ORLAPUBS R185: "TRUTH THAT WORKS FOR US"

THAT EVER-AWESOME AND VENERABLE
"TRUTH THAT WORKS FOR US"
THAT OUR "INNER VOICE"
BIDS US PAY HEED TO

     When it comes to a choice between the collective tradition or Christianity that has held up for 2000 years and idiosyncratic whim that may hold up for several months, the latter seems to be the more venerable on terrorvision--whose most frequent expletives are "My God" and "I swear to God." The inner voice wins out, if not every time, almost every time--or so it seems. It is truly omniscient.
     Anthems like that magnificent "Praise the Lord, my soul" (Ps. 145, the 2d anthem of the typics in the Slavic rite) or the Slavic "Heavenly Jerusalem" and Alleelouias before the Gospel or the Greek Cherouvikon and Aneite at the Communion could not get to first base if a competition were to be held on terrorvision. Such passe music is just "the old tradition." How can such words and inspired music or the Truth that has held up for two millenniums and inspired millions (e.g. under Communism) to die for Christ matter in our modern society?
     No, the individual is supreme--if not individualism. If individualism will get you into trouble, there is a kind of self-authority that is allowed: Just follow the truth that works for you, and you can go your own way. This truth cannot be just yours however. That would be dangerously individual--as mock-worthy as following an enduring tradition. Make sure that you inner voice is not too individual or you will butt heads with the majority. At all events, tiime and durability matter not. The ephemeral is better, provided that it "works for you."   Never mind if one's "inner voice" bids one to heed a different "truth that works for me" tomorrow.   Never mind if it cannot endure. The ever-present "now" is all that counts.   Whim reigns supreme. The only constant in all of this seems to be the aim of "feeling good about myself."
     I can invent my new religion as others do--look at the allegedly 29,000 denominations of Christianity alone. Never every one believes the Bible literally, as a matter of course. Never mind that none of them believes John 5:53-54; the inner voice does not accept that.. Whatever one's background, one is competent to understand Scripture according to my own inner voice and inclinations. Don't try to tell us what it means.

This sad description of contemporary Western understanding of things that ought to be handled gingerly as sacred mysteries, this bringing it all down to earth, this faddism . . . is a poison whose roots lie in late-Mediaeval Western culture, now maturing in our heedless society. Much of today's society is admirable; you know that when you go to others that are not. But our good points perversely lead to the bad side. Why is it that the "inner voice" is more worthy than the spiritual insights and collective wisdom about God that have endured so many hundreds of years--two millenniums. Why do these insights have no value in comparison with the "inner voice"? That truth and the infinite God are to be found circumscribed in finite "l'il ole me" is truly remarkable, isn't it?

     In less than three generations, we have moved from respect for dis- cipline, work, duty, and sacrifice to a prevailing narcissism that expects some- thing for nothing, a culture in which we are bombarded with ads that tell us we "deserve" the product being hawked, and in which respect for just about everything except winning-at-all-costs has gone by the board. Strangely enough, only in sports (at the lower level) are work and expertise appreciated--and at the highest level rewarded in unbelievable commercial ways. We admire the clever inventors of new modes of communicating more for the huge sums of money they have garnered than for the work, intelligence, and energy invested in their successes. We see the same trends in the way we vote politically, in the way we vote in choosing certain programs on the media, and in what we spend our money and free time on. Religion is as taboo on the commercial media as invoking God in one's "oaths" is frequent. And on the religious media, we see giant "worship centers" with huge organs and manifold choirs (requiring more than one director), and floral arrangements all centered on the podium from where words of comfort and admonitions are directed toward us who attending and those who pay for such enormous outlays of time and personnel. Of doctrine there is little; a sermon can move seamlessly from Adam and Eve to one's problems with one's spouse. Cheating on exams in merely frowned on; petty theft is smiled at; and the idea of intellectual integrity is way off in never-never land, something more real to atheistic scientist than practising Christians, many of whom, living on slogans as they are wont to do, have no idea of how to sift out truth from fiction.
     At many junctures in past history, similar observations have been made. Now it is our turn. Prosperity previously unknown has not brought cures for society's ills but a sort of frenetic effort to cure some pigeon- holed category of defects. This is not necessarily bad: One cannot focus on everything, and progress in such directions is good wherever it occurs. But each effort lacks the holism that would brings all of such scattered efforts onto a single screen in a unified vision in which efforts to remedy one defect would redound to remedying others. We have our favorite causes or charitiess; we lack the vision that ties them together in a giant co-operative social effort. Medical cures are praised because we do not wish to have to take care of and pay the costs for sick parents, who have lived longer on average than ever. We often paint over ills--defects in our automobiles, bovine encephalitis, whatever--hoping they may not get worse and cost us a lot; when it is too late, we wish we had acted sooner.
      Adults who grew up in the depression pamper their children and grandchildren--mostly out of love, but not out of enough love to see the greater value of discipline for their contentment and well-being. Instant gratification (a strange word!) is the order of the day; a sense of time-- past history, future needs--is replaced with an awareness of the instant. What is lost is a sense of the eternal, the sublime, the tugs from above-- things that even the pre-Christian pagans were very aware of.

