The Lord taught me to love my enemies. Without the grace of God we cannot love our enemies. Only the Holy Spirit teaches love, and then even devils arouse our pity because they have fallen from good, and lost humility in God. I beseech you, put this to the test. When a man affronts you or brings dishonor on your head, or takes what is yours, or persecutes the Church, pray to the Lord, saying: “O Lord, we are all Thy creatures. Have pity on Thy servants and turn their hearts to repentance,” and you will be aware of grace in your soul. To begin with, constrain your heart to love enemies, and the Lord, seeing your good will, will help you in all things, and experience itself will show you the way. But the man who thinks with malice of his enemies has not God’s love within him, and does not know God. If you will pray for your enemies, peace will come to you; but when you can love your enemies--know that a great measure of the grace of God dwells in you, though I do not say perfect grace as yet, but sufficient for salvation. Whereas if you revile your enemies, it means there is an evil spirit living in you and bringing evil thoughts into your heart, for, in the words of the Lord, out of the heart proceed evil thoughts--or good thoughts.

St. Silouan the Athonite

Do you wear flip flops? (Weather permitting.)

What types do you wear?

Where do you think it's appropriate to wear flip flops?

What do you think of guys wearing flip flops?

Dear Bioactiv-Man,

I am, perhaps, uniquely suited among the readers of this blog to answer some of the points that you raised, concerning evangelism, church attendance, and abortion rates among the Orthodox.

I just returned less than two months ago from serving as a missionary of the Orthodox Church at an orphanage for disabled children in east-central Ukraine. While I was living there, I attended the nearest parish to me.

I've also lived for four months in Moscow, attending a normal parish of the Russian Church. I speak Russian and Ukrainian, and I've studied in depth the history and culture of Russia and the Soviet Union, both from a secular and a religious point of view.

As such, I can answer your points with my own first and knowledge and experience, as opposed to with theories that may not have a basis in fact.

Your charges, while commonly made, are unfounded, in my experience. In making them, I think you fail to take into account the seriousness of the toll that the Soviet period, a period of martyrdom and persecution to an extent greater than at any time before in Church history, had on the Russian Church and the people.

During a five year period alone during Stalinism, the number of bishops in the Russian Church went from 184 to 7, as many bishops were executed by firing squads or sent off to forced labor concentration camps. Similarly, 40,000 priests were killed, and countless multitudes of monastics and lay people were also given the choice between their lives and their Lord. The Church was destroyed almost entirely. I've gone to liturgy at a monastery where less than 80 years before, the bishop was murdered by the communists at the gates of the monastery.

You cite the high rates of abortion as if this were proof that Orthodoxy can't be what it claims to be. However, what you don't mention is that it was the Soviets who legalized abortion and officially encouraged it. If you go to http://www.johnstonsarchive.net/policy/abortion/index.html and look at the historical data for Russia and the Soviet Union, you'll see that the numbers are indeed tragically high, and that they rise steadily throughout the whole Soviet Union. This was very much during a time of suppression of the Church.

However, if you look after 1991, you'll notice that since then, the number of abortions, while still really high, has gone down by more than half. It takes time to change hearts. But the Church is working hard to do just that. While I've lived in Russia and the Ukraine, I've seen parishes distribute pro-life literature free of charge. I've seen priests preach forcefully against abortion. I've seen monks on street corners passing out pro-life information. I've also seen ordinary believers talking to their friends and coworkers about abortion, trying to give them other options and offer them support for keeping the child.

In a society where the atheistic authorities promoted abortion as a form of women's liberation, and where many women had a dozen or more abortions, do you expect things to change overnight? Afterall, it took 300 years for the Faith to win over the Roman Empire.

While not excusing the high abortion rates, I thank God that we've been able to lower them by over half in 15 years.

In terms of low Church attendance rates, you're right -- that isn't good. It might, however, be understandable in societies where, for 75 years, people were taught in school that belief in God was a sign of mental illness, and children were encouraged to report their parents for praying at home, in which cases the parents were often sent off to labor-camps. Even as recently as the 1980s, during the thaw of perestroika, a friend of mine from Ukraine, who was in school at the time, was made to take part in atheistic teaching workshops at schools. They would go from school to school and put on plays where they would mock God and throw rocks at icons of Christ and the Virgin Mary, saying that if there was a God, He would stop them.

(By the way, God did stop my friend, but not in the way that he expected Him to. Instead, God changed his heart. My friend is now a priestmonk and will be made a bishop in the spring. Truly, God desires not the death of a sinner.)

So yes, Church attendance rates in post-Communist societies are not great. They are getting better, though.

What, if I may ask, is the excuse in Catholic Europe, where there has been no such persecution? Why are the Church attendance rates low and falling there, where people have always been free to practice their faith? (http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2006-01-08-faith-edit_x.htm)

I've also lived for four months in Spain, and I rarely saw anyone under the age of 65 at a Catholic mass.

Europe has become post-Christian without the need of any prolonged persecution to make it that way.

In terms of evangelism, where have you been looking? Were you expecting to see large numbers of missionaries coming from Soviet Russia, or Ottoman Greece? And yet, despite persecutions, there have always been missionaries in the Orthodox Church, including to Africa and Asia. St. Stephen of Perm, St. Macarius, St. Herman, St. Innocent, Sts. Cyril and Methodius, Archbishop Anastasios, St. Nicholas of Japan, Fr. Cosmas of Zaire, etc.

In my own personal experience and missionary work, I have been blessed to meet a lot of people working hard to spread the Gospel. While in Ukraine, I was introduced to a local Orthodox student group. The members of the group are active in visiting prisons, orphanages, children's cancer wards, etc. A friend of mine, Yuri, visits a local prison once every week or two to spend time with the prisoners and share the Gospel with them. Over the past couple years, he has seen many of them come to faith, and the prisoners have now, with their own hands, built a chapel in the prison. Yuri may soon be ordained to the priesthood to serve the prisoners.

Another friend of mine is part of a Ukraine-wide organization of Orthodox volunteers visiting children's cancer wards, to comfort those suffering from the after affects of Chernobyl. Several times a week, she goes and spends time with dying children and their parents, brings a priest to give them communion, prays with them, and comforts them, and also from her own small student's budget tries to buy some necessary supplies for the children that the hospital cannot afford, thereby showing the Gospel to these suffering children and their parents.

Here in America, many of my close friends have been on mission trips to different countries around the world, including Africa and Central America, helping to teach, build Churches, and visit the poor and orphans.

So, while I can understand you believing what you've been told, believe me -- It isn't accurate :-)

In Christ,
John Hogg

12/23/2007 3:14 PM