Bible Story Illustrations- Something I Do

These are done on 11x14
paper- that which was available in the prison camp, and with Bic pen.

I did them for my grand daughter, hoping to get Bible stories in her heart.

An inmate just walked up to me and

gave me the paper; I had been drawing

on lined 8.5x11.

This is Moses opening the Red Sea. I am on the right third from the front.

Only part of the picture is displayed. The copy misses the panorama.

This I did July 2nd, after prayer and fasting because the future looked so bleak. This was God's promise to me. I still cling to it, you know.

This is Israel

squaring off with Goliath and the Philistines at Brook Kidron.

This is the dream of Pharoah wherein the skinny Kine, ate the fat kine.

Jonah being tossed overboard.

Colored with coloring pencils. An inmate just walked up to me and gave me coloring pencils. I started using them.

This is Jonah preaching to the folks in Ninevah.

Jonah down the hatch.

Jonah prays in the Fishe's belly.

(Good idea)

The King of Ninevah Repents (Good idea)

Jonah gets on the boat going in the wrong direction (bad idea)

Risk Mitigation and Faith in God

We are looking at the Ascendancy of the Risk Mitigating State. Men do not wish to face the future with the formidible challenges to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness without something bigger than themselves assuring them that the risks of moving into the future as mortal creatures, subject to death and pain, are mitigated, are dissipated.

The classical Christian call is, on the other hand to trust in God for that which the future holds, not that trust in God argues against preparation by industry, but that our security, as it were, is something we look to from God. Only God, in this view, is 'big' enough to mitigate all risks inherent in the future.

This view has been enculturated in the past in the United States, so much so that we have been accustomed to putting "In God we Trust" on our coins. A habit, unfortunately, that we found necessary, when erosion in Trust in God was evident.

In times when our cultural trust was not primarily in the State, we often mitigated risks of the future through insurance programs. We invested money earned in the present to mitigate risks inherent in the future.

On the other hand Christians are called to live and to love their neighbor in the present; to love their neighbors as themselves, and to give to the neighbor who has no coat, the second one we may possess. The call to love is therefore in the present, and it is an obligation laid on our present resources for the neediness of our brother, or our neighbor.

How does the desire to mitigate the risk of the future square with the call to love our neighbor in the present, especially as both compete for scarce resources available to us now?

Some have argued, be frugal as you can, give all you can, and save all you can. This does not give us a precise formula and does not help us solve the question of what to do- do I buy more life insurance or health insurance, or do I give the child who has not eaten for three days a glass of milk?

I believe that if we would be perfect we would trust God in the totality for our futures, and deny ourselves, and give to serve our neighbor. I think we find that pattern in the lives of the Saints. I have never heard a story of a great saint who , when called to walk deeply with Christ, felt that call was to acquisitiveness and risk mitigation. I think of the parables- the risk- mitigating wealthy agriculturalist in the parables, sought to mitigate the risks of the future by building larger barns and filling them, and sought to live in the present by sumptuous dining and the pursuit of satiety. St. John Chrysostom and other Fathers preached rather insistently that any excess we have produced belongs to our brother who has nothing.

While the call to perfection is something that none of us can bear in ourselves, and the Lord in His mercy and condescension allows us to live at a lower standard, if we would be perfect, the call comes, 'sell all that you have, give to the poor and , come, follow me."

Back to the parable of the wealthy agriculturalist. We learn something profound about the damning effects of the pursuit of a life that seeks supremely, risk mitigation and satiety in the present. These were his supreme pursuits and it led to the loss of his life. While we might not lose our lives physically, it seems to me that this parable teaches that we risk the loss of all that is human about our life, for it is love, essentially, that makes us human, and distinguishes us from the animals, with whom we share mortality, but from whom we are distinguished because we have within ourselves a principle higher than survival of the fittest- we have the transcendence of nature by love, so that we participate in the Divine.

This bodes ill for the current mania and passion that we in this country have that Government mitigate all risk for us- our health, our pocket books, our education, our old age, the education of our children, and the fried chicken on our plates. The essence of government is compulsion, and trust placed in government to mitigate all risk and to give us satiety will also steal from us that which makes us human, that is to say, love, and the possibility of transcending our animal selves and the mere survival of the fittest, and becoming Divine. Another way of saying this, is that unless Divine Love, the worship of it, the practice of it, the enculturation of it and even its realization in the fabrication of the body politic, is our highest value, that those things that we have made highest values, those idols, if you will, become demonic, and rob us of the very things that make our lives worth living.

