Perpetual Spiritual Infancy

Milk and Meat

It’s no secret I’ve been around the Ortho-net for a loooong time. Last spring The Wifey and I took a “Post-caregiving Decompression” 10,000 mile, nine week tour of The South. We visited 13 parishes and I met dozens of people I’ve known on the internet, some for over 25 years, that I had never met “incarnationally”.

But that’s just to say I’ve been in a lot of discussion groups (from Yahoo Groups to Facebook, I avoid Reddit and Twitter), read a lot of posts and comments, have written quite a few myself, and answered a lot of private email. If you hang around long enough in a space across time and people, if you pay attention, you see patterns, trends, themes and recurring topics. Sometimes you see the same patterns, themes and topics across time from the same people or same groups.

So these are some of the topics I’ve seen discussed, hashed, argued, and flamed for over 25 years:

Baptism. Re-baptism, valid/invalid baptismal forms and formulas.

Ordinations and tonsures: (see “Baptism”), ordination of women/deaconesses/altar girls, issues across jurisdictions with ordination/tonsuring of minor orders and their meaning/path to priesthood, and of course who has “valid” apostolic succession across jurisdictions (and of course a critique of the word “valid” when discussing Orthodox sacraments).

The meaning of “faith toward God”. What beliefs (or actions) constitute “apostasy” or a denial of true Orthodoxy.

Repentance. Wellll… there’s just a zillion memes and “Holy Elder Quotes” about repentance. And of course, what needs to be repented of and what does that look like for repentance to be “real”?

The resurrection of the dead and judgment. Just mention Seraphim Rose, “toll houses” or “David Bentley Hart” in a discussion of death.

I’d venture to say just about anyone who is reading my blog is caught up in the Ortho-net and has more than likely been “taught” by someone on the internet about one or more of these issues so I don’t need to put up examples, screenshots of messages, discussions, comments and posts.

So, I’ve been a “teacher” in various churches for over fifty years now. No matter how new (or old) I was in my churches I never questioned whether or not I should be teaching or whether or not I was actually qualified to teach others. Of course I was. And the leadership of the churches allowed me to teach. I knew stuff and I could communicate it, whatever “it” was. Unfortunately “communicator” is not a gift of the Spirit. Two of the most influential people in the Bible, Moses and St. Paul were both self-admittedly “tardiloquent” and had weak personal presences. There’s more to teaching than being able to be convincing and entertaining with your message.

After a while… well, after several decades, I came to realize that St. Paul nailed my hubris: “(you) rely on the law and boast of God and know his will and are able to discern what is important since you are instructed from the law, and you are confident that you are a guide for the blind and a light for those in darkness, that you are a trainer of the foolish and teacher of the simple, because in the law you have the formulation of knowledge and truth— ^(so) then you who teach another, do you not teach yourself?” (Romans 2:17-21) No matter what I believed I always believed it was “truth” and was willing to share it freely.

But… even now… wellll, I’m writing this blog post.

Of course I knew that the scriptures are laced with warnings about the danger of being a teacher (James 3:1), false teachers and true teachers who use their gift for self-aggrandizement and gathering a cult-following. St. John warned the church against Diotrephes who “loves the pre-eminence”, talks nonsense about his brethren, is malicious, does not receive his fellow Christians he disagrees with, forbids others from receiving them too, and anathematizes them all. (3 John 9-10) Thank God Diotrephes didn’t have the internet and is dead…, oh wait….

And yet, in spite of the problems there ARE “teachers” in the church. It is a gift of the Spirit, an office and a necessity within the church. As with every gift of the Spirit and office in the church there is the human element of ego, pride, vainglory and desire for pre-eminence that counterfeits or taints the true vocations to some degree. Not even ordination is a prophylactic against the passions, pride, nor a guarantee of truth; if anything it is fuel on the fire of an ego: All the major heresies and schisms in Church history were led by ordained clerics.

So the other day I was reading the normal litany of FB posts and looking at “teachers” and “what is being taught” and I saw (and participated in) our collective self-assessment that American Orthodoxy is “a guide to the blind, a light to the world” and on the front line of relevance and influence and the judge of all things “Orthodox” for the nations (all the while denying that I believe that because that would be like prelest). Then by some providence this scripture came up in a daily reading. Of course I’ve known it for decades, but like all scripture does at times, it spoke in one moment in a particularly clear way:

“Concerning Christ we have much to say, and it is difficult to explain, since you have become poor listeners.  For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you have need again for someone to teach you the elementary principles of the actual words of God, and you have come to need milk and not solid food.  For everyone who partakes only of milk is unacquainted with the word of righteousness, for he is an infant. But solid food is for the mature, who because of practice have their senses trained to distinguish between good and evil.

Therefore leaving the elementary principles of the doctrine of Christ, let us go on unto perfection; not laying again the foundation of repentance from dead works, and of faith toward God, of the doctrine of baptisms, and of laying on of hands, and of resurrection of the dead, and of eternal judgment.” (Hebrews 5:11-6:2)

“Concerning Christ we have much to say, but…” you’re a babbling baby and cannot understand righteousness and your senses are not trained to discern good from evil because you are stuck on the infant milk of repentance, faith, baptism, ordinations, state of the dead and judgment.

Some day I hope to understand what St. Paul would have told them about Christ.

Some day I hope, like him, to “know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified.” (I Corinthians 2:2)

Until then, may God have mercy on us all who are presuming to teach.