Archive for category Religion

Road map

Posted by Tsunami.No.Ai in Other Religions, The Christ on February 25, 2010

It’s been a while since the last time I wrote anything. I apologize for that. It seems that for the last year or so I have been wrestling with some questions. Some of these questions are about religion in general and some of them are directed solely at the Christian Church. A lot of these questions remain unanswered, even after taking so long to meditae on them. The other night, though, I found something that opened my eyes to a new way of seeing things. I found a new way of looking at not only my own questions, but of the things the questions themselves were questioning.
If you know me, you know that I have a deep seeded resentment towards ignorance in the face of knowledge. Show me someone who would rather take it easy rather than learn something about themselves or the world and I would see someone I would rather kick in the back of the head. For a long time, whenever someone in the American Christian church would talk about religion, I would basically tune it out. The reason being that I had come to the conlusion that most American Christians would rather be boiled in acid then acually have to think for themselves. I chalked it up to a hatred of knowledge on their part and dismissed the idea that maybe there was some other factor involved. That is, until I read something in a book.
In his book, Living Buddha, Living Christ, Thich Nhat Hanh, a Vietnamees Buddhist monk, discusses the relationship between the teachings of Jesus and the Buddha. For the first part of the book I was not much impressed. I had read much concerning Buddhism beforehand and what this book was saying about the similarities between the two religions was not very revealing, at least not in a new and novel way. It wasn’t until I got to the titular chapter that I had my mind blown. Hanh states, “When Jesus said, ‘I am the way,’ He meant that to have a true relationship with God you must practice His way. … But we must distinguish the ‘I’ sopen by Jesus and the ‘I’ that people usually think of. The ‘I’ in His statement is life itself, His life, which is the way.” It was here that suddently things began to click.
For as long as I can remember, the statement “I am the way, the truth, and the light. No one comes to the Father except through me,” was always used only in one context: to prove that Christianity was the only way to heaven. I can not recall a time in which this statement, spoken by Jesus, was not used to disregard another religious teaching or philosophy. The only way to heaven is through Jesus, which means that the only way to heaven is by worshiping Jesus, which means that anyoen who doesn’t worship Jesus is going to go to hell. That was the interprutation I learned from the Church and from other Christians. But this statement by Hanh, esspecially put in the context I had prior to learned about Buddhists, is of monumental importance to me.
The true meaning of the statement, in my view, is two fold. The first one is like the original interpruation: Jesus is the way to heaven. The second one is this: being as Jesus is the way to heaven. I think that American Christianity has lost a lot of itself in he last century. It is told to me that there were people in the world who became like Jesus; people who, instead of following a list of regulations and conforming to a set of social expectations, actually embodied the attributes of Christ in the world. Today, it is hard to imagine what such a person would be like.
Christians today have taken, what I consider, a grave turn. Instead of becoming like Christ, they have instead taken to becoming a Jesus cult. This may sound ridiculous, but consider it for a moment. A lot of Christians today would describe themselves as “spiritual, but not religious” or would give an account of the religious affiliation as “I love Jesus”. Go to a “praise session” at a modern church and you will find people who will, instead of reflecting on how to become more like Christ, put their hands in the air and chant or mutter “Jesus” over and over. There is a strange fixation on the death and sacrifice of Jesus to the point where all other teachings of Christ fall by the wayside. I think it would be fair to say that to some extent they could be called a Jesus-cult. A cult which is hung up on the humanity of Jesus instead of on his divinity and his teaching.
Let me clarify a bit. I am not, I repeat Not, saying that loving Christ or the sacrifice made by him for humanity is not important or in anyway a bad thing. What I am saying is that it would seem that Christians today, esspecially in America, have become stuck in a rut of making those the focal point of their entire lives. Why, though, is that a bad thing? Christ did come to die for our sins, no doubt. However, if that was all he was here to do then he could have done that at any time. What makes a Jesus-cult bad is that it religates the teachings and the life of Christ to the back burner if not cuts it out all together and begins to teach that all that is needed for salvation is to accept Jesus Christ as your personal savior and all is forgiven and you are heaven bound. If that was really all there was to it we would be no better than the Buddhist cult that believes that they can lead any kind of life, but as long as they call upon the name of the Buddha before they die they are guaranteed to be reincarnated in the Pure Land.
Christ did not come just to die so that we could claim him as a savior and then go about our merry way so long as we worship his name every noe and again. He came to teach us how to live–Not only as a guideline, but as a requirement. It is not enough that we say “I believe in Jesus.” We must become like Christ. We must live like Christ. We must follow his teachings: Love God with all your heart, soul and mind; to love your neighbor as yourself regardless of what he has done or what he believes; to be charitable and merciful; and to seek peace within ourselves and to spread that peace to others. As Hanh says, “If you only satisfy yourself with praising a name, even the name of Jesus, it is not practicing the life of Jesus.”
The Jesus-cult is so prevelant because it is so easy. In today’s society we like things that are simple, easy, and convenient. Showing up to church, praising the name of Jesus, getting swept up in the emotion of a crowd (as opposed to fostering true emotions within one’s self), claiming Jesus as a personal savior, and going home, these are easy and simple. There is no real life change except maybe for a new schedule to follow and a few new social norms to abide by. But the true person has not, I think, been changed at all. What has been changed are only the clothes of the person. Being a true Christian is hard, strenuous, and tough. It requires not only “rebelling” against a society in which we are in to be “good” but requires us to change ourselves from the soul out. It demands us discovering who we are, who this person is whom I call “I”. It requires knowledge and wisdom, something that has become hard to aquire as those who could pass it on have themselves passed on and those who seek the easy path have nothing to offer. When Christ said that there were two paths, a wide, easy path a rocky, narrow one, he did not mean just “being evil is easy and good is hard”, he also meant that being good is easy, but following his life and his teachings is hard.
Examine your own faith, if you are a Christian. Are you being as Christ or are you simply praising the name of a man?

