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Perspective changes everything. Just take for example the modern tendency to hold up the anti-hero as someone to be admired or at least respected, and sometimes, even cared for.

This is especially true in several contemporary television series. From Tony Soprano to Walter White of Breaking Bad fame, it seems our modern media is desperate for us to see the “good side” of being evil. They seem to be telling us that “see, even though these characters break the law, they aren’t all bad.” We have even pushed this ideology of glamorizing unhealthy lifestyles that we teach our children to pretend good is evil and evil is good!

On the other hand, we also live in a day when there are so many laws and regulations enacted that the average person can’t help but break at least four laws before breakfast every day! If the police are looking to arrest someone, they usually can find some reason to do so. And our local police are increasingly looking like a paramilitary organization. Forgive me for being pretty nervous about “the straw that breaks the camel’s back” in this clash of consequences!

Between the obsessive law-making of our modern world and the media’s obsessive glamorization of law-breaking, one has to wonder if we’ve all somehow missed the point in today’s society.

In our Gospel Lesson today, we get a bit of a hint as to the core reason we’ve come to this place in our modern world. Look at Mark 1:29-35:

At that time, Jesus entered the house of Simon and Andrew, with James and John. Now Simon’s mother-in-law lay sick with a fever, and immediately they told him of her. And he came and took her by the hand and lifted her up, and the fever left her; and she served them. That evening, at sundown, they brought to him all who were sick or possessed with demons. And the whole city was gathered together about the door. And he healed many who were sick with various diseases, and cast out many demons; and he would not permit the demons to speak, because they knew him. And in the morning, a great while before day, he rose and went out to a lonely place, and there he prayed.

It seems that the Lord Jesus dealt with the general population of His day with a decidedly different perspective than He dealt with the leaders of His day. The Lord dealt with the “regular” people by extending healing and forgiveness to them, and He dealt with the leaders in a stark and brutally honest way to the point that they hated Him and wanted Him dead! Why?

Well, the leaders always seemed to be exclusively focused on rule-keeping, so if that was the way they were going to deal with the world, then the Lord gave them back the very perspective they had in the first place. In other words, be careful when you demand what you deserve; you may just get it! But the everyday people were suffering, and the Lord didn’t deal with them by piling on more rules and regulations. He healed them, which seems to suggest that the path to true holiness and right living isn’t through the path of mere rule-keeping, but being healed from the “handicaps” of my soul-sickness! That will make me able to live a “healthy” spiritual life in communion with the God Who loves me AND with those around me

Today, it isn’t so much that you are a rule-breaker and you need to start getting better at rule-keeping as much as you need to admit your sickness and finally check into the spiritual hospital and get your soul-sickness diagnosed and a proper path for spiritual treatment prescribed. Then go about becoming healed so you can be strong enough to BEcome who you really are! That change of perspective will finally liberate you from the twin lies of “I’m just no good” AND “See, I’ve obeyed the rules! Aren’t I a good boy?!” No, the truth is we are all soul-sick and the amazing grace of God given to us in the wisdom of the timeless faith invites us to trust the Great Physician in the spiritual hospital of His Church to heal us and finally make us fit for His eternal home. That’s why it’s so important to be Orthodox on Purpose!

1 Comment

  • Mary Bernardelli
    Posted August 28, 2020 at 1:37 pm

    I always enjoy all of your messages. I always find them, “a get real” approach to life and living. We are living in a time of complexity and I always pray to simply “overcome”. In my youth when I was a very active church worker, we would have all night vigils in t he small chapel and we would hear the police sirens and ambulances all night long. The priest would always tell us that we were safe and in a good place. Now the sirens seem to go all night and all day. I would always pray for my nephew who was a police officer. He died young leaving two children. In my own daily prayer I always pray, “God let your kingdom come”. Blessings father.

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