Category: Spirituality

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Stay Away From The Sand.

 In the days before I became a priest, I had many interesting discussions with various Jehovah’s Witnesses and Mormons (for some strange reason they seem to avoid me now). Among the many things this taught me was how easy it is to fall into the trap of making the Bible mean what you want it to mean. Allow me to clarify.

 There are two ways to approach the Bible. One is to read it with an open mind and let it educate you; and the other is to come to the Bible with a fixed idea already in your mind, and then selectively read it in order to find support for that idea.

 I shouldn’t just blame the Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses. At university I had a rather difficult dialogue with a homosexual Christian. I could not for the life of me see how one could profess Christianity yet openly flout a very clearly stated tenet of Christianity. His arguments were masterpieces of Bible twisting.

 And just in case you’re starting to feel a bit smug about it all at this stage, I am afraid that we in the Coptic Church are sometimes guilty of a bit of clever Bible twisting ourselves. How often have I heard a disgruntled husband sulkily pointing to St Paul’s command that wives must submit to their husbands (Ephesians 5:22)? Somehow, the verse before it (“submitting to one another”) seems to be invisible to these guys. People use Bible passages to accuse and discredit their enemies, forgetting that the same Bible exhorts them to love their enemies and do good to those who persecute them.

In fact, the Bible itself warns us not to twist its words: “knowing this first, that no prophecy of Scripture is of any private interpretation” (2 Peter1:20). History is replete with sad examples of Christians reading into the Bible support for their own agendas that in reality have nothing to do with God’s Word. The medieval Crusaders killed and pillaged and raped in the name of Christ. The European Catholic Church of the early Renaissance put people to death as heretics for believing that the earth orbits around the sun. In each of these cases, selected Bible verses interpreted in a certain way were used to back up these actions; actions that we now see are clearly the opposite of what the Bible stands for and teaches.

The Protestant Reformation reacted to this particular form of Bible twisting by creating its own. Martin Luther himself is notorious for calling the Epistle of St James a “book of straw” and dismissing its teachings. Why? Because St James insists that “faith without works is dead”, whereas Luther espoused the Protestant doctrine of salvation by faith alone without works. Thus does HH Pope Shenouda III often warn us to beware the danger of the “single verse”; the use of a Bible passage taken out of context, and without reference to all the other passages in the Bible that touch upon the topic.

You can be more confident in your interpretation of a Bible passage if no other Bible passage contradicts that interpretation (of course, you must also beware of mangling the meaning of other passages so you can squeeze them into your interpretation). As Orthodox Christians, we have another check on our interpretation: Holy Tradition. This consists of the interpretation of the Bible by the Fathers of the Church, the generations who lived in the centuries immediately after Christ, including Fathers who knew the Apostles personally, who sat and learned at their feet.

Christianity is a living tradition, not a monument of granite. The basic truths of Christianity will always be the same in every age and in every society, but of course it is the application of those truths that can often be most challenging. How much harder that challenge is if those truths themselves are vague or misinterpreted because we haven’t been diligent and honest in our reading of the Bible!

 Like building a house on a foundation of sand.

 Fr Ant

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In Praise of Truth

 I thought twice before writing this piece. The danger is that it is a topic where it would be so easy to sound trite and fanciful. For those experienced in the fickle ways of the world, truth can become nothing more than fantasy for children. When our Lord proclaimed that He had come to bear witness to the truth, the jaded Pilate scoffed cynically, “What is truth?” (John 18:38). In more recent times, post modernism has seen truth become suspect; so much so that any idea of a real, objective truth is to be rejected, and the only truth is a relative truth. You can make up your own truth.

 

And yet, truth cannot be so easily dismissed. It is there, lurking underneath everything we experience. Solid and unyielding, sometimes surprising, occasionally astonishing, always constant; our existence is built upon the basic existence of truth.

 

Our Lord called Himself “The Truth” (John 14:6) and He called the Holy Spirit, the “Spirit of Truth” (John 16:13). He came into the world “full of grace and truth” (John 1:14) and He exulted that the Truth would set us free (John 8:32). He denounced the devil because he “does not stand in the truth and the truth is not in him” (John 8:44).

 

For the *true* follower of Christ, then, truth is not an optional extra. It is an essential part of the make up of the Christian and should be found within the very fibre and sinew of the Christian soul. To be separated from the truth is, for the Christian, to be separated from life itself.

 

Truth is beautiful.

 

When we study the creation that surrounds us, how can we not be moved by its beauty? This is a beauty grounded firmly in truth. There is the true reality of the twinkling stars of space, the reality of the sweet harmony of a little bird’s call on a fresh spring morning and the reality of the soothing scent of a dew flecked rose. We take these things in with our senses and we know that we are alive! We know intuitively the difference between what is real and what is imagined, between waking and dreaming.

 

The deeper we delve, the more beauty do we find. A complex mathematical problem suddenly comes together and falls precisely into place: “Beautiful!” erupts the student. And it is! A solemn piece of music or a well crafted poem moves us to tears and we sigh longingly, “Beautiful”. A deep spiritual insight breaks upon our consciousness, explaining much that was hidden to us before and we shake our heads and say … “Beautiful”. This universe of ours is filled with natural laws and events that are finely tuned and amazingly designed. Among them is our own brain, designed with the built-in capacity to recognise truth and to delight in its beauty.

