incapable of (at worst) comprehending eternity in the presence of God.
The way I see it, from the day we are born, almost every aspect of our lives is centered around the temporal. We eat healthy, we exercise, we go to school, to university and to work, all in the name of earning a good living and enjoying life.  But we pretty much ignore the spiritual side.  So it should come as no surprise that we would be completely ignorant of, or even incapable of, perceiving eternity.
I think that spiritual things are so foreign to us because we have almost nothing in our lives that moves us in that direction.  Even most churches focus simply on morality.  So to think about and formulate ideas about spiritual existence is beyond us. 
Someone said to me once, "I think eternity would get boring.  It would just go on forever."  While I can understand where they are coming from, their statement only makes my point.  If we understood our own spiritual nature, I don't believe we would ever conceive of being bored with the presence of God.  You cannot speak of that of which you have no point of reference.  If we put no effort towards experiencing or living spiritually, we cannot conceive or think of such a life.
I'm afraid for a lot of people.

New website!

For those of you interested, I've started a new website, www.orthrosgnosis.wordpress.com.  It consists of a commentary on the epistle reading for each Sunday, as based on the Antiochian Orthodox Church calendar (you can see it here).  Take a look, I appreciate your support and feedback.