Are these guys nuts -

I saw a very earnest black gentleman on TV proclaiming that the newest and fastest growing religion in America, particularly in the black community, was Islam.

Interesting. The perception among many American blacks is that their ancestors were enslaved and persecuted by Christians, and that Moslems do not have any racial phobias. Not exactly true, by a long shot.

The problem is that the people of this country look at things through the prism of their emotional prejudices and do not check the facts.

So, let’s check some facts. The official dates for American slavery were 1700 to 1865. Even from the very beginning there are records of Christian protests against the slave trade. It was the Christian Abolitionists that brought about the end of the English slave trade. The Civil War was not started nor fought over slavery, but the abolitionist movement managed to sway public opinion and the end result was the total rejection of slavery and the freeing of all the slaves. There were approximately 400,000 slaves brought to America. Look around at the number of black people descended from these 400,000 still in America. Something around 36 million in 2000.

The book and TV blockbuster Roots portrayed the American slave traders as landing from boats and then rushing inland to capture the inhabitants of a peaceful village. That may have occasionally happened, but there are some disadvantages. First off, there is no guarantee that you can get the people that you want, age, sex, health and so on are just pot luck. Secondly, even though you have rifles, some indignant primitive with a spear is likely to object to being killed or captured. Getting a spear though your guts is usually considered a bad economic proposition.

Fact is, the American and English slave traders bought their slaves from the Arab traders who had been dealing in African slaves for centuries.

For the record, one of my ancestors is Captain James Reilly, who was shipwrecked off the coast of Africa, captured and held slave for many years by Arab slave traders. His book Reilly’s Narrative, the story of his slavery and escape, was very popular in the mid 1800s and was one of Abraham Lincoln’s favorites. And may have had some small influence on his decision to draft the Emancipation Proclamation.

Herself Sez: And let us not forget the “Underground Railroad,” operated by Christian households who believed that slavery was wrong, that helped close to 100,000 slaves find freedom in Canada, New Mexico and in non-slave states in the US.

Nowadays, “according to 1993 U.S. State Department estimates, up to 90,000 blacks are owned by North African Arabs, and often sold as property in a thriving slave trade for as little as $15 per human being.” Slavery in the Modern World.

I do not excuse the conduct of slavery under any conditions, and the thousands who died in the European slave ships are a true horror. But let’s remember the basic numbers: less than 200 years, 400,000 slaves, over 36 million descendants. And the countless Christian Abolitionists who protested from the beginning because the fundamental nature of Christianity is love for all mankind.

Now let’s look at the Moslem track record. You know, the Peace-Loving Religion that so many blacks are turning to so that they can say to hell with America.

Mohammed owned black slaves up until his death. The word for slave in Arabic became the common word for black person. “Abd” is the Arabic equivalent for “nigger” in modern America. Except there is no politically correct movement in Islam to keep people from using it. Let us quote Mohammed himself “Do not bring black into your pedigree”.

Moslems still practice slavery to this day. The Moslem Arabs began slaving in Africa from the very beginning. The last public slave auction of African blacks in Mecca was in the 1960s. This is fourteen centuries of trading in African black slaves. There was not and has never been any abolitionist movement in Islam. Slavery is still considered quite proper and meritorious under Sharia Law.

Now for a few numbers. There were an estimated 19 to 20 million African slaves over the centuries. This does not count the probably 50 to 80 million who died before they made it to the Moslem slave markets.

Look at those numbers compared to the American black slave descendants. Look around the Middle East - how many blacks do you see? Damn near none. African male slaves were usually castrated. Not likely to leave many descendants. Also the treatment of the slaves was so brutal that most died young, necessitating a constant flow of new slaves since most did not live to procreate.

Now - you want to explain to me just why Islam is the “natural religion of the black man”? If you really want to go back to the original religion of Africa then you need to look at Orthodox Christianity! I assure you that the Early Christian Church was quite active all through North and Central Africa. Many of the early saints were black. There is not and has never been any anti-black discrimination in the Orthodox Church. One of the most beloved saints on any calendar, Russian, Greek, Syrian, or whatever is St. Moses the Black, who is celebrated in all Orthodox Churches every year.

If you want to get away from the culture that you grew up in try visiting the Orthodox, the native Church of Africa before the Moslems came in murdering, raping, burning, and enslaving.

But do check some facts for yourselves. I would encourage you to read The Legacy of Arab-Islam in Africa: A Quest for Inter-religious Dialogue by Dr. John Azumah. At the very least think several times before you act out and commit yourself to a religion which is ridiculously false, and in which the black is always a fourth class citizen in the view of the racist Arabs who are the real top dogs. Or maybe you think that the Iranians - who are really Persians - and who despise everyone else, including the Arabs, do not think that you are fourth class. Why fourth class? Check out the facts of Moslem ranking of slave desirability: First - Middle Eastern, second - white, third - Ethiopian, fourth - black.

“The ape is more capable of being trained than the Negro” - Nasir al-Din Tusi, very famous, influential and respected 13^th century Moslem Persian theologian and scientist. So much for the love of Moslems for blacks. They only want you as tools, fools, and slaves. This is not something that I would call “the natural religion of the black man”.

A Nest of Vipers -

Hollywood exemplifies the thought process of the modern liberal. An excellent example is found in the movie Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. On the whole, I rather enjoy the movie. But, the central fact that there are no decent Christians portrayed is revealing. The Bishop is despicable, Friar Tuck is a drunken bigot, and the remaining Christians don’t have a clue. The only decent character is the Morgan Freeman Moslem. In an exchange in one of the earlier scenes, something is mentioned about women and Robin Hood says something off the wall and the Morgan Freeman character insists that “We talk to our women”. Really? Since when? A woman is of less value than a camel.

Mohammed was a pedophile and child molester. He was a murderer and rapist and a racial bigot. And the liberals want to spit on Christians and hold up Moslems as examples of how to relate to women? A woman, by the way, is worth half the value of a man in Islam. No matter how wonderful, educated, wealthy, or whatever - the woman is only worth half what the most worthless man in the world is worth.

Narrated ‘Aisha: that the Prophet married her when she was six years old and he consummated his marriage when she was nine years old, and then she remained with him for nine years (i.e. till his death). Volume 7, Book 62, Number 64: Sahih Bukhari [the most venerated and authentic Islamic source]

Mohammed, at 50, became engaged to a six year old child. Her had sex with her when she was nine. The only reason that he waited was that she contracted some disease that made her hair fall out. That is child abuse and pedophilia any way you cut it. Oh yeah, the usual liberal excuse is that well, golly gee, customs differ in other places and times.

