Why I Am a Christian

What Brought Me Here, and Why Stay When There is so Much on Offer

Come to me all you who are weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, for I am meek and lowly of heart, and you will find rest for your souls.

-Matthew 11:28-29

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“I hold myself to be a Christian, in the imperfect way that so many others do” wrote George Kennan echoing my own sense of the weight—the responsibility, implicit in those four simple words: I am a Christian. Being a follower of Christ is itself a daily remembrance of faith, of death, and ultimately of love. Upon waking and praying the traditional morning prayers, the mindful and slow recitation of the Creed, the Symbol of Faith, becomes a way for us to recommit ourselves to this path. It is a via dolorosa. A pathway that involves much pain, much struggle, and many tears. And yet, this is also a path of overwhelming beauty, peace, clarity, and lightness of spirit.

Often, Christians will inquire from others what, if anything, would cause conversion from their current religion to the Christian religion. I find that even, perhaps especially, among converts to Christianity, there is little charity or understanding for why people would convert to a non-Christian religion or choose to remain in their non-Christian religion of birth. This would be an interesting topic to explore, but I think digging more deeply into the why for Christianity seems like a more valuable use of my time. In a globalized world where the internet offers us infinitely more information than any of our pre-modern forbears could have dreamed of, becoming or even staying a Christian in a vacuum of ignorance is essentially impossible. Our religions collide, our worldviews intersect and overlap. Cultures are melding and conglomerating in new and curious ways as the costs associated with moving, both spiritually and physically, are lower than ever before.

There is perhaps among any practitioner of a faith an implicit sense of superiority. Even among those most “open-minded” religions from the East, there is always an understanding, one which I am sympathetic to, that one’s own religion possesses a unique and inviolable understanding of the relationship between the created and the numinous that renders all other faith traditions “incomplete.” I am not exempt from this perspective. On this very dispatch I have written of Christianity as the “fulness” of faith. However, what does this fulness entail? Surely a religion ought to offer answers to difficult questions about life. How is one to live? Is there a God? Is there even a self? If God does exist, how does he relate to our world? And what of suffering? While explanatory power is of tremendous value—to relegate the religious as merely an explanatory device for those puzzling and perplexing human questions seems to make religion more of a pacifier than a transforming and life-giving way of life. A security blanket when things seem unsure and shift under your feet. I have known several individuals whose perspective on religion is respectful. They may even “practice” one themselves, but who see it as merely a manner of insulating oneself from life which in their view is fundamentally cold and unfeeling and empty of meaning and purpose. Unfortunately, for these individuals the highest reality is not God nor the union of the seen and unseen. Rather, the Ultimate is little more than a drab lifeless nihilism where God is nothing more than an auxiliary construction we fashion to help us flee from the crushing mental neuroses born of nihilism and her children. Religion for these poor and tepid souls is not, therefore, the task of staring into the void: to confront and overcome the seeming absurdity of life. Rather, religion is a turning our back on life itself because we dare not suffer the consequences that love demands from us, which, at the last, demands everything.

However, a more original question must be asked: what is a religion, and what does it mean that one belongs to the Christian religion? Like many others, I would first say that I prefer the term “religion” over the lukewarm and vague term that has grown in popularity “spirituality.” Certainly, it is the case that religion contains within it a certain “spirituality” or a particular savor. But even this would give the impression that all religions are fundamentally the same and could be functionally equivalent to choosing between different flavors of ice cream. From the start, “religion,” as an adjective, itself has meant something like that which “binds together.” Often when the term religion has been employed, it is describing a virtue. In most translations of the New Testament into English, the Apostle Paul when speaking on the Areopagus says, “Men of Athens I observe that you are very religious in all respects.” When I lingered in Evangelical circles this was taken to be a tongue in cheek jab at the Athenians. “Religion” from the Evangelical perspective was a dead and lifeless thing that Jesus came to liberate us from for us to enter into a living and dynamic “relationship” with him. Of course, this virtual distinction between “religion” and “relationship” has simply never existed in the course of the life of the Church. Even the emphasis that one must have a uniquely sentimental and tender relationship with Christ is one that has often been warned against as a sign of prelest—spiritual delusion. I take St. Paul’s words at face value. The people of Athens exercised tremendous piety and religiosity towards their gods, and of this virtue he praises them even if he would condemn the direction of their devotion.