 

Truth can be painful, yet its beauty is not thereby diminished at all.

 

As long as one lives in truth, one is surrounded by its piercing beauty. There is a joy, a life , a vivid clarity in the sense of reality that truth brings that transforms even painful truths into deep pleasures. Yes, there is a sort of pleasure in discovering an evil creeping about inside your soul. You are repelled by the ugliness of the sin and the horror of having that slimy spiritual substance staining your innermost being. And yet, to discover it, to know that it is no longer hidden, to finally understand why you behave so unaccountably badly at times – this brings its own great joy and relief. The world begins to make sense again, and of course, true repentance becomes possible.

 

For without truth, there can be no true repentance. How can the soul that deceives itself ever truly repent? If it lies about the existence of its sins, how can it repent them? If it falsely apportions blame to others but never to itself, what can it change in order to attain repentance? If it constantly finds false excuses to excuse its evil behaviour, how shall it ever be motivated to repent? The truth of one’s own sinful nature is one of the hardest truths for us to bear, and a truth we flee from by instinct. But those who insist on turning around and facing it, however painful and dangerous it may be, discover in that courageous act the nobility of truth. And they are transformed by it, just as a coward’s life is transformed when he finally stops running from his fears and turns around to face them. He becomes a different person.

 

This is the transforming power of the Truth of Christ.

 

There is so much more to say in praise of truth. Perhaps, another time.

 

Fr Ant

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Hitchens’ Twisted Mind

What kind of God asks you to kill your son?

Christopher Hitchens, one of the “New Athiests”, posed this question in a lecture I heard recently. With great eloquence, Hitchens put God under the microscope and found Him wanting. How could God have asked Abraham to sacrifice his only son Isaac on Mount Moriah? What would we think of any human leader who asked us to kill our children to prove our loyalty and obedience? Surely, we would call such a leader a megalomaniacal despot, an egotistical maniac? That was the gist of his argument against God. It is Hitchens, after all, who wrote a booked entitled: “God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything”.

A sincere Christian cannot leave such a challenge unanswered…

The Unique Nature of God

If a human being were to demand this act of another human being, one would certainly have to question his motives and his character. No human has the right to take the life of another. We are all on the same level, so none of us has the right to practice the power of life and death over another, or even over himself. That is why the consistent Christian is opposed to both abortion and euthanasia.

And yet, we do not mind killing lesser creatures for good reasons. I have no doubt that even Hitchens occasionally sits down to enjoy a nice meal of roast lamb chops. I wonder, this make him a megalomaniacal despot and an egotistical maniac? How dare he participate in the brutal slaughter of a poor and innocent fluffy little lamb, merely to satisfy his selfish desire for protein?!

Now it is true that there are vegetarians in this world who for conscience’ sake refuse to eat the meat of living creatures. But they still eat vegetables and fruits and nuts, which once were also alive in their own way. They too grew and flourished, only to be cut down ruthlessly in their prime merely to please the palate of the human eater. It may seem a silly comparison, but if God is who we think He is, then the difference between a celery and a human is nothing compared to the difference between a human and God. If the human is justified in eating a celery because it is so far inferior to him as to be considered expendable, then God must certainly be justified in sacrificing a human, because a human is far, far more inferior when compared to God. What is more, humans eat fruits they have not created. They merely plant and water them, but no human makes a plant grow out of his own power. Yet God is the One who made each of us out of nothing. Without Him we would not exist. Does not the Giver of life have the right to take it away if He so chooses?

The Sublimity of Surrender

The above looks at the matter from the perspective of God, but looked at from the perspective of Abraham or even of Isaac, Hitchens’ argument is equally unacceptable. Hitchens is guilty of a mistake that is common in modern Western society: the destruction of the good name of Submission.
For the modern thinker, surrender is the ultimate evil. If we look at relationships as a power struggle, then indeed to submit to another is a defeat. In many areas in this world, the strong defeats the weak and forces him to submit. Moreover, this submission is often designed in such a way as to humiliate the loser, to cruelly rub their face in the dirt.

But for a God of Love, submission is not a power struggle, but an indication of strength: the invincible strength, in fact, of true, divine, aghape love. Think of a father carrying his small daughter, perhaps two years old. This father allows his child to play with his nose, to grab it and pull it painfully, and then laugh at her achievement. He is submitting to his daughter. She is the victor, he the vanquished. But this is not a power struggle. This is a relationship of love, and the father’s willing submission is an expression of that love. He would in fact give anything for his daughter, perhaps, his own life in order to save hers. That is his free choice, a choice he makes because it is the nature of love to give without expecting anything in return. This is the beauty and the nobility of love.

This is the love shown by Abraham. God never forced Abraham to sacrifice his son. He did not threaten him with punishments if he refused. He merely asked him to do it, and the choice was completely up to Abraham whether to obey or not. In the same way, young Isaac must have willingly submitted to his father’s wishes. There is no sense of a struggle in the story. It is true that the Bible tells us that Abraham bound Isaac with thongs upon the altar, but there is no mention of resistance from Isaac. Very likely, he trusted his father as implicitly as his father trusted in God.