Our Our religion is not like a garment that we might change according to the circumstances; it is part and parcel of our bones and blood and personality . . . If you try to force your will upon us we are ready to suffer and to be tortured and even to die. However, you should know in advance that there is no power on earth which can force us to change our religion because our covenant is not with man but with the Almighty God.

For all too many, the foregoing sentiment lacks beauty or sublimity and even nobility, though it will evoke tears from some. What of the forty Holy Martyrs of Sebaste? How impressive were the secret actions of St. Nicholas and many others? Think of the holy Unmercenaries, SS. Kosmas and Damianos, brothers and physicians who would accept no pay for their healing in the name of the Most High. (Of course, they didn't have to buy equipment costing many fortunes; nor did they have to repay enormous expenses borrowed for their education.) There were more than one pair of brothers in the third century who were unmercenaries that were martyred because of the envy of physicians who accepted remuneration.

Where Western doctrines have come and gone like fads, Orthodoxy, with it unbroken links to the Greek-language Bible and early doctrines, has endured. Has this been because Orthodoxy has been true, or just because the Orthodox are too hide-bound by tradition to be able to change? Those who read what the traditionalist Orthodox say and those who believe John 16:13 will find their answer there. One is not unaware that Buddhism, Hinduism, and other religions of India have long endured, or that the history of Islam is not brief; Judaïsm is the oldest, but is a special case for Christianity, since we Orthodox hold that the Prophets and Patriarchs--Moses, Elijah, etc.--saw the uncreated Light of YHWH, the One Who is, the same Jesus Christ the Reason and Wisdom of God before Whom we bow our heads to the ground just as they did. (St. Elizabeth called Jesus's by us much revered mother "the mother of YHWH" in Luke 1:43.) One is not unaware that societies in India, Islamic countries, and various Orthodox lands have not been open enough to winds of change for the cultures in question to liberate the people in ways one can applaud. To have the good, do we have to accept the ills? Is freedom to live a fulfilling life also freedom to mess up one's culture? These are serious questions.
It has been said that time heals all wounds and wounds all heels. If it is clear that errors inevitably get found out over time, and that truth has the solidity to endure, we must ask whether Orthodox teachings (not this or that canon, but our beliefs) have appeared false over time--the way one generation of adherents to Western religions repudiates or changes the teachings of its its grandparents. It can be argued that Orthodoxy has survived this touchstone of truth. In respect to what is at issue, what is true of religious doctrine is true of other pursuits. The fads and fashions of today's cultures will not endure; what people chase after will in time be found out to be unfulfilling. So it has always been, so may it be presumed to be going to be. But what a waste to invest so much effort and energy in chasing after the will-o'- the-wisps that occupy so much space in people's lives and degrade rather than elevate our culture and individual's souls. On some terrorvision shows, the only thing the writers seem to think people spend time on is plotting the next seduction. Since shows come and go, losing their appeal after viewers get tired of the same theme or themes, perhaps "nature" works a cure over time and patience is what we need. Prosperity often loosens the shackles on propriety. One is not against propsperity in noting that traditionalist societies have "pros-pered" least in the long haul. Will humanity ever achieve a balance in which the truths that endure can co-exist with prosperity and a proper freedom of individuals to be able to choose from among a wide spectrum of pursuits the ones most fitted to their talents and aspirations? Is anyone trying to devise such a system? Isn't it rather true that newly invented forms of Christianity growing as fast as they cast off traditional religious beliefs and behavior--leaving the non-paradox that the greatest number of divorces are taking place among the most anti-traditionalist of all--Evangelicalism, whose contributions to high culture are very mea- gre? What is also no paradox is that a society that decides truth on what "works for me," an individualist culture in which one's inner voice is the final touchstone of truth, a society in which desires are confused with deserts and self-fulfilment not only prevails in terms of immediately obtaining the object of every (not very lofty) desire, a society that substitutes whim, for discipline and even scorning sacrifice, and chase after every novelty . . . is and always has been a society headed for a show-down. For "the sublime" has run out of steam in such a culture.

