Emerging Church Economics
There are too many errors in this book for unsophisticated readers. McLaren’s book has value only to readers who recognize the mistakes but are willing to learn about a position that springs from ideology and a theological framework. For me, the emerging church movement is enough to consider by itself without flawed economics intertwined
Mordecai Kaplan: Rethinking Judaism for
]]>The reason for the books is simple. If culture is to undergo the necessary moral transformation, it needs to draw from resources where the moral foundations of culture are understood. Western culture has those resources but they are hidden by the subjective relativism that afflicts so many today (including the Orthodox). If culture is to be renewed (which begins with the transformation of the individual), then we will need something more than just, say, the personal testimony of the individual. I believe in personal transformation, of the radical reorientation of the individual through the power of the Risen Christ. I see it again and again (more on that later). But without anything more, without serious intellectual engagement, we end up where many Evangelicals are today — civil religion politicized. And that simply wont endure.
Orthodoxy of course can offer something much deeper, but we aren’t doing it. I know you are trying, but I can’t really figure out why you spend time with the homosexual thesis and so forth. This isn’t a polemical statement calculated to raise your ire (I don’t work that way anyway). But if you are going to put you mind to the larger and more pressing problems, why not draw from the wealth that is already there? Why spend your time with such a marginal question? That I just don’t understand.
I don’t mean the Orthodox wealth because frankly, it is not there yet. We don’t seriously engage contemporary culture. Instead, we craft apologetic rationales about the “true faith” and so forth, or we elevate the cultures of the “mother country” that are themselves in collapse. Each approach has some value of course, but to my eyes the value is nominal. Instead, why not unearth the wealth that already exists in the Western moral tradition and expand and build upon it? Leon Kass, perhaps one of the greatest public intellectuals of recent memory, asked an Orthodox friend of mine when the Orthodox were going to join the debate. “You have the most developed anthropology of any religious tradition,” he said. Well, it’s a good question. So far all we have provided is the assertion the he, too, made. It doesn’t really help anyone in the end.
As for indifferent people, that has not been my experience. I don’t doubt that many people are indifferent, they are. Frankly I don’t have many dealings with them and life is such that hardship will shake them out of their slumber sooner or later. I tend to run into them when the hardship starts and I run into a lot of them. Many are not Orthodox but it does not matter because Christ died for all. My sense is that the “God question” is right below the surface, invisible to, say, the prying eyes of the media and other busy bodies but only because people are reluctant to talk about it except when they are around someone they risk trusting. I am not exaggerating when I say “all the time.” In fact, these days I am on alert because it happens much more often than not, especially with people I do not know beforehand.
That’s where I practice my thesis on the power of the spoken world. Personal experience opened that door, others provided the concepts that made it comprehensible. Discernment and a word spoken in truth changes the world one person at a time by revealing truth to the hearer which always references Him who is Truth. It’s only a matter of time before the person who embraces relative (circumstantial, existential) truth is drawn to Him who is Truth. I don’t do this to change the world. I do this because if we are sent to heal with the words of Truth we must obey, and through that obedience we too partake of the Life that Truth gives to us.
On the “Our Bishops Lack Moral Authority” question, well, I’ve been hammered quite a bit for my independence already. You can imagine that expanding that thesis will not be well received in many quarters. I read in your statement an implicit challenge. If it is correct and ultimately true (which is to say from above), then I have to find an independent means to generate income.
One correction though. The truth of true words in not dependent on the sanctity or character of the speaker. Bad character however, provides an easy excuse to dismiss them, which is why Paul wrote to “abstain from all appearance of evil” I think. Truth is still truth. It can never be diminished. The wrong speaker can be the pretext for dismissing it, however.
]]>Well, Abouna, simply put, after listening to the notable Gospel selections of Holy Week, I am at a loss. Why would an Orthodox priest invest such an amount of time, energy, and enthusiasm for what seems to me a suggestion that if we were only return to conservative thought, values, and leadership, “progressive,” liberal-created chaos will resolve, and society will, again, be just and equitable? Apparently the words on the lips of the Lord Himself regarding the Last Times have lost their “flavour.”
I see you referring to the virtual shelves of conservative “solutions” on Amazon that are nothing more than unproven conjecture, and not the clear and irrefutable voice of the prophets, the Apostles, the Martyrs, and the Fathers. Where are your HTML-boxed references to the “sanity” of the Psalms? To the patient, simplistic, consoling YouTube sermons of Mt. Anthony (Bloom)? My point above is that from where I am – outside the altar, in the street, in the hospital, in the prison – people are indifferent; they neither know about, nor care about the “issues” you find so profound. “Atheism” is an academic exercise that will only play to the boys in your “band.”
If words are, in fact, as powerful as you have so eloquently written, I am at a loss as to why your first live broadcast on Ancient Faith Radio is not “Our Bishops Lack Moral Authority.” Those were your words. And how much could change with actual moral leadership and guidance! It is overwhelming to imagine. Whatever. It will never happen… In the end, words are only as powerful as the person who speaks them.
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]]>I believe I have sustained a healthy skepticism of “labels,” nicknames, jingo, and the like, as significantly susceptible to misuse (e.g. to dismiss, isolate, “single-out” for purposes of embarrassment, etc.), as far out-weighing the potential “instructive” benefit. Secondarily, unless you are a “subscriber,” jingo necessarily begs further questioning and further definitions (e.g. what constitutes a “comprehensive culture” and what is “liberal Orthodox?”). Thus we end up with “third wayers,” sliding down the greased pig, squealing “Dissociation!” as Orthodox “conservative-meaning-Christian-Righters,” but gladly cozying up to “Discovery Channel: Genetics 101” so as not to appear “Orthodox foolish.” And at the very same time, you can walk into any Orthodox parish, of any jurisdiction, and easily demonstrate that the overwhelming number of people, in full fact, believe in heresy and teach it to our children! They could no more explain the theology of the first paragraph of the Nicene Creed than Mendelian Inheritance. Fr. Schmemann summed up confession: “Father, I didn’t kill anybody, cheat on my wife, or steal. I’m basically a good person.” And, Abouna, so are we all. We are all good people.
You devote such time and energy to “skirmishes” of cold intellectualization “among friends,” and at my level, no one cares. The battle down here is against indifference.
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