Rejoice!

I find that with all the holiday-ness and end of the school year stuff surrounding Christmas I have trouble rejoicing in Christmas the same way I do Easter. While for Christians, Easter is the chiefest of holy days Christmas is still a day to rejoice in, for Truly God is incarnate and our salvation is now at hand in the form of a babe!

I picked up a book while I was at the monastery and though I am not a big fan of extensive mariology I read something that helps me to put Christmas into perspective and brings tears to my eyes and makes my heart want to leap out of my chest for joy.

Building on the Angels proclamation for Mary to "rejoice" (Lk. 1.28), the beginning of the akathist to the Theotokos reads:

An Angel, and the chiefest among them, was sent from heaven to cry: Rejoice! to the Mother of God. And beholding Thee, O Lord, taking bodily form, he stood in awe, and with his bodiless voice he cried aloud to her such things as these:

Rejoice though through whome joy shall shine forth. Rejoice, thou through whome the curse shall be blotted out.

Rejoice though the Restoration of fallen Adam. Rejoice, thou the Redemption of the tears of Eve.

Rejoice, Height hard to climb for human thought. Rejoice, Depth hard to explore, even for the eyes of Angels.

Rejoice, for thou are the Throne of the King. Rejoice, for thou sustainest the Sustainer of all.

Rejoice, Star that causest the Sun to appear. Rejoice, Womb of the divine Incarnation

Rejoice, thou through whome creation is renewed. Rejoice, thou through whome the Creator becometh a babe.

Rejoice, thou Bride unwedded.

I know a lot of that language may make some of you uncomfortable (to be honest it does that to me a little as well). But how glorious is this incarnation!! God has taken flesh, but not merely flesh, but has become a babe! This is not merely Jesus' birthday that we celebrate (more on this later) but the incarnation of our God! Jesus Christ, God of God, Light of Light, the begotten of the Father before all ages has condescended and become human. The eternally begotten one of the Father is now brought forth through the womb of a young girl in order to die and rise again so that humans can becomes friends of God.

With the incarnation of our God the beginning of the end has come for sin and death. The curse of sin is being tread under foot by an infant yet unable to walk. God has taken flesh and the tears of Eve are wiped away and the groans of creation are subsided. Glory to Jesus Christ!!

Let us praise God that a young girl when confronted with the proclamation from an Angel said: "He am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word," for it was through her womb that the creator of all things took on flesh and was born in order to redeem us all from the curse of sin and death.

Glory to the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit!! Let the joy of Christmas ring not merely because we get to see family and friends, but because our God took flesh and was born this day! Let the tears of Eve be blotted out this day, for today our Savior and our God - Jesus Christ - is born!! Hallelujah! Glory to God in the highest!!

May you all have a joyous Christmas!!

- Ben

Shared Experiences

Much of what is below is still a work in progress (especially given I just started thinking about this about 3 minutes ago) but I wanted to throw it out there before I forgot it (as I usually do).

I was just youtube-ing at work since the student center is completely empty and I have another hour and a half to work, and I came across a sweet video via my friend Tegan's blog. I promptly sent the link to my sister with whom I was IM-ing to pass the time.

After a period of no response from my sister (not an unusual thing) I asked if she watched it yet? She replied that she hadn't and thus I exhorted her to watch "now." I told her it was great and gave her a few reasons to watch it. After prodding her to watched it I began thinking about the youtube phenomenon and blogging and things of that nature.

I began to wonder how much of this is more the desire for shared experience than actually just the dissemination of cool videos and ideas. I'm sure it's a bit of both, but it seems that one of the driving forces behind youtube and really all the internet fads is shared experience.

As I think about this I wonder if this is need or craving for shared experience has helped to feed into the various popular Christian movements over the past few years. Think about the Emergents. What do they emphasize? They build upon a need for experience and collective-ness at the expense of Christian orthodoxy, even to the point of holding heretical views and ignoring essential Christian tenets. I personally am absolutely dismayed that the emergent movement continues to thrive. This is a cancer growing through protestantism that is causing us to forsake the Christian faith all for some sort of collective experience and liberal idealism. In my mind many of the emergents are no better than the heretics of old such as Arius, Nestorius, Montanus, etc.

I also wonder if desire for shared experience helps to contribute to the Rob Bell craze. While I'm still working on reading through some of this guy's books, I do have to say that I'm not a big fan. His nooma videos are junk and I think they are mostly fueled by this desire for a shared experience or a desire to be 'timely' (see my post: Current? and yes I do realize that I'm being a bit contradictory by posting these thoughts so quickly)

The students here crave Bell and the Emergents. They get all starry-eyed when someone mentions their names and quickly bristle when someone like me says that they're not that great and may indeed hold heretical beliefs (emergents). I find it disturbing that students champion these people and drink the proverbial Kool-Aid so quickly. Why must our shared experience be found in the latest fad and not the timeless beliefs of classic Christian orthodoxy? Why do we champion these new thinkers for innovative ecclesiologies when they lack the substance of the faith and are doing nothing more than leading people down the path to hell with their watered down theology and absence of anything genuine?

If these men and women teach something contradictory to classic Christian Orthodoxy and they cease to become "nice" and "slightly misguided" people that we should learn from and they become impious God-haters (to use some of the phrasing for those anathematized at the ecumenical councils).

Just so I don't get misunderstood and get a ton of backlash let me be clear: I am not calling Rob Bell a heretic. I am also not calling ALL of the Emergents heretics. I have, however, had a conversation with one high-profile Emergent leader in which he claimed the Trinity was just Greek philosophical ideals and not really Christian and thus not a necessary or even important doctrine. I also think that Emergent theology down plays Christian orthodoxy to a dangerous extreme and thus runs fearfully close to falling into heresy (like the aforementioned leader).