Let’s see what a current Moslem “Holy Man” has to say. This is Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. Yeah, that’s the same “Holy Leader” that the Iranian “students” that took over the American embassy in Iran still look to as the greatest “Holy Man” since the pervert Mohammed.

“A man can quench his sexual lusts with a child as young as a baby. However, he should not penetrate. Sodomizing the baby is halal (allowed by sharia). If the man penetrates and damages the child, then he should be responsible for her subsistence all her life. This girl, however, does not count as one of his four permanent wives. The man will not be eligible to marry the girl’s sister. It is better for a girl to marry when her menstruation starts, and at her husband’s house rather than her father’s home. Any father marrying his daughter so young will have a permanent place in heaven.”Khomeini, “Tahrirolvasyleh” fourth volume, Darol Elm, Gom, Iran, 1990

The way to heaven is to submit your daughter to molestation at first menses? When he forbids penetration, he is only talking about vaginal, after all, to lose the hymen reduces the female’s value. Buggery (anal sex) of babies is perfectly good and moral conduct. And liberals think that living under sharia law is ok?

Notice that this blessing for child abuse only holds for the worthless female babies. The boys are sacred and protected. Homosexuality is not allowed under Sharia law. Remember that the “peace loving” creep that leads Iran said that Iran had no homosexuals like we do in this country. Boys cannot marry until the ripe old age of 15. Girls at 9. Feminists - where is your cry for equal treatment?

Mohammed also forced his son to divorce his wife so that Mohammed could marry his daughter-in-law. Good, moral behavior according to the Moslems.

In the Toronto, Canada, suburb of Mississauga, a Moslem father strangled his 16 year old daughter because she did not wish to wear the headscarf. This man is regarded as a hero by Moslems because he murdered his own child.

A seven year old girl is raped by her uncle and her father cuts her head off to protect his honor? I would kill the uncle, and comfort the daughter, but these animals blame the worthless female child for getting raped.

Even a casual search of the net will turn up thousands of examples of Moslem brutality and excess.

When a Christian commits a crime, he is acting as a sinful individual outside the Church and his conduct will be condemned by fellow Christians. There is no way to justify barbarous conduct under Christianity. This is not true of Islam. The most horrific acts, such as murder of your own daughter, child molestation, rape, and slavery are regarded as holy acts and the perpetrator will be lauded.

Now the question that comes to mind is why do Hollywood and the liberals want to honor these people? Why do the Democrats in the House and Senate want to honor Moslem holidays and spit on Christian holidays? (The nine Dems who voted no for Christmas voted yes for Ramadan). Why do the feminazis not condemn Islam? What is the liberal rationale for hating Christians and insisting that we not have any public displays of Christianity and yet want to honor these foul perverts?

I suppose that I will be called radical and terrible and all such things for what I am about to say, if not for what I’ve already said. I would ban any Moslem immigration to the West. We are asking for trouble. The liberals in Los Angeles raised mortal hell when the police wanted to map Moslem neighborhoods to predict where trouble would erupt. Ask the French or the Brits who causes them the most trouble. Every time something upsets these murderous perverts they riot and destroy property and kill someone. There is no place in the America I grew up in for such heinous behavior. If we do not eliminate these creatures of evil from our midst, they will surely poison us. We need to understand that they do not live and let live. They live to dominate and kill. We are in a war to the finish. We did not start it. We do not want it. But it only takes one to hate and murder. We either defend or die.

The Germans were pikers. Hitler and company got somewhere around 13 to 15 million. The Moslem score is around 270 million. And they want more deaths and misery. You liberals are so busy hating your own people and your own countries that you are overlooking the people that will destroy you and all you stand for.

“Talk to our women”. What pathetic and contemptible bullshit.

Whether one regards Christ as God or not, one cannot fault Him on moral grounds without telling lies. The lib practice of lumping all religion together and considering them as equal is stupid. One can make a good case for most of the major religions being fairly good moral guides, even if one does not follow the beliefs. This cannot be said of Islam. The tenets of Buddhism are clearly good moral teachings. Confucianism and Daoism are decent moral guides. If a Christian follows the moral tenets of the Bible there is no room for hatred. This does not mean that individuals cannot be blind and perverted, but there is no backing for it. Islam is not on the same moral plane when the founder is a murdering pervert and murder, rape, slavery, and child abuse are considered good and moral conduct. The sad thing is that the libs never get the facts straight.

I do not object to Buddhists immigrating to this country. I do not object to them practicing their Buddhism. I do object to Moslems and would not allow them in if I had any choice. Our children will regret that we ever allowed them in at all. This is not to say that I would not allow Middle Eastern people who rejected Islam in. I would not allow any Mosques to be built under any circumstances, for in the Mosques hatred is taught.

Anyone who thinks that I have exaggerated about Mohammed or Islam should check the facts for themselves. The facts are as I have stated them. Indeed, the facts about these psychotic killers are ever worse. Check them out before you condemn me as a bigot. This is not hate speech. This is true. Check it out before you get wrapped around the axle.

I should point out that humans, contrary critters that we are, do not always follow the tenets of their religions. While Christianity is about love and redemption, individual Christians may commit horrible acts, sometimes even twisting the facts of Christianity to suite their own perversions. Likewise, although Islam is full of hatred, perversion, domination and evil, individual Moslems are frequently good people who act in a morally correct fashion. There have been and are Moslems who act far more morally correctly than many Christians. Nonetheless, the fundamental natures of the religions are as stated.

Herself sez: I’m sure my Ol’ Curmudgeon will get some death threats because of this one! But I double-checked the references and researched them myself - his facts seem to be straight. I had done a good bit of Islamic research on my own a while back and concluded that Islam “ain’t our friend.”

Philosophy of Slavery –

The history of slavery precedes written records. It is conjectured that when man turned to agriculture slavery became practical. In the hunter/gatherer society the numbers are small and the tribes diffused across the land. There can be no higher concentration of people than the land will freely support. Those who are not strong, diligent, intelligent and talented die. When primitive agriculture is the norm, muscle power becomes paramount. The land is plentiful and cheap, or free. The labor is scarce and expensive and needed. Does slavery happen rapidly, as in one tribe just wakes up one day and decides to pillage another for forced laborers? Or is it slower, the less able to provide for themselves voluntarily taking service with someone who can provide for all? Is it the easy path from voluntary servant who gets life’s necessities in return for allegiance and labor to full blown slavery in a few generations? It is unanswerable at this time, but it does seem to have happened at one time or another in all cultures. However, once slavery is established it seems to self-perpetuating until it becomes economically impractical. Or until that society is conquered by some stronger culture. Then the masters also become slaves. Be it noted: most slaves didn’t really see anything wrong with the system. They just wanted the roles reversed.

