His Life is Mine

One of the most beautiful expressions that often precedes a sermon or a talk is "Christ is in our midsts" to which the gathered respond, "He is and shall always be". Does anyone know where this greeting originates from?

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Jesus said "Where two or three are gathered together in my name, I am there in the midst of them.

I really can't figure this out. People in ancient times, thought that the heart was really the brain in ancient times, it's just nobody ever bothered to switch the terminology around. I don't understand what a soul or spirit is either. Because to me the soul or spirit is an antiqued way of explaining something that humanity couldn't figure out for eons, and that's the instructions that run around your body causing it to \"live\". This can be proved since the synapses of the brain have been reverse-engineered as neural networks inside of computers; and these neural networks (although limited by the number of transistors that can be made to work together, and the type of input and output they have) can be made to function just like a humans brain: they can read letters (OCR text reader), recognize faces (facial recognition), understand sentences and spit them back out again, after enough training. So I don't understand where the soul/spirit falls into all of this, if a brain can be emulated in this manner. In my own neural network nothing seems to be missing, as everything can be emulated as a function of this. Also I'd really like not to believe in God, but unfortunately I've seen too many weird unexplainable things in the Church. So I believe in God, but I don't necessarily trust or like Him, I'm not totally convinced that He is good. And I came to this conclusion thanks to things that He has allowed to happen to me. It hasn't been something so silly as \"oh I missed catching a football, so now I'm gonna hate God\" no, it's not that shallow at all. It's about coming up from being a sped student in school, figuring out that I had problems with my eyes, trying to fix those problems, succeeding, doing well in college, working in two consecutive jobs, being independent, living on my own, and then having all of this destroyed because God coded something into my DNA, which caused my jaw to grow larger, and my eyes to be thrown off yet again by me grinding my teeth at night with out me knowing what the heck even happened. I ended up quiting my job, (because I couldn't even read anymore), going back, doing vision therapy for a year and half, getting another job, figuring out that I had TMJ and needed braces to fix my problem, losing that job because of my vision problems (as well as a-holes bulling me at work), and finally ending up back at my parents unemployed, and needing to wear braces for two years, and additionally the economy collapses (that's not God's fault, man's fault, lets be fair here). WTF God?!? Now I'm concerned that I won't have food, shelter, or even a damn job after my parents die (they're in their 60s), and I'm so old now that I don't think I could ever even recover my career, because I'd have to do all of the above again, to get myself righted again, so that I could be a fully functioning adult. Thanks God, thanks alot! I wish You never would have allowed me to even think for a minute that I was good enough to do anything. And if I don't get your ancient screwy terminology in that Bible of Yours, that's probably because its been translated a zillion times into our crummy insufficient English language, and everything happened 2,000-some years ago, so if I have trouble relating to that, it really isn't my fault!!!!!

It's not like that. It's on and off and on and off. It's basically like being interrupted at irregular intervals so that you can't concentrate or get anything done. One day I can read okay, and then another day I have a really difficult time reading and comprehending things. It also effects my ability to get a good nights sleep. To understand how important this is in your ability to survive/succeed here is a short video: http://www.smartplanet.com/business/blog/smart-takes/is-the-modern-office-dead/12807/

Looks like you're doing a pretty good job of reading right now. Did you get your TMJ corrected?

Survival/success in life is defined by how many plates you can keep spinning in the air at one time. If you've ever seen a guy doing a plate spinning act on tv, he puts a single plate at a time up on stick and spins them, and keeps them all spinning at once, life is like that. The spinning plate is a metaphor here. A spinning plate might be a job you have, that has dead lines; it might be a relationship with another person, and you need to keep that plate spinning too. Paying for your rent, food etc, all spinning plates. The point is, that all of these plates have to spin at the same time, and to keep all of these plates spinning, it usually requires you to be able to comprehend what is going on all of your waking hours. I don't really have that right now, that's what is missing in my life; I can only keep one of the damn plates spinning, and that's the relationship with my parents. And the only reason that I can't do this, is because I cannot guaranteeing access to my ability to focus, and my ability to read. Soon the question becomes, how long can I go without having a job, before people consider me unemployable? God has this awful thing that He does to people, He has no regard for their livelihoods. I remember that story in the Bible where Jesus sends the evil spirits into the swine, and those swine were some nearby people's livelyhood. What the hell God? I'm sure that's easy to not worry about such things when you're immortal, but when you're mortal it's a different story entirely.

