Nr.20: Problems in North America

Discussion of a problem facing the Orthodox Church in North America

Category:

People & Blogs

Tags:

• Lazar
• Puhalo
• Fundamentalism
• Orthodoxy

[MrBrendaneoin22]

Father this hahs nothing to do with the subject of the video but i was wondering what your view is on what the Russian orthodox church is doing with regard to the Puttin administration and making of icons of Joseph Stalin?

[allsaintsmonastery]

@MrBrendaneoin22 It is the ultra nationalists, what in America would be called the "ultra rightwing" that are making icons of Stalin, not the Church. However, the alliance between the Russian Church and Putin is very unhealthy and put the Church in a compromised position that is dangerous for it.

[Cherubicon]

"...[T]hose who... have not yet attained perfection and dispassion should guard themselves from being preoccupied with the reasons in nature... When the mind is still passionate it cannot see the immaterial and spiritual reasons hidden in the shapes and beauty of physical nature... They remain on the physical level of admiring and being filled by the corruptible beauty of nature only... a condition which many naturalists of the past and today are suffering." St. Nicodemos the Hagiorite

[allsaintsmonastery]

That may be true, but it should not hinder us from trying to convey the Gospel to people living in the world, and even to those not yet Orthodox Christians. We cannot allow ourselves to become Manichean about the question. One cannot convince people that God created the universe while at the same time lying to them about the processes and the timeframe. The creation, with all its beauty and mystery is, according to God, at least, "very good." Did he create the beauty of the universe in vain?

[Cherubicon]

@allsaintsmonastery The materialist accounts of nature are themselves lies, which obscure the true beauty and goodness of the creation. Someone who looks at the beauty of nature in a purely carnal or passionate way is in fact not looking at the beauty at all.

[allsaintsmonastery]

You are sounding more Gnostic all the time. The hatred of the material world is, of course, Manechean, not Christian of any form. If you hate the beauty of the handiwork of our God, then I can only pity you for your blasphemy and your Gnosticism. Evidently you do not believe that God created the beauty of the universe, that there is only some invisible universe that can be loved, and God's beautiful creation must be dispised. That is what you are saying, at least.

[MrBrendaneoin22]

@allsaintsmonastery thanks for the reply Father

[session9100]

When Christian evangelicals and fundamentalist interpret scripture they do it to make a political point whether they know scripture in full context or not

[Cherubicon]

No, that's how you choose to interpret my words.

[avantibarbari]

@allsaintsmonastery All of which is besides the point. There are deeper forces in the process of Creation than can be measured or speculated about by modern science.