History of the Orthodox People website launched!

Such a joy to see, it’s a magnificent book already. Getting into the West’s War against Serbia part — this is going to be a great tool for communicating the Orthodox frame of mind to many of us in the west and elsewhere, and we need it! Something that has never been done before. Thank you and congratulations.

What a nice way to erase the macedonian Orthodox Church from history. Is this done on purpose or not?

What an exciting and much needed project. Orthodoxy has always been one of the world’s best kept secrets, at least in the West.
I wonder if some of my friends who came to Orthodoxy from barbarism, atheism, Judaism, and Protestantism could define a special area for themselves.
They do form a very special and treasured part of modern Orthodoxy.
Bishop Kallistos (Timothy Ware) who wrote one of the best modern overviews of Orthodoxy comes to mind, but he is not the only one by any means.

I do not see Etiopian and Coptic churches listed.

R

Oouf! I am too excited. I always wanted your postings on this subject on the saker site to continue beyond what you would always say was not the time or place for them, not to mention the amazing contributions of some of your commentors.

Thank you.

Thank you Saker. I m so pleased to hear this news because I listen to Raphael Johnson when I can, with great interest.

Let’s think about some basics:—

One might think, what if there never were a United States of America? What if the American Revolution failed? Well, there would be no Bill of Rights or its concepts. There would likely simply be a set of clashing empires over the planet,—the British, the Japanese, the French, the Chinese, the Russian, the German.

Typical leadership would likely be by warlord types either claiming a “divine right” to lord it over and do to their followers whatever they please, or claiming some mystical mind-meld with the “soul” of their followers, in the sense of a given nation, race or class, so that they stand as the unchallengeable “leader” or “vozhd” or “führer” and can simply do to their followers whatever they please and lead their followers anywhere they please. All societies would likely be essentially rigidly class-based, caste-based, feudalistic, veering eventually into the technologically advanced feudal societies like we now see implemented in North Korea. There would likely be “god kings” with powers to,—on mere personal whim,—decide who lives, who dies, who eats, who starves, who has the privilege to walk around unchained and who gets sent to prison. Slavery and serfdom would likely abound everywhere, without even any concepts or arguments against it, about natural freedoms and rights, as voiced by American abolitionists.—And concepts of the rights of minorities versus majorities in an operative democratic vote-based government were debated and published extensively by Calhoun and other American orators in the years leading up to the American Civil War.—All of that would not exist.—And there would still be ferocious wars and atrocities, waged by warlord-elites.

Maybe ultimately “private capitalism” would not dominate, but there would arise as mentioned before, the modern technologically-backed feudalism and a kind of absolute monarchism as now exemplified in North Korea with its ruling dynasty. Not a very good alternative, we would say!
—This is something to consider, by all those who tend to rush to judgment that the USA has been the source of evil in the world, while other systems get the free pass so to speak.

The ultimate adversary is not any given government or nation-state, but rather secretive cults of persons being manipulated, influenced and/or possessed by predatory emotional organisms operating both within and among humans, thereby generating religious-like evil spiritual cults dedicated to produce maximal rage energies and fear energies, through perpetual warfare and ongoing human sacrifices, including ritual sacrifices, with, for example, suicidal bombers being
a modern technologically-adapted variant of effective ritual human sacrifice.—Only human willpower implementing flexibly detached analytical intellect, probing the truth which is in the details, can seem to defuse the emotionalistic currents underlying these cults, influenced and/or possessed by the superenergies of non-human emotional organisms or non-human emotional entities which seek to maximize human rage energies and fear energies as a type of nourishment. From the human perspective, they are predatory and “evil”, of course. And Lord Jesus the Anointed came to protect and save humankind, not species of predatory devil-entities.

<<>><<><><>><<>>

There appear to be only three major documentable fundamental ways for humans to function both as individuals and collectively-socially:
—1) the way of the “kingdom of heaven” both within and among humans, being through creativity in liberty and peace within oneself and with others, this being the fundamental way taught and exemplified by Lord Jesus the Anointed (Christ);
—2) the way of disciplined furor and/or disciplined fear;
—3) the way of idolatry, the sacrifice of oneself and others for the sake of something given greater value that concrete human well-being, be that a concept of God, or nation, or race, or money, or whatever else for which humans go so far as to kill and/or die. Note:—the humans are the only species on the planet that will even kill or die for the sake of something that they have constructed purely from their imagination.—These things we say are based on life experience and on studies of the thoughts, words and example of Lord Jesus of Nazareth through the Gospels of Mark, Luke, Matthew and John and other texts of the Holy Bible, the so-called canonical books thereof. Douay-Rheims English translation and King James English translation were used. No special so-called supernatural revelation, angelic visitation and the like are being claimed here, only personal thinking and conclusions, and let others simply judge whether this makes sense or no sense.

More specifically, the way of human functioning, the universal kingdom of heaven within and among persons is a kind of divine grace-energy, notably including multiplication of one’s given talents [Matthew 25:14-30]; the leaven of development [Matthew 12:33]; arising of itself without coercion, freely and spontaneously [Mark 4:26-29]; in reconciliation between human and God, human and human, and within each human [Matthew 18:21-35]; the conciliating motive underlying [Luke 17:3-4]; worldwide and often operating unawares, even to a degree within unbelieving Pharisees for instance [Luke 17:20-21].—And the best definition of God would be as pronounced by Apostle Paul:—God is (the whole truth) in whom we live and move and have our being, our continuity [Acts 17:27-28].

