Simple Thoughts on Why Orthodox Worship the Way They Do

One way I like this think of Orthodox worship is that it is God's love language. Protestants (I'm a convert) would emphasize so much that what we did be "from the heart," by which I get that they meant sincerity, but the problem is that a key Christian truth is that we don't understand God and our hearts are corrupt. So in the OT, God revealed how to love Him. When the NT Church was founded, the Apostles didn't teach anything like "do whatever is in your heart," they instead had a new version of the same OT service, with the Eucharist as all the sacrifices rolled into one, because Christ fulfilled them all. These parallel not only the services of the OT, but the heavenly services described in Revelation. The services did not conform to the people, but the people conformed their hearts to the services, the content of which was mostly readings from scripture.

The services had beauty, but not to the degree that they stirred up emotional zeal (and early Christians specifically warned against making the music too stirring). The services were not about making us logically think or have emotional reactions, though this happened secondarily, but they were intended to transform us on a much deeper level, a level that scripture calls in Greek the "nous" (which might be translated spirit). When the West began to lose touch with this concept, and finally the Roman Catholic Church broke off communion with the Eastern Churches, they slowly replaced it with rationalism (starting to technically explain what were previously left as mystery, like the Eucharist and the accomplishment of the Cross) and emotionalism (the sensual art and Stations of the Cross). Eventually, this was taken to it's logical conclusion in the Reformation, where the whole focus became about learning a logical teaching and singing emotionally stirring songs. This has taken even sadder forms in the mega-churches and health'n'wealth gospel of today, losing a lot of the point to take up one's cross and being left simply with a comfort session of fun music and declaring what God tells me I will get for "believing."

I've noticed that what is done on Sunday psychologically determines the definition of spirituality for a person's week. If a person gets emotionally stirred by U2-style songs on Sunday (which I used to be very attached to, and some songs I still do love!), the person has to do everything they can through radio and motivational verses to try to keep that emotional high through the week, which they interpret as closeness to the Lord because that was their Sunday encounter with Him. When the service is hard and doesn't gratify the rational or emotional mind very much, and that is "spirituality," then the parishoner sees the rest of their difficult week as just as capable of containing the spiritual life.

Lead Out (Prose on Skepticism)

I’ve been there

I’ve been out to the edges

The fringes

I’ve been deep into that place
Skepticism

Some dabble

Some read in magazines

Some even venture a little

Some watch The Matrix and joke
What if this isn’t real?

These aren’t the logical people

Nor are they the questioners

The truth seekers

They know they can be wrong

They know they can misinterpret

Some question as is convenient

They question only as much as they cannot deny

They will question your beliefs

Your faith

But deny theirs is no less than faith

Some will question your books and facts

But their own is on equally shaky ground

They just don’t look down

But where is truth?
Is there such a thing?
How do we know something is real?
Is anything real?

What if this isn’t real?

How? When?
Why?

What a frightening question

It demands an answer

If I ask it, I find I must ask it again
Over and over
Where does it take me?

It’s scary there
You find answers you don’t like

You don’t find the answers you hoped you would

You’ve always taken a different angle
You’ve wanted to escape lies

You’ve wanted to know truth
You’ve wanted to have the courage

To face your own beliefs

To not let fear rule you

To let go of a belief if the evidence is against it

Even if it makes you comfortable

Even if leaving it is terrifying

So you are attached to nothing

You make it a discipline

Question everything

Question everyone

Question yourself

You’ve seen the pride

You’ve seen it in yourself and others

Overconfidence

It’s dangerous

It hurts people

So you run in the opposite direction

Doubt

And you learn that if you live it well

That if you doubt your initial reaction

If you doubt the common narrative

It’s easy to think doubt finds you the answers

It’s easy to think your questioning puts you in a better place than others

Wiser

Open-minded

Enlightened

And then you realize that you’ve stopped doubting

You stopped doubting you because you thought you’d reached

The End

So you keep going

Doubt again

Doubt yourself again

And there’s a new layer

You doubt

The books

The authorities

The histories

The religions

The claims

The people

The logic

You doubt it all

You question everything

In the world of logic

You find there’s always room to question

There’s always room for doubt

You go crazy

Can you prove you’re not a brain in a vat?
If you can’t prove something

You shouldn’t believe it

You very well could be a brain in a vat

This could all be meaningless

I think therefore I am

Yet that still requires logic, Descartes

And our logic can be wrong

You don’t know that you are

Nor do I know I am

Nor do I know anyone

Or anything else

IS

…

…

...

Suffering

It rings

It fuels

It drives

You ask because of pain:

Why?

