Tag: genuine

Faith and Works

Faith and Works

by Shenouda Girgis 

“Listen, my beloved brethren: Has God not chosen the poor of this world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom which He promised to those who love Him?”– James 2:5.

The opening chapters of St James’ epistle reveal the importance of being a doer of the Word and not just a hearer. We strive for a strong and steadfast faith to guide our Christian life. We must be genuine; What does it profit, my brethren, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? (James 2:14)

In the beginning, God, out of His great love, created us, everything around us and set us over all His other creations. And as if such a gesture of love wasn’t enough, He blessed us with free will – the ability to make our own decisions – but simply asked that we be obedient to His word.

As we all know, it was this very ability to make our own decisions that led to the demise of humankind as we know it. Surely God knew that His gift of free will would be abused and that we would disobey and fall from grace. 

Why did He allow this to happen knowing the consequences of sin was death? Why would He allow such a void to form between us and Him? The answer for this is God Himself, love. What we sometimes don’t understand is that our relationship with God is unlike any other relationship – the strongest relationships are the ones that are not one sided – where there is mutual love. That’s why God gave us our free will, He wants us to chose to be in a relationship with Him and not force us into just doing the right thing. 

His love for us is unique in that, despite our numerous and infinite infidelities, He is always willing to accept us and is waiting for the day that we consciously choose Him with the free will He gave us. As Christians, our faith is established on the very thing makes God, God: love! Surprised? 

Out of His love, He sent His Only Son to bear the punishment of our sins and through the death and resurrection of Christ we have been given eternal life. But just like our fall, our fate is in our own hands and the hands of the free will that God blessed us with. All of this is important to know because this is the foundation from which the strength of our faith can grow.

Our works are the true measure of our faith. But what do the Saints mean when they say works? Put simply, works are the proof of faith; it doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to dedicate your entire life to service but if our faith is strong then we naturally have ‘works’, when out actions reflect Christ and people can see Christ in you then these are the true works that the saints are referring to. Are you inclusive of others as Christ was inclusive? Are you quick to anger or do you have the patience we are taught to have? I think St Francis of Assisi says it perfectly:

“Preach the gospel at all times and if necessary use words.”

Further reading: James 1-3, Romans 4-5, Galatians 3, Ephesians 2 & Proverbs 1

From Theology, with love: Eponymous

From Theology, with love: Eponymous

by Tom Seodyu

My thanks to A,

with ornery irony,

you above others are responsible

for my most mature spiritual ideas

and incendiary hopes for this life.

You’ve asked me why I even bother with this (and you).

And again, I have repeated the only real answer I can give –

it’s because you have a beautiful soul, and are a misunderstood sort.

I understand why you hate this answer. Even more so because you don’t believe I am being sincere:

‘I’m just another person he has decided to be nice to today.’

‘He’s only listening to me because he’s naïve for the church and rituals.’

That you’ve mistaken me for a liar makes it hard for me not to feel hurt. But I know why you would think that way – that I’m some “Sunday school agent” here to pretend that he cares long enough to return you to “the quack priests who cannot give [you] a straight answer”, who are totally worthless and despicable to you. You’ve even asked before, “if you really understand how incompetent our church is, why don’t you speak up about it?” Because I learned long ago that this earthly body of Christ does not need any more ‘fixing’ by way of noise, and recommendations, and complaints (especially Facebook rants). Rather, it needs Christ; examples of His love, and a serious personal start – and perhaps, if I myself cannot succeed in setting this example, and inspire change through that love, then I am another mouthy critic. Though I am too ironic, and sarcastic to be that example…

I know that you are a sweet person (since you care so much about those who are nice to you and the suffering of innocents,) which begs the first question you asked. What is all this for? Because of all the commandments you had to stomach being raised here; of all the beliefs that we possess, the one that you feel most betrayed by; is the commandment to love our neighbour.

“If it’s real then why is it, when we try to love our neighbour, we act more out of pressure than genuine love?”

Perhaps it’s our poor understanding of Gospels and the story of the Good Samaritan:

A man left beaten and half-dead, ignored by the priest and the Levite but rescued by the Samaritan; bandaged with oil and wine, and taken into an inn in care and mercy. We were told growing up that the Samaritan was the enemy, but because he loved his ‘neighbour’ he overcame this and we are called to become like him and treat everyone like our neighbours with our love. But even atheists can ‘become the Good Samaritan’, loving their neighbor; like we were taught.

But no church father has ever understood the parable like this…

For them, we do not play the role of the Samaritan, but rather the dying man on the road.

Chrysostom wrote:

“Here then was man (that is Adam) lying destitute of the aid of salvation, pierced with the wounds of his sins, whom neither Aaron the high priest passing by could advantage by his sacrifice […] Nor again could his brother Moses [the Levite] assist him by the Law […] Naked and afraid we lie. Until the Good Samaritan – who is Christ – rescues us. He poured in wine, that is, the blood of his passion, and oil, that is, the anointing of the chrism, that pardon might be granted by His blood, sanctification be conferred by the chrism. The wounded parts are bound up by the heavenly physician, and containing a salve within themselves, are by the working of the remedy restored to their former soundness […]”

Since it was Him who first showed us great love through His Incarnation, all humanity is called to love to the end, without exception.