It’s been a while since the last time I wrote anything. I apologize for that. It seems that for the last year or so I have been wrestling with some questions. Some of these questions are about religion in general and some of them are directed solely at the Christian Church. A lot of these questions remain unanswered, even after taking so long to meditae on them. The other night, though, I found something that opened my eyes to a new way of seeing things. I found a new way of looking at not only my own questions, but of the things the questions themselves were questioning.

If you know me, you know that I have a deep seeded resentment towards ignorance in the face of knowledge. Show me someone who would rather take it easy rather than learn something about themselves or the world and I would see someone I would rather kick in the back of the head. For a long time, whenever someone in the American Christian church would talk about religion, I would basically tune it out. The reason being that I had come to the conlusion that most American Christians would rather be boiled in acid then acually have to think for themselves. I chalked it up to a hatred of knowledge on their part and dismissed the idea that maybe there was some other factor involved. That is, until I read something in a book.

In his book, Living Buddha, Living Christ, Thich Nhat Hanh, a Vietnamees Buddhist monk, discusses the relationship between the teachings of Jesus and the Buddha. For the first part of the book I was not much impressed. I had read much concerning Buddhism beforehand and what this book was saying about the similarities between the two religions was not very revealing, at least not in a new and novel way. It wasn’t until I got to the titular chapter that I had my mind blown. Hanh states, “When Jesus said, ‘I am the way,’ He meant that to have a true relationship with God you must practice His way. … But we must distinguish the ‘I’ spoken by Jesus and the ‘I’ that people usually think of. The ‘I’ in His statement is life itself, His life, which is the way.” It was here that suddently things began to click.

For as long as I can remember, the statement “I am the way, the truth, and the light. No one comes to the Father except through me,” was always used only in one context: to prove that Christianity was the only way to heaven. I can not recall a time in which this statement, spoken by Jesus, was not used to disregard another religious teaching or philosophy. The only way to heaven is through Jesus, which means that the only way to heaven is by worshiping Jesus, which means that anyoen who doesn’t worship Jesus is going to go to hell. That was the interpretation I learned from the Church and from other Christians. But this statement by Hanh, esspecially put in the context I had prior to learned about Buddhists, is of monumental importance to me.

The true meaning of the statement, in my view, is two fold. The first one is like the original interpruation: Jesus is the way to heaven. The second one is this: being as Jesus is the way to heaven. I think that American Christianity has lost a lot of itself in he last century. It is told to me that there were people in the world who became like Jesus; people who, instead of following a list of regulations and conforming to a set of social expectations, actually embodied the attributes of Christ in the world. Today, it is hard to imagine what such a person would be like.

Christians today have taken, what I consider, a grave turn. Instead of becoming like Christ, they have instead taken to becoming a Jesus cult. This may sound ridiculous, but consider it for a moment. A lot of Christians today would describe themselves as “spiritual, but not religious” or would give an account of the religious affiliation as “I love Jesus”. Go to a “praise session” at a modern church and you will find people who will, instead of reflecting on how to become more like Christ, put their hands in the air and chant or mutter “Jesus” over and over. There is a strange fixation on the death and sacrifice of Jesus to the point where all other teachings of Christ fall by the wayside. I think it would be fair to say that to some extent they could be called a Jesus-cult. A cult which is hung up on the humanity of Jesus instead of on his divinity and his teaching.

Let me clarify a bit. I am not, I repeat Not, saying that loving Christ or the sacrifice made by him for humanity is not important or in anyway a bad thing. What I am saying is that it would seem that Christians today, especially in America, have become stuck in a rut of making those the focal point of their entire lives. Why, though, is that a bad thing? Christ did come to die for our sins, no doubt. However, if that was all he was here to do then he could have done that at any time. What makes a Jesus-cult bad is that it religates the teachings and the life of Christ to the back burner if not cuts it out all together and begins to teach that all that is needed for salvation is to accept Jesus Christ as your personal savior and all is forgiven and you are heaven bound. If that was really all there was to it we would be no better than the Buddhist cult that believes that they can lead any kind of life, but as long as they call upon the name of the Buddha before they die they are guaranteed to be reincarnated in the Pure Land.

Christ did not come just to die so that we could claim him as a savior and then go about our merry way so long as we worship his name every noe and again. He came to teach us how to live–Not only as a guideline, but as a requirement. It is not enough that we say “I believe in Jesus.” We must become like Christ. We must live like Christ. We must follow his teachings: Love God with all your heart, soul and mind; to love your neighbor as yourself regardless of what he has done or what he believes; to be charitable and merciful; and to seek peace within ourselves and to spread that peace to others. As Hanh says, “If you only satisfy yourself with praising a name, even the name of Jesus, it is not practicing the life of Jesus.”

The Jesus-cult is so prevalent because it is so easy. In today’s society we like things that are simple, easy, and convenient. Showing up to church, praising the name of Jesus, getting swept up in the emotion of a crowd (as opposed to fostering true emotions within one’s self), claiming Jesus as a personal savior, and going home, these are easy and simple. There is no real life change except maybe for a new schedule to follow and a few new social norms to abide by. But the true person has not, I think, been changed at all. What has been changed are only the clothes of the person. Being a true Christian is hard, strenuous, and tough. It requires not only “rebelling” against a society in which we are in to be “good” but requires us to change ourselves from the soul out. It demands us discovering who we are, who this person is whom I call “I”. It requires knowledge and wisdom, something that has become hard to aquire as those who could pass it on have themselves passed on and those who seek the easy path have nothing to offer. When Christ said that there were two paths, a wide, easy path a rocky, narrow one, he did not mean just “being evil is easy and good is hard”, he also meant that being good is easy, but following his life and his teachings is hard.

Examine your own faith, if you are a Christian. Are you being as Christ or are you simply praising the name of a man?

