Our Saturday Guest Blog – About Ted Cruz and Orthodox Christians

Dear Devotional Reader,

I am grateful for your regular visits and your kind words in reaction to our daily attempt to lift our minds and hearts to the real purpose of our human existence – true communion with our Loving God.

It is not the purpose of our work to be political or to delve into the minutia of this or that political movement. But, we Orthodox Christians ARE in society. We are by nature persons in communion and communion presupposes an active involvement in our society. So, any notion that we can divorce ourselves from reality is another form of delusion that dilutes our witness to the Resurrection of Christ in our world. It is another temptation to relegate our faith to a mere ethnic badge of honor or, worse yet, some nostalgic hobby. This is not the “normal” Orthodoxy of the saints and the martyrs!

Recently there was a dust up at a forum held in Washington DC for the expressed purpose of raising the awareness of the horrible persecution of Christians in the Middle East, most of which are some form of Orthodox Christians. A very popular American senator in the Conservative political world, Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, caused something of a stir when, in a room filled with Christian leaders and citizens of Middle East countries; Christians facing the very real possibility of complete annihilation; the senator at the very least showed a striking lack of familiarity of the reality of his fellow Christians on the ground in this troubled part of our world, and at worst displayed the most crass and cynically calculated political pandering to a section of fundamentalist who really don’t see Middle Eastern Christians as “real” Christians at all.

While this post isn’t our normal Saturday Guest Blog, I felt it was necessary to address this issue head on because the real danger to our brothers and sisters in the Middle East is heartbreakingly real and immediate! However, this Western deafness to the ethnic cleansing of Christians from their ancestral homes is one of the consequences of our own unwillingness to raise our voices and share our faith. Can anyone doubt that if we Orthodox Christians were 20% of the population in this country instead of the less than 1% that we are now, our politicians would feel the freedom to ignore our brothers and sisters that are being driven from their homes, beheaded, and tortured, and martyred? Being silent is tantamount to offering assistance to the murderous barbarians who want to drive all Christians from the Middle East!

With this I ask you to spend some time and read the attached article by Rod Dreher. But do more than that! Do something more profoundly foundational! Become a purposeful Orthodox Christian through daily prayer, practicing the disciples of the faith every day, be a regular and purposeful presence in as many Church services as possible for your life. Then we will be what Christ declared we SHOULD be: A City set on a hill that cannot be hid. It is only by abandoning the half-hearted adherence to the faith of our ancestors that we will EVER hope to be the defenders of our Faith to the next generation!

Share Orthodoxy by LIVING Orthodoxy! And by doing so you help save the life of a brother or sister persecuted for our faith! This is NORMAL Orthodoxy!

Click here to read this helpful article from The American Conservative writer Rod Dreher – http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/lift-high-the-cruz-ted-christian/