I'm a "why" kid...
I always drove my mom nuts with "WHY".
*It's time for bed.
"WHY"
*Eat your broccoli.
"WHY"
Bless her, for she always answered, and sooner or later we'd find one that I could live with. "Because sleep/broccoli will make you grow taller." (I was tiny). It wasn't so much the quality of the answer, as the thoughtfulness and concern of actually taking the time to try to come up with one. I appreciate effort, even if it leads nowhere.
Growing up in the church, I had a lot of "WHY"s along the way. But too many of the churches could never seem to answer that question for me:
*There are thousands of Protestant denominations.
"WHY"
*There are only 66 books in the Bible.
"WHY"
*We don't speak in tongues.
"WHY"
*We do speak in tongues.
"WHY"
*We believe 'once saved, always saved'.
"WHY"
*We believe you can lose your salvation.
"WHY"
...and on and on it has gone for me, for so many years now. Different churches brought different attempts to answer those questions, but nothing ever to my satisfaction, and I had a lot more questions than these.
For some reason, Orthodoxy has thus far been able to answer so many of my questions. Sometimes the answer is a simple one...because that is how the Church has always done something. As I look back over a 2,000-year history, I'm ok with that. Sometimes the answer is a shrug, and then "It is a Mystery." And I'm ok with that too.
There's a courage in admitting you don't really know how God does what He does, or why He does it.
I respect that.
posted by Bec @ 8:55 PM
3 comments
3 Comments:
From one "why kid" to another, Yeah! Keep goin' after it. Peace to you.
Arlen
Courage, absolutely.
And intellectual honesty, too, lest we puff ourselves up with pride over a purely rational approach to comprehending .... God. What eternal silliness to think that we can define the Undefinable or limit the Infinite.
Bec, I did a google search on Orthodoxy and broccoli; with tongue figuratively in cheek, of course. The search returned 742 items.
As you can imagine, most consisted of lenten recipes, but there was also a great article I had forgotten about that relates well to the subject of your blog. It is entitled "Orthodoxy in Dixie" by Father Joseph Huneycutt at:
http://www.antiochian.org/893
um, i absolutely drove my parents nuts with questions. they are not followers and i would ask how we got here, who made the trees, why they smoked :) i just can't help it...i'm made to question things. I'm just really glad that they were patient with me and that God is also.
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