Our responsibility

Many of us have many things that come under our umbrella of responsibility,  and some of us take on additional responsibilities, often out of a feeling of love for God and for neighbor.  But the one great responsibility that we have, and cas odd as it sounds, it really is the most important, is that of our own holiness.
Saint Seraphim of Sarov, a monk in 18th century Russia, once said, "Acquire the Holy Spirit and a thousand around you will be saved."  In short, this pithy saying is saying, work on your own holiness, i.e., be filled with the Holy Spirit and in doing so, everyone around you will be affected as well. 
As someone once said, "You can't communicate what you do not know."  So despite all the best intentions and love for neighbor, if you do not know and love the love of God, you will never be able to communicate that to your neighbor. And even more so, the closer you are to God, the better you will know him, the more you will understand who God is and the better you will reflect and communicate that love to those around you, usually in more effective ways than you could even devise yourself.
"Acquire the Holy Spirit and a thousand around you will be saved."

Emulating Christ

Our emulation of Jesus Christ is not in merely copying what he did, for this would be foolishness. For Jesus lived in the period of the old covenant, with all of its cleanliness laws, it's food laws and it's separation laws. Jesus lived as a faithful old covenant Jew. We, on the other hand, live in the new covenant. We are not forbidden pork, nor mixing our fabrics. We are permitted to eat dinner with gentiles. We are permitted to shave the sides of our heads, if we wish.

So what does it mean to emulate Jesus Christ? We are to do so by practicing his summation of the law, which is, to love God and to love neighbor. If we do this, we are fulfilling every aspect of the law, in total.

We should love those people in our circle of influence. We are to love where we live.

Purpose and Direction

Early this morning it occurred to me.  From 0 to 20, I had no direction in life. I graduated from high school, didn't go to college, got a job unloading semi-trailers of bales of alfalfa on local farms and played my guitar.  That was it.  Within a year of unloading alfalfa, I got another job, at a local factory, entry level.
It wasn't until I was introduced to the Reformed (Calvinist) version of Christianity that direction began to take form.  I immersed myself into the study of my faith and "understanding" was my goal.  So from that point (around 20 years old) to the time I was 40, "understanding" was my be all and end all.
I eventually went to seminary and earned my Masters degree in Divinity, with the goal of becoming a pastor.  God led me into teaching Bible and Koine Greek at a private Christian school, and I loved it. So why did I just share this brief biography?  As I was thinking about that, it occurred to me that direction and purpose is foundational to a person's well being.  As the old saying goes, "Idle hands are the devil's playground."  If someone has no specific direction in life, one of two things takes place. They either distract themselves with pointless and inane entertainment.  Or they immerse themselves in making money. 
I began to wonder what would happen if a person only worked "because they had to" and their vocation was merely a means to provide for themselves.  It seems that this sort of approach to vocation will probably result in vocational mediocrity. If you don't love and immerse yourself in your job, your work will (at least) be adequate at best. 
And then the spiritual side of things.  How do we tie all of this into a life that is focused on pursuing holiness and eternal life?  If we are totally focusing on making money, being comfortable and having a good size retirement plan, how can we say we are focused on eternity?

Issues

Issues are an interesting thing.  When I say "issues" I am talking about the internal/psychological struggles that everyone seems to go through at some time in their life.  These can range from small, short term struggles to deep, even neurotic, debilitating psychoses.  The thoughts that are plaguing me in this regard are "how"?
When we do a wide, brief survey of modern man, we see a wide range of people.  Rich, poor, beautiful, ugly, talented, awkward, gifted, average, educated and ignorant.  But all of these have issues, some more, some less and most in people that one would not expect.  The great modern lie of America is that having lots of money, power, fame and external beauty will make one happy.  But it simply does not work that way. In all honesty, it seems that the wealthier or powerful one becomes, the more issues surface.
In my semi educated, semi informed opinion, the foundation for all of this is family.  I would argue that the more solid and loving a family in which one grows up, the higher quality of life one will have.  A loving family will provide for the basic needs of life, will instill a sense of value, will provide a healthy self esteem and will provide a sense of importance of loving others.
If one does not have a stable, loving childhood, these things will not have been instilled and the person will have to find these things later in life, which, without a solid foundation, is increasingly difficult and will possibly lead to wrong choices and later issues.

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.