Augustine wrote:

“He shows mercy to us because of His goodness, while we show mercy to one another because of God’s goodness. He has compassion on us so that we may enjoy Him completely, while we have compassion on another that we may completely enjoy Him.”

If we tried to love everyone from our own power, without remembering – and deferring first and foremost to the lover of mankind – how could we not become practitioners of guilt and slide inevitably into hypocrisy and sin in exhaustion? Likewise, if the atheist has no one who loves them and can return to to be refreshed, how can they prevent despair and not abandon their righteous instincts?

Ambrose said:

“Since no one is closer than He who tended to our wounds, let us love Him as our Lord, and let us love Him as our neighbour. Nothing is so close as the head to the members.”

You may despair about your upbringing and your surroundings, but always remember Him, for He is blameless in His love for you. You may not accept this parable, or even believe that this love is a real contending force on this miserable earth. But I see evidence of a girl, who (though, all her life is one long disaster) races eagerly to feel embraced. Her head leaning into the other, cradling into the warm tenderness available for her. Held in the envelopment, she  experiences in those moments the idea that she has found a home that reciprocates her – and she thinks, for a single moment, for one absurd second, that it may really be possible that God had sowed this friend into her life.

This leads me to your second question…

Even if, in the end, you still cannot find meaning, or purpose, or drive in your life remember that you and I who are so young have very limited right to nostalgia. You need only to learn what Life is.

Smile sweetly to strangers on your walks.

Learn humility from nature.

Listen to music that makes you want to sing and look ridiculous!

Laugh and be full of good humor.

And young woman,

do not forget to pray.

And with that,

I want you to know that I meant it when I said I loved you.

Christ be with you always.

Faithful Living in a Faithless Society

Faithful Living in a Faithless Society

by Bethany Kaldas

When a Christian says society is ‘faithless’, they mean godless, or sinful. There is, however, a kind of faithlessness that often goes unacknowledged. A kind of faithlessness that does indeed permeate much of modern Western culture today…a faithlessness we Christians are just as susceptible to as everyone else—perhaps even more so.

To show you what I mean, I’m going to tell you about Percy Jackson. You’ve probably heard of this series of fantasy novels, but if you’re one of the people who enjoyed the series, I can all but guarantee your reaction to the movie adaptations. You might say that the movies did not at all follow the design of the original tales, that they were a betrayal to the design that the author intended, trading the wonderful, unique stories for something lesser to pander to a wider audience…I’ll stop now, but you get the idea. The movies were not faithful to the books. They tried to be something they were not, something other than what their creator had made them to be, out of fear they would not be accepted as they were. You might say, they were faithless.

It’s easy to see in movies. Perhaps too easy to miss in ourselves.

The modern Western world is full of good things—but it is also, in my opinion, a breeding ground for fake personalities. It is only in first world countries where our basic needs are thankfully provided for (for the most part), that we can become so preoccupied with the most trivial of commodities—how we appear to others.

In a world like this, it is easy to forget that how others perceive us is, strangely enough, not a matter of life or death. It has very little survival value, and in and of itself, is neutral regarding our spiritual health.

‘…For the Lord does not see as man sees; for man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.’ – 1 Samuel 16:7

Yet in this society, it is so easy to slip into the selves we’ve built up so that we can shine for other people. Indeed, when wandering the wilderness, it is easier to forge gods of gold than to continue following a God who does not look like what we expect. If we ourselves do not appear as expected, why should those of the wilderness not reject us?

This is faithlessness in one of its most potent and dangerous forms. A faithlessness that is ever more tragic for the Christian than for anyone else, because we know not only the intended design, but the Designer, too.

I would dare to say, that compared to our other conceptions of faithlessness—those of disbelief or sinfulness—this kind is far more devastating to the Christian.

‘As long as we ourselves are real, as long as we are truly ourselves, God can be present and can do something with us. But the moment we try to be what we are not, there is nothing left to say or have; we become a fictitious personality, an unreal presence, and this unreal presence cannot be approached by God.’ -Anthony Bloom, Beginning to Pray

That’s the bottom line. If you are not faithful to yourself—to the person God made you—if you live your life as a lie to please others, even if they are your fellow Christians—you can never meet God. An unreal person cannot commune with the real God.

This notion is presented perfectly in C. S. Lewis’ novel, Till We Have Faces. The novel asks the question we must ask ourselves:

‘How can we meet [God] face to face till we have faces?’

We must recognise that although the world may never be satisfied with who we really are, though it may only want to look at masks forged of gold, God wants to meet us face to face. He will settle for nothing less.

And when we do muster the courage to be faithful to who we were made to be, when we finally cast away the false self we’ve created, we see the person that God created, the person we were so frightened of setting free. We stand in the light of our Creator, fully real, fully exposed—and see what we truly are. And what will we say?

‘I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made;

Marvellous are Your works,

And that my soul knows very well.’ – Psalm 139:14