Abraham was willing to give back to God the most precious thing he had in his life: his one and only son. After a lifetime of Abraham and Sarah longing for a son in vain, after finally receiving the son of their prayers in old age, what an incredible sacrifice it must have been for Abraham to give that son back to God, and to do so with his own hands. It is an action that bespeaks tremendous faith and trust in God, and submission; freely chosen submission that came from love, not from weakness. He could easily have said ‘no’.

Thus does the human father test his daughter by asking if she would give up her favourite toy for him to play with. He does not need the toy and it is not the toy he is interested in. He is interested in his daughter’s reaction, whether she will love and trust him enough to give up her toy to him, whether her heart is selfish or generous. With such gentle tests, the father teaches his daughter what it means to love and to give. And when she gives him her toy, he immediately gives it back to her, together with so many hugs and kisses of genuine affection for his gracious little dear. This is what the incident of Moriah is all about.

The Historical Context

In this test of faith and love, God also gave Abraham an important message. Many tribes of Abraham’s time, with whom Abraham would no doubt have come into contact, practiced the cruel sacrifice of their children to their gods. These tribes actually did kill their own children in a bloody frenzy of madness and misguided devotion to false gods. We cannot even begin to imagine the horrors that must have played out in these people’s minds over the years.
Abraham was susceptible to following the example of these tribes. But on Moriah, God showed him that such a thing was unnecessary. It was as if He was saying to Abraham: “I know that you are willing to go even as far as killing your son for Me. Your devotion is at least as fervent as that of the pagans. But it is more than theirs, just as I am more a true God than their gods. Do not follow in their footsteps and do not imitate them, for you see, I have no need of their kind of sacrifice. I will bless you for what is in your heart, and not for your external actions only.”

So much of the pagan religions of ancient times seems to have been external. Yet here was God pointing out to Abraham that it is his willingness to obey and to submit that really matters, not the killing of his son. God is not interested in having children sacrificed to Him. He is interested in kind of heart His children have. This approach to worship must have been absolutely revolutionary for Abraham’s time and environment. It is easy to see how it fits in with the teaching of Jesus and prepares us for it.

A Base and Narrow Mind

Finally, I cannot help wondering at the kind of mind that can only see such horror in something so beautiful. If anything, I think Hitchens’ comments reveal far more about Hitchens that they do about God. He and his fellow critics of religion look upon the astounding sacrifice of love of the Cross of Christ and see only vileness. Richard Dawkins describes the Cross as “sado-masochistic” in The God Delusion. Somehow, he manages to keep himself completely blind to the love that the Cross represents, the supreme act of humility, of noble giving of oneself, of total and utter devotion to the beloved. Instead, he can only view the Cross from the point of view of selfishness. Upon the Cross, if Dawkins is to be believed, we see only God satisfying a base aberration of the human mind: the Father being sadistic to the Son; the Son enjoying the suffering in a fit of twisted masochism. “Religion poisons everything” says Hitchens. Who is doing the poisoning now?

What kind of mind can reduce noble love to animal violence? What’s next, I wonder? Nursing mothers only care for their child because they have a perverted desire to fatten them up and eat them? This is perhaps one of the most repugnant aspects of the New Atheists. They really seem not have thought things through to their logical conclusion. They seem unaware that their philosophy leads eventually to everything we hold dear in life losing its value, and in the end, to a sort of nihilistic fatalism where nothing matters anymore.

But that’s a topic for another day.

Fr Ant

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Pride and Prejudice – Coptic Style II

One of the more pernicious bigotries that occasionally rears its ugly head in our community is that of racial prejudice. Now I know that it is a built-in instinct in human nature to form groups to belong to and to which we show loyalty. There is nothing wrong in appreciating one’s history and lineage and taking strength and a sense of identity from that.

Where it does go wrong is when this belonging becomes competitive. To borrow from St James; competition, when it has conceived, gives birth to antagonism; and antagonism, when it is full-grown, brings forth enmity.

This has historically been one of the major obstacles to our Church evangelising those of other nations and bringing them to Christ. Back in the 1950’s when HG Bishop Antonios Markos, the modern pioneer of Coptic evangelism in Africa, would speak to others in Cairo about his dreams, he would mostly be met with scorn. “Why waste your time with black people?” the incredulous Egyptians would ask.

And yet, amazingly, here in Australia in 2009 it is possible to find Copts who, incredibly, have that same mindset! A small section of the community still asks why we should waste our time reaching out to our neighbours to share the love and peace of Christ with them. They continue to treat newcomers to our Church as second class citizens and to make them feel unwelcome. And all this simply on the basis of race!

Even more unchristian is the artificial division between Egyptian and Sudanese within our Church community. Forget that the Sudanese members of our community all originated in Upper Egypt, and that only a few generations ago at the most. Never mind that the two cultures are virtually identical in every way that matters, or that they have blended together in perfect harmony in Sydney Coptic Churches for the past 40 years. No, there are some who try to draw this line in the sand and say, “We on this side are different to you on that side. And we are better.”