Back to the parable of the wealthy agriculturalist- his idols were risk mitigation of the future, and satiety in the present. What alternative does our Christ offer us. The human and humane and divine all converge and call us to deny selves and take up cross and follow Christ, who is Divine Love incarnate. To deny self is to deny the pursuit of risk mitigation and satiety, for the supreme value of love. Taking up cross is the historical footprint that appears when we deny self and follow Christ; it is a cross that is existential, psychological, and social; the cross is the price that we pay that we may obtain the Pearl of Great Price to live in the Present in the Love of God, and to be divinized thereby, transcending mere satiety and risk mitigation- transcending mere survival of the fittest.

Lord, have mercy.

The Uncreated Light- St. John of Shanghai

The Transfiguration of Christ on Mt. Tabor involved His appearance surrounded by the Uncreated Light. Scripture states that God is Light. The Process of Theosis, of Divinization, involves Christians in the experience of the Uncreated Light.

Those who purify their souls through the stages of Purgation, Illumination and Theosis find that they see the Uncreated Light.

Here he is photographed with the uncreated Light around him.

Trepidations on Orthodox Youth Going Off to College

"Seriously unprepared am I 

to Face a World of Men...."  From the Sound of Music. 

When you read the ante-Nicene Fathers, you are impressed with the fact that they were both Traditional in that they appealed to the Tradition that had been handed them through apostolic succesion, and Scriptural, for every Tradition they received they also derived from detailed and painstaking and passionate interpretation of Scripture.  It is said that if the Bible was erradicated from the earth, It could be reconstructed just from the quotations found in the writings of the Ancient Fathers of the Church.  

Orthodox graduating seniors go off to college this year. Most have never read the Bible through. Most don't know whether Job is in the Old Testament or the New.  So, off they go to college.

They enter a comparative religions class or an English class where Genesis is viewed as literature.

The professor has studied Graf-Wellhausen, at least once, and loving it, throws it in their face, saying "JEDP". "JEDP"? What's that?  O, he explains different self interested ruling groups of the various tribes of Israel tried to advance their theology and their own names of god, so the Scriptures are a composite of cut and paste attempt to advance their own gods. Jahwe, Elohim, Adonai.  Etc.  O, and the book of Daniel; it was written after the exile during the Macabeean period and so the prophecies that appear to predict the Babylonian Empire, the Medes and the Persians, and the Greeks are not really prophecies but sham prophecies.  (Because, of course, we know that miracles can't happen, and so the Traditional claims that Daniel wrote his book in Captivity, and prophecied that after 70 years the captivity would be ended, are bogus).  So they are slammed with Source Criticism.  Ah, yes, and then there is early Genesis- a literal six day creation; hah! We all Know that the Universe is Billions and Billions of Years Old and that everything is the result of helium and gravity.  And our student, who has never read Genesis, and has never been challenged to think through the meaning of the Book, nor Christian apologetics for it; he has never been shown that literary criticism has overthrown much of Source Criticism, and that archaeological studies explaining toledoths gives great credance to the antiquity of Genesis from a scientific viewpoint, nor has ever been shown the weaknesses of modern Big Bang Cosmology, nor the atheistic arbitrary assumptions that are plugged in to the math to produce their results, nor seen the cavernous weaknesses of the Darwinian theory, nor been introduced to the global evidence of a Watery Catastophe known as the Flood,  nor ever been exposed to the massive flip flops that have occurred in this natural philosophy we call science, can not help but be at grave risk to being reduced to skepticism, not only about the Old Testament, but also the New; for Christ said, if you do not believe Moses and the Prophets, you will not believe Me.  

 Lord, have mercy on him, and on us who have so neglected in this respect to train up a child in the way he should go. What will we say to the Lord, on that day, if that child has departed the faith, as 60 per cent of our Orthodox youth do who go off to College?

Buddhism and the Trinity

The Buddha, it seems to me, intuitively connected in some ways with the Stillness of the Father.