We should define and examine the various kinds of slavery. There is total slavery, with the slave owned by the master and totally at the mercy of the master. These can be bought and sold and families split up.

There is slavery where the slave is bound to the land, not directly owned. This is usually called serfdom or peonage. The serfs cannot be sold or families split because they belong to the land, not the master.

There was also indentured servitude where the slavery was for a contractually limited time in return for some consideration. This was mainly limited to the settlement of the American colonies in modern times. Frequently indentured servants were treated worse than owned slaves. Most people will take better care of their own property than they will rental property.

There is also the slavery where one individual has some hold over another. This is more a modern phenomenon and does not usually have legal status where practiced. Think of prostitutes held to a pimp by a dependence on the drugs that the pimp supplies.

The things that distinguish slavery are:

· No freedom of movement
· No freedom of occupation
· Receive no recompense for labor other than necessities
· Bound to do the will of the master with no alternative

For right now we will concentrate on legal and condoned slavery. One of the things that people seem to overlook in discussions of slavery is the economic side of it. Humans don’t generally do anything that is not economically advantageous. The myths about slave ships showing up at coastal villages in Africa and just running in and capturing a whole bunch of people are pretty much fantasy. It is dangerous to run into a village. Some cranky guy just might shove a spear through you. Death is generally considered economically undesirable. It did happen, but not all that often.

There were thriving slave markets in Africa when the Europeans showed up. It was much better to purchase existing slaves and load them and ship them back. The markets were run by Africans, for Africans, selling Africans. When the European traders started buying it was the beginning of a two hundred year economic boom for the suppliers. Of course they had to raid further and further afield to gather fresh merchandise. It is of interest to note that a good bit of the African slave trade is tied up with the spread of Islam and a good many of the slave traders were Moslem. The early African Christians did not practice slavery.

The Moslems practiced slavery up to the present. Slavery is still practiced in the Sudan. Note that Louis Farrakhan has visited the Sudan often. He has never seen fit to criticize the slavery in the Sudan or the forced servitude in modern Saudi Arabia. I guess it is only wrong if the master is white. One of my ancestors was Captain James Riley. He was shipwrecked off the west coast of Africa and after a harrowing ordeal in the Sahara, was captured and enslaved by Moslems. The story of his torture and eventual bid for freedom are chronicled in his memoirs. His book had considerable influence in the mid 1800s. You can look him up on the internet.

There is not a human on the planet who does not descend from slaves and slave owners. The talk of reparations is just foolish distraction. If your grandfather murdered my grandfather do you owe me a life? Money? Foolishness. More crap from the professional “victims” of the world.

Back to philosophy and history. The slavery that comes to most modern minds is that African period of the 1600s to the 1800s. Using Africans had several advantages:

The first and obvious was that they were visually different from the European masters and thus easy to spot. Less opportunity for a runaway to make freedom. Better economics.

The second was that in the new lands of the Americas and the Caribbean area, the Africans were more heat tolerant and stronger than the indigenous Indian tribes. Many of the Indian tribes practiced slavery, but not on so wide a scale as the Africans. The Africans were culturally used to the institution of slavery and fared better mentally. The Indians tended to die when overworked, the Africans survived. Better economics.

The third was that the existence of the large African slave markets. Since slaves could be bought rather cheaply at the markets, it then boiled down to simple transportation and housing to get them to the New World markets. The ships could be built so that a maximum number could be shipped with minimum loss. Read dead or permanently damaged people from horrible conditions. Chained in the holds and unable to move about. Stench, heat, boredom and terror constant companions. Hell. But a Hell designed to be just barely survivable for 90% or so. Your profits went down if too much stock died. Therefore the shippers provided the minimum expenditure for the maximum return. Good economics.

The price of slaves went from a low of around $40.00 in colonial times up to $1,000.00 in the 1850s. The average return on a slave after all costs was around 5%. This factored in shelter, clothing, sickness, death, runaway loss, and any other losses likely to be incurred. It was generally considered cheaper to buy slaves than to breed them. The slave was not considered fully functional and profitable until around age 14.

This may be compared to a general cost for sex slaves in Thailand of around $1,000.00 initial investment. The general return is around $35,000 until death from abuse, HIV, or drug overdose. There is no economic incentive for the pimps to cease this lucrative trade. There is no particular incentive to take good care of their stock. People come from all over the world to partake of the sex market. It is a significant part of the tourist trade. The world community has not seen fit to punish the country for condoning this trade. It also occurs in surrounding countries, none of which are being punished with UN sanctions. This kind of trade does occur in all modern countries. However, in the west it is not openly or legally condoned and carries some risk of prosecution.

The fact that slavery is morally repugnant does not enter into the thinking of the practitioners. One of the abilities universal to humans is to either demonize or de-humanize others, particularly if there is some group difference. Most people are not deliberately cruel, but can be quite malicious when thinking about others as some sub-human group rather than as human individuals.

Of interest is the constant historical emphasis on the degradation of the enslaved. A small point here – an individual cannot be robbed of his essential humanity and dignity if determined to keep it. Even in horrible circumstances. From a Christian perspective, the corrosive effects of slavery on the soul are far more dangerous to the master than to the slave. This is not to say that many of the preachers of the time did not blind themselves to the incompatibility of slavery and Christianity. Indeed, many of the preachers of the day condoned the practice. Unfortunately, the economic arguments far outweigh the moral for the majority of humans.

Man is not a rational animal. He is a rationalizing animal.

Satan and Rebellion –

One fine non-day – this was before God invented time and days and all that stuff – God was kicked back admiring His plans for creation. Lucifer (Satan) – lux opher – light bearer – brightest of all the Angels wandered by. Lucifer’s attention was caught by the plans on the drawing board. He looked carefully through each stage and admired the concept. He especially liked how everything was linked and interdependent. He was wowed and said so: “Cool, boss!” Then he got to the final creation. He was appalled. He was disgusted. He was horrified. He said so: “Boss! You are out of your mind! Look, this thing is spirit and physical! Why, look at how it processes energy. This is disgusting. This is terrible. These are the filthiest things I ever saw. Gross! Yech!”.

God just smiled and said: “These things are great. I’m going to make them my children. They will learn to love. I’m going to give them free will so they can learn great lessons. I’m just totally in love with them, they are going to be my greatest creation.”

Lucifer was nauseated. “Boss, you mean they are going to have a greater place than us angels?”