Therefore, religion is that which binds together. It is a virtue that one exercises in the spiritual life. Its excess is a self-righteous, unctuous, and self-satisfied piety. Its dearth: lukewarmness and backsliding. However, this is not the only definition of religion we are given. The brother of our Lord, James, tells us “Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world.”¹ This is a simple and straightforward answer. It is a distillation of the entirety of Torah while providing a more concrete expression of the famous line, to love God and to love neighbor. And yet, when we discuss “religions,” as when participating in inter-faith dialogue, there is yet another meaning. Elsewhere I have described my understanding of what “religion” in this sense means. In short, it is a set of practices, or way of life, that encompasses the whole of reality whatever that means to the particular believer. For not all religions have God, in the typical manner in which we would understand it, nor do all religions have sacred texts in the same way that those of us who belong to a middle eastern religion would understand. Therefore, there are a number of different ways of expressing what exactly “religion” is. It is simultaneously a virtue one exercises; it is a concrete set of practices such as visitation of widows and care for orphans, and at the same time remaining unsullied by the passions, and it is also a world-view—a frame through which we perceive reality and thus act accordingly.

It is with these three definitions of understanding religion that I will explore why I myself am a Christian.

I have had the distinct joy of never having a memory in which I did not know who Jesus was. The Bible and the stories of Adam, Eve, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, David, Jonah, Jesus, Peter and Paul have all been deeply ingrained in my psyche for as long as I can remember. This deep familiarity has been a blessing but also poses unique challenges to overcome when one gets older and intends to make the faith “their own.” The biggest challenge I discovered at this stage was to break from the sheer commonness of the stories as I had received them my entire life. At times it can feel, especially when one is young, that the stories have already disclosed all the meaning they contain. As enjoyable as the story of Jonah and the whale is as a schoolboy, one begins to wonder if there is anything else in the story beyond the merely moral gloss which insists that obedience to God is the best thing to do (which, to be clear, it is), lest one endanger their own life and the lives of those around them. However, especially as I moved into college and continued to engage with the Bible, this “moralistic” take on the scriptures that once seemed to prove the most useful and practical, began to wane as an approach of reading the text. It was at this junction that my own approach shifted from the merely personal ethic to a broader social ethic. In particular, when reading the prophets it occurred to me that much of their ire was directed at a religious establishment that had forgotten the “weightier matters of the law”² namely justice, peace, and mercy. I felt at once that the faith I was being steeped in (at the time a charismatic adjacent evangelical campus ministry) felt far too solipsistic on the one hand concerned with one’s personal salvation and “relationship with Jesus”, and on the other, was exclusively concerned with the salvation of individual souls as the chief social end of the Gospel.

With this in mind I grew distant from my community feeling that while they were serving a good purpose of helping people come to know Christ and live a life in accordance with his teaching, it felt as though the aspects of justice, mercy, and amelioration of oppression were being forgotten. In this I found myself returning to my native Methodist roots with a social consciousness rooted in help for the poor, the outcast, and the mistreated. But more than a return to a greater social awareness, was a return to a broader sense of a need for authority within the Christian consciousness. The sola scriptura language of most Protestants never made much sense to me. It seemed eminently clear that while the Bible retained a certain pride of place within the life of a believer, it would be impossible to solely derive a Christian life from within the pages of the scriptures. Structures and standards besides the scriptures, albeit rooted in the scriptures, were an obvious and necessary fact of living the Christian life. The existence of so many Christian sects and movements demonstrated this, especially when they taught a variety of beliefs, often contradicting one another.