1 Comment

Road map

Posted by Tsunami.No.Ai in Other Religions, The Christ on February 25, 2010

It’s been a while since the last time I wrote anything. I apologize for that. It seems that for the last year or so I have been wrestling with some questions. Some of these questions are about religion in general and some of them are directed solely at the Christian Church. A lot of these questions remain unanswered, even after taking so long to meditae on them. The other night, though, I found something that opened my eyes to a new way of seeing things. I found a new way of looking at not only my own questions, but of the things the questions themselves were questioning.
If you know me, you know that I have a deep seeded resentment towards ignorance in the face of knowledge. Show me someone who would rather take it easy rather than learn something about themselves or the world and I would see someone I would rather kick in the back of the head. For a long time, whenever someone in the American Christian church would talk about religion, I would basically tune it out. The reason being that I had come to the conlusion that most American Christians would rather be boiled in acid then acually have to think for themselves. I chalked it up to a hatred of knowledge on their part and dismissed the idea that maybe there was some other factor involved. That is, until I read something in a book.
In his book, Living Buddha, Living Christ, Thich Nhat Hanh, a Vietnamees Buddhist monk, discusses the relationship between the teachings of Jesus and the Buddha. For the first part of the book I was not much impressed. I had read much concerning Buddhism beforehand and what this book was saying about the similarities between the two religions was not very revealing, at least not in a new and novel way. It wasn’t until I got to the titular chapter that I had my mind blown. Hanh states, “When Jesus said, ‘I am the way,’ He meant that to have a true relationship with God you must practice His way. … But we must distinguish the ‘I’ sopen by Jesus and the ‘I’ that people usually think of. The ‘I’ in His statement is life itself, His life, which is the way.” It was here that suddently things began to click.
For as long as I can remember, the statement “I am the way, the truth, and the light. No one comes to the Father except through me,” was always used only in one context: to prove that Christianity was the only way to heaven. I can not recall a time in which this statement, spoken by Jesus, was not used to disregard another religious teaching or philosophy. The only way to heaven is through Jesus, which means that the only way to heaven is by worshiping Jesus, which means that anyoen who doesn’t worship Jesus is going to go to hell. That was the interprutation I learned from the Church and from other Christians. But this statement by Hanh, esspecially put in the context I had prior to learned about Buddhists, is of monumental importance to me.
The true meaning of the statement, in my view, is two fold. The first one is like the original interpruation: Jesus is the way to heaven. The second one is this: being as Jesus is the way to heaven. I think that American Christianity has lost a lot of itself in he last century. It is told to me that there were people in the world who became like Jesus; people who, instead of following a list of regulations and conforming to a set of social expectations, actually embodied the attributes of Christ in the world. Today, it is hard to imagine what such a person would be like.
Christians today have taken, what I consider, a grave turn. Instead of becoming like Christ, they have instead taken to becoming a Jesus cult. This may sound ridiculous, but consider it for a moment. A lot of Christians today would describe themselves as “spiritual, but not religious” or would give an account of the religious affiliation as “I love Jesus”. Go to a “praise session” at a modern church and you will find people who will, instead of reflecting on how to become more like Christ, put their hands in the air and chant or mutter “Jesus” over and over. There is a strange fixation on the death and sacrifice of Jesus to the point where all other teachings of Christ fall by the wayside. I think it would be fair to say that to some extent they could be called a Jesus-cult. A cult which is hung up on the humanity of Jesus instead of on his divinity and his teaching.
Let me clarify a bit. I am not, I repeat Not, saying that loving Christ or the sacrifice made by him for humanity is not important or in anyway a bad thing. What I am saying is that it would seem that Christians today, esspecially in America, have become stuck in a rut of making those the focal point of their entire lives. Why, though, is that a bad thing? Christ did come to die for our sins, no doubt. However, if that was all he was here to do then he could have done that at any time. What makes a Jesus-cult bad is that it religates the teachings and the life of Christ to the back burner if not cuts it out all together and begins to teach that all that is needed for salvation is to accept Jesus Christ as your personal savior and all is forgiven and you are heaven bound. If that was really all there was to it we would be no better than the Buddhist cult that believes that they can lead any kind of life, but as long as they call upon the name of the Buddha before they die they are guaranteed to be reincarnated in the Pure Land.
Christ did not come just to die so that we could claim him as a savior and then go about our merry way so long as we worship his name every noe and again. He came to teach us how to live–Not only as a guideline, but as a requirement. It is not enough that we say “I believe in Jesus.” We must become like Christ. We must live like Christ. We must follow his teachings: Love God with all your heart, soul and mind; to love your neighbor as yourself regardless of what he has done or what he believes; to be charitable and merciful; and to seek peace within ourselves and to spread that peace to others. As Hanh says, “If you only satisfy yourself with praising a name, even the name of Jesus, it is not practicing the life of Jesus.”
The Jesus-cult is so prevelant because it is so easy. In today’s society we like things that are simple, easy, and convenient. Showing up to church, praising the name of Jesus, getting swept up in the emotion of a crowd (as opposed to fostering true emotions within one’s self), claiming Jesus as a personal savior, and going home, these are easy and simple. There is no real life change except maybe for a new schedule to follow and a few new social norms to abide by. But the true person has not, I think, been changed at all. What has been changed are only the clothes of the person. Being a true Christian is hard, strenuous, and tough. It requires not only “rebelling” against a society in which we are in to be “good” but requires us to change ourselves from the soul out. It demands us discovering who we are, who this person is whom I call “I”. It requires knowledge and wisdom, something that has become hard to aquire as those who could pass it on have themselves passed on and those who seek the easy path have nothing to offer. When Christ said that there were two paths, a wide, easy path a rocky, narrow one, he did not mean just “being evil is easy and good is hard”, he also meant that being good is easy, but following his life and his teachings is hard.
Examine your own faith, if you are a Christian. Are you being as Christ or are you simply praising the name of a man?