God thought a minute and said “Well, I suppose you could look at it that way. But really, I love all of you too. But I can join with these humans in ways I just can’t with you. They are different.”

Satan was so revolted, he revolted. Prematurely. Satan did not get as far as the last pages of the plans. He did see that God intended to become one of the humans. He did not see that the humans could/would actually become part of God Himself. If Satan had, he would have been even more appalled, but he would have known that he could not defeat the humans.

Terrible, nasty creatures. But with a capacity for Godhood when they love enough.

Saints and other interesting critters –

English is an interesting and polyglot language derived from many sources. People don’t seem to realize just how much the language used affects the thought process. But, the fact is, we cannot conceptualize without words. Words wind up carrying overtones and flavorings which go beyond the mere dictionary definitions.

The word saint derives from the Latin sanctus, which does mean holy. The early church did not write in Latin, but in Greek. Now, in Greek the word is άγιος (hagios), which also means holy. The difference is that that hagios carries the additional overtones of “holy one”.

In the Western Roman church the term saint carries a whole concept involving the whole canonization process. Emphasis on the legal proceedings, canonical court, devil’s advocate and all that stuff. Emphasis is put on outward and visible miracles and all that. Saint’s wind up being almost a different category from most humans.

In the Eastern Orthodox Church the whole understanding is different, not “saint” like a military title, but “holy one” as in participates in the Kingdom of Heaven. The sense is that, as in the New Testament, the saints are among us. Indeed, anyone who is or will be in Heaven is holy. There is no particular formal mechanism for canonization. A saint is declared as such when the people of some area decide that they are. No courts, no investigations, no formal legal proceedings. There are thousands of local saints that are not on any official list. A given saint may be placed on a national church’s calendar when enough people in that area decide to honor that person. This can result in otherwise unsavory people being venerated as “holy ones”.

I have met many living “holy ones”. There is one abiding characteristic among all – the overwhelming love that pours from them. You do not have any doubt that these people love God with all their might. You also do not have and doubt that you are loved. It can be rather overwhelming to be in the presence of these people. It draws like a magnet. It can also be frightening. Other than this holy and heavenly love, there is very little else that these people have in common. They may be genius, they may not have a full deck. They may be highly educated, they may be quite ignorant. They may be urbane and charming, they may have the manners of a pig. They may not even be housebroken. They are real people. They can even be people you wouldn’t want in your home.

Some of the Orthodox saints are rather unsavory, at best. St. Moses the Black comes to mind. One of the many African Saints. Oh yes, many people do not seem to realize that Africa had a ton of early church activity and that many of the early Saints were black. Anyway, Moses was a bad boy. He was an escaped slave, gangster, robber, and murderer. He was a huge, powerful and terrifying man. He and his gang attacked a monastery to pillage. Moses was so impressed by the abbot that he repented. Long, agonizing story short, he became a monk, a priest, and an abbot himself. He was martyred in 405 by the Berbers, at 75 years of age.

There are a whole series of “transvestite nuns”, a remarkable group, mostly women, who dressed as men and lived as monks in the Eastern church. Most of these are recorded from the 5th to the 9th centuries. Of course, in the current culture, we would assume that anyone who cross-dresses is also sexually active. This was not the case. These were people whose bodies did not match their genders, and in a celibate monastic life the gender of the body is somewhat irrelevant. There were also men dressed as women in the female convents. Somewhat less frequent. Not only did this not really bother the Orthodox, but note that several of these people are now recognized and loved as holy ones.

There is also the intriguing group known as “fools for Christ”. Юродивый is Russian for Holy Fool. The original inspiration is 1st Corinthians 4:10 - “We are fools for Christ’s sake, but ye are wise in Christ; we are weak, but ye are strong; ye are honorable, but we are despised.” There are all kinds of theology and discussion to go along with the whole concept. The fact is that a lot of these people did not play with a full deck, yet were nevertheless recognized as “holy ones” by the people around them. Contrary to the delusions of some, Harvard or Yale are not like Heaven. An IQ test is not required for entrance into Heaven.

The man known as St. John of San Francisco was John Maximovitch. He was quite recent and current, he only died in 1966. In the Roman way he would not even be eligible for consideration much before 2066. In the Orthodox Church he is a saint on the calendar of the Russian Church Abroad and has been for several years. His veneration began almost on the day of his death, his holiness was recognized during his life. He was Bishop of San Francisco and would frequently scandalize some of the more staid parishioners. He had no patience with social convention and would often interrupt social occasion to declare that there had been enough frivolity, it was time to pray. The children of his cathedral once made him a paper mache miter (fancy bishops hat). It looked pretty dreadful. He stopped the service, removed his golden brocade and jeweled miter, set it aside and placed the paper mache miter on his head. He did the rest of the very formal and beautiful service with this garish thing. He said that the children’s loving gift was far more beautiful and pleasing to God. Some of the stuffier parishioners were totally horrified. He would give his shoes to someone homeless and then wander into some important meeting in the Cathedral barefoot. In Shanghai when his church was closed by the communists he celebrated the services in the middle of the street using a card table. At considerable risk to his life, the communists had already martyred several of his people. He was loved all across the globe for his direct and loving (and tactless) approach to the Christian life. He served as priest or bishop on every continent of the world except Antarctica.

The Kingdom of God does not follow social convention. Neither do all the holy ones. Some very peculiar and surprising people have been models of faith and love. Maybe we need to rearrange some of our American notions of what is “proper”?

Military –

My country, right or wrong!
My country, love it or leave it!

We’ll come back to these in a minute. First – let’s get some qualifications out of the way. I enlisted in the Marine Corps in 1966 and had to get my mother’s signature. I was too young. I didn’t have a draft card, not old enough. I didn’t get a draft card until after discharge. My kid brother was in the Air Force. My oldest son was 12 years in the Army. My daughter was 3 years in the Army – Tank Corps. Cutest little combat boots you ever saw. My youngest was 6 years in the Navy as a Marine Corps Medic. My Godson was 6 years Navy on the Nimitz. My father was Navy WWII. My uncle was Army Air Corp WWII, my grandfather was bird colonel, Army, WWII and 1st Lt. WWI. To my knowledge there has never been a member of my family that was drafted. Ever. We always volunteered. (My wife’s family has just as much service).

I think that the above should provide my blue ribbon credentials to the most skeptical and hard-line of right-wingers. Therefore, I will commence to bloviate. BTW – Bill O’Reilly did not invent this handy verb. It shows up in slang dictionaries of the 19th century and was very popular in the early part of the 20th century. (Damn – it’s hard to remember that we’re in the 21st!)

