Truly Living
We humans take in many things for sustenance. We have a variety of drinks to choose from (water, milk, juices, etc.), and the different types of food in the world seem almost endless. Nevertheless, out of everything we consume and take into our bodies, it is all touched by death. From the moment we uproot plants from the ground, they’re dying. When it comes to “slaughtering” animals, the descriptive term speaks for itself. Even water, with all of its life-giving qualities, becomes a danger if left still for too long. It is very apparent that our lives are surrounded and touched by death everywhere we turn. One is almost hard-pressed to see anything but irony in our having to live through the death of some other thing. But is this really the case?
Up until this morning I would probably only answer “yes”. But then I remembered something wonderful. Our Lord Jesus said: “I am the living Bread which came down from heaven: if any man eat of this Bread, he shall live for ever: and the Bread that I will give is My flesh, which I will give for the life of the world” (John 6:51). Then there is what He said to Samaritan woman at the well (St. Photini, as she is known in the Orthodox world): “…Whoever drinks of this water will thirst again, but whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst. But the water that I shall give him will become in him a fountain of water springing up into everlasting life” (John 4:13-14).
Call me silly or nit picky if you like, but I was relieved to be reminded that though we live in a world surrounded by death on every side, to the point of our having to use it to continue to live, our Lord provided and provides true life for us through both the Holy Spirit, and through His flesh every liturgy with the Eucharist. How it happens exactly is beyond this sinner’s capability of explaining. Nevertheless, it does.
I can’t help but wonder if St. Athanasius said something on this…
God bless.
The Arrival of Esmeralda Valentina
For any of you wondering if I have fallen off the face of the earth, wonder no more! My wife and I recently had a baby. Here’s a little info:
Esmeralda Valentina was born on Valentine’s Day (hence the name, of course) 2008, at 9:16 pm Swedish time. She weighed 3355g (7lbs 4oz.), and was 50cm (21 and half inches) long. She came into the world via an emergency C-section after what was supposed to be a routine visit for an attempt to turn her into the proper position for delivery. For some strange reason she preferred the sideways position of being on a beach 
, (ironically, so far, she sleeps best on her side). The attempt failed, and my wife, Kim’s, blood pressure dropped a bit much, while Esmeralda’s vitals weren’t making any of us happy either. So, the doctor decided since Kim was going to have a C-section either way, they should go ahead and get it done. The surgery LITERALLY took 10 minutes. One thing is for sure, the Swedes know medicine, and especially pediatrics. We’re very glad she, the doctor, made the decision she did. Through the grace of God, all are well and relaxing at home now.
As any of you parents out there know, children being born cause you to wonder even more about things that really matter. Such is the case with little Esme (pronounced Ezmee). I look at her and wonder all the more how God can love me as much as He does; so much that He’d bless my life with little Esme. And then I consider the fact that God loves me more than I love her, and my soul stirs in ways indescribable. I have had many things cause me to drop to my knees giving thanks to God, however, looking at my newborn child sleep is so awesome (in the true sense of the word, of course) as to cause me drop to my knees in total adoration.
All that said, if you detect just a bit more mushiness in my postings, you’ll at least understand why. 
Glory to God!
The Joy of Discovery
Thanks to my 3rd grade teacher Mrs. Davidoff (formerly Ms. Reitmann), I’ve been a fan of reading for a long time. Out of all of my teachers, she was the one that lit the spark for me. Somehow, after she explained things, words magically combined into sentences, meaning started being revealed, and knowledge came forth like a good friend who always had cool toys to share. May God bless her for what she passed on to me. It remains the same today, thank God. Knowledge still has toys to share; albeit, now, like most things grown-up, they tend to be more complex.
For example, I’m currently nibbling my way through John C. Lennox’s God’s Undertaker. Has Science Buried God? I’ve not finished yet, but from what I’ve read so far it’s a tremendously delightful read. Reading not only unlocks doors one never really thought of opening, but it often sheds light where we least expect. Take, for example, a passage in the section of I recently read in God’s Undertaker. Has Science Buried God? (Prepare yourself. It’s a bit lengthy but worth it 
):
For Albert Einstein the comprehensibility of the universe was something to be wondered at: ‘You find it strange that I consider the comprehensibility of the world (to the extent that we are authorized to speak of such a comprehensibility) as a miracle or as an eternal mystery. Well, a priori, one should expect a chaotic world order, which cannot be grasped by the mind in any way… the kind of order created by Newton’s theory of gravitation, for example, is wholly different. Even if man proposes the axioms of the theory, the success of such a project presupposes a high degree of ordering of the objective world, and this could not be expected a priori. That is the ‘miracle’ which is being constantly reinforced as our knowledge expands.’