I don't know if this is an old thread or if this would even help or not, but I sending it out. Perhaps part of the issue, and something that I have been going through recently, is the issue of what the world tells us is important and trying to live up to those expectations. If you read more of the fathers you begin to understand that jobs, success, independance, and even health (something hard for me to get through) does not matter like we think it does. The world wants us to focus on these things.....because we can NEVER achieve them! In the constant running after them, we never focus on what is most important, and in the end we miss the mark and we never heal from the inside out. I'll give you an example I saw with my own eyes..... I had a friend, she was successful, a professor at an Ivy league school. Intelligent, beautiful and captivating, she excelled in everything. She was born Orthodox, but left the church when she got more into the reason and science based crowd. When she was 31 she got very sick and found out she had a quickly spreading cancer. She told me once, \"I tried everything to understand why I had cancer. I looked throughout the world to find the cure, the answer for why I was suffering. But I never found it and I got very angry and depressed.\" Her colleagues left her, she had to quit her job, her beauty was eaten away by the cancer. She could no longer visit friends, or even go for walks because she would get too tired. Then she met a friend of mine who invited her back to the church. She came with her husband (where I met her for the first time) at a Pascha service.) She met our priest and they became good friends quickly and she began to read the fathers and books like \"The Reason for Suffering.\" And her inner life changed. When I got to sit down with her, only once mind you, she immediately told me about her life before and now.... \"I used to really hate myself. I had everything yes, but really deep down I was sick. I was constantly chasing the world, another paper needed to be written, another bill paid, another workload, and another and another....reaching for what? Success? What is this? Running running running.\" She talked about getting sick and reading the spiritual books on suffering.. \"My eyes opened. Now believe it or not, I have joy. Ever pain is a joy to me. Why? Because now I understand what is important. I know now that it was given to me, to open my eyes to what life really is. God gives us these things not as punishments (like the world says) but to get us closer to Him, to open our eyes. To give us compassion. To heal our soul. To help us love the unfortunate. To help us understand how they suffer. To get us closer to Him, to help us push away everything that distracts us, that keeps us chasing the world.\" \"You know, before I really was deep down very hateful, prideful, ungrateful. Now I feel God is helping me to realize these things and with his grace I am healing those things that I wouldn't have seen otherwise. Now I have joy! Peace! Love! Oh how I love everything! I have time for prayer! To love every face I see! To even love myself.\" Needless to say, she became a saint to all if us. And as her cancer got worse, I swear to you, her love poured out more. She never complained (even when they cemented her back and she was in great pain) and she never became angry or hateful. She came every Sunday, even when her husband had to carry her, for communion. When she died, her husband told me, \"Don't worry about her my dear! I have never been a religious man, but she proved to me that we have souls.\" I heard later that on the night and morning of her death, she had been unconscious for days, but when our priest came to serve her communion one last time, she fully woke up, and talked with him and took communion. The next morning as her husband knelt by her side, he had a vision of her, and she said to him, \"It's alright. Its time for me to go.\" Her death was peaceful, even the nurse said it was the most peaceful death she had ever seen. From the time she first realized she had cancer, she lived only 1 year and got to see only one Pascha. Most of us only knew her, 1 year, but she now stays with us for our lives as a witness of what suffering can achieve when it is used to heal your soul. She as 32. Perhaps this doesn't give you any answers, perhaps it does, but either way, I wanted you and others to know it...because it happened only a few years ago. Everytime I think about it, I suffer because I realize how little I have learned and how much I complain and use this life for nothing but myself.

You know I think about the shaky physiology of antiquity as well, however just because it doesn't comply with actual science now, doesn't mean that it should be completely dismissed either. IMO, the fact that the Fathers and other writers throughout Orthodox history have done quite a great job at correlating these faculties to even ways that even the most modern of us can still relate to it. It just has to be applied. I think the same way about the bible as well, how the earth was created before the sun LOL, but, it has to be in the book for a reason. A few months ago, I find myself in a situation where I was feeling completely like sh#t, this had caused me to be completely angry at God and was looking for any excuse to abandon Christianity that I would possibly fine. I was getting tired of other Christians, this lifestyle, and everything else. If I went to church and recieved \"warm fuzzies\", I did everything in my power to ignore them because I just felt they were emotional sentiments that caused me to feel good. I was evaluating religion through the scientific method. I have been trying to become Orthodox for almost five years. Never been christmated, baptized nothing. I was pretty annoyed myself. The point is though, if you don't suffer on this earth, you will probably suffer a lot more on the next earth. Go read Job, see if that doesn't rearrange any of your thoughts. and LOL @ \"i'm so old\" your profile says you aren't even 30 yet LOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! You make it sound like you're 67. Hell a lot of people don't even get their degrees until they're 40 or so, so you're not doing that bad. Take everything with stride, be thankful, every struggle we get is an opportunity to grow closer to God. I suck when it comes to being a Christian. But, maybe it takes time who knows. Anyways, hang in there dude. J.