Why does it hurt to be alive?

You can’t ignore pain

You can focus on the positive but pain catches up eventually

We want pain to have purpose

We understand laboring for a goal

That’s why we asked
Why

But as suffering washes over us

With no end or purpose in our vision

Pain is torment and confusion on an even deeper level

Why pain?

It doesn’t make sense

In the doubt

Sometimes we make answers

Simply because

We are asking why

And because

There is room for that answer

Sometimes I wonder

Am I a rat in a lab

Of the psycho-scientists

Running the simulation I live in

Who simply wonder

“How much pain can he take

Before he snaps?

How far can we push him

Without breaking him

From the inside?”

If I’m honest

That’s logical

Occam’s Razor

The simplest answer is the most likely

Suffering makes sense with that

I’m a science experiment

If I’m honest

That makes the most sense

There’s no disproving that

Not with logic

…

…

...

This is a scary place

Out here

With no reality

With no people

With no matter

With no God

With no me

These are the fringes

These are where logic reveals its emptiness

To claim we only do what is rational

It’s a dead end

You will die here

Logic says you should

Logic leads you here
And leaves you here

There’s no disproving that

Not with logic

…

Not with logic

Alone

…

Ah, I missed something

Remember?

I’m fallible

And in this way

I did have hope

I had trapped myself

Inoccently

Sincerely

But I had put myself in a trap

Under the authority

Of my logic

And I am fallible

And in that weakness

The slip-up of the gatekeeper

Myself

I had hope he might not keep me

He might have made a mistake and I could get out

And he did

I missed experience

I betrayed logic

I betrayed myself
I had a presupposition

That logic could sustain and prove itself

That logic was the foundation

That logic was the core

These are presuppositions

Presuppositions are not logical

Really

Logic is a tool

Logic assists experience

Experience is reality

And logic lets me work with it

With logic I go deeper in experience

Logic is not the depths

Logic is an empty death

Logic is an empty vehicle

But experience is full

Experience needs no explanation

Experience is there

In our face

Before logic
In the moment
A piece of our human depths

Experience proves itself

Only when logic presupposes itself above experience

Do we find ourselves alone in the vehicle of logic

An empty car

Floating in vast soulless space

But experience is the world in which

The car of logic can travel well

Rational empiricists

Who presuppose logic

Are in reality logic’s enemies

Empericism

Pure and simple

That is the true foundation of human reality

Only when I cut off my experience

Do I forget it

When I shut off my senses

That is when Nihilism is the only logical conclusion

It’s because I’ve discounted facts of experience

When experience is given permission to come back

Then the answers come before I can even think them

…

Listen

  Music

Taste

  Flavor

Feel

  Touch

Love

  Her

Logic wasn’t needed here

Here is here

No observation or proof required

What beauty

What joy

What hope

Reality is home

…

As I live

As I taste my humanity as it is

I notice the great flavors

I am relationship

I am soul

I am love

In this world of science and causes

In this world of logic

In this world of order

Relationship, soul, love

These experiences defy this world

No

They love this world
But they supercede it

Logic does not explain love

Logic does not explain self

Logic does not explain beauty

Beauty endows logic

Soul reveals logic

Love embraces logic

I feel this love that explains all

What is it?

Who is He?

Christ

I knew it was out there

I knew there was love

I saw it in humans

I felt it in myself

But I was not enough

Why do I hurt others?

Why do I hurt myself?
I wondered

I was driven to my doubt by these questions

Because love is in me

Deeper than logic

A driving experience

Love demanded I know
It would not be satisfied
Not without answers

Answers deeper than logic

But now I’ve encountered Him

I see what I want

What I want to have

What I want to give

Love

Real, true, and untainted

It makes experiential sense

It makes logical sense

(If experience is not precluded)

Why pain?

I am sick

I am sick with Selfishness

But I am Self

How do I heal?

How am I cured?

My sickness is my loudness

My sickness is my grandiosity

My sickness is my grasp

I will be quiet

I will be small

I will let go

And the Self will heal without these burdens

And room will be made in me for love

And I will have something to give

There is joy

There is love

There is peace

There is beauty

There is hope

Beyond logic

In the depths of experience

I have found all of these things

The only step now is to continue

Step

After

Step

…

And should I return

Should I walk into that dark place

Alone

Questioning everything
There is a path
I’ve walked that path

Many times

The path out

From the fringes of doubt and skepticism

Where nothing is real

I have been lead out

Through pain
To experience
Of Love

I have been lead out
Gently

Again and again

Loved by Truth Incarnate

Yet still able to be Self

I am lead out once again

Step

After

Step