However, since he was before Christ and the revelation that took place in salvation history , he did not have the revelation of the Logos that came in the Incarnation of Christ. Nor was he aware of the Revelation of the pesonsal God that prepared the way for the Incarnation that came through Abraham and Moses and the Prophets. For to Abraham was revealed the Personal God whose lovingkindness, his Chesed, led Him to strike Covenent with Abraham. To Moses who was in the spiritual and physical lineage of Abraham came the Revelation of the Shema,  "The Lord our God is Composite Unity."  In line was this was the revelation of the creation event where God said ,"Let us make man in our Image", thereby revealing that God was both one and plural, the antinomy finally elucidated in the revelation of the Trinity at Christ's baptism.
Without the Judeao-Christian revelation, of which the Logos was the supreme expression, one does not know that the Stillness is the Father, and He concluded that the Absolute was an impersonal, that union with the Brahman was a union with the impesonal absolute, and that our sense of personal individuation, including consciousness, was an illusion, that must be overcome by Enlightenment. He wrongly concluded that all is manifestation of God since He did not have the revelation that creation is an order distinct from God, having an essence different from that of God, yet a creation that was sustained by God, a non-pantheistic panentheism.  Since he was also before the revelation of the Holy Spirit that took place at Christ's baptism, and was poured out on all flesh at Pentecost, he did not have an understanding of the Spirit who impells all men forward to find the Logos.  Thus, the Buddha and His Enligtenment was an Eastern, intuitive anticipation of the Doctrine  of the Shema, that of God being a composite unity, fully explicated in the doctrine of the Holy Trinity and the mysticism inherent in the worship of the Holy Trinity found in Christian Eastern Orthodoxy.

In addition, because the Buddha existed and meditated before the Union of Heaven and Earth that took place in the ascension of Christ, and before the harrowing of Hell wherein Christ took the righteous from Sheol to Paradise, the meditations of the Buddha concluded wrongly that the Stillness  was an Impersonal and had no experience of the Communion of Saints, because there were no Saints in the heavenlies to commune with. How unlike the hesychastic pilgrims who in the pursuit of union with God, as purity of heart is attained through the blood of Christ, and as the Stillness of the Father becomes their constant dwelling place, they find frequent concourse, not only in earth but in heaven, the two being united in Christ, and find their inner mystical spaces populated with the Saints, and the angels, and the souls of just men made perfect, and supremely, Christ, who ever lives to make intercession for us.

That the Buddha found the Stillness that is the Father seems evident; the conclusion and doctrines he eluted from that experience were wrong, but we can't fault him for that, since he lived before the Incarnation.  It is a shame that Western Christians who now have the doctrine of the Incarnation, fail so many times upon the basis of the doctrine, to go on and know the energies of the Logos sufficiently that the also enter into the Stillness of the Father, causing a stumbling block for many who are disciples of the Buddha, who having known the Stillness, fail to go on and Know Who the Stillness is, and Who it is that Reveals the Who of the Stillness, and miss the Spirit of Truth  who impells us along, revealing the Logos, so that we might return to the Father.

Lord, have mercy on us all.

Attempting to Fix the Evangelical Church by Grafting On Spiritual Formation

Richard Foster and Dallas Willard and many others are attempting to bring about spiritual maturity in Christians by importing spiritual disciplines mainly from Roman Catholic mystical practice into evangelical churches.  Perhaps it will work in some cases, but the mysticism of the Church is one fabric with the Church itself which is the ground and pillar of the truth. 

I write this as an Orthodox Christian and I believe that Orthodoxy with the mysticism that it has preserved is the answer for growth in holiness, in union with God, in theosis.  But the pursuit of Theosis, if you will, the practice of the mysticism is all involved in the sacramental life, the cycles of prayer of the Church, the practice of confession, and obedience, so that for one to plumb the depths of the mystical Tradition of the Church, which is preserved in the Orthodox Church, one must necessarily unite oneself to the Church whose rhythms of spirituality foster the mysticism.  

A small example-  the romanticized praise music so common these days actually draws the spirit of man away from the depths of Stillness that the Spirit of God calls us to when He calls us to 'be still and know that I am God.'  On the other hand the gentle chanting of the psalms in worship is conducive to the spirit entering into the Stillness.  

Endless controversy will be provoked by the attempt as is seen.  The mystical practice of the Church is not contradicted in Scripture but neither is it spelled out, and the theology behind it has been preserved in the Tradition of the Church and not in Scripture.  One needs a Church that recognizes that the Church is the ground and pillar of the Truth in order to have enough peace to pursue the mystical life that leads to Theosis.