Holy Ignorance
Today a populist religious current prevails in the Church (comprising laypeople, clergy, and monks), a current zealous for the faith. I say it honestly: there is zeal for Christ. We are not more zealous than them nor more faithful, but as the Apostle Paul says: “I bear them witness that they have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge.” (Rom 10:2). This current is a current closed in upon itself; it reads only itself and what it writes, and it is selective in its reading of the saints and the Fathers, reading what it is comfortable reading and what keeps it comfortable with its situations. And this current lacks the divine spaciousness.
It always reads and publishes a defense of the faith that heresies threatened in history and over which the Church in fact triumphed, and it reflects this onto our new issues, while neglecting what the Fathers said about defending man and his dignity and lifting injustice from him — man whose dignity is still violated in the East. For defending the faith is easy, while defending human rights in Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and Egypt costs blood, a cross.
Its tools:
This current uses the tools of political sectarianism, so the other is always an enemy and a heretic. Its religious discourse is also a party discourse, entirely far from the discourse of the Gospel and the ethics of Jesus. Among the traits of this current is that it is exclusionary, for it considers that every other who is different is a barbarian, a heretic, and an infidel, and that it alone possesses not only the truth but also its forms. And every attempt from outside this thinking to draw near to the different other and to pour out an evangelical, Jesus-like thinking is met directly with accusations (heretic, apostate, infidel, saboteur, deviant…etc.), because the approach of exclusion is easy and very comfortable and costs no effort or trouble. Exclusion in the name of religion is comforting to the conscience and makes a person feel the intoxication of religious struggle.
But I ask: what new thing have we offered our society in the spirit of Christ, if we exclude the other and cast him out of all salvation, while this exclusion exists in the extremist thought of the Islamic and Jewish religions, whose results we taste and experience forcefully with the political Islamist extremist and the Jewish right?
One of the problems of this current is that it is contradictory. For example, it considers that the miracle that occurs among the other denominations does not indicate the soundness of faith, and it says that even the demons perform miracles, warning the faithful against them; while the miracle that occurs in our own tribe indicates with certainty the soundness of our faith and our superiority over the rest of the Christian tribes. And while it calls for the importance of humility, that every man sins, and that we have come short of the glory of God, it sees no error in the history of our tribe, for it is infallible against every error, fault, and miscalculation, and every other bears alone the responsibility for the corruption of history and for the schisms. As for us, we have been none other than these wronged and persecuted ones who have defended the faith. And the painful thing is that it demands of the other repentance and return — but not to Christ, but to it, to our tribe. Everyone must return and identify with this current in order to become saved.
Its method:
In its defensive method it uses the method of political media, not the approach of the holy Fathers. For the Fathers’ defense of the faith was through clarifying it, explaining it, and simplifying it; while this current confronts every subject by hurling accusations at times, and belittling the other and distorting him at other times. And one of the most hideous tools it uses is the mixing of subjects, and the conspiracy theory invented by the political regimes.
For example: political media confronts the revolution and the demand for reform by mixing up the headlines. For example, it puts the following words together: revolution, reform, terrorism, and sabotage; or freedom, sex, and nudity are put together, and thus it makes the subjects become confused in people’s minds. Consequently, the one who demands freedom becomes as though he were demanding prostitution and sex, and the one who revolts against corruption is the saboteur and the terrorist. Likewise, the religious discourse does not discuss civil marriage with evangelical logic, but in order to fight it, it puts it on a list together with adultery, ecumenism, and permissiveness; and it puts, for example, openness, ecumenism, and the Antichrist on a single list. And because it cannot discuss the priesthood of women on its own and does not possess theological arguments to defend its ideas, it puts it on a list together with sexual deviance, sex change, and the new world order. And thus the one who accepts the diaconate of women, for example, becomes as though he were permitting sexual deviance.
A current stuck in the past
It is a current preoccupied with the past. The issues it discusses are all linked to historical events that have passed, and it wages conflicts over them today. For we have been afflicted with what the Muslims were afflicted with, Sunni and Shiite, who still struggle over a historical issue that passed centuries ago, while those who caused the differences have all died and are being judged according to the justice of God. We must learn from the past in order to repair the future and gather together the children of God. So the one who hears some sermons and reads the many articles that are put forth almost feels that Arius is still alive, and that the war of the icons is still burning, and that the Crusaders are at the gates. It makes you feel that the Catholic — your neighbor, or perhaps your brother-in-law or your uncle — is a Crusader whom you must fight.
While at the same time singing the glories of Byzantium and the great kings, who were no less evil and tyrannical than the pagan emperors. For the conflict that this current leads is only a conflict to prove who possesses the truth, and who alone is the saved denomination and the tribe distinguished before God. The old disease of Judaism has afflicted us.
The intoxication of remaining in the past:
Remaining in the past is also a comfortable matter for the religious thought prevailing today, for it feels the intoxication of defending the faith, and at the same time this discussion poses no danger to it. The populist religious thought amuses itself with the past away from the issues of its age; it does not discuss, for example, the issues of human rights, social justice, citizenship, justice, and freedom, and it closes its eyes to the rape of children, murder, torture, kidnapping, and theft in our countries. It identifies with the discussions that the political authority kindles in order to distract its peoples, and it remains silent about what they remain silent about.
And from its production you read nothing but discussions about intellectual and theological matters pertaining to the heavenly and the eschatological. The prevailing religious discourse is a discourse that has no flesh and no blood and is devoid of feeling; as John Climacus says, it is “a foolish philosopher and a man of letters who contradicts himself.” It does not discuss the earthly and the present. The greatest example is the neutrality of the Christian religious discourse in general, and the Orthodox in particular, toward what is happening in Gaza, as though what is happening in Gaza were a (crisis), as one of the Church leaders said. Dr. Tarek Mitri says, commenting on the meeting of the Christian leaders in Palestine with the president of Israel: “Did it escape you that the one who mediates between you said that there are no civilians in Gaza? And that the Christians of Gaza live and die with their people?”
Or what is happening with the Syrians in Lebanon — have we seen a single Christian page at least denouncing what is happening? Rather, the Syrians are attacked from many church pulpits, because the Syrians in Lebanon have no backing and no support. And while the same pages wage war against homosexuals, they remain silent about the gang that rapes children. And while fingers are raised in sermons claiming to bear witness to the truth and waging war against those who demand civil marriage, we see this very finger lowered from defending the truth in other places, because in other places the confrontation is not with people demanding their rights, nor with marginalized people who are easy to attack, but with oppressors who possess strength, influence, and authority, and who have prisons and soldiers.
Its origin:
This prevailing thought and current is nothing but the result of sectarian insularity; it sees itself only as threatened, and that conspiracies are being hatched against the faith and the Church is in danger, while in reality the matter is entirely different and we must see it from another angle. We have been afflicted with diseases that have made us disintegrate from within and have made us expose the Church and the community of the faithful to the danger of fragmentation and dispersion; nay, we have even become absolutely ineffectual in our present and irresponsible toward it. While early Christianity was able to transfer the Roman world from paganism to Christianity, we are now fading away. And whoever relies on the saying that the gates of hell shall not prevail against it must remember that in the Church of Morocco, Tunisia, and Libya, the remembrance of Christ has faded away.
Shall we take heed?