Of course, such a judgement is ridiculous in every way that counts. Your racial background helps define who you are, but an honest observer will see that there are good and bad people in every race, nation, culture and racial group. Race is merely one small factor in the hand that is dealt to each of us. It is how we play that whole hand that makes us who we are, and that depends on the individual person, not the race from which they come.

This kind of divisive thinking is also clearly unbiblical too. How can it possibly be justified in the light of passages like this:

“… there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcised nor uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave nor free, but Christ is all and in all. Therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, put on tender mercies, kindness, humility, meekness, longsuffering; bearing with one another, and forgiving one another, if anyone has a complaint against another; even as Christ forgave you, so you also must do. But above all these things put on love, which is the bond of perfection. And let the peace of God rule in your hearts, to which also you were called in one body; and be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord. And whatever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through Him.”
Colossians 3:11-17

Can you imagine the Lord Jesus coming to one of our parishes and saying, “I’m not going to hang around with THAT group; I don’t like that race”? That would be so diametrically opposed to His gospel of unconditional love that I am amazed that anyone could ever think it was an acceptable way for a Christian to think! Does the “word of Christ” spread bigotry? Is it possible to incite racial hatred “in the name of the Lord Jesus”?

Perhaps the problem is that this kind of error often begins as a harmless joke. We all know many Irish jokes, Polish jokes, Upper Egyptian jokes. But what if a joke becomes a philosophy? That’s just not funny.

If we are to be authentic in our Christian walk then this is something we cannot ignore. It is compulsory, if you wish to truly follow Christ, to love your neighbour as yourself. When He was asked to define what He meant by “neighbour”, He told the story of the Good Samaritan, pointing out that Christian love crosses all boundaries of race. Even those who have traditionally been racial enemies, such as the Jews and the Samaritans, are brought together in Christ and united by His boundless love.

There is no nice way of putting this: racial prejudice is a sin. It needs to be repented of with sincerity, in thought, word and deed. Those who divide the Church along racial lines are dividing the very Body of Christ. That’s got to hurt Him…

Fr Ant

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Pride and Prejudice – Coptic Style I

Is it wrong to be proud of your Church?

Our Coptic community in Sydney, in all the time I have known it, has more or less encouraged local pride. People want to feel good about their parish, and after all, why not? This is the place where they have invested a deal of their time and energy and donations to make it a blessing for them and their families. This is the place where they come for refuge or guidance or peace. This is the temple where they come to meet with God.

On a larger scale, we often point out to non-Copts the glories of the Coptic Church. They are prodigious without doubt: the School of Alexandria was THE centre of Christian learning in the ancient world; the Egyptian desert gave birth to Christian monasticism; and an unparalleled multitude of martyrs soaked the banks of the Nile with their freely sacrificed blood. Why shouldn’t we be proud of all that?

Why is it then that I sometimes feel a little twinge of discomfort about all this? Why do I feel that something is wrong?

Perhaps it is that this kind of pride is so easily misused, if not totally abused.

For example, when a sense of joy at one’s heritage turns into a form of racial bigotry and prejudice, it has left the path of Christ. Yes, I have heard members of our community speak of non-Copts as inferior beings. Ethnic stereotypes enjoy the occasional vogue even among our youth, who should know better, having grown up in this multicultural society where tolerance and understanding are emphasised so often. And how easily do we forget that whole thing about specks and logs in eyes!

Then there’s that whole competition thing:

My parish is better than your parish.

My Church is better than you Church.

My priests are better than your priests.

My youth meeting is better than your youth meeting.

Does this sort of thing really do anyone any good? Built into it is the very unchristian idea that whatever I am associated with has to be superior to everyone else. And it leads to a nasty kind of self-centredness, where if I can’t be better than the others, then I have to cut them down to my level.

Many years ago I heard a parish priest extolling the virtues of “holy competition” between parishes. He saw this as a positive force that motivated parishes to grow and develop better services. I must say that a couple of decades of service have not convinced me of his views, at least in my experience. People and services grow far more and in a healthier way if they cooperate together rather than compete against each other. And can you really see Jesus encouraging His disciples to compete against each other to see who will be the best Disciple? “If you wish to be greatest, go for it!” doesn’t really fit in with the rest of His Gospel somehow.

So is it wrong to be proud of your Church? Depends on what you mean by “proud”. If you mean feeling superior to others, putting others down, being unduly sensitive to criticism, even when it’s valid, and always trying to keep up with the Joneses (or Abdelmessihs in this case), then, yes. It is most certainly wrong.

But if you mean rejoicing in the gift of God that you share with the rest of His family, appreciating how beautiful that gift is, making the most of it, sharing it humbly with others, and working together selflessly for the benefit of all, then be as proud as you like!

Fr Ant

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You Talk Too Much

“You talk too much!”

Rather disrespectful words to say to a parish priest, don’t you think?

Sadly, I hear these words said to me on a regular basis. What’s worse is that they’re right. It’s not as bad as it sounds, for the person who is constantly saying that to me is me. But I have to tell myself that far too often. Here are a few examples:

Someone has come to discuss a problem with me. We sit down and they begin telling their story. I keep suggesting solutions that sound so simple and obvious, but would actually never work in reality.
I am talking too much.

