Iraqi Christians in Peril

In America we are so fortunate that we Christians also have a sense of entitlement to a good and easy life like the rest of the population. Some preachers even teach this. We don’t really ponder and mediate on the lives of our Christian ancestors who lived in perilous times during the first 3 centuries of the church. If we think about persecution in our present time, places like China, Sudan, or Pakistan come to mind as perpetrators of human rights abuses against Christians. We don’t know or like to think that the war our government started in 2003 has caused the deaths and dislocation of thousands of Iraqi Christians. Most of us don’t even know that there are Christians in Iraq. We just assume that everyone there is Muslim; this is not to say that a Muslim life is less than a Christian life as some fundamentalist Christians think, but while we are “living it up” here in America, we should be concerned about our fellow Christians elsewhere. The mainstream media and the government has not done their job to inform the public about what has happened to the Christians of Iraq since 2003, but there is the internet. As a Christian blogger I feel that it is my responsibility to keep reminding people of the plight of Iraq’s Christians. I have written about this before, and I will continue to write about it because a week does not pass when I do not think about those who lost everything because of the evil of war.

Below are two links with information on the situation of Iraqi Christians. The first is a video.

Iraqi Christians in Peril (video)

Iraqi Christians Living in Fear

A Case of Racism in the American Church

There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. (Galatians 3:28)

This is not a story of what some people see as typical American racism, a black person being put down by a white person.

Racism silently courses like poison through the arteries of America contributing to constant suspicion, paranoia, and conspiracy theories. It has really reared its ugly head in the last few months since the election of President Obama, but it has reared up under different labels and slogans. Some naively hoped for a Golden Age of racial harmony and color blindness. Instead openly racist comments along with those cloaked in stridently illogical accusations of reverse racism flow from the media and internet. There is a new conspiracy theory every week now. How can this happen in a country which many here call a Christian nation? How can so many blacks and whites sleep at night without realizing that by even putting anonymous racist rants online they are contributing in their own small way to the downfall of this nation?

For years now, America has been imploding economically, racially, and spiritually. Race is always a constant here for many. Some say they cannot escape it. Others, like me, try to. Race should be a mote point with a Christian. Though movies about His life show otherwise, I would not be surprised if Jesus encountered a few black people during his time here on earth. The Middle East is near Africa and ancient people were a lot more mobile than most people think. If Jesus did see a black person, do you think that individual’s color mattered to Him? No. Jesus looked at a person’s heart and its ability to be receptive to loving God and righteousness. Why can’t more American Christians be like that?

Two Sundays ago I met a Greek woman who was born in Istanbul, Turkey at my town’s Orthodox Church. She is the second person of Greek extraction that I had met that was born in Turkey. Like my mother says, “Turkey will always be in your life.” This seems to be coming true. I become burned out and exasperated with Turkey during my trips to work there. I packed up and returned to my dull, immaculate southern town back in March, but the communication lines between me and some Turks continue. My last sojourn to Turkey was especially hellish this time because I worked for one of the most corrupt and illogical bosses on the planet.

Two weeks ago I met L. L. is 64, but looks a little younger. When she and her young daughter came up to me after church during fellowship, I immediately was struck by their attractive exoticism. I could see that her daughter was obviously biracial or a child of the Near East. I assumed that L. herself was a light skinned black woman or from the Near East. When she spoke to me, her accent made me less certain of her heritage. She told me that her beautiful child with smooth reddish gold skin was named A. A. is a curious 7 year old spitfire. She did not seem too distant or afraid to come near me, a stranger, like many American kids. In fact, her eagerness to be near me reminded me of some Turkish children who are open to strangers. Turkey is a different world. It may be overrun by a very bad private sector, but it does not have the kind of violent crime like America. Crime makes Americans guarded. A. wasn’t guarded in her behavior maybe because her mother, L., came from a culture where a lot of people are more open to strangers.

I asked L. where she was from. She told me that she was from Istanbul. I was floored. Then she told me that she was not Turkish, however, but that she was Greek. She and her family had moved to Germany when she was a child. There she had married and started a family. Her adult children still live there, she said. Later she and her second husband (an American) moved back here to the states. Before she had told me all of this, she had said that A.’s biological parents were a black woman and a white man. Both parents were drug addicts and had Attention Deficit Disorder which A. had inherited from them. L. was a widow since her second husband had died of cancer, but before he died he had adopted A. for her when she was 3 months old. A.’s parents were in no condition to raise a child, and L. believes she would have been dead long ago, if her husband had not rescued her

L. loves A. intensely and says she is her real daughter. On rare occasions when married couples have a lot of love and respect for each other and have been together for many years they start to resemble one another. I think that A. could pass for L.’s biological daughter, and I told her so. The love and attachment between them may run that deep. L. liked that very much that I saw a resemblance and said that A. IS her daughter. L. is passionate in her dedication to her child. She told me that A. can be extremely difficult to handle. I could see that she was very restlessly energetic, popping over to where we were sitting deep in conversation and then leaving us and following Father Anthony around wherever he went. Father Anthony and one of the deacons were taking down a mural in progress that the former had shown me a few weeks at his home studio. A. went under the ladder and waited there while Father Anthony, who climbed up it, took down the mural.