It’s been a while since the last time I wrote anything. I apologize for that. It seems that for the last year or so I have been wrestling with some questions. Some of these questions are about religion in general and some of them are directed solely at the Christian Church. A lot of these questions remain unanswered, even after taking so long to meditae on them. The other night, though, I found something that opened my eyes to a new way of seeing things. I found a new way of looking at not only my own questions, but of the things the questions themselves were questioning.

If you know me, you know that I have a deep seeded resentment towards ignorance in the face of knowledge. Show me someone who would rather take it easy rather than learn something about themselves or the world and I would see someone I would rather kick in the back of the head. For a long time, whenever someone in the American Christian church would talk about religion, I would basically tune it out. The reason being that I had come to the conlusion that most American Christians would rather be boiled in acid then acually have to think for themselves. I chalked it up to a hatred of knowledge on their part and dismissed the idea that maybe there was some other factor involved. That is, until I read something in a book.

In his book, Living Buddha, Living Christ, Thich Nhat Hanh, a Vietnamees Buddhist monk, discusses the relationship between the teachings of Jesus and the Buddha. For the first part of the book I was not much impressed. I had read much concerning Buddhism beforehand and what this book was saying about the similarities between the two religions was not very revealing, at least not in a new and novel way. It wasn’t until I got to the titular chapter that I had my mind blown. Hanh states, “When Jesus said, ‘I am the way,’ He meant that to have a true relationship with God you must practice His way. … But we must distinguish the ‘I’ spoken by Jesus and the ‘I’ that people usually think of. The ‘I’ in His statement is life itself, His life, which is the way.” It was here that suddently things began to click.

For as long as I can remember, the statement “I am the way, the truth, and the light. No one comes to the Father except through me,” was always used only in one context: to prove that Christianity was the only way to heaven. I can not recall a time in which this statement, spoken by Jesus, was not used to disregard another religious teaching or philosophy. The only way to heaven is through Jesus, which means that the only way to heaven is by worshiping Jesus, which means that anyoen who doesn’t worship Jesus is going to go to hell. That was the interpretation I learned from the Church and from other Christians. But this statement by Hanh, esspecially put in the context I had prior to learned about Buddhists, is of monumental importance to me.

The true meaning of the statement, in my view, is two fold. The first one is like the original interpruation: Jesus is the way to heaven. The second one is this: being as Jesus is the way to heaven. I think that American Christianity has lost a lot of itself in he last century. It is told to me that there were people in the world who became like Jesus; people who, instead of following a list of regulations and conforming to a set of social expectations, actually embodied the attributes of Christ in the world. Today, it is hard to imagine what such a person would be like.

Christians today have taken, what I consider, a grave turn. Instead of becoming like Christ, they have instead taken to becoming a Jesus cult. This may sound ridiculous, but consider it for a moment. A lot of Christians today would describe themselves as “spiritual, but not religious” or would give an account of the religious affiliation as “I love Jesus”. Go to a “praise session” at a modern church and you will find people who will, instead of reflecting on how to become more like Christ, put their hands in the air and chant or mutter “Jesus” over and over. There is a strange fixation on the death and sacrifice of Jesus to the point where all other teachings of Christ fall by the wayside. I think it would be fair to say that to some extent they could be called a Jesus-cult. A cult which is hung up on the humanity of Jesus instead of on his divinity and his teaching.

Let me clarify a bit. I am not, I repeat Not, saying that loving Christ or the sacrifice made by him for humanity is not important or in anyway a bad thing. What I am saying is that it would seem that Christians today, especially in America, have become stuck in a rut of making those the focal point of their entire lives. Why, though, is that a bad thing? Christ did come to die for our sins, no doubt. However, if that was all he was here to do then he could have done that at any time. What makes a Jesus-cult bad is that it religates the teachings and the life of Christ to the back burner if not cuts it out all together and begins to teach that all that is needed for salvation is to accept Jesus Christ as your personal savior and all is forgiven and you are heaven bound. If that was really all there was to it we would be no better than the Buddhist cult that believes that they can lead any kind of life, but as long as they call upon the name of the Buddha before they die they are guaranteed to be reincarnated in the Pure Land.

Christ did not come just to die so that we could claim him as a savior and then go about our merry way so long as we worship his name every noe and again. He came to teach us how to live–Not only as a guideline, but as a requirement. It is not enough that we say “I believe in Jesus.” We must become like Christ. We must live like Christ. We must follow his teachings: Love God with all your heart, soul and mind; to love your neighbor as yourself regardless of what he has done or what he believes; to be charitable and merciful; and to seek peace within ourselves and to spread that peace to others. As Hanh says, “If you only satisfy yourself with praising a name, even the name of Jesus, it is not practicing the life of Jesus.”

The Jesus-cult is so prevalent because it is so easy. In today’s society we like things that are simple, easy, and convenient. Showing up to church, praising the name of Jesus, getting swept up in the emotion of a crowd (as opposed to fostering true emotions within one’s self), claiming Jesus as a personal savior, and going home, these are easy and simple. There is no real life change except maybe for a new schedule to follow and a few new social norms to abide by. But the true person has not, I think, been changed at all. What has been changed are only the clothes of the person. Being a true Christian is hard, strenuous, and tough. It requires not only “rebelling” against a society in which we are in to be “good” but requires us to change ourselves from the soul out. It demands us discovering who we are, who this person is whom I call “I”. It requires knowledge and wisdom, something that has become hard to aquire as those who could pass it on have themselves passed on and those who seek the easy path have nothing to offer. When Christ said that there were two paths, a wide, easy path a rocky, narrow one, he did not mean just “being evil is easy and good is hard”, he also meant that being good is easy, but following his life and his teachings is hard.

Examine your own faith, if you are a Christian. Are you being as Christ or are you simply praising the name of a man?