Within the Methodist frame, however, there seemed to be a certain sobriety when encountering these problems. The classic “Wesleyan Quadrilateral” proved to be an exceptional tool to discerning the spiritual life (one that to this day I implicitly use as it is so deeply held in my bones). In it the scriptures were viewed not as the exclusive means by which theological reflection could be carried out, rather, they were viewed as the primary means by which we begin any theological investigation. Downstream from this, the scriptures were viewed not in a vacuum, but rather as descending from a tradition which was the second leg of the quadrilateral. The tradition (namely in Wesley’s case the Anglican tradition) became a guiding principle in how to read the Bible correctly. Much like the Jewish proverb “The Masorah is a fence to the Torah,” the tradition within Methodism, included in this is the liturgical life and the ever-venerable Book of Discipline, provides clarity on the spiritual life. However, Wesley wisely understood that although the Bible and the tradition may provide guidance to life in Christ this must be confirmed by experience. The supreme manifestation of which is “the heart strangely warmed.” An experience in which something from the eternal broke through to Welsey and, perhaps in spite of his conscious awareness, transformed him forever. It is this experience of a life steeped in the scriptures and the tradition that was able to confirm to a believer that they were walking on the straight path leading to God. Finally, and perhaps most importantly in contradistinction to my evangelical campus ministry, reason, was the seal in evaluating the faith. Wesley himself had a view in which reason was not merely a human function but a Divinely appointed faculty for us to come to know God. In his view, and quite wisely I might add, if the faith is not intelligible then it is of little to no value. That is not to say that mystery and unknowing have no place in the Methodist tradition. Rather, it was offered as a reminder that mystery itself is not something irrational despite perhaps existing in the realm of the a-rational. The heart strangely warmed is not a communicable experience from one rational creature to another. And yet, it can be understood, conveyed, and experienced in the life of any believer.

All of these aspects of what could perhaps be referred to as “Magisterial Protestantism” were amenable to what I felt I needed to grow more deeply in the faith. I stopped attending the Assemblies of God church I was going to and returned to the Methodist parish in town which felt like a return to both a more familiar and sophisticated form of Christianity. And so, the question is perhaps rightly asked, what happened for me to set my sights towards the East and begin my journey towards Orthodoxy. As I have reflected and contemplated in preparation for this very essay that question has become clearer and has uncovered some interesting aspects in my conversion. The first, and perhaps most important reason (as I will explore below) is that I was not turning away from anything. I did not “reject” my Methodism because of certain doctrinal or social qualms I had with the denomination (although its increasing identification with western progressive/liberal and socially libertine politics was and remains a significant issue no less than the Evangelical movement’s turn towards the right). My slow and gradual shift towards Orthodoxy was rooted in a desire to be more deeply grounded in the long history of the Christian tradition. If, as Wesley conceived it, tradition was the second leg of the quadrilateral, I desired to find not merely his own parochial tradition, but the authentic Tradition of the Church.

Like any good English-speaking convert to Orthodoxy my story begins in Oxford. I spent a summer studying Early Modern History and Literature at St. Anne’s College, in what can only be described as one of the most marvelous cities in the world. Oxford is a glorious city fecund with both striking beauty and an ancient history. Moreover, it is the very birthplace of Methodism as we know it. John and Charles Wesley were students at Christ Church and began their “holy club” which grew to become the burgeoning Methodist movement. While the concept of pilgrimage is of low importance within Methodism, being in what can only be conceived of as a Wesleyan Mecca was impressive and I felt as though I were participating in something older and bigger than myself. I attended the church that both Wesley brothers attended, and my evenings were suffused with the wonders of Anglican Evensong liturgy at Christ Church Chapel. In the course of my time in Oxford, I was also learning of the effects of the English Reformation on the Church in the Isles. I was stunned, angered even, at the barbaric and crude iconoclasm that swept through the country leaving many churches utterly denuded and sometimes completely ruined. Oliver Cromwell (of thrice cursèd memory) has since occupied a space in my mind as a ruthless tyrant. He was thoroughly thuggish and brutish, and a great enemy of Christ and his Church. It was this encounter with the rather nasty and violent past of the English Reformation (on the part of both Catholics and Protestants, although it should be said that the English Reformers were the ones who liquidated the entire monastic, and by extension contemplative, life of their country) that opened to me a sense that perhaps something was wrong with the Anglican tradition that Wesley was formed and steeped in. Although his movement was one about revitalization and reform within Anglicanism, his worldview was, in a sense, already irrevocably entrenched in that more original mindset of the English Reformation. However, this issue existed only on the periphery of my awareness. Despite this rather tragic history, I continued to enjoy the glories of English culture: room temperature beer, hand-rolled cigarettes, late-night kebabs, and the great beauty of both the Methodist and Anglican churches I was visiting.

