Regarding interpretation

I've recently been spending some time in Matthew 25 and some things came to mind.  Most of the time, when people read this passage, they automatically think in terms of the end of the world.  But, as I've come to realize, this is mistaken. First, the eschatalogical text in Matthew 25 is simply one part of a larger narrative.  In other words, one is mistaken to pull this text out of its surrounding texts and disregard what come before.  Second, the beginning of this overall section begins with these words,

Jesus left the temple and was walking away when his disciples came up to him to call his attention to its buildings. 2 “Do you see all these things?” he asked. “Truly I tell you, not one stone here will be left on another; every one will be thrown down.”

3 As Jesus was sitting on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to him privately. “Tell us,” they said, “when will this happen, and what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?”

It speaks very clearly here.  The question that Jesus is answering is about the future and end result of the temple and its system.  "When will this happen" and "what will be the sign of your coming".  Jesus answers this with the following text.  Its not about the end of the world, its about the end of the old covenant and the temple which personifies that era.  All of this takes place, as Jesus said, within the time period of that generation.

I encourage you to read the text, just as an exercise, as if what I am suggesting is accurate.  I would love to hear some feedback in this regard.

Wholly Holy

The thought occurred to me this morning regarding the comprehensivity of the Orthodox faith, in comparison to the fragmentation or compartmentalization of Protestantism/Evangelicalism in America.  In the Orthodox life, our faith directs and controls every aspect of our living.  We live according to the church calendar, which directs our food intact, our use of time and our use of money.  Our thinking is formed by the regular exposure to and involvement in, the Scriptures and the lives of the saints.  Our diets are controlled and directed by the regular, consistent fasting pattern that is described in the calendar.

Because the foundation of the Orthodox faith is “love God and love neighbor”, we must think about everything that we do and how our actions connect to and are modeled by, these two standards.  As Orthodox believers we strive to purge out the passions, live according to the Spirit and think the mind of Christ.  Of course, we stumble and fall far too often.  But confession brings us back and reminds us who we are and what Christ has done for us.

Our life should be one of reciprocity.  We love God because he first loved us.  We love our neighbor because God loves us, regardless of how sinful or stupid we may be.  There is no neighbor who could sin against us in any way greater than we have sinned against God. 

Poisoning the well

A curious metaphor came to mind this morning as I was musing on the state of all those who call themselves Christians.  I am finding myself being more and more careful with labels these days, as it is not a simple matter of saying "Christians" any longer, as evangelicals, fundamentalists, Protestants, Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormons, Catholics and Orthodox, all identify themselves as "Christian".
Anyway, the current social media/news feeds throw around the term "Christian" and far too often those connotations are negative. We think of TV preachers, sexual scandal (in both evangelical fields and Roman Catholic) and many think of Christians as ignorant, backwater, gullible fools with no grasp on modern science.  What do we do to combat this?
My metaphor was that of child abuse.  Imagine trying to communicate the love of God the Father to someone who was frequently abused, in all sorts of manners, by one's father.  For that person, the image of God as Father only brings up horrible memories.
The reality is that the splintering of the church, first in 1054 when Rome broke away from the rest of the church, again in the 1550's when the Protestant Reformers began their rebellion and the rest of Protestant/evangelical/American home religions splintering in the 19th and 20th centuries, brought about terrible confusion and miscommunication.  When we say "church" or "Christian", people far too often think of the deviations rather than the historic Church.
There are two things we can do in response.
1) We pray.  Pray that God gives us wisdom to respond rightly and in love.
2) We speak up, calmly and with love when opportunities arise.  We should always take the opportunity to clarify and identify the historic Church and how most of what we see in American religion is not faithful to the historic faith.

Context

Having heard a song recently, composed and performed by the son of an acquaintance, the idea of context for identifying and labeling “problems” came to mind.  In this song, the young man, a middle class, classically educated white male, laments his situation of struggle against sin as a hellhole.  I was left wondering if this person had any understanding of human suffering, for example, the people in Syria, Yemen or Central Africa.   

So, my question is this, what is the standard for defining suffering?  Do we label our situations based on how it compares to our typical standard of living or is there a universal standard?  Can the rich, white, Protestant 20-something complain that his life is hell simply because his particular situation is less than the standard he typically enjoys?  Or is he to shut up and quit whining because his situation is nothing compared to the suffering that so many undergo, daily, in other parts of the world? 

In short, is it legitimate to whine and complain about one’s discomfort when one has had every creature comfort at one’s disposal and the level of “suffering” is due a life of ease and a lack of self-control?

False Dichotomy

There are two problems here and they originate from wrong thinking on opposite ends of the spectrum.  The Democratic party understands and tries to put into practice, the idea of helping others and fulfilling needs.  The Republican party understands and tries to put into practice, the idea of personal freedom and personal responsibility. 

But the Democratic party puts too much power in the hands of big government and is heading toward a nanny state where the government takes care of everything. 

The Republican party puts too much freedom into the hands of the individual without taking into account the need for accountability and love for neighbor. 

The biggest problem, that I see is the lack of other options.  From the beginning of time, there has never been an adequate form of government that balances these issues.  I think the answer must be in the form of “size”.  It seems that big never works. Big churches fail, because there is a lack of accountability and neighborliness.  Big cities don’t work for the same reason.  The answer is “love your neighbor” and that cannot be done when you don’t know your neighbor and have no connection with him. 

If you live, for example, in a small town, or are part of a close community, the social problems that are currently extant in very large situations, are not.

The Value of Silence

Far too often, we obtain a small portion of information and then, thinking we are informed, begin to speak.  This sort of thing takes place often in the field of politics.  I suspect that there is much data unreleased to the general public.  Meetings take place, documents are shared with a small control group and experts in their fields are engaged in decision making processes by those in power.  And all of this takes place, typically, outside of our purview. 

Our first response should be silence.  If we suspect (and we should) that we are missing large portions of information, we should not speak as if we are well informed.

Truth in the Arts

As much as I dislike the idea, my thoughts concerned “scary” movies are changing.  In the past, I have enjoyed a good scary movie, something with good jump scenes and usually of a “spiritual” nature, demons and ghosts and such.  But as I’ve seen trailers for the most recent movies to come out, I’ve begun to be troubled. 

While these thoughts are something I have pretty much always believed, they are really pressing me lately.  I believe that movies ought to be “true”, not in the silly “oh, that could never happen” kind of thing, like super hero movies or alien movies.  Obviously, there is not nor will there ever be super heroes and (I don’t believe) there is no such thing as intelligent alien life. But that is not what I’m talking about. 

I’m talking about truth as in “worldview”.  When a story is told, there is a foundational worldview that is behind and beneath it, upon which the scenarios and story is built.  This, I am arguing, is what must be true.  And unfortunately, scary movies are becoming less and less “true” as our culture digresses into depravity.   

In almost all cases, something of value can be taken from a story and used to our benefit, as long as the story is built on truth.  But when the story is built on falsehood, it will most likely have no redeeming value.  This is where Hollywood has gone wrong.  In recent scary movies, the demonic powers appear nearly invincible and God/angels/saints appear to have no bearing on the situations that take place.  We do not live in a world where Satan is nearly all powerful, where demons are regularly possessing innocent victims and evil wins. 

Yes, we do live in a world rampant with evil people, but Satan no longer has the upper hand.  God has defeated death and evil, we should not be entertained by a worldview that teaches the opposite.