Fideism replaces a disciplined investigation of what is truth in even the areas of truth that have eternal consequences. Swayed by unexamined simplifications and a lack of training in discerning truth from mere probability or (more usually) what one would like to be true, many embrace this or that religion or cause if it will give them something to do. Beneath it all, many still have enough of their humanity alive to desire what is true and good--perhaps only for their own gratification but sometimes in the larger, more communal picture. For whatever reason, many do seek direction. Actually, strict intellectual honesty may be found outside of the modish religions more than in them, since the insiders fideistically accept what is on offer. Many invent their religions, their interpretations of the Bible, and even call figurative interpretations "literal"- so incognizant are they of how to go about finding truth. Cult leaders suppress any show of a questioning mind and impose fideism in place of "rightly discerning the truth."
Holy Orthodoxy offers an alternative to the infections of modern society (though of course, the Most High has not spared many of its leaders and followers from being infected). It doesn't go in for the latest philosophical modes or change its garments with every new -ism. Its stability is sometimes too rigid and even a drawback, but the anchor of stability is ever-present. Orthodoxy as it actually exists in the concrete is certainly not defect-free--something evident to anyone who looks; but it is holy and elevating. The Holy Spirit has kept our Savior's promise in John 16:13 with respect to Orthodoxy for two millenniums now. Its holiness and beauty may not shine through all of that evidently in every context; its unwillingness to change its clothes with every fashion may even be compromised and gotten around by some. But the kernel is enduringly solid. One moves to a higher level of truth and beauty and goodness when one embraces the ancient Faith and the assumptions that underpin an understanding of its truths and practices. How could they have endured this long and produced sixty million martyrs in the USSR alone in the last century if it were full of holes. Orthodoxy has been tested--by time, by the endurance of its core of true believers, by the Holy Spirit. This has been done on all levels--intellectual, practical, artistic--but above all on the level of being--being energized by divine Grace and miracles and healings for twenty centuries. At the prayers of the all-holy Theotokos to her divine Son, we may expect the true and good and beautiful to continue and the false and bad and ugly never to gain the upper hand; may the unfading exaltation of our spirits continue to breed among us the workings of the uncreated Energies of Grace and never spare us the corrections of proper discipline. The miracles and healings and the dóxa "Glory" of Orthodox belief, worship, and other pious behavior, and not least the repeated words of our prayers that impress our hearts with a proper understanding, unite us with myriads of Martyrs and Confessors, Church Fathers and Mothers, and other Saints, not to speak of the Angels, Cherubim, and Seraphim--all thought to be present at the Oblation of every the divine Liturgy--and with all who sleep in Christ in one holy Fellowship of love that is two millenniums old, yet is unaging and ever invigorated with the uncreated Energies of Grace by the all-holy Paraclete promised by our Savior to lead us to all truth.

We excite ourselves today over so many trivial issues and some important ones. We indeed behold many seeking Truth with a capital "T." But who knows how to find Truth, how to find God? What religious body tells the seekers how? Some say "We've got it; you'd better accept it"--evidently on the private recognizance of a leader of the representatives of the 20,000 kinds of Christianity or the representatives of some other religion. Or else we are admonished to, "believe whatever one's inner voice directs; we're all saying the same thing at all events"--no matter how contradictory what we all are saying may be! The general level of insight is at a major low. Busy-business replaces thought and contemplation, not to speak of understanding. All the complex things of religion can be reduced to three or four rules of thumb.
The real religion of the American masses is a worship of the inner voice and the "truth that works for me"--which so many assume that a finite inner voice can discover. Why bother to study? Why learn about the culture of ancient times or the history of thought? Why can't one just decide what any verse of whatever Scripture one dabbles in really means? Why would it matter if some interpretation wipes out the sense of the passage and often makes nonsense?

     I wonder how, without the guidance of the Fathers & Mothers, one could determine which images in the Bible are metaphorical, which are literal, which are models.
      Many Protestants who interpret the Bible literally treat John 6:53-54 either virtually or metaphorically or Gnostically. I have yet to meet an avowed literalist that can or will tell me how (i) s/he knows that that some verses are not literal and at the same time how (ii) the fact that some verses are not literqal squares with one's profession of accepting every word of the Bible literally (which is an impossible and indeed insane sentiment, as we know--no examples are needed).
     What is the way out of the dilemma? Is it just that some emotionally driven people cannot or will not think straight? I don't think so, since I know some fairly intelligent people who accept the above contradictions (and won't explain how).
     Without the inspired collective tradition (John 16:13), anything can be a metaphor or a virtual reality or just literal. But there are a lot of things that are not "just literal" for literalists.
    Where is the doxa in any of all of that haggling and niggling uncertainty or rather false certainty? The true Glory is the Reign of Christ--the cloud of uncreated Energies emanating from the Divine Essence and bestowed by the all-holy Spirit on the faithful . . . the true Glory that will be shared in in due course by the faithful in its unending fulness. Can you imagine a divine Liturgy with choirs of Seraphim, Cherubim, and Angels chanting the responses and prayers, singing the Standard of Belief, and all bowing down--wings and all--before the Altar on high and the throne of the Lord of Hosts, the Pantokrator who made all that has been made, and the Spirit of Energy on fire, in the shadows of the unblinding but dazzling uncreated Light that never wanes? However metaphorical such language may be, the realities will be analagous.