L. talked to me about how racist America is about judging people by the color of their skin. She told me that Turks, Greeks, and Germans were not anywhere as concerned about color as a lot of Americans are. I expected her to really demonize the Turks being a Greek person, but she did not. There is a history of bigotry between the Greeks and the Turks, but L. held no animosity toward Turks. In fact, she said that she liked Turks far better than she did Greeks from mainland Greece. She felt that Turks were far warmer than Greeks native to the Greek peninsula. The Turks and Greek have a long history together since Turkey is in what was once the Greek speaking Christian Byzantine Empire. I was told by a Greek once that Greeks refer to Turkey as “Greek lands.” When the Muslim Ottoman Turks under Mehmet the Conqueror put Constantinople, the final remnant of the thousand year old Byzantine Empire under siege in 1453, and conquered the city making it the capital of the Ottoman Empire, the Greeks there then lived under Turkish rule. Mainland Greece was also became a part of the Ottoman Empire. Greeks and Turks have a long, sometimes violent history together. Though there are Greek and Turkish nationalists who are as rabid in their hatred as any American racist, in the last few years more and more young Turks and Greeks have chosen to attend universities in each other’s countries. These tend to have roots in each other’s countries with great great grandparents who perhaps passed each other during the population exchanges of the early part of the last century.

L. was one who also went against the grain not only in her lack of hatred of Turks, but when she moved to America, she gravitated immediately toward blacks here more than whites. After coming here L. decided to go to a black Baptist church. She was contented there until A.’s adoption became an issue with the church’s pastor. Her pastor told her one day that her daughter needed to be with her own people. He didn’t feel that a white person had any business raising a white child. L. hit the ceiling and did not hesitate to give him a piece of her mind. She stopped going to that church. What affect this must have had on her since she truly felt at home around black people? But she did not know how racist that even we can be. To us, however, we are justified in our racism because for so long we were the victims. Many of us grew up in the church and love to go there, but we soon forget what the Bible says about retaliation for wrongs and hurts. L. was not even a white person from America, so why paint her as an enemy because of the color of her skin? I would have liked to ask this preacher how he could honestly say that leaving A. with a young, black drug addicted mother was better for her than for her to be with an older white woman who came from a Near Eastern culture that is family oriented. Like some of my Turkish friends and students have asked me, “What has color got to do with it?” When are whites and blacks in this country and in the church going to become mature enough and Christian enough to ask themselves this question? Are there going to be separate Heavens and Hells for all the different racial and ethnic groups of the world?

There is an ugly undercurrent in America now and both whites and blacks have to face up to the fact that both groups privately cut each other down often. Both make comments about each other that contain stereotypes when they are in private with family and friends. Christians need to check themselves if they are engaging in such behavior. After all, race or the pigmentation of skin is not mentioned in the Bible except in the Song of Solomon where the speaker says she has gotten tanned from working in the sun. Plus in the Middle and Near East where there has been so much cross pollination of cultures and races, the color of one’s skin has rarely been as big an issue as here. We should think about Jesus and emulate him. Would color matter to our Lord?

My Visit to a Greek Orthodox Church

Recently I visited St. Philothea the Greek Orthodox Church located in my town. For about two years I had thought about going, but it wasn’t until the present time that I mustered up enough courage to attend their Sunday morning service called the Divine Liturgy. Now even though part of the name of this church is Greek Orthodox, actually the ethnic make up is not entirely Greek. The priest’s wife is Greek-American. There are also Russians, Serbs, Coptic Egyptians, and Americans who are converted Protestants and Roman Catholics. There is also one African-American and one person of biracial parentage.

When I first entered the church in the entrance hall outside the chapel, a table was set up. There with red hymnals. The one that it was suggested that I get were liturgical hymns by St. John Chrysostom who lived over 1700 years ago. Beside the hymnals was an icon which the people ahead of me bent down to kiss. I did not kiss it, but I did light one of the candles that were nearly beside the icon, and I placed it upright in a type of long tray containing sand.

Once I was let inside the chapel the Divine Liturgy was already in progress. Many of the Orthodox churches in eastern countries like Greece, Russia, or Turkey do not have pews for the congregation to sit on, so the people have to stand throughout the entire service. Here in America, there are pews, and the people stand while they sing ancient Christian songs. When I came in, they were already singing a cappella, for no musical instruments are used in Orthodox churches. The human voice alone is used to honor to God. The singing was hauntingly beautiful and intricate in its rhythm, almost sounding Middle Eastern at one point. Often Christians in America seem to almost forget the Middle Eastern origins of the faith, acting as if the Protestantism is the first and only expression of Christianity, not realizing that historically what we have is new and now often has little or nothing to do with the attitude and spirit of the early church.