One particular event will forever be remembered as the moment which set me upon my course to Orthodoxy. One of our tutors, a fellow of the University, offered us tours of the various colleges, which, due to his position, permitted us entrance to all the colleges gratis. Our penultimate stop was New College. “New” of course being a relative term since it was founded in the late 14th century, and was only named as such because its patronage, that of the Blessed Virgin, was already taken by Oriel College. I have always had a penchant for visiting chapels, churches, cathedrals, and basilicas. To really know a place, one needs to see how the people there worship. As I stepped into the colorfully lit chapel of New College I was enamored by the usual beauty and simplicity of gothic architecture. The high stained-glass windows permitted a technicolor explosion of color and light—sharp rays of red, blue, green, and yellow pierced the stony gray nave. As my eyes moved across the length of the chapel I was entranced by the reredos behind the altar. A towering statuary, floor-to-ceiling, depicting the Old Testament Patriarchs and Prophets, and Saints of the Church. I stood breathless; the vast silence pressing into me from all sides. In a single instant, my prejudice against images, which up to this point had been somewhat pointed, evaporated never to be felt again. The veil of the Church militant was lifted and in the twinkling of an eye I stood in the midst of the Church triumphant where all the holy ones of God praised his goodness and mercy—for they are from everlasting.

I have never been able to uncover what about this particular moment so brought me into contact with the Divine Presence. I had seen other statuary, some of equal and even greater beauty. But in this moment that chaste but ardent eros for the Divine was enkindled in me for something more, not to be quenched until I was sealed with the gift of the Holy Spirit years later. However, it is telling that what set me on my course was nothing other than an encounter with perhaps nothing more radically Anglican than medieval statuary in a small church in an English town. This itself suggests that my yearning for Orthodoxy (which at this point was still essentially unknown to me), rather than being a simple rejection of my past, was in fact a more original longing for that which I have always known. A desire to dig more deeply into the resources I had rather than the discovery of something novel or exotic. Whenever I retell this story, the unveiling of the eternal on that day strikes me as the defining moment rather than merely one step among several.

Photo by Raghavendra V. Konkathi on Unsplash

The rest of the story of what brought me to Orthodoxy is itself fairly bland and common. The rest of my summer following that irruption of beauty in the chapel of New College was relatively uneventful. I continued attending the Methodist church where the Wesley brothers attended, and Evensong continued to be a necessary aspect of my evening routine. Nothing on the surface changed. However, the experience did begin to pull some threads in the tapestry of my religious thought. Questions related to beauty and antiquity began bubbling to the surface. Why, it seemed to me, was the expression of so much of Christianity, including my own, so often devoid of truly beautiful expressions of devotion toward God? Not simply in the sense of the beauty of the baptism of someone into the faith or a Christian marriage, or even of a life poured out into service for the poor and helpless (which, by the by, is our highest calling as Christians), but of a truly incarnational and manifest beauty that highlighted the glory of God in the matter that he both loving made and emptied himself into. In the following months as a result of my Religion Minor I was exposed to two essential volumes: Athanasios’ On the Incarnation, and John Damascene’s Treatises on the Divine Images. In them I found that sacred art was not merely a matter of adornment, but an expression of God’s supreme compassion for creation which “convinced” him to incarnate himself in human form. Damascene’s famous, “I will not cease from reverencing matter, through which my salvation was worked”³ became something of a guiding principle directing me towards a Christian understanding of creation, beauty, and anthropology. I grew estranged from the Methodist church in my college town, and while I was still part of my evangelical campus ministry, I felt further disillusioned and confused as to the state of modern Christianity. As I read more of the Church Fathers and more about the political history surrounding the reformation I could never shake the sense that something had been lost. The heart of that ancient mystery divulged to the Apostles on Mount Tabor, shared among them at the Mystical Supper, and spread out into the world following the descent of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost felt hopelessly irretrievable; lost in the vagaries of historical accident and fortuity within the Protestant worldview, even if it was from a more enlightened perspective of Magisterial Protestantism.