In R.A. Heinlein’s turgid opus (which is still too short) Time Enough for Love, in the Tale of the Lazy Man, or some such, we have a lazy hero who joins the military. I think I remember the character’s name as David. Anyway, to his horror, a war breaks out. Now the sentiment of the character is that an army should be so big and fierce and nasty that no one would think of attacking. This may be the best description that there ever was. It is the proper function of a good military to never have to shed blood. There is no peacenik in the world that hates war any more than a combat soldier who has actually been there. Only a few nutcases actually want war. Most of these nutcases haven’t actually been there before. A rational soldier wants peacetime duty, but is prepared to defend his beloved country with his life, if necessary. But only as a last resort. If the military has to kill and die, the politicians and diplomats have failed. Most would just like to do their duty and go home to their families.

The left likes to view the military as an outmoded and unnecessary expense. Said money would be better spent on the dole. Libs like to look out and see victims that can be helped by the government. Truth is, the dole doesn’t relieve poverty, it creates it. There is no way for any government to solve social problems. They can only make them worse. Anyway, lib congresses and administrations weaken the military and encourage the crazies of the world to poke at us. This, in turn, costs lives and money while we fumble for a response. Sounds a whole lot like Rome in the 6th century.

Now, back to the opening credits. My country, right of wrong! Not exactly. In the Corp (and all services), one of the first things that you are taught is the difference between a legal and an illegal order. You must not obey an illegal order! Ever. Period. There is also a chain of command procedure to protest even legal orders that are against your conscience – in other than combat conditions. If you disobey a legal order in combat you may be shot on the spot. There is no time for debate when the shooting is going on.
Generally, it is not the role of the individual soldier to determine the morality of a war. The President and the Congress have that role. The soldier must simply obey all legal orders. If ordered to torture, murder, rob, what ever, it must not be done, as these would be illegal orders. But, if you do disobey an order you better be right. With witnesses.

Similarly, as citizens, we may make our views known when we think that our country is heading into a morally incorrect position. And, indeed, we not only have the right to voice our views, we have the moral obligation to do so when we see things that are wrong. Now, since none of us is God and can see into another’s heart, the FFs decided that everyone, including the nuts, should have the blessing of free speech. There are some rare exceptions. The old shouting fire in a crowded theater is just the obvious example. Use your mind, you can think of others.

My country, right or wrong! Yes, true. But we must always be vigilant to insure that we stay right.

My country, love it or leave it! OK, this one I pretty much buy. But, as usual, I have to set terms. There is a difference between loving someone and approving of all of their actions. In Church terms, hate the sin; but – love the sinner. Now if you truly love this country and wish nothing but the best for it and all its citizens, feel free to stay and criticize constructively. Your contributions are valuable, even if you are silly enough to disagree with me (What a preposterous notion). But don’t whine, it doesn’t become you.

Contrariwise – it you do not love this country and wish the continuation of its people and existence – leave. Go away. If you hate us, go where we are not. If you wish to piss in your own cereal – do so. But don’t try to piss in mine. I might just react in a way that will be unpleasing to you. If you are anything other than scum, some other country that shares your values will take you gladly. If no other country will have you, perhaps you might want to reevaluate you life and your opinions. If no other country shares your values – is everyone in the world out of step but you?

Post-thought. When I got out of the Corps and back on the street, we were being called baby-killers and spat upon. I never knew any combat soldier that killed babies deliberately. The very nasty lib feminist activists who were willing to crucify us for defending our ally (we had treaties) were the ones who firmly advocated and practiced, after Roe v. Wade, abortion. Who is the baby killer?

Old monks and the WCC –

In the 60’s or 70’s, I forget which, there was a convention of the WCC – World Council of Churches – in Atlanta. I vaguely remember it being at the Pascal’s Motor Inn on Hunter Street, now Martin Luther King Boulevard. At that time many of the Orthodox Churches belonged to the WCC, even though it was acknowledged as a very liberal organization not in keeping with Orthodoxy. Why? Well, the Orthodox Churches in the Soviet Union and those countries under their influence had no other way of communicating with the West. Even the KGB had no objection, since they felt that liberal organizations would help weaken Christianity and democracies.

Anyway, the delegates were met in session and one of the members was bemoaning the current state of faith in the West. He plaintively wailed, “What we need is to learn to pray!” One of the Russian delegates, an old, very pious monk, stood up and said in a very calm manner, “This is how to learn to pray. Join the thumb and the first two fingers or the right hand – this represents the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Fold the little finger and the ring finger against the palm – this is for the two natures of our Beloved Savior. We sign ourselves on the forehead, the stomach, the right shoulder and then the left, blessing ourselves with the power of the Cross. We then humbly say “Our Father, Who art in the Heavens, …”

There was complete silence in the meeting. Now that the Soviet Union has collapsed, the Communist country Orthodox Churches no longer belong to liberal organizations.

ORTHODOX CHRISTIANITY

Why am I Orthodox? Why Russian Orthodox? What is this stuff, anyway?

OK, first of all, relax. I’m not trying to convert anyone. Much, anyway. Mostly this is just some background so people can understand why some of my positions are so different from what you might suspect. Fair warning. Some of the positions are gonna make a lot of people mad.

Let’s start with some ground rules: I’m not going to debate whether God is or not. As far as I am concerned, He is. Nextly, Christ wasn’t a good man. He wasn’t a prophet. Either He was the Son of God, the Second Person of the Trinity, as He claimed or He was a nutcase. No in between. Not going to argue that one either. So we will start with the assumptions that there is a God, and that the Christ was also that God.

I was born and raised in the Episcopal Church. Now in the 1950s we were decidedly the minority in the South. Socially, in the Old South, the masses were Baptist, the middles were mostly Methodist, and the elites were Episcopalians. I really didn’t comprehend the protestants that surrounded us. The Episcopal Church was really big on the branch theory. That theory states that the Church is one only in some mystical sense. The East and the West split into separate trunks, and the Church of England (Episcopalians) split off from the Western trunk, and so on. The Episcopal Church is now firmly protestant. But back in the ‘50s they still thought they were half protestant and half Catholic. The great compromise. We start with Henry. Now history has been a bit unkind. Henry is remembered as a fat guy with six wives who was the eighth Henry. There was a bit more to him than that. Henry was an extremely talented man who composed some very nice music and also won an award for excellence in theological writing from the Pope. He was good and he knew his stuff. So when Henry decided to break from Rome and establish himself as head of the local church, he knew enough to convince the local church hierarchy. It also helped that he had the army behind him. Later, the Americans were mostly all Church of England. Yeah, I know they fed you all that stuff about the Pilgrims and Plymouth Rock and the Mayflower. But really, most colonists were Church of England. After the Revolution, there were many problems. The Americans had no Bishops, and Episcopal means ruled by bishops. Most of the priests had either gone back to England or up to Canada with the loyalists. Eventually Samuel Seabury from New England was able to convince some Scottish Bishops to consecrate him bishop. Thus was born the Protestant Episcopal Church of the United States of America. What a mouthful. Thus just Episcopalians or sometimes the organization was called PECUSA. This was called the thinking man’s church in the 1950s and was growing like crazy. Missions all over the place for the baby boomers. As the church got more and more liberal and protestant in the ‘60s and ‘70s the inevitable started happening. People began leaving in droves, and splinter churches formed that were throwbacks to the 1950s or to the Anglo-Catholic movement. BTW – Post revolution, most of the South was still Church of England. But — they had no priests. The protestants grew like wildfire during this period. It was a whole lot easier to self-ordain and then start having revivals and such. The Episcopalians insisted on a seminary education and then they had to be ordained by a bishop. These bishops were in sort supply, remember?