1 Comment

Lent Week 1: Prayer

Posted by Tsunami.No.Ai in Christians, Churches/Organized Religion, Prayer, Sin and Salvation on March 6, 2009

So after not updating this site in nearly a year I am now going to write an article nonchalantly and act as if nothing at all is amiss.

Ever since I decided to once again participate in orthodox lent people have been bugging me to start blogging again. In particular, one minister from Mitchell. I messaged him this morning with an offer. I had two ideas for writing this week. One on prayer and one on scripture reading. Laying down these offers on the virtual canvas between us I slammed my hand down and declared “You shall choose!” To which my office mates looked at me funny and told me to sit back down. But I still got the answer I wanted from Mr. minister.

Probably the biggest fear I had about this lent was prayer. No, I didn’t fret over what I would be eating or how much studying I would do or how much church I would attend. The fear I had was actually praying to the power that created the universe and who has the final say over my salvation.

Perhaps a little background is in order. As many of you know, I am originally from a Church of Christ background. This is a big deal here because one of the few things that particular denomination does not do is teach you how to pray. A large section of my life was spent in CoC and I never knew how to pray. Oh, I’m not saying I didn’t pray, I just had no idea how. You see, most protestant denominations (especially restoration movement ones) are big into praying “from the heart.” It certainly sounds good and in truth that is what we should be aiming for at all times: to have our hearts constantly praying. But what it translated to in practice was no one really seeming to know how to pray except through impromptu.

Let me say that I have no problem with impromptu prayer as such. Meaning, I don’t have a problem with a random prayer to god welling up and coming out in honesty. What I do have a problem with is two fold. I have a problem with prayer that is planned for, for a group for instance, and the leader of the prayer gets up and makes it up as he goes. I also have a problem with prescribing this method of prayer to laymen at large for private prayer.

I am sure most of us have been in a congregation where it came time to pray and the leader got up and said something like this:

God, I just also lift up soandso to you, Lord, I just join all of us in asking, Father that you would just love us and Lord, we love you. Lord, and Lord, just pray over us, Lord, and Lord, bless us Lord. We don’t deserve your Love Lord. And Lord, thank you for Jesus Lord, because Jesus is Lord, Lord. Lord Jesus, Lord, you are Lord Lord Lord Jesus Lord Jesus Lord Jesus Lord Lord Lord. Amen.

OK, maybe that’s a little over the top, but I’m sure you can relate at some level. What is it about this prayer that is wrong? Well.. none of it really. It may genuinely be a prayer from the heart to God. My question though is this. We are in front of the god all mighty, maker of heaven and earth and everything in between and speaking for your congregation or group you say that. Imagine you saying that to a king on earth. Or perhaps imagine you saying that in front of a stadium of people you do not know. Would you be embarrassed? Would you perhaps want a chance to prepare your prayer first?

So there’s my nitpick section. Prayers lead by a designated person should be thought out for the group and not impromptu on the spot. Why you ask? Why should they? Why can not a man get up in front of his church family and open his heart to god? My answer is two fold. One, doing it impromptu means there is either undue pressure on the speaker to say the right things or no pressure at all to say anything significant. These are our petitions to the Lord. They should be handled with care. Second, impromptu without any knowledge of the structure of how to pray gives the impression that that’s how everyone should do it. Just open up and let loose to god.

There is where my big problem came from. My idea of how to pray was just let loose. Tell god how I feel and what I want. “Talk to Jesus as a friend,” I was told growing up. Yes, I know, god loves us all. However, we are also called to have fear of god. To know his power and glory. Years of laying in bed at night saying “Dear lord, please help with this and please do this for me. Oh, and let me have this. And please make so and so do this. In Jesus name, amen” was getting nothing done other than me treating god as though he were some advise column at best and salesman at worst. Years of treating god like a chum, like a pal, had slowly degraded him in my mind to something even lower than myself. I had relegated him to my co-pilot, the guy I turn to when trouble hits and who I ignore the rest of the time.

Then I went to the Pascha service at my Dad’s church (orthodox) last year. For the first time I saw a purely liturgical prayer. “Nonsense!” I thought, “Prayer like this has no soul behind it. They are just saying words on a page.” And so I left there thinking that impromptu was still the way to go, even if flawed. Then I read a book my dad gave me called “The way of the Pilgrim.” It is about a Russian man who wants to learn how to pray. He goes to his priest and asks him, “Father, how must I pray?” And he is told, “Pray the Jesus prayer until it flows from your heart unbidden.”

If you are asking yourself what the Jesus prayer is, it is this “Lord Jesus Christ, son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” That’s it. He was told to pray this over and over until it became like breathing. The man did, and it changed his life. Every action he took from then on was exposed under the light of these words coming from his heart unceasingly. It was then, in that book that I discovered how to pray.

Prayers are not just petitions to god for ourselves. They are more. They are us speaking to the creator of all, who has power of life and death, who holds salvation in his hand. If we are to pray, we must hold that in mind. So with that in mind, I revisited the liturgical way of prayer. I realized they were not just words on a page. They were words of power written down by holy men who have prayed the same prayers for thousands of years. Praying those words was to commune with them in the presence of god. It was to understand what a holy petition was to god.

With that said, allow me to share two examples of this. The first are the Trisagion Prayers. These are said before private morning and evening prayers as well as various other prayers.

In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Glory to You, Christ our God, our hope, Glory to You!
Heavenly King, Comforter, the Spirit of Truth, present in all places and filling all things, Treasury of Goodness and Giver of life: come and abide in us. Cleanse us from every stain of sin and save our souls, O Gracious Lord.

Holy God. Holy Mighty. Holy Immortal Have mercy on us.
Holy God. Holy Mighty. Holy Immortal Have mercy on us.
Holy God. Holy Mighty. Holy Immortal Have mercy on us.