As a Westerner, the only referent I had on hand to begin exploring this ancient mystery was that terrible Whore of Babylon for the early Reformers: The Roman Catholic Church. As I studied more the great controversies surrounding that horrendous and deeply painful disintegration of Western Christendom, I felt myself more sympathetic to the Roman point of view. Moreover, it seemed to me, particularly in a world enlightened by the Second Vatican Council, that each of the 95 theses Martin Luther nailed to the church in Wittenburg had been addressed and appropriately reformed within the Catholic Church. The history appeared to me that not only was there a reformation, but that this reformation actually succeeded in changing the Catholic Church for the better in the places where imperial excess and decadence and taken their toll. And so began my journey towards Roman Catholicism. Not only was the historical continuity of the Catholic Church a thing to be admired, I also felt that I was returning to my own Spanish Catholic roots. It was in this Church that my grandfather, and his grandfather, and his grandfather were baptized and raised. It was at this Mass that countless generations of my family had found spiritual succor and comfort in times of tribulation and distress. It was this faith that had sanctified my people and my land. This was where I would find mi casa sosegada.

And yet, as is often the case, God had other plans.

A dear friend of mine, someone close to me in my campus ministry, also had quite the transformative summer. He had felt that the spiritual resources offered to him from his childhood religion were inadequate and lacking. However, he was afforded the great benefit that his own father had, at some point, made a discovery of a strange sect within Christianity that not many are aware of. It was through this friend that I first heard of the Eastern Orthodox Church. We sat on the carpet in his apartment that had, as yet, not been furnished with a dining room table and chairs. In between bites of cauliflower curry, he shared with me his recent experience having been at an Orthodox Church. It sounded interesting. Strange even. And yet, his words were intriguing to me. I remember clearly, as he handed me a book entitled Common Ground: Eastern Christianity for the American Christian, when he said “All of the theology in Orthodoxy seems to be both incredibly nuanced and subtle. Just when you think you’ve understood, you realize you haven’t.”

Naturally, it took me months to actually pick up and read the book, and when I did I happened to be on a retreat at a Trappist monastery not far from my school. The experience was spiritually rewarding (the Trappists really know how to pray) but put me in a peculiar position with regards to both Orthodoxy and Catholicism. On the one hand I was pursuing reception into the Catholic Church despite the crass and often irreverent liturgical expressions one finds at your average Catholic parish, and yet, I was moved by the vision of Christian discipleship as found in the East. In my mind I resolved that I would be theologically Orthodox as a Roman Catholic. Needless to say, this was a dead-end. As my discomfort with Catholicism grew so too did my appreciation for Orthodoxy waxed. However, much like the experience that drew me into this spiritual sojourn, I found myself at a crossroads where none other than the Lord could guide me. I felt stuck. On the one hand I saw an ease, and a personal relationship with Catholicism that, especially in the West, would mean little in terms of additional challenges to living the faith. Catholic parishes are, while not exactly a dime a dozen (perhaps more like a quarter and dozen), fairly common, and access to the sacraments fairly high. On the other however, I felt an almost irresistible draw. A strange and mysterious beauty; a deep calling to deep. It would demand from me much more, not only ascetically, but also by the lamentable dirth of Orthodox parishes around the country. Moreover, it would also be hard for friends and loved ones to understand who are just as perplexed by Orthodoxy’s enigmatic character as I was.

