Saturday, January 31, 2015

How the State Leaches Power by Abusing Minority Rights

I'm preparing to Emcee the Libertarian Party of Oklahoma's "WTF (Where's The Freedom) Day" at the Capitol on Monday.  We are highlighting some of the most Liberty unfriendly bills that are being introduced this session.  As I am familiarizing myself with some of the different speakers we've lined up to discuss each bill, I find I will be in the company of a very diverse group of people.  


It seems these laws are all targeting groups of people that are in the minority in some way, be it because of race, religion, lifestyle choices, etc.  Some of them controversial, but some of them are just in the minority.  

It struck me how the state can establish and maintain power through this kind of bigotry.  Increasing their power to regulate the lives of minority groups, and doing so not only with little push back from the majority of their constituency, but with their enthusiastic support.  

If I wasn't paying attention to this, I would have likely just let it pass.  These are people I don't associate with, some of them I don't even agree with, so the effect these laws have on me isn't readily apparent.  But when I consider the foundation of power these laws establish for the state, at the expense of other people's rights, I realize that my rights are being traded as well.  

The importance of standing against these kinds of actions by the state cannot be over stated.  If we allow the state to traffic in the rights of others, then we've allowed it to establish itself over all of us.

Monday, January 26, 2015

Icons teach us to commune with Christ, the Saints, and each other.

My family and I have recently embarked on a journey to join the Orthodox Christian tradition.  Our path in arriving here is an interesting one and will the the subject of some future post I'm sure.  This journey has been an enlightening and surprising one.  Many of the strange and ancient traditions, coming from a protestant perspective I was sure I was going to hate, have actually taken me by surprise and served not only to cause me to fall in love with the Orthodox Church more and more, but have also deepened my faith and my relationship with Christ.  One of the most interesting of these is the Orthodox tradition of icons.

In my protestant turned neo-Calvinist understanding of Christianity, icons never really entered the picture (See what I did there?).  Icons from my perspective were strange bits of idolatry that my greatest exposure to was in the Mexican section of the grocery store with those odd Roman Catholic candles that were right next to the corn tortillas.  The idolatrous label that I had accepted toward icons pretty much prevented me from exploring the concept any deeper. Why would I entertain this idolatry? I already knew enough to reject it on its face.  Besides, as a good little Calvinist I already had my theology all the way figured out and all I needed was Scripture.  Icons were minimally a form of Christian art, but the incorporation of them into worship was likely a heresy.  This was my take on the issue, although I will admit that in the two or three years prior to my first setting foot into an Orthodox Church I also went through a great doctrinal softening, so to speak, and even an abandoning of many of my hyper Calvinistic tenants.



We arrived at Orthodoxy by means of some friends who's journey intrigued us, but as I've illustrated, I arrived with some reservations.  We took the inquirer's class offered by St Elijah's, and taught by Deacon Ezra.  Deacon Ezra is a great teacher who isn't afraid to use some really big ideas to get a point across.  Being a former Baptist minister, his own history and his excellent teaching helped put me at ease a little as he presented some of these very new (to me) ideas.  I quickly was able to grasp the idea that icons were not idols.

My understanding of icons began with them simply being additional tools used to tell the Gospel, and the history of the Church.



"Icons do with color what Scripture does with words."

This quote made sense to me.  Orthodoxy had already validated many fundamental shifts in my theological paradigms that I had been entertaining, one being the authoritative nature of the Church and of it's tradition in the keeping of the doctrines and of the pure Gospel, and in this context icons simply do as Scripture does to a similar effect.  Now I was beginning to be intrigued, but I had no idea what was in store.

As we continued in some classes on the subject the concept of icon's was explored further. When God says in Genesis 1:26 "Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness," the word in greek for "image" is the same word we get the word "icon" from. An icon differs from a picture, or an idol, or even a painting. An Icon is the likeness of the person in the Icon. It is similar to the person and serves as a physical window to a spiritual reality. The saint in the icon did not cease to exist, we simply cannot see him or her at this time, and the Icon helps to remedy that. The person being depicted in the Icon is real, existing in the invisible reality that we are blinded to by our physical condition.

As soon as this idea hit me I looked around the room, which was a chapel in our church filled with icons, and the room came to LIFE!  All of the sudden the presence of those Saints, and of Christ himself, surrounded me like the cloud of witnesses in Hebrews 12.  Deacon Ezra says that during worship it isn't uncommon for the veil that separates us from the invisible to be momentarily parted, and I believe that is what I began to experience.  As I gazed upon each icon I saw past the wood and the paint to the spiritual reality that was the person who's likeness the icon was communicating.  As I looked upon Christ and Mary I was almost overwhelmed, and even as I looked upon the saints that I was unfamiliar with I somehow sensed their presence.  Deacon Ezra explained that we are living inside the icon of the Transfiguration of Christ, Christ manifests the invisible reality of His Kingdom right here into our physical world.




The next Sunday at the Divine Liturgy the experience resumed, Christ and the Saints joined us in a very real and visible, if not tangible way.  I was now experiencing a fullness of the Church that I had previously not even been able to imagine.  Christ was the focus and I was worshiping him along with the Saints and with every other person in attendance. Even the work of the priests took on a whole new meaning as their colorful vestments and their purposeful movements caused them to create a living transition between the physical world and the spiritual reality they and the icons were leading us to participate in.  This was amazing to me, I was awestruck at moments and almost welcomed the fleeting nature of the revelation occurring around me as it seemed it could at any moment be simply too much to take in.


Divine Liturgy at St. Elijah's in OKC

I now understood why many in the Orthodox Tradition venerate or pay special honor to the icons, even kissing them.  This was not idol worship, they were simply honoring and communing with their Savior and with the Saints that have kept the Church throughout history.  Just as we might greet, hug, and honor a wise, loved, and respected elder as we pass by the pew where he sits, in fact, exactly like that.  This honor doesn't detract from our worship from God, it adds to it.

Then a thought hit me that changed me.


It is amazing and incredible and fulfilling for me to be able to commune with Christ and the departed Saints in the way that the icons facilitate. This experience edifies me. Which is good, I need to be edified, but many may argue that they experience similar things in other methods of worship, through song, speaking in tongues, even through a powerful sermon. And while edification of the self is good, shouldn't we be seeking to edify the whole church? Icons may edify the individual, but how do they edify the Church? I had learned to experience the iconography of the Church to aid in my worship, but it occurred to me that the icons were also teaching me so much more.

If we are made in the likeness of God, as Genesis 1:26 says, more literally we ARE icons of God. Each person is made in the likeness of God, just as each icon is made in the likeness of the person in the icon. When I look upon the wood and paint of the icon, it teaches me to see beyond to the spiritual truth and the person that the icon is communicating.  If every individual is an icon of God, what if I began to look at other people in the same way that I looked at icons?  What if I saw them as more than what they were presenting to me in the physical, but looked beyond to the spiritual reality that was just as much a part of their being as is their physical appearance?  I could now begin to see the whole person.

Icons have not only taught me to commune with Christ and the Saints in a way that I had never before considered, they not only created a fullness of Church that I had never imagined could be possible, but they had now taught me to see other people in a way where the likeness of God in them was plain and apparent, no matter their physical appearance, or even my personal opinion of them. Try hating a person who's mere presence communicates to you the likeness of God, try defrauding them, try hurting them.  In a very real way icons are teaching me to love others in a superior way.

Once you see it, you can't un-see it.