For, as the example of Newton’s theory shows, it is not only the fact that the universe is intelligible which is amazing; it is the mathematical nature of that intelligibility which is remarkable. We tend to take the usefulness of mathematics as obvious because we are so used to it. But why? Paul Davies is among those not satisfied with the glib response of people who say that the fundamental laws of nature are mathematical simply because we define as the fundamental those laws that are mathematical. One of the main reasons for his dissatisifaction is that much of the mathematics found to be successfully applicable ‘was worked out as an abstract exercise by pure mathematicians, long before it was applied to the real world. The oiginal investigation were entirely unconnected with their eventual application.’ It is very striking that the most abstract mathematical concepts that seem to be pure inventions of the human mind can turn out to be of vital importance for branches of science, with a vast range of practical applications.
Davies here echoes a famous essay by Eugene Wigner, a Nobel Laureate in Physics, in which he wrote: ‘The enormous usefulness of mathematics in the natural sciences is something bordering on the mysterious, and there is no rational explanation for it… it is an article of faith.’ The relationship between mathematics and physics goes very deep and it is very hard to think of it as some random accident. Professor of Mathematics Sir Roger Penrose FRS, whose understanding of that relationship is unquestioned, has this to say about it: It is hard for me to believe… that such SUPERB theories could have arisen merely by some random natural selection of ideas leaving only the good ones as survivors. The good ones are simply much too good to be the survivors of ideas that have arisen in a random way. There must be, instead, some deep underlying reason for the accord between mathematics and physics.’ Certainly science itself cannot account for this phenomenon. Why? Because, in the words of John Polkinghorne: ‘Science does not explain the mathematical intelligibility of the physical world, for it is part of science’s founding faith that this is so.’
We cannot fail to note that here we have two leading scientists, Wigner and Polkinghorne, explicitly drawing our attention to the foundational role that faith plays in science. Yes, faith. This may come as a surprise, even as a shock to many, especially if they have been exposed to the very common fallacy mentioned at the beginning of this book and spread with memetic speed by Richard Dawkins and others, that ‘faith’ means ‘blind faith’ and belongs exclusively to the domain of religion, whereas science does not involve faith at all. Dawkins is simply wrong: faith is inseparable from the scientific endeavor. Gödel’s Second Theorem gives further evidence for this: you cannot even do mathematics without faith in its consistency — and it has to be faith because the consistency of mathematics cannot be proved.
Besides this being a delightful piece of writing expanding on the paradox of man trying to use his finite mind to explain away the existence of the infinite, much less our being able to grasp, if only minutely, concepts such as eternal, perfection, omnipotent, and infinite without in any way understanding them from experience, I very much appreciate the insights of some of the brilliant minds in the world of science both honest and wise enough to make room for a Cause [big "C" my choice]. Given the way in which science is often portrayed nowadays, especially with the success of folks like Richard Dawkins, Daniel Denett, and others, one would think that science is absolutely firm in its often perceived position of all that is coming into being through natural selection. However, when one takes the time to read what some scientists are themselves saying, this, more often than one thinks, turns out not to be the case. There are nuggets to be found in science, albeit secular nuggets, and they are delightful. Nevertheless, our holy Orthodox faith does not leave us lacking for true spiritual nourishment in such matters.