Laying in the dark of my dorm room I stared up at the charcoal gray-black ceiling, the only light coming from the yellow sodium streetlamp outside. The inner struggle that haunted me with insomnia the previous weeks reared its head yet again. But that night, in the dark and in the silence a small voice whispered two words “go east.” Whether this was “God’s” voice or “my” voice (if we can even make such kinds of distinctions) has never really perturbed me with regards to my movement towards Orthodoxy. I say “movement” and not “choice” because when the conscience, goaded by the Spirit, makes a demand of you there are no choices. Or rather, it is a choice between obedience and death. And if that impulse of the conscience were insufficient then certainly the wave of serenity and the quietude of my reasoning mind were the confirmation of such an experience.

Despite this, the question remains: why be a Christian when there is so much else on offer? Often, we conceive of this question in a sense that requires we “disprove” other religious traditions. For example, we regurgitate apologetics for why modern-day Judaism is not the “real” Judaism that Jesus followed, and that the subsequent rabbinic restructuring following the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem was a needed reconfiguration of Judaism since it supposedly “needs” the temple (note: it actually does not). Or we drill down on the supposed inauthenticity of the Qur’an. The multiple recensions of the text which were destroyed during the Caliphate of Uthman which itself was only physically written down after the Prophet’s death (it should be mentioned that the history of the Qur’an is exceptionally well-attested to by modern historical-critical methods). And for those religions that fail to pass the necessary litmus test for monotheism (itself a fairly modern term that has little by way of precedence in Christian history), such as any religion east of the Indus—well, the unwashed masses of idolatrous pagans hardly need mention as serious contenders of truth whether or not they are evaluated charitably.

On the other hand, there is a scientistic and forensic way that this question is often answered. If we take the materialist worldview, the spiritual life becomes a quest to “prove” the bodily resurrection of Christ much like the need to prove a six-day creation that happened some seven millennia ago. While following this line of reasoning is certainly entertaining if only in an Indiana Jones-esque way where finding lost Arks and purloined Grails is the kind of thing you are after, it must be admitted that it is, at best, a curious preoccupation, but by no means can it be the very ground upon which we stake the whole of our lives on. Of course, it is a fascinating historical datum that among the numerous Messianic claimants around B.C. 100-A.D. 100 none managed to successfully rock the boat of history with the notable exception of Jesus himself. Let me be clear, far be it from me to deny the bodily resurrection. The resurrection is true, and at the heart of our religion is an empty tomb on the third day. However, reducing the question of why one is a Christian to simply a matter of historical fact, no different from Hannibal’s march across the Alps or the battle of Milvian bridge, seems to be rather missing the point.

I suppose as someone who is well acquainted with several non-Christian religions, I feel that I do have a unique voice to add to this discussion. I have been moved by great beauty both in the written word and in the rites of other religious traditions. Despite this, I remain fairly unmoved in my Christian convictions and am often confirmed in them when I see my faith through the eyes of another. Not that I am left unaffected. I do not think I could be where I am now if not for the numerous dialogues I have had, and continue having, with the varied philosophies and religions of the world. Rather, my frame of reference has always remained clearly and stably directed towards Christ. And it is in his person that I think I can begin to answer the question “Why Christianity and not something else.” Moreover, if there is one thing this work has generated, it is a certain humility that holiness is not restricted to my ecclesial borders, nor is wisdom a thing to be grasped within a narrow frame of dogmatic formulae. While neither discrediting the importance of either ecclesial border nor the necessity of dogma, I have come to the realization that while historical and apologetic data may be of some preliminary importance they are as chaff in the wind as compared to the sudden and blinding encounter with Christ.