Three of the Orthodox churches that I visited in Greece and Turkey were built during Byzantine times and were no longer in use as places of worship. They had been converted into museums. I did visit a small, beautiful Orthodox church that was still in use on the Asian side of Istanbul, Turkey. In all of them I had my first real life experience with the art or iconography of the Orthodox Church. Iconography is some of the world’s most beautiful art, but it is little known outside the Orthodox Church. All Orthodox Churches are adorned with icons, frescos, and murals of Jesus, Mary, the angels Gabriel and Michael, and giants of the faith from both during and after the biblical period. Orthodox churches built in the old world during Byzantine times are often adorned with mosaics. Iconography is not only lovely, but it also has a bigger purpose than art for art’s sake. Its purpose is to aid in worship and to create an atmosphere as close as human understanding can go in re-creating heaven. Iconography is, in other words, symbolic.

I have long felt that God should be glorified better than He often is in many Protestant churches. A part of me just felt that the music should be more than just something loud to arouse emotions; there needs to be beauty, not just noise. I just imagined that God was not in Heaven being praised with singing and music by the angels that sounded loud and with mediocre words. I also had become fed up with the attitude of some Protestants that they are not entitled to any hardship in life, and that God should always be the giver and they the receiver. What had happened to the idea that it is better to give than to receive?

In the last several years I have felt sicken by all the TV ministers who preach a gospel that is like a speeding car on a dirt road. This gospel leaves God behind in the dust because everything they preach is about monetary award or psychology or politics. God is mentioned, but just as an inserted word to make everything appear to be Christian. A relative sent off money to TV one of these TV ministers regularly thinking that he would get money out of the blue from God. I saw him grudgingly help an elderly neighbor with a hot meal every Friday complaining all the while that the old neighbor nagged him about just sitting with her for a little while to just chat. For him his false charity was not about loving his neighbor, but it was all about him and having his finances increase. Strangely he did not seem to know that God is all knowing, therefore God understands the heart and one’s motives, but this relative has probably lived in denial for most of his life. He fools himself or is maybe ignorant of the fact that God loves a cheerful giver and one who gives selflessly not constantly looking for an immediate earthly reward. My relative thinks that watching TV ministers is the same as having a relationship with God and fellowshipping. He waits to hear from his TV pastors about how wicked so many are in the church, then he can justify not even attempting to find a church to attend. For him it is all about money and his fear of dying. His behavior is a reflection of many of the problematic attitudes, outlook, and teachings of elements in Protestant church in America.

The gospel of prosperity and politics has gotten a grip on the souls of many Americans causing the church to fall into a kind of apostasy not seen since the 1500s when

Martin Luther cried out against the spiritually and doctrinal abuses of the Roman Catholic Church. His outcry and reform lead to the Reformation and Protestantism. The Roman Catholic Church in Luther’s day also had its own kind of prosperity gospel, the indulgence. The indulgence was different from what is having in the Protestant church now, but it was another weapon used by Satan to corrupt and destroy the integrity of the church just like so much that is going on today in Protestant churches across America. Indulgences were apostasy just like the prosperity gospel, politics, and psychology are apostasies that have crept into the church. Jesus said, “Give to Caesar what is Caesar's, and to God what is God's.” (Matthew 22:21, NIV). The church in America is failing not only because of indifference and unbelief, but because what is important to humans is being mixed in in a bad way with what is important to God. Too many Protestants are concerned with what they need not with what God needs.

I have begun studying the Orthodox faith. Whether I will become Orthodox or not is unknown to me, but already I agree with what is taught and the Orthodox Church’s historical connections with the early church. The Orthodox Church is a historical and ancient church, and portions of the east where it has existed for centuries has been overrun first by Islam and then much later by Communism. American Christians have suffered on a tiny scale compared to many Eastern Christians. The Christians of Iraq, many of whom are Orthodox, have suffered terribly in the last eight years because of America’s invasion of Iraq. Many have been killed or have fled to other countries in the Middle East. Few Americans know about this or even care. I believe the government and the media has actively did their best to keep American Christians in the dark about what has happened to Christians in Iraq because this country which views itself as Christian is responsible of bringing so much misery into the lives of believers in that country.

I know that everyone in Orthodoxy does not fully follow Christ’s teachings of love, truth, healing, and forgiveness, but too few in Protestantism do these days. This I do know. This is a loss and a tragedy for many people who count themselves as followers of Christ.

The Ichthys on Brief Hiatus

Hey, I just started back blogging again! Well, my laptop is sick; apparently it has been rather infirm for about two months at least and needed repairs. The speed has been
painfully slow as if my computer was straining, trying to go from webpage to webpage. This was even the case if I remained on a site for awhile. Scrolling up or down was difficult. I took my computer to the shop a couple of times, but the guy who waited on me had poor customer service skills, and he went on to blame my internet service as the reason why my surfing online was going at a snail’s pace even though I have broad band. The problems accumulated with me even having my laptop’s hard drive replaced for free since my computer is still on warranty.

I am going to finally put my computer in the shop tomorrow, and they will ship it off. I won’t have internet access for the next 2 to 3 weeks unless I go to the public library and use the computers there. I will go there, but not to blog. I prefer to blog in the privacy of my own home, so I won’t be posting for a few weeks unfortunately. I will be back though once “the world in a box” (my name for a computer) has been cured of whatever ails it.

In closing, what if Noah’s Ark had unfortunately hit an ice berg? See the solution at the following link:

Biblical Disaster

See you in 2 or 3 weeks.