In other news

In an overwhelming display of generosity and good will, the Turkish government gave the Orthodox Church back this dilapidated, hundred year old building (that the Turks had "appropriated" in 1997):



Bravo, Turkish government. What more could the Orthodox want?

Buddhism and Abortion

I'm not sure why it never occurred to me (given the essential role that respect for life plays in Buddhism), but reading about abortion laws in Thailand has made me realize just how "pro-life" Theravada Buddhism can be:

In [the] Buddhist view, both having an abortion and performing an abortion amount to murder. Those involved in abortions will face distress in both this life and the next because their sins will follow them.

Action 5 News Meets Survivor

In a recent TV plug for WMC-TV Memphis evening news, the anchor promised that if you watched that night you would see the sex of an unnamed staff members baby revealed. It turned out the story was actually attached to a report about the accuracy of a take home test that purports to determine the sex of a fetus, but I'm concerned that TV channels feel the need to advertise the news as if it were reality TV.

Texts on Thanksgiving: Jonathan Edwards

This short quote is from a sermon by Jonathan Edwards entitled "The Importance and Advantage of a Thorough Knowledge of Divine Truth:”

When God hath opened a very large treasure before us, for the supply of our wants, and we thank him that he hath given us so much; if at the same time we be willing to remain destitute of the greatest part of it, because we are too lazy to gather it, this will not show the sincerity of our thankfulness.

Edwards has in mind here particularly the abundance of information which God has revealed about Himself for mankind’s benefit. The Bible, for example, lies waiting to be plumbed for the abundant and rejuvenating truth which it records. Edwards balked at the idea that the information was so readily available and yet so few people took advantage of it. (Easily imaginable is the kind of invective he would call down on contemporary society, with its obscenely ready access to Scripture and inversely proportional apathy to its message.) Yet, the idea carries beyond just knowledge. God has afforded to humanity abundant blessings that merely await human appropriation. Salvation must spring immediately to mind, offered freely to all and yet rejected by so many. More convicting still is the abundant time and resources of so many of the world’s Christians for which they give thanks but with which they never do anything productive for God’s ends.

Edwards insists that gratitude for some blessings best takes the form of seizing those blessings when they are offered. Are there gifts which God has offered that we refuse to accept for His purposes?

We interrupt this program to bring you some late breaking news:

The pope has come out in favor of condoms as a means of combatting the AIDS crisis in Africa. Or at least he thinks that they are slightly less immoral than HIV positive, homosexual prostitutes having unprotected sex with clients.

But then again, who doesn't think that?

Texts on Thanksgiving: Symeon the New Theologian

The following passage may be found in Symeon the New Theologian’s homily On Faith:

I grieve, I exhaust my heart, I pine for you when I bring to mind that we have a Lord so bountiful and compassionate that simply if we have faith in Him He grants us gifts beyond our imagination—gifts we have never heard or thought of and that ‘man’s heart has not grasped.’ Yet we, like beasts, prefer the earth and the things of the earth that through His mercy it yields in order to supply our bodily needs…This is our purpose, for this we were created and brought forth: that after having received lesser blessings in this world we may through our gratitude to God and our love for Him enjoy great and eternal blessings in the life to come. But, alas, far from having any concern for the blessings in store, we are even ungrateful for those at hand, and we are like the demons, or—if truth be told—even worse. Thus we deserve greater punishment than they, for we have been given greater blessings. For we know that God became for our sakes like us in everything except sin, so that He might deliver us from delusion and free us from sin. But what is the use of saying this? The truth is that we believe in all these things only as words, while we deny them where our acts are concerned. Is not Christ’s name uttered everywhere, in towns and villages, in monasteries and on mountains? Search diligently, if you will, and find out whether anyone keeps His commandments.

Symeon, with fearful conviction, speculates about just how deep is human ingratitude. It is one thing that humanity should prefer the immediate, terrestrial blessings to the eschatological, supernal blessings. After all, the one is grasped by the senses and the intellect (if one is keenly perceptive), while the other is grasped only by faith and only in the spirit. Yet humanity is not even appropriately thankful for those earthly blessings it receives. Being more richly blessed than the demons—infinitely so—in this life, humans typically have a disposition no better than evil spirits. It raises doubts about whether or not humanity truly can be grateful for the eternal gifts which were bequeathed to it in the Incarnation since humans cannot seem to begin to show appropriate thanksgiving for the blessings which are experienced now.

Symeon suggests that the truest act of thanksgiving is obedience, which in turn mediates more blessings to creation. If he were alive today, would he still find that our thanksgiving exists “only in words?” Would he still say, “Among thousands and myriads you will scarcely find one who is a Christian both in word and in act.”

Texts on Thanksgiving: Peter of Damascus

Here is a text from Peter of Damascus, A Treasury of Divine Knowledge:

The purpose of what we say in our prayers is as follows. The thanksgiving is in recognition of our incapacity to offer thanksgiving as we should at this present moment, of our negligence in doing so at other times, and of the fact that the present moment is a gift of God's grace.

The prayers offered by the monks in Peter's day always began with a thanksgiving. This thanksgiving, according to Peter, was not so much a genuine fulfillment of humanity's duty to be grateful to God. In fact, it functioned first and foremost as a reminder that people cannot be truly thankful as they should. Whether it be sin or merely ignorance that prevents people from truly recognizing all that God does for His children, the gratitude offered God is never sufficient. It overlooks things that God has done and continues to do. Even if humanity were able to recognize every grace conferred to humanity, people could still not thank God adequately since every moment it would be necessary to thank God merely for the gift of being itself.

Peter recognizes that beneath every thanksgiving offered to God should be implicit remorse and recognition that it is never enough. Do we deceive ourselves into believing our gratitude is sufficient?