My concern is that Asbury Seminary students and undoubtedly students, ministers, and lay people across the country and buying into these faulty paradigms because they desire a shared experience. This is absurd. The shared experience should be the Holy doctrines of the Church which help us to partake of the divine essence of God as St. Peter says. I am absolutely disgusted with the hero worship the students around this campus give to folks like Rob Bell and the emergents.

While the same charge of hero worship could be thrown at me and the way I read the saints of the church, I will just say that my hero's have lasted the test of time, and were actually building up and codifying Christian orthodoxy not ignoring it and leading people astray.

- Ben

In Response to a Weekend at a Monastery

I just spent my weekend (Friday night, Saturday, and Sunday until lunch) at St. Gregory Palamas Monastery in OH with a few guys from church. Although I came out of the weekend very tired, I also think that it was a great 'retreat' and would do it again in a heartbeat.

We arrived at the monastery around 11:30pm on Friday. As we settled ourselves we noticed a sign that informed us that the monastery practices silence from 8:00pm - 9:00am and thus we finished getting settled in silence.

In order not to bore you all with a lengthy more detailed account of the days let me just list our general schedule:

Friday:
11:30pm - Arrive

Saturday:
4:00am ~ 8:30am - Prayers, Matins, Liturgy at the Chapel.
Noon - Prayers and then lunch (in silence)
5:00pm - Prayers and then dinner (in silence)
7:00pm - Compline
8:00pm - 9:00am - Silence throughout entire monastery

Sunday:
6:00am ~ 11:30am - Prayers, Matins, hours, Liturgy
Noon - lunch (in silence)
1:30ish - depart in peace.

So that's the basic schedule. Since the three major emphasis of monasticism are Prayer, Work, and Silence even during the times that were not specifically designated as silent times we tried to remain quited and respectful. We were, however, able to have a few sit-down conversations with the Abbot of the monastery. Father Joseph (the Abbot) was an amazingly wise man and he said some very simple yet profound things to encourage us in our walks with the Lord.

Aside from the general tiredness from the early hours, I think the hardest part for me was the silence. It was wonderfully meditative, but it was also very hard. So often I just wanted to talk to one of the guys I was with, but had to remain silent. I think it was a good practice and it helped me to realize how much "idle talk" comes out of my mouth. It was particularly hard to eat in silence, though to be fair it wasn't complete silence. During the meals there was one monk who was assigned to read from a commentary, a sermon, or another spiritually edifying book. While everyone ate in silence he read. Even though I didn't grab everything that was read, I still caught bits and pieces of it and I thought the practice was healthy. Despite this, I still longed to just have a conversation during the meal. Maybe I'm just entrenched in the practice from society, but it seems like talking with the others one is eating with is only natural. I appreciated the vast amounts of silence. The Silence was really good, and I should probably focus on curbing my speech and talking less, but it was also really hard (though I guess that might be the point).

Another thing I struggled with was keeping my mind focused on the Lord during the long services. This was especially hard given the fact that I was very tired. Even while my thoughts during those hours were not sinful they still were unfocused and tended to stray towards football, lunch, and other randomness. When one of the guys from our group asked Father Joseph if he had any suggestions to help us focus more attentively on the Lord during the longer prayer vigils and liturgies, he said that people can focus on two things at once, but seldom three. Thus ,while listening to the liturgy (or the long sermon) it may be helpful to pray the Jesus prayer, or the Lord's prayer while listening in order to drive the distracting and/or sinful thoughts from our mind.

Another thing that Father Joseph said that I thought was very profound was that the goal of the monastic is to quench the passions which means in part being equally non-reactive to both compliments and insults. He told us a story of a young monk who struggled in not reacting to the insults hurled at him. The Abbot of this monk told him to go to the grave yard and hurl insults at the monks buried there. When the young monk returned the Abbot asked him what reaction he received. The young monk told him that they did nothing. The Abbot then told the monk to go cast compliments at the monks buried at the cemetery. When he returned the Abbot again asked him what reaction he received, and again the young monk said that the monks buried there gave no reaction. The Abbot then told the young monk that he should express the same reaction when confronted with both insults and compliments saying that we should neither be offended or angered by insults, and neither should we swell with pride at compliments.

While this isn't a full synopsis of the weekend I think it is a good representation. The weekend was great, though short and tiring. The monks were incredibly kind and what few conversations I had with them were enlightening. Like I said, Father Joseph was a very wise and holy man and his insight into spiritual things was full of great wisdom brought forth from the experience of walking closely and intently with the Lord for many years. I think it may be a very sad thing that Protestantism doesn't have a form or monasticism which could serve as pillar and exemplar of truth and piety.

- Ben

Coming up: A few book reviews from the semester and maybe some advent thoughts.

Christmas Break Reading List

I can't believe I just made it through the semester! I think 14 credits of graduate level work (if you can call some of it that) is a little much for me, but I made it through and I only had to pull about 4 or 5 all/most-nighters.

Now that I'm done with the semester (after I turn in the paper I just finished) I've got a little time on my hands to do some reading that I want to do. While I plan to fill my break with hanging out with friends and playing a good amount of video games I also hope to get through at least two if not three books that aren't required reading.

Thus, in typically Ben fashion I'm going to create a giant book list for my next post and probably only get one book from the list read. So, what suggestions do you all have for me to read over Christmas break?

Either email me or post your suggestions in the comments and in a few days, probably after I get back from the monastery I will post a book list I hope to read over break. I would really love some suggestions so post away.

Well it's time to get some sleep, I have to be up to turn in my paper by 9:00am and then I have to bake something for our student services party before noon.


Though I haven't posted about it, it is Advent.

Happy Adventing,

Ben