Defending the Faith
Early in the fourth century, a popular priest in Alexandria preached and taught about the nature of Christ to his congregation. He taught with great zeal that Jesus was the Son of God. That sounds good enough, but he got trapped in the concept of what it means to be a son. A son is created, begotten in time, an offspring that comes into existence from nonexistence. His teaching became the rage, literally. It created arguments across the then-known world.
To make things worse, he was a talented hymnographer. His church hyms melodically proclaimed; "there was a time when the son was not". He did not accept the eternal nature of Christ, despite the proclamation of the Gospel of John, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and The Word was God". This priest considered Christ something less than God; a creature. This concept attacked the very basis of salvation that only God could save mankind, not a creature. In his view, Jesus is simply not God, something very foreign to Orthodox teaching as we know it.
The priest's name was Arius, and his controversial teaching became the heresy bearing his name, Arianism. So powerful and dangerous were his teachings, that they still exist today. The Fathers of the Church used secret codes imbedded in the hymnography of the Church to protect the faith from other would-be 'hymnologizing' heretics.
Orthodoxy has undergone many such tumultuous attacks of heresy and difficult waves of twisted belief systems. Even in America, the land of the free, we are surrounded by several opposing forces, secularism, the occult, atheism, humanism, and layers of sectarian Christians who see things quite differently; some even to hostile extremes! Many denominations consider the Orthodox to be "non-biblical" and don't even recognize us as Christians. With this as an excuse they charge into our households, our countries, even our churches proselytizing and spending large sums of money to convert the Orthodox to their 'correct' version of Christianity.
Orthodox Christians be wary! When you see in the news that groups are fighting prayer in schools, realize that wars are being waged on us from many fronts to steal our souls from the true faith. When you hear Christ ridiculed, and traditional faith belittled, arm yourself; you may be fighting for your eternal life! Put on your armor and be on your guard. As Orthodox, our armor is the unified teaching of the church that has been passed on to us unchanged from the Apostles themselves. Our history proves this, as does the Holy Spirit that keeps our venerable faith intact. We are responsible to learn that faith, to pass it on with even more zeal than our adversaries. Our Church is a remote fortress in a perilous and hostile spiritual wasteland. The only protection we have is to arm ourselves by learning more about what we believe, living our faith and reaching into its depths to grow in Christ.
It is no accident that the parish is working to hard to build up its worship and education programs. We need to do this for our very survival. Too often we have seen Baptized Orthodox join other faiths and casually backslide into oblivion. Not only must we better learn our faith, but we must generate enthusiasm for that learning and pass it on to others.
There is great joy and power in knowing the things of the Spirit and in growing closer to the Lord. Many lives have been given in martyrdom to defend the faith to us intact. The Lord Himself guides and guards that faith for us. Learn to tap it, you eternal life depends on it.
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