The same person goes on, thankfully ignoring my useless interruptions. Now they are venting their emotions. Tears are flowing. I tell them a few meaningless clichés just to fill the silence between sobs. The clichés don’t help them, and they just make me feel even more useless because I have nothing meaningful to say. They would have been better left unsaid and I should have respected the silence that can sometimes allow that still small voice of God to be heard.
I am talking too much.

Now I am in a meeting and a decision needs to be made about some issue. An idea jumps into my head, and before I have thought about it I blurt it out. But it doesn’t really move matters forward, in fact it is more of a distraction from the real issue at hand. The meeting drags on longer and longer because of these red herrings.
I am talking too much.

Three or four youth are standing around and I go over and engage them in a little light conversation. Before I know it, I am doing all the talking and they are doing all the listening. That’s right of course, isn’t it? I’m the priest, and I have to teach? But it also means that I learn nothing about them; or from them. I miss out on all sorts of new perspectives and interesting ideas they might have opened up for me. I don’t get the chance to enter their world, to share in their lives and their cares and their joys.
I am talking way too much.

Standing at the pulpit I am delivering a sermon on Sunday. Things seem to be going well until I suddenly realise that I have left the real topic of the sermon and gotten on to one of my personal pet hates. With horror I realise that I am now using the pulpit not to spread the word of God, but the personal opinions of an individual. I look out, and all those innocent faces are looking at me attentatively, apparently enjoying my little gripe session. Dear Lord! I am teaching them to complain! Clearly, I am talking too much.

And so it goes on. And on. And on.

When will I learn to keep quiet?

Fr Ant

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The Driven Christian

Emigration out of Egypt only began in earnest in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s. There were a number of factors that drove the Egyptian people, hitherto quite patriotic and devoted to their native land, to leave it in search of greener pastures.

Perhaps the main factor was economic. By the late 1960’s, the socialist reforms of President Gamal Abdel Nasser had squeezed the life out of many a middle class businessman and made it impossible for them to maintain their standard of living. Another factor was the opening up of the world that came with the advance of technology. Television and movies brought new cultures into the field of vision of the average Egyptian, particularly western culture with its motorcars and soft drinks and apparently unlimited potential for personal development. The advent of affordable and safe air travel also removed the obstacle of the three month ocean voyage that had until then been the only feasible way to emigrate.

It is little wonder that the countries that received the largest numbers of Coptic immigrants – USA, Canada and Australia – were the countries that seemed to offer the most of what they yearned for: freedom of religion, economic and educational opportunities, and social sophistication.

It is a fact of history that most immigrant Copts came from the upwardly mobile middle classes. The upper classes had no reason to emigrate and the lower classes did not have enough money to emigrate. Until today, in these diasporic lands, the Coptic population has a disproportionately high number of professionals, even if the more recent immigrants have been unable to find work within their own profession. This is usually seen as a very good thing, something to boast of, but it also has its downside.

For example, the pressure that Coptic parents exert on their children to succeed in their studies is legendary. I wrote some weeks ago about the Coptic community’s view that if you don’t become one of the “Big Four”: a doctor, lawyer, pharmacist or engineer, then you have pretty much failed in life. That was slightly tongue in cheek; but only slightly. Now it is true that this kind of pressure often does lead to our kids working very hard at their studies and achieving quite highly, but it is also true that many of them suffer badly, whether emotionally, psychologically or spiritually from the experience. And what of all those people who ‘fail’ this unrealistically high standard? What of the fact that there are far more gifts and talents than this limited bunch, and far more to life than making money?

Another drawback is the danger of elitism. Any community within a society that sees itself as somehow better than the rest of society is in grave danger of falling into a superiority complex. And to be frank, this just is not Christian! Feelings of superiority are used all the time in our community for the noble task of producing successful future generations. How many times in their life does the young Copt hear this: “Don’t copy what those people are doing. They’re bad people. We’re not like them!”

I like the first part of that advice. The Bible tells us not to conform to the ways of the world, but to be different (Romans 12:2). But the reason the Bible gives us is certainly not that we are better than those who live in the world! If anything, we are warned to remember that we are all just as weak and susceptible to sin deep down as anyone else! (Romans 11:30, Ephesians 2:11-13). No, our reason for not copying others is because we have met Christ, and you cannot remain unchanged once that happens. He changes us, not because we are better than others, but because we have understood that we are worse. There is no room here for any feelings of superiority.

Herein lies the danger. “How hard it is for those who have riches to enter the kingdom of God!” said Jesus (Mark 10:23). As immigrants or the children of immigrants, we have come to our new homelands to strive for a better life for ourselves and for our children. Yet if we succeed in this very striving, we run the grave risk of losing our place in the Kingdom of Heaven!

Perhaps the solution lies in not being drawn into the ‘game’ of modern western society. I am always stunned (and a little repulsed, frankly) by the underlying premise in virtually every single American movie or TV show I have ever seen: that to be valuable, you must achieve something, and make something of yourself. These stories are usually about someone who has failed to make something of themselves; their family is ashamed of them, and they are ashamed of themselves, but by the end, they come through and prove themselves by scoring the winning touchdown or getting that promotion. Sound familiar?