People can have conceptions and they believe them (like if you suddenly get up and stamp your feet and throw something down, you have a mental illness - I can't remember the details of the action). But God himself knows men's hearts and their minds and their souls and their bodies. One should never pry to find out but rather let God handle it.

I mean God created Satan, what the was He thinking? Okay so we know that God, wants us to Love and have Faith in Him. The definition of Love, and the definition of Faith, both require that the person having confidence or acting in love have the free-will to select the opposite action; that is to not have confidence in, or choose to not love the entity toward whom the Love or Faith is being directed. Now who created love? Who created faith? Who gave us free-will? God did. Now my question is, why would God, being all powerful, able to do anything, make the actions of love and faith, that are optional by their very definition, if He wants us to love and have faith in Him? God sounds quite schizophrenic to me, He's set himself up for disappointment by giving his creatures free-will. What am I missing here?

Sandblasted is right. Love is an energy from God to all of creation. By definition Love cannot seek itself, or it's own self interest-Love must be sacrificial or it is fake. It is the Love from God that created the cosmos, the world, and everything encompassed by that Love. Evil is a vagary of perception. St. Gregory Palamas has some excellent writings on \"evil\" and sin; i would suggest reading some of his writings. Sin is done of a persons own freewill, and not of God's will. In fact sin is in direct opposition to the will of God so cannot come from God at all-God does not do the opposite of His own will. St. Marcarius said it best that our freewill is proof of how far we have fallen. In the Garden we did the will of God out of Love. Our ancestors sin created an opposition to the will of God through their own will. Evil, in and of itself, does not exist, nor can anything embody it. God declared everything in the cosmos good therefore there can be no \"evil\". There is only sin which is an \"evil\" against God. Sin is transitory and not a permanent condition according to the Fathers. Blessed Augustine is an exception to this rule with his theology of Inherent Sin making everyone culpable for the first sin of humanity-essentially making everyone a sinner before birth. Of course it begs the question of what, if anything, Christ accomplished on the Cross and His resurrection which is why the Orthodox east never adopted this ideology. Evil is a verb-not a noun. It is something done, not someone or an object, according to the Fathers. Some consider sickness evil, to others something as malignant as weeds can be evil, or bugs can be evil. As i said in the beginning-a vagary of perception depending on the conditions of the individual and whether they consider something evil.

Part Duex; Freewill: Yes Virginia, there are absolutes! As a Church, and in the world we near the annual celebration of The Incarnation! This is an undeniable \"absolute\" The reason for which celebration, again undeniably so, is the sin stained separation of mankind from his Creator. This separation we all know as the result of the fall from the grace due to a \"bad choice\" in The Garden of Eden. The Fall was again the result of a bad decision by an archangel, Lucifer! Lucifer wanted to be equal to God. Just as sin severed the relationship of mankind and God in the Garden, Lucifer's \"choice\" sired evil into God's creation. Again, God: about whose energies we can only speculate without having a clue as how to describe His Essence, allows action and reaction to flow on with no \"do overs\", providing in the fullness of His plan as prophesied in the Garden, a Redeemer, Jesus Christ Our Lord! By The Redeemer's Incarnation, Passion, burial and Resurrection and Ascension (\"...I have done what you have sent me to do...It is finished....), the father/sire of evil, was defeated by the weapon he himself had crafted, death! The first and most principal thing however to consider, is not so much \"Where did evil come from?\", but our individual responses to the gift of God's grace. Answering that question has a more significant outcome on our future. (Not that yous is of no importance) If no one answers to your minds satisfaction, you should not withhold embracing God; for, with all our mental faculties we will never be able to embrace even the least of what we know about God who created, and loves us!

Here's a story: A teacher asked his students, Is the Bible true? A boy stood up and said, Yes, it is. The teacher replied, The bible says God created everything. If God created everything then God also created evil. Therefore, God is evil and so Christianity is a false religion. The boy did not know what to say so he sat down. Another boy stood up. Teacher, does darkness exist? \"Of course it does\" \"No, darkness is the absence of light. You can study light rays but you cannot study Darkness.\" \"does cold exist?\" \"yes\" \"Cold is merely the absence of warmth\" \"So, does evil exist\" \"Yes, we see it everyday. Kidnapping, theft, murder. Of course evil exists\" \"No, evil is the absence of God. When God's love does not abide in someone, then there is darkness\" The boy was Albert Einstein. coes this answer your question?

Someone, somewhere, said that \"Love isn't love until you give it away.\", i.e., it doesn't seek a return on its investment. Now if God is, in point of fact, all that love is, then God had no other recourse in creating mankind, than to provide 'freewill' as an option. Yes I am made to love God; but, that love is not its purest if it is demanded without an option. I am then an automaton, a robot. Remember the words of the Apostle Paul \"Love suffers all things....\", including the pain of rejection inherent in the gift of freewill.