Meanwhile, I started studying for the Episcopal Priesthood. Remember that. We’ll come back to it later.

My wife and I tried going to one of these splinter churches and it just didn’t get it. We felt bereft. We called a dear friend who had been an Episcopal priest and asked him about the situation. His advice: look into Orthodoxy.

Now this was some interesting advice, given what I had seen in pre-the. (Preparatory theological). One of the things that I had studied was Greek. Very interesting language, works a lot different than English. One of the nice things is that you get to read the Bible as it was written. Now the King James was/is that which the Southern protestants loved to bang on and quote. And truthfully, it’s not too bad in the New Testament. Translated straight from the New Testament Greek. A few bobbles, but good on the whole. But the Old Testament — oh, brother! To start with, the King James was done using the Hebrew Old Testament. Sounds good. But — there are problems. To wit: the Jews and the early church did not use the Hebrew Old Testament. They used the Greek Septuagint. The Jews of the time didn’t speak Hebrew. They spoke Greek, the international trade language. They also spoke Aramaic. This had been the official language of the Achmenid Empire (read Persian = Iranian, Cyrus & all that). Ever notice that when Jesus or the boys are quoting scripture that it is close, but not dead-on? If you use the Septuagint it is correct. Secondly. There was a movement in Judaism that was called the Masoretes. The Christians had been converting Jews left and right using their own text. The Jews, naturally, did not like this. The Masoretes were kind of like the Gideons of their day. They distributed corrected copies of their text (with the passages the Christians used carefully massaged) all over the world to the various Jewish communities. They also very carefully destroyed the old, “corrupt” text they replaced. The only text that the early Church ever used or blessed was the Septuagint. When the Church adopted Athanasius’ list as the accepted Bible, the Septuagint was what was used. There are several books in the Septuagint that did not make it into Jeromes’s translation or the Vulgate. They also did not make it into the King James since that was from the Masoretic Text, not the Septuagint. The only bunch that still uses the whole Bible as declared by the Church is the Orthodox.

The next thing that bothered me was a book by an Anglican monk: The Shape of the Liturgy by Dom Gregory Dix. This traced the development of the Liturgy from apostolic times to the present. The major thing that kept popping up to me was Dom Gregory would be rattling along about this or that element and would say something like “the Western practice changed in such and such year. But the original practice was such and such, as the Orthodox still do.” I started figuring that if the first Christians did something, we should still be doing it, unless there was a real good reason to change.

The third leg goes something like this: The Episcopalians make a real big deal about Apostolic Succession. This means that they think that the Bishops of today can trace an unbroken line back to the Apostles by consecration, or laying on of hands. I thought about it and came to the conclusion that the original church had to be out there somewhere. I didn’t buy the argument that it had split into all these branches. I wanted the trunk. We all agree (I think) that the Church was founded on the day of Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit descended on the Apostles and Disciples in the upper room. We can probably agree that the Church was one for at least the first century into the second. Most people will agree that there was only one Church at the time of the conversion of Constantine. So far, so good. It is a historical fact that the Coptic Church in Egypt and Ethiopia broke away from the main Church at the 4th Ecumenical Council — 451. We need not go into the Monophysite Controversy here. The next split was when East and West finally split in 1054. Now who left who depends on which pew you occupy. Rome had been diddling around with things for quite a while. They changed the Nicene Creed to include the filioque (and the Son) in the 6th century without passing it through a council with the rest of the Church. The Romans were also centralizing power into the single Bishop of Rome – the Pope (means father). In the Orthodox tradition, all Bishops are equal, they all have one vote in the council, and the council is the final authority when acting in accord. The Romans were claiming that Christ gave Peter primary power — “upon this rock” and so forth. There was also a claim that Peter was the first Pope. Not so, the first Bishop of Rome was Clement. Wonderful writer — good stuff. Look it up. The very first Church council is not in the list of Ecumenical Councils. It was the 1st Apostolic Council recorded in Acts. Now when you read that, notice that Peter does not get his way in the Apostolic Council. James pins his ears back and Peter loses the vote on Judeization. Next, notice that every single Church mentioned in the New Testament, except Rome, is still Orthodox. So – does the majority leave the minority or the other way around?

So, if we want the original Church, we’ve got 4 choices at the most. The Orthodox, The Roman Catholics, The Coptics, or the Church of India. Huh? Where’d they come from? Well, it’s like this. The Christian Church in India goes slap back to Thomas. You know. The doubter. That’s where he wound up. They are great people. But they were off on their own hook and crook for centuries and never took part in the Ecumenical Councils. They also kinda’ developed a few strange beliefs on the way. But they do have some nifty prayers and services. It is also interesting to compare the practices that they have to the other three. Now you bare bones protestants, here it comes: All these churches have very similar formal liturgies. Check it out. From the beginning, the worship of the Church was all that fancy stuff you hate.

OK, so we have a beginning and a middle church, what about now? My rational: if Christ is God and if the Church is the spotless bride of Christ and His body on earth, then any discontinuity, even for 5 minutes, means that the gates of Hell prevailed for a while. And if that’s true, you are wasting your time. There is no surety of Salvation. You might as well get some more sleep on Sunday. Whew. Sit back and think about that one. If there is no continuity in the Bride of Christ, then this cannot be the Bride. You may get a warm, fuzzy, religious feeling. You may get some good from studying the scriptures. But — you are NOT in the mechanism that was set up by the Holy Spirit to be the vehicle for our relation to Christ and our salvation. The oldest protestant churches go back maybe 500 years or so. Most protestants seem to think the Church was ok up until the time of Constantine and then fell apart until their founder (fill in the blank), somewhere around year (fill in the blank), stumbles out of the woods with the unvarnished truth from reading a King James Bible and receiving the True Word straight from God (or rolled their own — Joe Smith). Sorry. Don’t buy it. The other bull that you get is that the “real” church went underground for x number of years. OK. That’s fine. Show me the historical continuity. How’d it get here?