If you had a view of life that was firmly founded in the Bible, it should sound anything but familiar! It should in fact trouble you. Since when has getting a promotion been a priority for Christ? When did Jesus ever tell His followers that they had to make something of themselves in order to be valuable? His message was the exact opposite of this: we are valuable not because of anything we can take credit for, but only because God loves us. He loves us not because we are lovable, but because He is Love. THIS is where the Christian draws their sense of self-worth and value.

That doesn’t stop the Christian from using the talents God has given them to achieve things. Nor does it stop the Christian from rejoicing in this success. But the big issue here is what is the priority? Is my priority to achieve above all else? Or is it to live with God above all else? If I strive for the first, I lose the second. But if I strive for the second, I will often also win the first. And even if I don’t, it matters little: I will still be content with my life.

Australian society is a lot less success-driven than American society (and so say everyone I’ve met who lives in America and visits Australia). But we are moving slowly in that direction over the years. I am probably betraying my Australian bias here, when I say that Australian society is far more relaxed about life. The average Australian is proud of what they can achieve, but they also take great pride in achieving it with as little effort and as little fuss as possible. And if they fail, it is no big deal – for that is not the source of their sense of self-worth. Life is too short to waste stressing about stuff like that.

Further, Australia is (supposedly) a classless society. In theory at least, the Prime Minister may hobnob with a bricklayer on absolutely equal terms. This too provides some protection for the successful Christian from the temptation to feel superior to others.

So we are left with a number of questions:

Where do you derive your sense of self-worth?
What is it in your life that makes you feel good about yourself?
Must your feeling good about yourself come from putting others down?
Does your happiness come from things that are eternal, or temporary?
And is it in line with the Gospel?

Fr Ant

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Next to Nothing

There are times when you can’t help thinking that our lives are very much like a little puff of smoke, existing briefly and easily dispersed by the wind.

You realise this in a hospital’s Emergency Department, when you are confronted with shattered human bodies … how fragile we little creatures are! How easily do our lives end! Even the greatest of men can be brought low by the tiniest virus or torn apart by the simplest of weapons. The Psalmists understood this…

Psalm 103:14 For He knows our frame;
He remembers that we are dust.
15 As for man, his days are like grass;
As a flower of the field, so he flourishes.
16 For the wind passes over it, and it is gone,
And its place remembers it no more.

Psalm 39:4 “Lord, make me to know my end,
And what is the measure of my days,
That I may know how frail I am.
5 Indeed, You have made my days as handbreadths,
And my age is as nothing before You;
Certainly every man at his best state is but vapour.
6 Surely every man walks about like a shadow;
Surely they busy themselves in vain;
He heaps up riches,
And does not know who will gather them.
7 “And now, Lord, what do I wait for?
My hope is in You.

The metaphor of vapour is particularly apt. Smoke looks big and solid, yet it is made mostly of nothing. You try to grasp it in your hand, but you can’t. God has built this lesson into the cosmos. I find it intriguing that universe has within it such messages of the nothingness of humanity: built into it, but hidden, so that only the most intelligent can discover them. It is as though the Maker built in a safety system: “If you are clever enough to discover how the universe works, then know that in reality, you are nothing”.

For example, the same knowledge that has given us nuclear power (and nuclear weapons of mass destruction) has taught us that we, and the whole physical universe, are made of mostly nothing. The atom which seems so solid is actually like a little solar system: a tiny little nucleus, some shells of whizzing electrons orbiting it, and in between, the huge majority of its volume is emptiness. Nothing. We are 99.999% Nothing.
This fact is not only revealed to the faithful, but to all humanity. For those who discover it, yet lack the support of faith, the realisation is devastating. If man is nothing so much as Nothing, then what is the point? How does living differ from dying, when both seem so empty, so meaningless?

Psalm 90:9 For all our days have passed away in Your wrath;
We finish our years like a sigh.
10 The days of our lives are seventy years;
And if by reason of strength they are eighty years,
Yet their boast is only labour and sorrow;
For it is soon cut off, and we fly away.
11 Who knows the power of Your anger?
For as the fear of You, so is Your wrath.
12 So teach us to number our days,
That we may gain a heart of wisdom.

For the Christian, the realisation of our nothingness leads not to despair, then, but to wisdom; and wisdom in turn leads to humility and purpose. In a universe made by God, to know you are nothing is not to lose meaning, but to find it: it is the understanding of our true state in relation to God. He IS, we are NOT. He is Existence, we are very nearly Non-existence, and it is only His Existence that lends to us any existence of our own. To know what we are in relation to Him, and to know the vast gulf between the Maker and the Made, is to know why we exist…

We do not exist in order to labour for the goals of this world: for money or power, for success or popularity or physical beauty. All those things are made of the emptiness that is this world. They are Nothing. No, rather we are put in this world of Nothing to realise that there is Something, the reality of God, that is worth labouring for. Meaning can never come into our lives effectively through the things that only seem to be Something, but are in reality, Nothing. Meaning can only be found in the things that seem to be nothing, and yet they are Something. Can you hold Love in your hand? Can you fill a bottle with Mercy, or warm yourself with a blanket of Justice? These are things that do not even pretend to have a solid existence, yet it is in them that we hope to give substance to our lives.

