The dominion of death can no longer hold men captive, for Christ descended, shattering and destroying its powers! Hell is bound, while the prophets rejoice and cry: The Savior has come to those in faith! Enter, you faithful, into the Resurrection! #pascha #christisrisen #trulyheisrisen #resurrection #easter #easter2017 #pascha2017 #orthodox #sophia
‘How could Eru enter into the thing that He has made, and then
which He is beyond measure greater? Can the singer enter into his tale or the
designer into his picture? ’
‘He is already in it, as well as outside,’ said Finrod. 'But
indeed the “in-dwelling" and the “out-living” are not in the
same mode.’
'Truly,’ said Andreth. 'So, may Eru in that mode be present in
Ea that proceeded from Him. But they speak of Eru Himself entering into Arda,
and that is a thing wholly different. How could He the greater do this? Would
it not shatter Arda, or indeed
all Ea?’
'Ask me not,’ said Finrod. 'These things are beyond the compass
of the wisdom of the Eldar, or of the Valar maybe. But I doubt that our words may
mislead us, and that when you say “greater” you think of the dimensions of Arda, in
which the greater vessel may not be contained in the less.
'But such words may not be used
of the Measureless. If Eru wished to do this, I do not doubt that He
would find a way, though I cannot foresee it. For, as it seems to me, even
if He in Himself were to enter in, He must still remain also as He is: the Author
without. And yet, Andreth, to speak with humility, I
cannot conceive how else this healing could be achieved. Since Eru will surely
not suffer Melkor to turn the world to his own will and to triumph in the end.
Yet there is no power conceivable greater than Melkor save Eru only. Therefore Eru, if He will not relinquish His work to Melkor, who
must else proceed to mastery, then Eru must come in to conquer him.
'More: even if Melkor
(or the Morgoth that he has become) could in any way be thrown down or thrust
from Arda, still his Shadow would remain, and the evil that he has wrought
and sown as a seed would wax and multiply. And if any remedy for this is to be
found, ere all is ended, any new light to oppose the shadow, or any medicine
for the wounds: then it must, I deem, come from without.’
J.R.R. Tolkien, “Athrabeth Finrod Ah Andreth,” in Morgoth’s Ring.
“No one, when he has lit a lamp, puts it in a secret place or under a basket, but on a lampstand, that those who come in may see the light. The lamp of the body is the eye. Therefore, when your eye is good, your whole body also is full of light. But when your eye is bad, your body also is full of darkness. Therefore take heed that the light which is in you is not darkness. If then your whole body is full of light, having no part dark, the whole body will be full of light, as when the bright shining of a lamp gives you light.”
The early church never came to a definitive understanding of the ‘atonement’, and neither have any of the most ancient churches. None of the early councils or heresies were about how to understand the nature of Christ’s redeeming death. Instead, all of them, one way or another, dealt with the incarnation and its nature and effects. For the early church, this was the defining doctrine of Christianity. And this is because our primary problem is not forensic, but existential. We are marked by a triple division - man is divided from God, from his fellow man, and from himself. We are de-humanized, and the message of the incarnation is one of re-humanization, the restoration of the image and an invitation to the likeness. True Godhood and True Manhood, revealed in the innocent fragility of a poor child and in a life of suffering love, the beginning and the end of all things. “Come, O ye faithful, inspired by God; let us arise and behold the divine condescension from on high that is made manifest to us in Bethlehem. Cleansing our minds, let us offer through our lives virtues instead of myrrh” (Sticheron of the Sixth Hour, Christmas Eve).
I’ve been thinking about making this post for a while, and I finally decided to make it.
At a certain point in my life as a pro-choicer, I discovered something: In order to be intellectually honest in my pro-choice thinking, I had to be willing to look around at all of the people I knew—my family, my friends—and be willing to say, “It would be okay if you had never been born.” And I had to be willing to say the same about myself, too.
And I actually was willing to say this. While my mother was pregnant with me, my father tried to pressure her into an abortion, and you know what I thought when I found out? I thought, “She should have gone through with it.” I was a burden; I made everyone’s lives difficult; I wasn’t worth loving or sacrificing for; I didn’t matter. I had so completely internalized this message about myself that finding out that I had almost been killed in my mother’s womb was no big deal. I mean, hey, it would have saved us all a lot of suffering. The cost-benefit analysis seemed perfectly clear: I just wasn’t worth it.
I wasn’t quite so obviously callous in my estimation of other people’s worth, but, had they asked me if I believed that they mattered in any real way—mattered in some way which did not include some reference to my thoughts or feelings about them—I would have had to say no. I would have had to say, “I am overjoyed that you were born because you have contributed so much to my life, and you make me so happy, and I think you’re wonderful, and look at all of the people who love you, but, ultimately, if you had not been born, it would have been okay. At the end of the day, there is nothing necessary about your existence. You are replaceable.” Those were the consequences of my worldview—the worldview which says that each and every child conceived in his mother’s womb is theoretically disposable; the worldview which can talk about “what you have to offer” and how “useful” you are, but can say nothing about the worth of the “useless.”
And I think our society has done a pretty decent job at living out that vision: the Vision of Replaceability. We don’t just treat the unborn this way. We treat the born this way, too. We give up on our spouses when our marriages stop being “useful” contributions to our lives. We give up on our families when the going gets too tough. We give up on our romantic partners when “the spark is gone.” We give up on our friends when we’re not getting what we “need” from them. We’re a culture of quitters. We love when it’s convenient for us. And people are often inconvenient; they demand our time and attention and care; they’re not perfectly suited to our desires the way objects are. So, we objectify them. We pay attention when it suits us and then tuck them away on a shelf somewhere where we keep the rest of our “toys.”
Is it any wonder that we don’t think that we matter? We’ve never seen it. Is it any wonder that many of us cannot even conceive of true selflessness? That the notion that someone might actually want good things for you and might actually not expect anything in return and might actually not just be doing it because “it feels good to do good things” seems so foreign and strange? Should we be surprised? It’s all we know.
And this is the root of the culture of death. This is where death starts. It doesn’t start in war zones or brothels or abusive homes or abortion clinics or execution chambers. Those are its manifestations, but that’s not where death starts. Death starts with people as things. It starts with “you are only as necessary as you are useful.” It starts with “you are not precious; you are replaceable.”
So, we leave ourselves with no resources when we are truly confronted with death. We have nothing real to offer to the suicidal, the eating disordered, the self-injuring, the depressed, the lonely, the abused. Nothing but empty words. We may say, “You are irreplaceable,” but do we mean it? Do we know what it would mean to truly mean those words? I don’t think we do. Not as long as we see each other as “choices,” as “options” in a sea of options. Not as long as we cannot honestly look one another in the eye and say, “It would not have been okay if you had never been born. You belong alive, and you matter, not because of what you do, but because you are you.”
And for those of us who call ourselves pro-life, that has to mean something. It has to mean that we see people as people; that we treat them like people; that we love them. Maybe the reason that the pro-choice movement so often accuses us of “only caring about fetuses” isn’t all unwarranted hyperbole; maybe they’re responding to the very real lack of true, genuine, selfless love in our society, and maybe we’re all in that battle together. How on earth are any of us supposed to know that that’s possible—that we could matter in that way—unless someone shows us? That’s where the culture of life starts: the moment when we discover that we’re loved.
Dude. Even if you skimmed past this post, at least look at the last 3 paragraphs. I mean, dang. So right on.
“Repentance is the abandoning of all false paths that have been trodden by men’s feet, and men’s thoughts and desires, and a return to the new path: Christ’s path.”