In America, we know that a new denomination pops up every 5 minutes. We also know that no two protestants can agree on theology. I love the non-denominational guys. Who do they think they are fooling? They are just their very own denomination with no one to ride herd over them. I can’t buy that any of these “roll your owns” are the true and original Church. The protestant myths about the “Catacomb Church” seem to be just that. Yes, the Catacombs were used by Christians, but probably not for services. The layout of the traditional Orthodox Church is exactly that of the standard Roman noble’s house, which looks to be the place most services took place.

Lastly, there is no central authority in Orthodoxy. The Patriarch of Constantinople does not hold any special power. He swings the gavel at a Conference, but he is merely first among equals. Yet — there is absolutely no disagreement among the Orthodox about the services. There is no disagreement about Theology. None. Now the Greeks, Russians, Arabs, Serbs, Japanese, etc. are a contentious bunch. Yet they do not disagree about matters of the Church — for two thousand years. Remarkable. Could only be the Holy Spirit in action. In the South we have an old saying: If there are two Baptists in town, then there are three churches. The one I go to, the one he goes to, and the one neither of us can stand. Now this does not mean that the Orthodox always get along. They don’t. But they don’t disagree about the faith. Amazing.

Now if we decide to check out Orthodoxy, there are some choices to make. There is going to be the investigation to find out what kind of Orthodox there are in the neighborhood. In Atlanta, we have a pretty wide choice. There may be a limited selection in your neck of the woods.
So here’s my rundown at the time:
Greeks. Lovely people. But in Atlanta in the 1970s they were very clannish and did not really like converts coming into their club. This is NOT the case everywhere, and not there anymore. Also, while I like Greek music, I like it in small quantities. That’s just me, others really dig it. Also the services were in Greek at the time. I could read it — slowly and badly, but I never did speak it. My Greek teacher used to despair — “I never heard Greek with such a thick Southern accent!”

Antiocheans. Read Lebanese, mostly. Same comments as above, though their services were in English. But the Eastern melodies grated on my ear.

Russians. Well, here in the South, mostly ROC means Redneck Orthodox Church about as much as Russian. The services are mostly in English. The people are mostly converts. The music is really good stuff. You will think you are in heaven. Think Tchaikovsky, think Rimsky-Korsakov. Think choirs of Angels. They are all there. (The Angels are occasionally off-key). By Russians I mean Russians. ROCOR. Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia. Also known as Synod sometimes.

There is also the OCA. This came from the Russian Church and was granted autocephaly, or self ruling status in the 1970s. There are many fine people here. The services are all English. But these guys have become a bit too Americanized. They think like protestants, not traditional Orthodox in many ways.

The others, Serbian and all the rest, were not in Atlanta at the time. They are now and may be in a neighborhood near you. Investigate for yourself if you are interested. Some of the ethnic churches may be really clannish and unwelcoming. Others will be wonderful. You just have to check each one out for yourself. Fair warning. If it is a real, traditional Orthodox Church there will be no pews and no organ. If you see those, it is a church that has been Americanized and will probably not hold to the traditional faith.

Now. You say to yourself: Self! Other than all that fancy Liturgy stuff and all that incense. What is the real difference with these people?

I’m glad you asked. Orthodoxy is a totally different world view. The Theological bones of Orthodoxy are from a really different animal.

Quick historical rehash. Christ. Birth, Death, Resurrection, Ascension. Day of Pentecost. Peter, Paul, all the rest. Church Spreads and prospers. Church is persecuted. Constantine converts. Empire becomes Christian. Now the next link in the chain is a fella’ named Alaric. You know the one, sacked Rome, split the Empire. Note that it is about this time of confusion, death, and all the rest that the West (Rome) starts twiddling with the Symbol of Faith (The Nicene Creed) and other goodies. The communication network of the West goes into the toilet. The spread of knowledge halts.

A few years before Alaric a real rip-roaring reprobate named Aurelius Augustinus has a conversion experience and spends the rest of his life teaching and writing and repenting. He is usually called St. Augustine in the west. The Orthodox do not regard him as a saint. He is sometimes called Blessed Augustine because of his writings on spirituality. Now Augustine was one of the early proponents of the Filioque (‘and the Son’) that was added into the Creed in the west. He was also one of the guiltiest people on record. The guy felt so guilty it was unreal. He decided that the whole human race was useless and doomed to hell and that Adam’s sin was literally inherited by all. Gloom and doom kind of guy. Only by baptism could the damning stain of Adam’s sin be erased. All are evil. And so on. Now the Orthodox have always thought that Augustine was full of beans. St. John Cassian of Lyon, France corresponded extensively with Augustine. It is instructive to read St. John’s dressing down of Augustine. Basically he tells Augustine that he loves him, and that he appreciate his dedication, but that Augustine is full of beans and goes too far. Western theology is completely based on Augustinian theology. (‘Bout all they had during the dark ages). This gives rise to all sorts of strange doctrine. How about Limbo? Here’s the chain. All humans are evil, and have inherited Adam’s sin. Therefore no human can go to Heaven unless he is baptized. But wait — what about an innocent stillborn baby? This baby has had no chance to be baptized. Therefore it must not go to Heaven. But — God is merciful and would not send this innocent to Hell. Would He? OK, I know, I know! We’ll invent a place in the middle where the innocent go! We’ll call this Limbo, neither Heaven nor Hell. Great, guys. Good use of logic. It works! It holds together! Only problem: This cannot be justified in Scripture, nor in Tradition. It comes out of thin air. Thin air is not sufficient when we are talking about salvation and all that. Now the West was in a hard way for centuries. Another minor problem. According to Augustine, God is so good and Man is so evil that there cannot possibly be any direct interaction. Therefore Augustine postulated little intermediate “energies” that God used to interact with Man. Later logicians realized that this presented some problems. God became Man. Christ is fully God and fully Man. But - God cannot directly interface with this evil creature, so how could God be born of woman? This tied up the western theologians for a while. They finally resolved it with the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception. This was first proposed in 1476 and finally became dogma in 1854. Immaculate Conception has nothing to do with the birth of Jesus. It states that Mary was born without stain of original sin. Got them out of one corner into another. Now Mary is a goddess.