We are next to nothing.

Know this, and you will find that He who IS is He who makes you Something.

Fr Ant

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History is NOT Bunk

Henry Ford, founder of the Ford Motor Company, is famous for saying, “History is more or less bunk!” What he meant was that it is important to live in the present, not in the past*. But I disagree.

In July, we commemorated the ninth anniversary of the passing of Fr Mina Nematalla. For those who weren’t born nine years ago, Fr Mina was the pioneering Coptic priest who was commissioned by his maternal uncle, the late Pope Kyrollos VI to travel to far-away Australia in 1968 and establish the first Coptic Church on this continent. He arrived, with his family and a tonne of Church equipment by boat in Sydney on 26th January 1969 and proceeded to serve this flourishing congregation faithfully for the next 31 years, until his departure on July 1st 2000. Today, his remains repose in a specially built crypt behind the sanctuary of our parish Church.

Some have questioned the wisdom of this crypt, wondering whether this meant that we are attributing sainthood to Fr Mina. It is important to make this point crystal clear: no one is attributing sainthood to Fr Mina. That is something that only the Holy Synod can do, and they have, I think, some fairly stringent criteria on which they make their decision, including a waiting period of at least 50 years from the date of departure.

No, the presence of the remains of Fr Mina in the crypt is for a very different reason. He played a unique role in the history of the Coptic Orthodox Church in Australia. No one else will ever be the founder of our Church on this continent. I cannot see anyone else taking it upon himself to personally greet every Coptic immigrant who arrives in Sydney at the airport, to take them to stay in his own home until he had helped them to find their own accommodation, Help them find a job and to go with them to school to enrol their children. That was how Fr Mina spent a lot of his time in those early years, and there remain in Sydney many who still remember his kindness with deep, deep gratitude. This was the true spirit of Christian love in action.

And this is a very important piece in the story of our Church; one that should be preserved for all future generations. In a hundred, two hundred, five hundred years, almost everything about the founding of the Church in Australia may well have been forgotten. But hopefully, the crypt will remain as a monument, not only to Fr Mina, but to all of those who served with him and gave so much of themselves in order to lay the foundations for the beautiful service and community we enjoy today.

Having the crypt makes no judgement of Fr Mina’s character, good or bad. Like any pioneer, Fr Mina lived through ‘interesting times’. He did all he could to guide the infant Church through periods of division, conflict and tribulation as well as periods of great grace and fruitfulness. This is to be expected. The role of the clergy in a diasporic Church was unclear at the beginning, for no one had done this sort of thing in our Church for at least 15 centuries! So Fr Mina and the early congregation were forced to work it out for themselves, far from the Mother Church in Egypt, and it is not to be wondered that there were often conflicting opinions.

One approach to our history is to gloss over these problems, to ignore them and hope they go away. I suppose they are seen as a sort of ‘dirty laundry’ that should not be aired in public. But perhaps it is possible for a mature community to take a different approach, one that is more in keeping with the honesty and humility enjoined upon us by the Gospels. Just because a Church community experiences a testing time, this doesn’t mean that the community is a failure. What matters is what is how they react to these difficult times – do they respond in a manner that is consistent with the message of Christ?

Our Church in Sydney has been through some very difficult times over the years. In fact, most would agree that we are going through one right now. But that is not what matters. It is our reaction to these testing times that matters. There are a variety of possible responses, and none of them are new. All possible attitudes have been tried before at some time in our long history as a Coptic Church. Troubles have been occurring both from within the Church and from without for nearly two millennia. Some would say this is the sign that the devil is not happy with us (thank God), and thus he does not cease to attack us with every weapon available to him!

With apologies to Henry Ford, it actually makes a great deal of sense to look back and see how people handled problems in the past; to learn from their successes and their failures.

Approaches that have failed include the following:

1. Taking sides or forming parties
2. Legalism, insisting upon the letter of the law and neglecting its spirit
3. Any type of self-seeking, trying to use the problems to gain personal advantage such as power or popularity or fame
4. Allowing anger and emotion to rule one’s thoughts and actions
5. Loyalty to any human person above loyalty to God
6. Gossip mongering

Approaches that have succeeded include the following:

1. Sincere, personal repentance
2. Patience and confidence in the power of God over all human weaknesses
3. Prayer in faith
4. Making the effort to build bridges and seek reconciliation between people
5. Honesty, integrity and transparency (these require a liberal dose of courage). No hidden agendas, no sneaky tactics
6. Willingness to genuinely listen to others, to see their point of view, rather than sticking doggedly to one’s own point of view, whatever the evidence
7. Dedication to Truth, to justice, and to mercy
8. Focusing on the basics of Christian life

This last strategy is to me the most important. At the end of the day, Church is NOT about politics and personalities. It is not about buildings and structures and finances. Church is the place where we all come to meet with God and find our peace with Him. Hopefully, it also the place where we learn to love one another from a sincere heart, for “He who says he is in the light, and hates his brother, is in darkness until now” (1 John 2:9).