It should be said, I have no illusions about the fraught historical fortuities and accidents that lead to the development of modern Christianity and Orthodoxy in particular. No one is unconditioned by the past, and the past is itself a complex and obdurately unknowable thing in its totality often reflecting more of our immediate concerns rather than an actual recollection of events transpired. That is not to say that I do not believe in there being in fact a continuous body of believers who have the best claim, among the several claimants, of having retained the purest expression of that original mystery. As an aside, I am somewhat skeptical of the rather popular position taken today that early Christianity was more a loose set of “Christianities” rather than a central orthodox (albeit not univocal) claim with various groups diverging from it. Rather, it is that while a certain cynicism towards the history of Christian faith as described in its almost mythological capacity is a sympathetic position to take, I think a dogged and slavish cynicism is no way to live a rich life in community with a body of believers. To stake one’s life on such a dogmatic historical cynicism, and its accompanying ecclesiastical homelessness, is ultimately an isolating position. We can take our various and sundry ideas about faith, life, truth, the Church, and history and create something of a straw house out of it that appears, in our eyes, to be more consistent and coherent. But it is a rather lonely endeavor and raises the question of whether our cleverness is worth the cost of the attendant misery it invariably produces in the face of the brutality that confronts us in life. While consistency and coherence have their place, by no means is its value of supreme importance.

In my own limited view, while Orthodoxy herself may not be historically or theologically consistent in every single point of its beliefs, history, and practice, as I conceive it, I must also recognize my own fundamental inability to see the totality of reality as it is. There is always a horizon of ignorance past which my capacity to reason or comprehend evaporates. What I mean is that while Orthodoxy makes more sense to me, that does not mean it makes total sense to me in a manner that satisfies every intellectual query I may have. Certainly, any other reasonable person of good faith could look at all the data and draw different conclusions. And yet as Father Seraphim Rose, who often wrote about the “crucified mind,” would say, is not life itself all about the “little deaths” we must undergo? To presume that judicious and discerning intellectual deaths will not occur seems not only foolish but leads down a rather grim path that I am not eager to follow. Furthermore, to pine for an envisioned counterfactual of the history and tradition as we have received it serves little purpose other than tantalizing ourselves with a self-made opiate of our own preferences and desires. It amounts to little more than a mirage. Desiring a return, for example, of the Eucharist to be something like a shared love meal as practiced in the first century after Christ’s ascension, and lamenting the degeneration of its practice into what we actually participate in at our local Eucharistic Synaxis, is something of a historical fundamentalism of the most stubborn kind precisely because it sees the modern instantiation as a frigid and alienating residue of conservative elements within the Church. Rather than sharing in the ever-renewing realities of the Church, we insist upon a particular vision of the past now long gone and and somewhat childishly refuse to see that this original vision is still present if only we had the eyes to see.

What I can certainly say is that my life has been something of one long experience of Christ that is, I hope, always deepening. At every stage I have continued to encounter and reencounter Christ as the axis about which my life rotates. Christ within me, above me, and below me. I have no other place to go it seems because Christ is himself stubbornly everywhere that I go looking. If I can make this as succinct as possible, I am a Christian because of Christ. His face, his manner of life, his every word are a life-giving fragrance drawing me out of myself and into communal life. From the darkness of ignorance and the catastrophe of egoism I empty myself into the ever-emptying God and in this I find my true nature. One’s Christianity cannot be an exercise merely of the intellect. Nor, however, can we call ignorance and rigid adherence to precedent, with its accompanying spiritual blindness, true sight. The only thing that can surely bring you to the other shore is that in Christ you see the very face of salvation’s bliss poured out on all flesh—taking upon yourself his yoke for it is “Easy and [his] burden is light.”⁴ It is not merely a rejection of the falsehoods you perceive there to be in the world, but rather the wanton abandonment of the nets of your life to follow him who can make you a fisher of men. I am a Christian because it is in him that I have come to know the truth that “it is in self-forgetting that one finds, it is in forgiving that one is forgiven, it is in dying that one awakens to eternal life.”⁵

1. James 1.27

2. Matthew 23.23

3. John of Damascus, Treatise on the Divine Images

4. Matthew 11.30

5. Prayer of peace attributed to Saint Francis of Assisi