Christianity

What The World Seeks From Us Is Consistency

"What the world is seeking from Christians is consistency."

"The world is asking us to reveal the beauty of the Christian message by conscientiously living its principles, in the light of the Crucifixion and the Resurrection."

"The world is looking for us to reveal, in the course of our daily reality, the beauty, radiance, glory, and power in a life that has been made new in Christ."

"The world is calling upon us to radiate the presence of the Holy Spirit."

"It yearns for a living Christianity that bears witness to the mystery of the All-Holy Trinity’s Love."

"It longs for the virtual transformation of human existence and for a communion with the transcendent power of Love." -- Facing the World: Orthodox Christian Essays on Global Concerns, His Beatitude Anastasios Yannoulatos, Archbishop of Tirana and all Albania

Christianity is Counter Cultural

"I think what we have to realize is that Christianity is counter-cultural. It is radically different. It is a continual change of mind. It is continual repentance, a continual sobriety which challenges even the most fashionable and almost universally accepted presuppositions and values of our cultures and times. Everything around is not necessarily able to be incorporated into the life of the Spirit. We are a little flock - a dynamic leaven. The Lord says to us, "Fear not little flock." We have to not be afraid to be different, not afraid to be looked down on, misunderstood, and even be ridiculed or suffer for being different." - Sister Aemiliane, An Interview with Sister Aemiliane of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross Monastery, Thebes, Greece

NB: In 2006 Sister Aemiliane visited St. George Church in Oklahoma City, and I had an opportunity to meet her. There is something very special and otherworldly about her. When she looks at you there is very much the feeling that she does not merely meet your eyes, but that she can look right into your very soul. I thought to myself, "This is what it is like to meet a true Saint."

An Interview with Sister Aemiliane

Christianity a Religion of Losers

"Deep failure, the failure of our lives, is something we occasionally contemplate in the middle of the night, in those moments of terrifying honesty before we get up and dress for success. Ecce homo, said Pilate. Behold, the man. This is humanity. And the facade of success we present to the world is commonly a desperate attempt to ward off this knowledge. At the beginning of Lent, Christians are reminded of this in the most emphatic of ways: know that you are dust and to dust you shall return. Those who used the period of Lent to give things up are invited to live life stripped bare, experiencing humanity in the raw, without the familiar props to our ego. This has nothing to do with the avoidance of chocolate and everything to do with facing the unvarnished truth about human failure. There is no way 100 top business leaders would endorse the cross. It is life without the advertising, without the accoutrements of success. It is life on a zero-hours contract, where at any moment we can be told we are not needed.

But here’s the thing. The Christian story, like the best sort of terrifying psychoanalysis, strips you down to nothing in order for you to face yourself anew. For it turns out that losers are not despised or rejected, not ultimately. In fact, losers can discover something about themselves that winners cannot ever appreciate – that they are loved and wanted simply because of who they are and not because of what they achieve. That despite it all, raw humanity is glorious and wonderful, entirely worthy of love. This is revealed precisely at the greatest point of dejection. The resurrection is not a conjuring trick with bones. It is a revelation that love is stronger than death, that human worth is not indexed to worldly success." -- Christianity, when properly understood, is a religion of losers, Giles Fraser, The Guardian, 04/03/2015, Full Article

That Same World Will Be Redeemed

"The world may mock, but a mockery is hollow laughter. The Christian faith teaches that the last laugh is on the world, because that grim old world, taking itself so seriously that even its laughter is a sneer, that same world will be redeemed. It will be made spanking new, whether it likes it or not, and if I know the world, and for better and for worse I am well acquainted with it, I wager that it will not like it at all, and will kick up quite a fuss before that consummation. But the end will not be a silent heat-death, or a shadowland below. It will be laughter as bright as the stars in their earlienst glory. It will be wholly unexpected, and wholly right; it will fulfill all times, and time itself, and the time after time. It will be as quiet as a still small voice, and will crack open the hardest material in the universe, the heart of man. It will still our questions, and stir our wonder with love. Nor can love allow the lowliest among us to be forgotten; not when Man himself sits upone the throne, Son both of Man and God. 'Behold,' says He, 'I make all things new.'" -- Anthony Esolen, Ironies of Faith: The Laughter at the Heart of Christian Literature