There is also much mentioned about “dialectics” in various articles. In contrast to the classical sometimes called “Hegelian dialectics” which is often summarized as “thesis” fighting “antithesis” to produce “synthesis”, and then also often mingled with slipshod references to the “unity of opposites”,—we raise the system of “dialectical Christian method” [in Ukrainian “rozmyslovyi khrystianskyi sposib”] where approach to truth is through the details, and at some point in delving into the details one encounters a point or level of the unity of the given opposites. At that point, the opposites become truly concretely the same, and by influencing and controlling that point one can then either decrease or increase the given conflict. For example: various substances and elements show vastly differing and opposite properties, yet upon delving
into the details one finds the major point where they are united, the same, at the level of the electrons, protons, neutrons. By manipulating electrons, protons and neutrons in nuclear reaction, one element can be transformed into another, like opposites being transformed. It would also be fair to say, that the concept of Hegelian dialectic is based on the primacy of conflict, warfare,
whereas the concept of the Christian dialectic, rooted in the ultimate unity of Lord God as the whole truth in which we all live, move and have our continuity (existence), does not require the preëxistence of conflict, that everything must begin with the conflict.

Given that all categories are inaccurate generalities simply because of the way human language is built, the non-material life of the typical human being can be divided into two broad categories which are significant because they are distinguishable empirically. The “non-material life” includes thinking, feeling and consciousness overall. One basic division of this is the part of non-material life that can be directly influenced by certain musical chords. This is essentially the category of emotions, which are influenced directly without any mediation by thinking, like vibration upon vibration, so that hearing certain chords tends to evoke immediate joy and others tend to evoke sadness, and still other music-like vibrations of tone of voice evoke disgust and anger, and so on. The part of non-material life which is not so directly influenced by musical chords can then be called the “intellect”, the analytical thinking part. From our own experience we notice that such a distinction exists, and this distinction is concrete and noticeable.—Most human destructive and evil behavior comes from emotions, of predatory rage and the fear in response to the rage, and in responding to dangers. We also notice what can be called “emotional organisms” or “emotional entities” acting within and among humans, and these entities often show a creepy kind of intelligence, if intelligence is defined as a certain complex-enough level of orderly interaction between the consciousness of an organism and its external environment and also inward between the consciousness of an organism and its internal environment, including the phenomenon of self-awareness.—Application of flexible analytical human intellect by the energy of sufficient willpower to persist stubbornly, that seems to be the only mechanism for defusing the mighty emotional entities based on predatory rage and reactive terror.

Monasticism and asceticism took over the spiritual leadership within Christianity very early, and this has been the first great deviation from the actual example of Lord Jesus and His overall lifestyle as recorded, which would be considered essentially a secular lifestyle by today’s standards of “secular” versus “spiritual” as determined by those monastic and ascetical cadres. In the Roman Church we have a popular summation of this so-called supremely virtuous Christian life in the book “Imitation of Christ” by Thomas à Kempis, where the virtuous Christian life is to live in imitation of Jesus suffering on the cross, and through denial of all pleasures and the embracing of all forms of suffering, including self-abasement, mortification of the flesh, hatred of the body, etc.. We suspect that Christian Orthodoxy is based on similar monastic-ascetical teachings as the supposedly supreme superior spiritual and virtuous life and ethics. But these teachings actually have little if anything to do with the kingdom of heaven within and among humans as taught and shown by Lord Jesus Himself. Monasticism and asceticism seem to essentially belong to the way of functioning through disciplined fury and/or disciplined fear, only the fury and fear are directed primarily against oneself, and because of that
they are made to appear like spiritual and virtuous and superior to the so-called “decadent” ways of selfishness.—That is why monasticism and asceticism are a deviation from the ways of the kingdom of heaven shown through the sayings, thoughts and example of Lord Jesus Himself, as for instance cited above.

<<>><<><><>><<>>

By the way,—I read the story of the “Holy Mother Mary of Egypt” whose icon is posted here.
The story strikes me as a tragic tragectory of a “girl gone wild” to a “girl gone crazy”—there is no real spiritual growth or good thing here.—It is like she ended up raising a second set of demons
to fight against the first set, and the second set might be in many ways worse than the first.
It seems the only way to make human sexual thoughts, feelings and behavior to conform to the ways of the kingdom of heaven within and among humans as preached and exemplified by Lord Jesus is to subordinate feelings in this area to the control of the intellect and rational will-power,
so that one may indulge or abstain with equal ease, and pursue the most hygienic and wholesome practices.—What prevails now is rule of emotions. Most sexual behavior is based on feelings of disgust, anger and shame regarding any sexual contact, thoughts and feelings,—especially between adult sexually capable men and women.—People influenced and/or possessed by this emotional organism of shame, disgust, anger/rage tend to like religion as a way of social control.
They either generate religions of their own or highjack existing religions and then impose feelings and behavior based on disgust, anger and shame everywhere upon everyone. Such people also tend to view any love or peace or harmony as fundamentally “decadent” and disgusting, and they like conflict and even outright war,—for them “war is heaven, peace is hell”.—They get high on rage like getting high on a drug, and they believe that this makes them morally and spiritually superior, stronger and better,—the strongest, the most righteous and the best.—Their influence
throughout the world [because millions of people are possessed by such feelings] is to bring about endless warfare and various forms of human sacrifice.