Glory to the Father, and the Son and the Holy Spirit, both now and forever and to the ages of ages. Amen

All Holy Trinity, have mercy on us. Lord, forgive our sins. Master, pardon our transgressions. Holy One, visit and heal our infirmities, for the glory of Your name.

Lord, have mercy.
Lord, have mercy.
Lord, have mercy.

Glory to the Father, and the Son and the Holy Spirit, both now and forever and to the ages of ages. Amen

Our Father, Who art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy name. Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in Heaven. Give us this day our daily bread; and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us; and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.

For Yours is the Kingdom and the Power and the Glory of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, both now and forever and to the ages of ages. Amen.

And one more, the prayer of St. Ephraim

“O Lord and Master of my life, take from me the spirit of sloth, faint-heartedness, lust of power, and idle talk.”

“But grant rather the spirit of chastity, humility, patience, and love to me, thy servant.”

“Yea, O Lord and King, grant me to see my own failings and not to judge my brother; for  blessed art Thou unto the ages of age. Amen”

I do not have the time to explain the significance of these two examples. A book could be written on each. And that’s just the point. In these little petitions are the power of thousands of words.

And that is why I was scared. To say these words, even silently, while on your knees is powerful and moving. Perhaps most frightening, they are changing. Say them enough and they begin to stay with you all day. When you sin, when you fall, you can hear your own words come back to you, rebuking you and correcting you. You have no choice really but to change.

On the first day of Lent, it took me a good five minutes to work up the courage to actually do this. I stood there in an almost empty room, all alone, willing myself to kneel and say these kinds of words to god. It was so vastly different from what I was used to. It was like that time I was doing it for real for the first time, as though I was actually in front of god this time and beseeching his mercy for me being a screw up.

So in the end, it is changing me. Even though its only been 5 days, I can feel it. I have seen a more excellent way and I would ask that if you are doing Lent as well, even if you’re protestant (which I still am, technically) try praying like this. Reflect on what you are asking god and let it change you as well.

http://www.transchurch.org/sguide/praybk.htm

5 Comments

Lent Week 1: Prayer

Posted by Tsunami.No.Ai in Christians, Churches/Organized Religion, Prayer, Sin and Salvation on March 6, 2009

So after not updating this site in nearly a year I am now going to write an article nonchalantly and act as if nothing at all is amiss.

Ever since I decided to once again participate in orthodox lent people have been bugging me to start blogging again. In particular, one minister from Mitchell. I messaged him this morning with an offer. I had two ideas for writing this week. One on prayer and one on scripture reading. Laying down these offers on the virtual canvas between us I slammed my hand down and declared “You shall choose!” To which my office mates looked at me funny and told me to sit back down. But I still got the answer I wanted from Mr. minister.

Probably the biggest fear I had about this lent was prayer. No, I didn’t fret over what I would be eating or how much studying I would do or how much church I would attend. The fear I had was actually praying to the power that created the universe and who has the final say over my salvation.

Perhaps a little background is in order. As many of you know, I am originally from a Church of Christ background. This is a big deal here because one of the few things that particular denomination does not do is teach you how to pray. A large section of my life was spent in CoC and I never knew how to pray. Oh, I’m not saying I didn’t pray, I just had no idea how. You see, most protestant denominations (especially restoration movement ones) are big into praying “from the heart.” It certainly sounds good and in truth that is what we should be aiming for at all times: to have our hearts constantly praying. But what it translated to in practice was no one really seeming to know how to pray except through impromptu.

Let me say that I have no problem with impromptu prayer as such. Meaning, I don’t have a problem with a random prayer to god welling up and coming out in honesty. What I do have a problem with is two fold. I have a problem with prayer that is planned for, for a group for instance, and the leader of the prayer gets up and makes it up as he goes. I also have a problem with prescribing this method of prayer to laymen at large for private prayer.

I am sure most of us have been in a congregation where it came time to pray and the leader got up and said something like this:

God, I just also lift up soandso to you, Lord, I just join all of us in asking, Father that you would just love us and Lord, we love you. Lord, and Lord, just pray over us, Lord, and Lord, bless us Lord. We don’t deserve your Love Lord. And Lord, thank you for Jesus Lord, because Jesus is Lord, Lord. Lord Jesus, Lord, you are Lord Lord Lord Jesus Lord Jesus Lord Jesus Lord Lord Lord. Amen.

OK, maybe that’s a little over the top, but I’m sure you can relate at some level. What is it about this prayer that is wrong? Well.. none of it really. It may genuinely be a prayer from the heart to God. My question though is this. We are in front of the god all mighty, maker of heaven and earth and everything in between and speaking for your congregation or group you say that. Imagine you saying that to a king on earth. Or perhaps imagine you saying that in front of a stadium of people you do not know. Would you be embarrassed? Would you perhaps want a chance to prepare your prayer first?

So there’s my nitpick section. Prayers lead by a designated person should be thought out for the group and not impromptu on the spot. Why you ask? Why should they? Why can not a man get up in front of his church family and open his heart to god? My answer is two fold. One, doing it impromptu means there is either undue pressure on the speaker to say the right things or no pressure at all to say anything significant. These are our petitions to the Lord. They should be handled with care. Second, impromptu without any knowledge of the structure of how to pray gives the impression that that’s how everyone should do it. Just open up and let loose to god.

There is where my big problem came from. My idea of how to pray was just let loose. Tell god how I feel and what I want. “Talk to Jesus as a friend,” I was told growing up. Yes, I know, god loves us all. However, we are also called to have fear of god. To know his power and glory. Years of laying in bed at night saying “Dear lord, please help with this and please do this for me. Oh, and let me have this. And please make so and so do this. In Jesus name, amen” was getting nothing done other than me treating god as though he were some advise column at best and salesman at worst. Years of treating god like a chum, like a pal, had slowly degraded him in my mind to something even lower than myself. I had relegated him to my co-pilot, the guy I turn to when trouble hits and who I ignore the rest of the time.