There wasn’t much education, and literacy didn’t exist outside monasteries and all that. All Western theology comes from Augustine. Thomas Aquinas later summed it all up in the Summa Theologica.

Now the kicker. No matter whether directly or indirectly: All protestant churches come from Rome. All protestant theology is Roman in origin. But wait! Not MY church. Guys, guys, check the chain. I stand by my premise: All western churches come from Rome. Either directly, as the Anglicans (Episcopalians) or Lutherans. Or indirectly, as the Methodists or Salvation Army. These both are second generation and came out of the Anglican Church. Others may come from third, fourth, or whatever generations. But theology of all western churches comes from Rome. It may be a protest in reaction to some of the bad theology, but it comes from Rome.

OK, so how is the Orthodox East different? The basic premise of Orthodoxy is that sin, sorrow, suffering and death came into the world as a consequence of Adam’s sin. He did not destroy God’s creation. Adam’s sin corrupted it, but did not destroy it. God had created the earth and said that it was good. While we inherit the consequences of Adam’s sin, we do not directly inherit the sin itself. Man is basically good. God’s creation is still good under our corruptions. We do not view Adam as the fully mature Lord of the Earth who fell to the depths of Hell that the west sees. We view him as a rather immature adolescent who foolishly corrupted himself and dirtied creation. From this different perception of the cosmos comes a whole different world view. We are not born with Adam’s original sin. We are born with a taste for sin. We are also revolted by sin. This makes for an interesting time growing up.

BTW — the other bunch that views the fall pretty much the same as the Orthodox are the Jews. Amazing coincidence. We come from the Jews. As another side note: our services are also totally understandable to the Orthodox Jews. Especially Vespers. They know what we are doing. It freaks them out.

The Orthodox view the Incarnation, Birth, Death, and Resurrection of Christ as one continuous action that fully rebuilds creation without disturbing the gift of freewill. We can choose to participate in the recreated cosmos and work on our salvation. We can also choose to stay in the fallen and corrupt world. Our choice.

Other things that flow from these differences of perception. If we look at other people and other cultures, a westerner (Roman or protestant) has a hard time explaining how so many of these people can be good and how so much of the other’s philosophy can be good morality. “Man is evil. These people never heard of Christ. How can there be any good here?” The Orthodox have no problem. “Man is basically good. He yearns for God. He will dimly perceive types and shadows. But only in the Church is the fullness revealed.”

Now we come to one that protestants hate. Growing up in the South, we had a lot of Bible thumpers. OK. You ask them where their church gets its authority. The answer is always “from the Bible.” So, uh, guys, where did the Bible come from? Usually you get the “it is the Word of God!”, rather indignantly. OK, yes. That’s true. But — how did God get it here? There’s usually some mumbling and fumbling about at this point. Sometime you get a mumble about the “St. James Bible”. This is usually from someone without a whole lot of education.

OK, time to be blunt. The fact is: the current Bible came from St. Athanasius list of what was suitable for reading in Church. There were a boatload of books and letters floating about, some of them pretty good, and some just crazy. People were being mislead by some of the nuttier writings. These discarded books and letters are what the west (particularly Americans) are always getting wrapped around the axle about. You know: “lost books of the Bible! Suppressed books of the Bible!”, and so on. Fact is, we Orthodox still know about them. We consider most of them junk and don’t pay any attention to them. But we’ve still got them. Anyway, back to Egypt and Athanasius. His list of “right-on” books was finally adopted more or less intact by the Church. Now, looky here: if the Church was founded on the Day of Pentecost then it did NOT take its authority from the Bible. The Bible did not yet exist. The Septuagint Old Testament existed, but the New Testament had not yet been written or ratified. So, while your Church may think it derives its authority from Scripture, we Orthodox know that Scripture derives its authority from us.

Now, the above should give a thinking human pause. The first reaction protestants usually have to the formal services of Orthodoxy is “that’s not in the Bible!” Of course not, we didn’t put it in the Bible, we put it in the service books where it belongs. Your drab and paltry services are not in the Bible either. That’s because they didn’t exist until recently.

The next thing that drives protestants nuts is the icons. Icon is a Greek word that means image. These are very stylized representations of the Saints, and of Christ. “Thou shalt not make any graven image!” OK — we don’t. You don’t see any statues, do you? The traditional style of the icon came from the Egyptian death paintings popular throughout the time of the Ptolemaic Empire. Check old icons against some of the recently excavated sarcophagi from the 1st century. Same style. The first icon was painted by St. Luke. You know, the guy that wrote the third Gospel. Yes, he was a physician and an artist. Yes, he was trained in Egypt. Other people have noted that portraiture was very popular in the Roman Empire at the time. We even know what that icon looked like. It was of the Mother of God and Christ as a child. It is called the sweet kissing. It looked like this:

It is ironic that most of the people who have a hissy fit about icons in the Church have drawers full of photos and their hall wall, and living room walls, mantle, and so on are covered with photos of loved ones. Some of them dead. So, where’s the difference? We love and revere these Saints, who are examples for us to emulate in the life of the Christian. Now the image of Christ. It is true that it is not proper to represent the Father, we don’t know what He looks like, he was never incarnate, so does not have a physical presence. But — God became Man in the person of our Beloved Jesus. We can portray Him — as a human. So — get over it. This is a different custom than you are used to, but it goes back to the first practices of the Church. Eusibeus (2nd century), in his History of the Church, comments that he has seen many portraits of the Savior and the Apostles.

Oh, My God — you people worship the Virgin Mary. No, we don’t. Man — you rednecks are inconsistent. If someone even starts off “Yo mama!” you boys are ready to fight. Now the Scripture says “honor father and mother”. Mary, who we call Theotokos — carrier or bearer of God — is the mother of Jesus. If you love and honor your mother, does He? Second, we don’t worship here. We venerate — as in honor. We ask her to intercede with her Son that our prayer may be granted. Don’t you do what your mother asks? Third, Our Lord was walking down the street. His robe was touched by a sick woman. He knew it and stopped. His followers thought He was nuts. Turned out the woman was healed of her sickness — just by touching His robe. Now then. If someone can be healed by touching a robe — what would it do to carry God in your body for 9 months and nurse Him for a year or two? We Orthodox love the Mother of God, we also love the Saints. Do you not revere the heroes of the past? So do we. Don’t you ask a friend to pray for you? So do we. For the dead are alive in Christ! Therefore the Saints may pray for us.

Modern Americans — don’t let your narrow preconceptions blind you to 2,000 years of tradition! Check out the original and traditional and true Church! The Faith of our Fathers means more than what your daddy did!