Church goes on. Individual personalities come and go. Even if they flare brilliantly for a time, then they pass into obscurity; this is the fate we all shall experience. All that is asked of us is that we do our best; that we trade faithfully with the talents the Master has given us; and that we do all that is within our power and our understanding to follow in His footsteps.

That is why it is important to have Fr Mina in the crypt in Church. He was a fixed point of faith, worship and Orthodoxy in a churning primal sea of change for the Church in Australia. May God grant us all even a tenth of his diligence and his integrity. An ounce of his common sense wouldn’t go astray either!

Fr Ant
_______________
* http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/182100.html

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The Fellow Traveller vs. The Perfect Model

Serving God brings with it a grave and self-defeating danger.

Our Lord enjoins us to be perfect, as our Father in Heaven is perfect. In the Orthodox Church in particular, we are also surrounded by “so great a cloud of witnesses”, saints whose lives we celebrate and seek to emulate. The servant of God is filled with passion for the beauty of this holiness, and strives with all their might to inspire others to aspire to it.

And then, the devil strikes. He will leave the servant to work others up into a frenzy of zeal, and then strike the servant; not with disease or disaster or even death, but with the servant’s own weakness. The bigger they are, the harder they fall. And when they fall, those who had come closer to God through their service face a crisis.

We see this pattern occasionally in the news. The regularity with which it happens among the “tele-evangelists” is one reason for their poor reputation in general. But it also happens within our own Church. The saddest thing is that it is not necessary, and, I believe, it is not Christian.

Let’s go to St Paul for some advice on this matter. He does indeed urge us to imitate those who have lived in intimacy with God and to learn from them: “…imitate those who through faith and patience inherit the promises” (Hebrews 6:12). He even goes so far as to blatantly hold himself up as template for his flock: “Therefore I urge you, imitate me.” (1 Corinthians 4:16). Some servants of God take these words and run with them, assuming that they too can become this perfect model; nay, that God has called them to be this perfect model for the salvation of others. Thus do they fall into the trap, for they do not read the rest of what St Paul has to say on the matter…

You see, St Paul never claimed that the example he set was a perfect one. He was not calling others to see him as perfect and thus to strive to become as perfect as he. He was calling others to see that he is trying, struggling with his own weakness and frail humanity to raise his spirit above the mean level of worldliness and sin. He was not a Perfect Model but a Fellow Traveller. And that makes a huge difference.

How do we know this? “Imitate me,” he repeats in 1 Corinthians 11:1, this time adding the explanation, “just as I also imitate Christ.” The perfect template is not St Paul, but Christ Himself, and St Paul is merely calling on others to join him in the struggle to become Christlike. We look to Jesus and Jesus alone as our perfect model. But if we want a model of human weakness striving to become like Jesus, then we can look to St Paul. He never claims to have succeeded. Instead, he often goes to great pains to record in writing that he is still frail and faulty, yet never losing hope or giving up:

1 Corinthians 9:27
But I discipline my body and bring it into subjection, lest, when I have preached to others, I myself should become disqualified.

Philippians 3:12-14
Not that I have already attained , or am already perfected; but I press on, that I may lay hold of that for which Christ Jesus has also laid hold of me.
Brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended; but one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead, I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.

2 Corinthians 12:9-10
And He said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness.”
Therefore most gladly I will rather boast in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me.
Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in needs, in persecutions, in distresses, for Christ’s sake.
For when I am weak, then I am strong.

Romans 7:
For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am carnal, sold under sin.
For what I am doing, I do not understand.
For what I will to do, that I do not practice; but what I hate, that I do.
If, then, I do what I will not to do, I agree with the law that it is good.
But now, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me.
For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh) nothing good dwells;
for to will is present with me, but how to perform what is good I do not find.
For the good that I will to do, I do not do; but the evil I will not to do, that I practice.
Now if I do what I will not to do, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me.
I find then a law, that evil is present with me, the one who wills to do good.
For I delight in the law of God according to the inward man.
But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members.
O wretched man that I am!
Who will deliver me from this body of death?
I thank God–through Jesus Christ our Lord!
So then, with the mind I myself serve the law of God, but with the flesh the law of sin.

Does that weakness ring any bells?

We have then, a servant of God who presents himself, warts and all, not as a perfect person, needing to constantly maintain that perfection, but as a weak and sinful person, constantly striving to improve. He is not at the top, trying not to fall, but at the bottom, always striving to rise up. His call to others is not “be perfect as I am perfect” but “strive to overcome weakness as I strive”.

To hold oneself up as perfect, to believe one’s own publicity, as it were, is a delight to the devil, and abominable lie to the Lord. That way lies all kinds of hypocrisy, pride, envy and deceit. It was the attitude of the Pharisees that Jesus condemned so harshly. Because of this misconceived idea of service, many good people have refused to serve, discerning the falseness in it, yet not knowing any alternative. Because of it, many good people have been made to stumble, when their servant who was held up as being perfect inevitably shattered them by turning out to be just as weak as anyone else. All really quite unnecessary, had they sought truth, however uncomfortable, rather than a pleasant lie.

Truth is a nicer place to live.

Fr Ant