Then I went to the Pascha service at my Dad’s church (orthodox) last year. For the first time I saw a purely liturgical prayer. “Nonsense!” I thought, “Prayer like this has no soul behind it. They are just saying words on a page.” And so I left there thinking that impromptu was still the way to go, even if flawed. Then I read a book my dad gave me called “The way of the Pilgrim.” It is about a Russian man who wants to learn how to pray. He goes to his priest and asks him, “Father, how must I pray?” And he is told, “Pray the Jesus prayer until it flows from your heart unbidden.”

If you are asking yourself what the Jesus prayer is, it is this “Lord Jesus Christ, son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” That’s it. He was told to pray this over and over until it became like breathing. The man did, and it changed his life. Every action he took from then on was exposed under the light of these words coming from his heart unceasingly. It was then, in that book that I discovered how to pray.

Prayers are not just petitions to god for ourselves. They are more. They are us speaking to the creator of all, who has power of life and death, who holds salvation in his hand. If we are to pray, we must hold that in mind. So with that in mind, I revisited the liturgical way of prayer. I realized they were not just words on a page. They were words of power written down by holy men who have prayed the same prayers for thousands of years. Praying those words was to commune with them in the presence of god. It was to understand what a holy petition was to god.

With that said, allow me to share two examples of this. The first are the Trisagion Prayers. These are said before private morning and evening prayers as well as various other prayers.

In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Glory to You, Christ our God, our hope, Glory to You!
Heavenly King, Comforter, the Spirit of Truth, present in all places and filling all things, Treasury of Goodness and Giver of life: come and abide in us. Cleanse us from every stain of sin and save our souls, O Gracious Lord.

Holy God. Holy Mighty. Holy Immortal Have mercy on us.
Holy God. Holy Mighty. Holy Immortal Have mercy on us.
Holy God. Holy Mighty. Holy Immortal Have mercy on us.

Glory to the Father, and the Son and the Holy Spirit, both now and forever and to the ages of ages. Amen

All Holy Trinity, have mercy on us. Lord, forgive our sins. Master, pardon our transgressions. Holy One, visit and heal our infirmities, for the glory of Your name.

Lord, have mercy.
Lord, have mercy.
Lord, have mercy.

Glory to the Father, and the Son and the Holy Spirit, both now and forever and to the ages of ages. Amen

Our Father, Who art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy name. Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in Heaven. Give us this day our daily bread; and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us; and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.

For Yours is the Kingdom and the Power and the Glory of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, both now and forever and to the ages of ages. Amen.

And one more, the prayer of St. Ephraim

“O Lord and Master of my life, take from me the spirit of sloth, faint-heartedness, lust of power, and idle talk.”

“But grant rather the spirit of chastity, humility, patience, and love to me, thy servant.”

“Yea, O Lord and King, grant me to see my own failings and not to judge my brother; for  blessed art Thou unto the ages of age. Amen”

I do not have the time to explain the significance of these two examples. A book could be written on each. And that’s just the point. In these little petitions are the power of thousands of words.

And that is why I was scared. To say these words, even silently, while on your knees is powerful and moving. Perhaps most frightening, they are changing. Say them enough and they begin to stay with you all day. When you sin, when you fall, you can hear your own words come back to you, rebuking you and correcting you. You have no choice really but to change.

On the first day of Lent, it took me a good five minutes to work up the courage to actually do this. I stood there in an almost empty room, all alone, willing myself to kneel and say these kinds of words to god. It was so vastly different from what I was used to. It was like that time I was doing it for real for the first time, as though I was actually in front of god this time and beseeching his mercy for me being a screw up.

So in the end, it is changing me. Even though its only been 5 days, I can feel it. I have seen a more excellent way and I would ask that if you are doing Lent as well, even if you’re protestant (which I still am, technically) try praying like this. Reflect on what you are asking god and let it change you as well.

http://www.transchurch.org/sguide/praybk.htm

5 Comments

Lent Week 1: Prayer

Posted by Tsunami.No.Ai in Christians, Churches/Organized Religion, Prayer, Sin and Salvation on March 6, 2009

So after not updating this site in nearly a year I am now going to write an article nonchalantly and act as if nothing at all is amiss.

Ever since I decided to once again participate in orthodox lent people have been bugging me to start blogging again. In particular, one minister from Mitchell. I messaged him this morning with an offer. I had two ideas for writing this week. One on prayer and one on scripture reading. Laying down these offers on the virtual canvas between us I slammed my hand down and declared “You shall choose!” To which my office mates looked at me funny and told me to sit back down. But I still got the answer I wanted from Mr. minister.

Probably the biggest fear I had about this lent was prayer. No, I didn’t fret over what I would be eating or how much studying I would do or how much church I would attend. The fear I had was actually praying to the power that created the universe and who has the final say over my salvation.

Perhaps a little background is in order. As many of you know, I am originally from a Church of Christ background. This is a big deal here because one of the few things that particular denomination does not do is teach you how to pray. A large section of my life was spent in CoC and I never knew how to pray. Oh, I’m not saying I didn’t pray, I just had no idea how. You see, most protestant denominations (especially restoration movement ones) are big into praying “from the heart.” It certainly sounds good and in truth that is what we should be aiming for at all times: to have our hearts constantly praying. But what it translated to in practice was no one really seeming to know how to pray except through impromptu.

Let me say that I have no problem with impromptu prayer as such. Meaning, I don’t have a problem with a random prayer to god welling up and coming out in honesty. What I do have a problem with is two fold. I have a problem with prayer that is planned for, for a group for instance, and the leader of the prayer gets up and makes it up as he goes. I also have a problem with prescribing this method of prayer to laymen at large for private prayer.