Even more delightful is following up such reading with the likes of what is offered by Blessed Theophylact, Archbishop of Ochrid and Bulgaria in his commentary The Explanation of the Holy Gospel According to John, specifically John 1:1a, “In the beginning was the word.”:
“How do you know,” one might ask, “that in the beginning means the same as ‘from the beginning’?” We know this both from the common meaning of the words and from what this same Evangelist says in one of his Epistles: That which was from the beginning, which we have heard [1 John 1:1]. Do you see how the Beloved Apostle interprets his own words? But the heretic might answer, “I understand in the beginning to signify what it did to Moses when he said, In the beginning God made the heaven and the earth [Gen. 1:1]. There, In the beginning does not mean that what God made is eternal; why, then, must it mean here that the Only-begotten is eternal?” To such quibbling we reply: O cunning sophist, why are you silent about the words that follow “In the beginning”? Moses said, In the beginning God made heaven and the earth; John says, In the beginning was the Word. Made and was mean two entirely different things. If it were written, “In the beginning God mad the Son,” I would be silenced. It says, however, In the beginning was. From this I know the Word to be eternal, and not originating at a later point in time, as you babble. Furthermore, why does the Evangelist say, In the beginning was the Word, and not, “In the beginning was the Son?” He does so out of condescension to our weakness, so that we would not hear at the very start about a “Son” and at once imagine a passionate and carnal engendering. He names the Son Word, so that you may understand, O reader, that as a word is generated by the mind without passion, so the Word was begotten of the Father without passion. He also calls Him Word, because Christ the Word proclaimed to us the things of the Father, just as every word proclaims the thoughts of the mind. Furthermore, he calls the Son Word to show that the Word is co-eternal with the Father. Just as it is impossible that a mind [nous] could ever exist without thought or word, so is it impossible that God the Father ever existed without the Son…
Again, I enjoy the occasional nugget that science provides me; however, my thirst is never quenched until I put things together by drinking from the living water (John 4:11).
God Bless.
Searching for That Which Has Been Established
I had an interesting conversation with a Protestant colleague yesterday. We were talking about religion and politics and the conversation strayed into the state of some Protestant denominations in the U.S. I tried letting him know that I was pretty clueless when it came to keeping up with the current movements in the Protestant world, and then tried to hang with him as best as I could. He asked me if I knew what the “Emergent movement was, and I mentioned I had heard of it, but didn’t honestly know what they were all about. Then he mentioned a “Mosaic” movement, and I admitted to being totally clueless on that one too. Apparently, they’re all looking for the size of Christianity that fits them just right.
Like a lot of folks, I listen to podcasts. Through the grace of God, there are now more than a few Eastern Orthodox podcasts to choose from online at no cost at sites like Ancient Faith Radio. Ironically, on the way home yesterday I was listening to one of Matthew Gallatin’s Pilgrims from Paradise podcasts. This one in particular was titled “What It Means to Worship” (click here to listen). Early on in this particular podcast, he reflects about a time during his past as an Evangelical when he and some others were disillusioned with the churches they were attending. One of the people he was talking with said she wanted to find a church, “Where the teaching and the worship fit where I am with the Lord”. Needless to say, after the podcast I thought about the conversation I had with my colleague. I wondered and continue to wonder how many Protestants struggle with the decision to find the right size church for themselves. A church they believe will fit where they‘re at with the Lord. I remember being caught in a similar sort of trap of trying customize and tailor make Christianity into my way of doing thing. It’s about as western as can be. Only when I encountered Holy Orthodoxy did I see that God’s Church is to be made to His liking, not mine. I had not realized, although somehow it made all the sense in the world after I had, that Christ had indeed taken care of my needs and established a Church that “the gates of hell would not prevail against it” (Matt 16:18b).
To God be the glory for this.
I’ve Finally Updated My “About” Page
You can read it here.
The Old Testament and Orthodoxy
As with most things in Orthodoxy, there’s a history connected to the Holy Bible. A history that goes back to the very beginning of the Orthodox Church (of course).
Looking back on my Protestant past, I can say without a doubt that far too little attention was paid to the history of Old Testament in the Churches I attended. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying the contents of the Old Testament weren’t discussed or preached about. I’m saying that the history of how the Old Testament came to be always seemed a bit lacking.
Like most things, becoming Orthodox helped fill a lot of gaps historically regarding how the Old Testament came to be. I was surprised to learn a lot of things. Nevertheless, instead of my trying to reinvent the wheel, I’m going to strongly recommend you take a look at this excellent article by Daniel Lieuwen titled “Who Decides? Unraveling the Mystery of the Old Testament Canon” to help you understand my point. I’m willing to bet you’re going to learn something new.
