I cam across this blog entry: http://www.johnsanidopoulos.com/2013/07/i-believe-in-god-but-i-dont-go-to-church.html and I thought this would be excellent to re-blog here because it deals exactly with a lot of issues that many priests and clerics deal with on a daily basis. Archimandrite Paul Papadopoulos get's to the heart of the issue which is focused on egoism. Egoism fuels the drive to be above scripture, to be above the church and everything that it stands for. Of course being united to Christ is not the work of the individual but the work of the community.
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I believe in God but I don't go to church."
We often hear the above phrase
from acquaintances, friends and relatives, so our discussion will focus a
little more on spiritual matters.
The basic argument of people who
say that they believe in God yet do not go to church to participate in
the Mysteries of our Orthodox Church, is that they are bothered by
certain things, such as the luxuriousness of churches, obnoxious priests
and chanters, the language is ancient (they don't understand it), the
microphones, the lights, the candle offering (where they give money for a
candle), the time the Divine Liturgy is celebrated, etc.
The excuses are certainly a lot
when someone DOES NOT WANT to live according to how the Church says.
Unfortunately these people consider themselves outside the Church since
they do not accept the basic components of the life in Christ, which is
the participation of a Christian in the Mysteries of the Church. These
people are not Christians, at least not Orthodox, because while they
(supposedly) believe, they do not follow any word of Christ.
The issue of course is that most
baptized Christians do not know who Christ is or what the Church is,
and what Christ and the Church offer to people. Thus they do not attend
church, because essentially they do not know what they are missing, and
they do not know what the sacramental life can offer.
The Church, with all Her
Mysteries, transforms us, sanctifies us, and brings us into communion
with God. Our participation in the Mysteries of the Church is the key to
this personal resurrection of ours.
The Church does not exist merely
to take the position of medicine and exhaust all its capabilities, as
some wrongly treat it. The Church exists to lead people, the faithful,
to the Love, the Light and the Life in Christ through the Mysteries.
To say you believe in God is
easy, but to believe in God in an Orthodox manner and to do
corresponding works is difficult, though not impossible.
If a person really wants to know
Christ, they can do this through the sacramental life offered by the
Church. If you want to fool yourself you can claim to achieve this on
your own. However, I do not know anyone that has been sanctified outside
the Church. (The crazy thing is that some people consider as saints
people like Elder Paisios, Elder Porphyrios, etc., yet they do not
accept their lives.)
All this happens for just one
reason: Egoism. When each person believes themselves to be a better
interpreter of the Scriptures, and they believe the God-bearing Fathers
of the Church are beneath them, and they believe they are smarter, more
worthy and holier than the old "religionists" as they call them, and
when they believe they have no need to repent of any of their sins (!),
and they could be saved by themselves (whatever that means to them),
then this text will probably not trouble them at all, rather it has been
a long time since they fell into the abyss of self-love and delusion.
The biggest obstacle that
prevents contemporary man from reaching communion with God is precisely
this: they are trying to know Him the wrong way, using the wrong means,
outside the Church. They dismiss the mystery of love and remain
willfully grounded in a sterile faith which in a best case scenario
simply means "acknowledging the existence of God" and not trusting and
surrendering to Divine Providence.
What about St. Isaac of Nineveh? He was a Bishop of the Church of the East and is recognised universally as a Saint.
ReplyDeleteWhat do you mean exactly by that comment?
ReplyDeleteVanda! Thank you for this insightful response!
ReplyDeleteFirstly I would agree with the point you make about Egoism! Of course the author did not talk about the good sense of Egoism but rather the negative aspect associated with it. So I think we both agree on the point that if Egoism is placed in the wrong context it can lead to a negative outcome. Of the the "self" is very important because it is the self that must be emptied in the person of Christ to be united to God and everything that is good.
This next point and maybe I misunderstood you but you can explain it further that I disagree on is the interpretation of scripture! We cannot have our own understanding of scripture. We all know what happened in the 16th century when everyone started to interpret scripture from their own perspective. We have over 35,000 different protestant denominations that believe in this method. Scripture is understood in the light of Christ. All scripture is inspired only if it is interpreted through the person of Christ. IF you refer to Luke chapter 24 Christ told the two disciples on the road that it is he that all the prophets spoke of before! So in that regard scripture is understood in the light of Christ and not ourselves! The beauty of Scripture in the early church was that it was read within the context of the church community. Their was never personal understanding of scripture. Yes Scripture was read in the homes but to understand it people came together to interpret within the church. This goes back to the previous point of Egoism being good and bad. Bad Egoism can give rise to pride which can develop from personal interpretation of scripture.
Your last point is bang on! I coundlt agree more with this!
"Perhaps then, the biggest obstacle that prevents contemporary man from reaching communion with God is this: a closed heart and closed mind. For although it is good to try to know God INSIDE the church, it cannot be said, as this text has said, that trying to know Him OUTSIDE the Church is “wrong.” That could never be wrong, for there will always exist different paths to the same truth".
Thank you Vanda! I never heard of that but I will give it more thought! Thank you :)
ReplyDeleteOf course their was a personal understanding of scripture because scripture as we know it is lived out and my life won't be the same as yours but the starting point or as Origen says the first principle becomes Christ, that is when Scripture is revealed to all. Both lives and understandings might be different but the principle remains the same-that is Christ.
We cannot understand scripture in the light of ourselves because this has caused many different denominations to grow but rather we understand Scripture in the light of Christ for the life of the world. So our lives and our interpretation of Scripture is based on the person of Christ. To understand scripture we need to contemplate the mystery of Christ. We contemplate this mystery through his incarnation, death and resurrection. Once scripture is understood and read that way then the life we live in this world will become lived but for the self but for the love that we share with others! :)