I am sure most of us have been in a congregation where it came time to pray and the leader got up and said something like this:

God, I just also lift up soandso to you, Lord, I just join all of us in asking, Father that you would just love us and Lord, we love you. Lord, and Lord, just pray over us, Lord, and Lord, bless us Lord. We don’t deserve your Love Lord. And Lord, thank you for Jesus Lord, because Jesus is Lord, Lord. Lord Jesus, Lord, you are Lord Lord Lord Jesus Lord Jesus Lord Jesus Lord Lord Lord. Amen.

OK, maybe that’s a little over the top, but I’m sure you can relate at some level. What is it about this prayer that is wrong? Well.. none of it really. It may genuinely be a prayer from the heart to God. My question though is this. We are in front of the god all mighty, maker of heaven and earth and everything in between and speaking for your congregation or group you say that. Imagine you saying that to a king on earth. Or perhaps imagine you saying that in front of a stadium of people you do not know. Would you be embarrassed? Would you perhaps want a chance to prepare your prayer first?

So there’s my nitpick section. Prayers lead by a designated person should be thought out for the group and not impromptu on the spot. Why you ask? Why should they? Why can not a man get up in front of his church family and open his heart to god? My answer is two fold. One, doing it impromptu means there is either undue pressure on the speaker to say the right things or no pressure at all to say anything significant. These are our petitions to the Lord. They should be handled with care. Second, impromptu without any knowledge of the structure of how to pray gives the impression that that’s how everyone should do it. Just open up and let loose to god.

There is where my big problem came from. My idea of how to pray was just let loose. Tell god how I feel and what I want. “Talk to Jesus as a friend,” I was told growing up. Yes, I know, god loves us all. However, we are also called to have fear of god. To know his power and glory. Years of laying in bed at night saying “Dear lord, please help with this and please do this for me. Oh, and let me have this. And please make so and so do this. In Jesus name, amen” was getting nothing done other than me treating god as though he were some advise column at best and salesman at worst. Years of treating god like a chum, like a pal, had slowly degraded him in my mind to something even lower than myself. I had relegated him to my co-pilot, the guy I turn to when trouble hits and who I ignore the rest of the time.

Then I went to the Pascha service at my Dad’s church (orthodox) last year. For the first time I saw a purely liturgical prayer. “Nonsense!” I thought, “Prayer like this has no soul behind it. They are just saying words on a page.” And so I left there thinking that impromptu was still the way to go, even if flawed. Then I read a book my dad gave me called “The way of the Pilgrim.” It is about a Russian man who wants to learn how to pray. He goes to his priest and asks him, “Father, how must I pray?” And he is told, “Pray the Jesus prayer until it flows from your heart unbidden.”

If you are asking yourself what the Jesus prayer is, it is this “Lord Jesus Christ, son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” That’s it. He was told to pray this over and over until it became like breathing. The man did, and it changed his life. Every action he took from then on was exposed under the light of these words coming from his heart unceasingly. It was then, in that book that I discovered how to pray.

Prayers are not just petitions to god for ourselves. They are more. They are us speaking to the creator of all, who has power of life and death, who holds salvation in his hand. If we are to pray, we must hold that in mind. So with that in mind, I revisited the liturgical way of prayer. I realized they were not just words on a page. They were words of power written down by holy men who have prayed the same prayers for thousands of years. Praying those words was to commune with them in the presence of god. It was to understand what a holy petition was to god.

With that said, allow me to share two examples of this. The first are the Trisagion Prayers. These are said before private morning and evening prayers as well as various other prayers.

In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Glory to You, Christ our God, our hope, Glory to You!
Heavenly King, Comforter, the Spirit of Truth, present in all places and filling all things, Treasury of Goodness and Giver of life: come and abide in us. Cleanse us from every stain of sin and save our souls, O Gracious Lord.

Holy God. Holy Mighty. Holy Immortal Have mercy on us.
Holy God. Holy Mighty. Holy Immortal Have mercy on us.
Holy God. Holy Mighty. Holy Immortal Have mercy on us.

Glory to the Father, and the Son and the Holy Spirit, both now and forever and to the ages of ages. Amen

All Holy Trinity, have mercy on us. Lord, forgive our sins. Master, pardon our transgressions. Holy One, visit and heal our infirmities, for the glory of Your name.

Lord, have mercy.
Lord, have mercy.
Lord, have mercy.

Glory to the Father, and the Son and the Holy Spirit, both now and forever and to the ages of ages. Amen

Our Father, Who art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy name. Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in Heaven. Give us this day our daily bread; and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us; and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.

For Yours is the Kingdom and the Power and the Glory of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, both now and forever and to the ages of ages. Amen.

And one more, the prayer of St. Ephraim

“O Lord and Master of my life, take from me the spirit of sloth, faint-heartedness, lust of power, and idle talk.”

“But grant rather the spirit of chastity, humility, patience, and love to me, thy servant.”

“Yea, O Lord and King, grant me to see my own failings and not to judge my brother; for  blessed art Thou unto the ages of age. Amen”

I do not have the time to explain the significance of these two examples. A book could be written on each. And that’s just the point. In these little petitions are the power of thousands of words.

And that is why I was scared. To say these words, even silently, while on your knees is powerful and moving. Perhaps most frightening, they are changing. Say them enough and they begin to stay with you all day. When you sin, when you fall, you can hear your own words come back to you, rebuking you and correcting you. You have no choice really but to change.

On the first day of Lent, it took me a good five minutes to work up the courage to actually do this. I stood there in an almost empty room, all alone, willing myself to kneel and say these kinds of words to god. It was so vastly different from what I was used to. It was like that time I was doing it for real for the first time, as though I was actually in front of god this time and beseeching his mercy for me being a screw up.

So in the end, it is changing me. Even though its only been 5 days, I can feel it. I have seen a more excellent way and I would ask that if you are doing Lent as well, even if you’re protestant (which I still am, technically) try praying like this. Reflect on what you are asking god and let it change you as well.

http://www.transchurch.org/sguide/praybk.htm

5 Comments