+Z’ev

Today’s assigned readings

Deuteronomy 8:11-20; James 1:16-27; Luke 11:1-13

If you do forget the Lord your God and follow other gods to serve and worship them, I solemnly warn you today that you shall surely perish. Like the nations that the Lord is destroying before you, so shall you perish, because you would not obey the voice of the Lord your God.
Leviticus 8:19-20

For now, at least, let’s assume one thing common to most Christian readings of the Jewish Scriptures: those things said of the Tribe of Israel are, somehow, applicable to the Christian “tribe” today. Let’s not wonder about replacement or grafting in or whatever. Let’s just take the concept as read. Somehow, this idea is to be said of us: “so shall you perish, because you would not obey the voice of the Lord your God.”

What is the will of God? My Housemate, Todd, is currently discussing this question on his blog:

Orthodox and Muslim alike believe very strongly in this phrase “If God Will’s It” or as other say “In Gods time”. At it’s root this is basically to say that nothing happens be it by the Will of God. But is this just a cop out on claiming responsibility for our own actions?

Truth be told, this is a common discussion topic in our house. 3 years ago, when Todd was undergoing catechises on his way into the Orthodox tradition, we were getting two messages, really.

In common practice, most folks we knew would preface just about everything with “God willing” or close off every comment with “Thank God” as if God had done those very things - or, rather, as if some act of God had prevented (or, please, will prevent) anything evil from happening. In fact, that’s important: we’re not asking God (praying) to allow what we’re doing. We were saying “I’m going to do this, if God let’s it happen the way I plan.” How are you? “I’m well, and God’s done nothing bad to me recently/allowed nothing bad to happen to me recently to destroy that health.”

But the other message we got, from our Priest, was that God’s will was that we all work our salvation in fear and trembling, that all should come to a “saving knowledge” of Christ.

And yet… the very mythology we taught ourselves was that God sent the Muslims to destroy Constantinople “because of their sins” or earlier, earthquakes for the same reason. This is why when Christians start hollering about “God’s will” after a natural disaster (or after 9/11), I’m amused at the voices saying “We don’t believe that.” In fact, we do…

But is it Gospel? Does not the prayer of Jesus say, “do not bring us to the time of trial”? Or is that superstition? Is the “time of trial” (”lead us not into temptation”) only the Final Judgement? In fact, the Greek word, “peirasmos“, lends itself to thinking of Job, when God allowed Satan to kill all Job’s children. God might not tempt us, himself, but we must beg him not to send is into the Time of Trial.

Or is that the God we worship? If God is omniscient and omnipotent, when evil happens is it because God allows it? Or even, causes?

Or is it that we live in a demon-haunted and superstitious world where it’s much easier to blame bad luck on “them” and a God that fails to protect us from “them”? This last option would imply that most of our religion is simply “apotropaic” - things done to ward off evil. Most of our rites then become magic: house blessings at Epiphany, icons in cars, crosses over beds - all done to prevent all the demons from getting a hold of us.

What a scary religion.

Most of my spiritual life is based on apotropes: if I forget to say prayers in the AM, I don’t feel like I’ve missed a conversation with a good friend, but rather that, sometime, God’s going to get me for it. If I drive off without Icons in the Car (or without crossing myself) I fear that something evil might happen. Nothing bad happens to me on a Sunday “With the sacrament still in my body.” Light a candle for that! Kiss all the icons lest one saint get offended that you forgot her! Do the right number of prostrations whilst saying the Ephremite prayer or it won’t be done right. Fast for 8 hours before communion or you may get sick. In the afterlife God will make you choke up every mouth of food you’ve eaten before Grace was said. Beg God not to strike you down for falling in love with the wrong sort of person! Beg St Raphael to stand over your shoulder while you read a book or you may get “led” astray. Burn a cross in the lintel over your door to keep the demons out! (Write +C+M+B+ in blessed chalk over your door to keep the demons out.) Start all your letters with +J+M+J+…

The list goes on: these are just the ones I can think of off the top of my head.

What an incredibly petty deity I’ve been following.

The passage from St James contains one of my favourite lines… two, actually. One is just for T-shirts! In the Authorised Version, James 1:21 asks us to “lay apart all filthiness and superfluity of naughtiness”. I still think a cool shirt would say something like, “I’m the superfluity of naughtiness your preacher warned you about.”

But the other passage, in the next verse, is one that heads up every webpage in this site and on my blog, just under “Christ is Risen!” Be doers of the word, and not merely hearers, or, as I like to say, Be Poets of the Logos! (Another T-shirt, I think.) Jesus tells us to hear the word of God and do it and his brother, St James, tells us not *just* to hear it, but to do it as well.

Narnia, Middle Earth, Malacandra… these are creations of poets, these are spinings-out, in poetic fashion, of the Logos. I think also of the hymns of St Ephrem and St Symeon and of St Romanus the Melodist - how they capture mystical tellings of Christ in poetry so beautiful that their hymns are still sung, 1000 years or more after their deaths. Not all of us are poets in the textual sense. Certainly I’ve tried at times, but I’ve not crafted anything so holy as they. But we are urged not to be literal poets, I think, but Poets of the Logos. The Logos made everything that is - from quarks to universes and all in between. How is it that I am Poietas and not just a consumer?

More than consume, I tend to be afraid that God will get me. Oddly enough, I can’t imagine the Logos of God - Jesus - wondering around kissing things to ward off the Evil Spirits. I don’t think we - commanded to “Do” the logos in our own lives - should be doing it either. That would include giving into superstitions of the evil eye like “knocking wood”, but it would also mean not giving in too ways to ward off evil like saying “God willing” every time someone asks us a question or makes a plan.

Carl Sagan once referred to science as “lighting a candle in the dark” of a Demon-Haunted World. Messiah, however, is the light of the world. We need nothing else to light against the demons. We created that darkness ourselves and are fittingly deserving of any fun the less-superstition have at our expense. And if we live in fear - in superstition - we’re not living in God at all, for perfect love casts out all fear.