Varför män gillar ortodoxa kyrkan bäst

Hittade en intressant och smårolig artikel, som även jag som kvinna delvis kan känna igen mig i. Inget puttinutt och gulligull, tack! Och inte denna tröttsamma människocentrering som finns i alla andra kyrkor!

Här några utdrag ur artikeln där ett antal män svarar på varför de tilltalas av det ortodoxa - men läs hela, det är den värd!

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"The term most commonly cited by these men was “challenging.” Orthodoxy is “active and not passive.” “It’s the only church where you are required to adapt to it, rather than it adapting to you.” “The longer you are in it, the more you realize it demands of you.”

The “sheer physicality of Orthodox worship” is part of the appeal. Regular days of fasting from meat and dairy, “standing for hours on end, performing prostrations, going without food and water [before communion] … When you get to the end you feel that you’ve faced down a challenge.” “Orthodoxy appeals to a man’s desire for self-mastery through discipline.”

“In Orthodoxy, the theme of spiritual warfare is ubiquitous; saints, including female saints, are warriors. Warfare requires courage, fortitude, and heroism. We are called to be ‘strugglers’ against sin, to be ‘athletes’ as St. Paul says. And the prize is given to the victor. The fact that you must ‘struggle’ during worship by standing up throughout long services is itself a challenge men are willing to take up.”

A recent convert summed up, “Orthodoxy is serious. It is difficult. It is demanding. It is about mercy, but it’s also about overcoming oneself. I am challenged in a deep way, not to ‘feel good about myself’ but to become holy. It is rigorous, and in that rigor I find liberation. And you know, so does my wife.”

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“Noetic reality,” the reality of God’s presence and of the entire spiritual realm, “had become completely distorted in the Christianity I knew. Either it was submitted into the harsh rigidity of legalism, or confused with emotions and sentimentality, or diluted by religious concepts being used in a vacuous, platitudinous way. All three — uptight legalism, effusive sentimentality, and vapid empty talk — are repugnant to men.” The discovery of the ancient Christian concept of the nous means that he can now “encounter (really encounter, not just pick up as an emotional infection) the invisible realities that form the genuine substance of the Christian lexicon. It is not just empty talk after all!” This unpredictable, lifechanging, immediate encounter with God is “inherently dangerous, a new adventure, and a consummate challenge.”

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In contrast to some other churches, “Orthodoxy offers a robust Jesus” (and even a robust Virgin Mary, for that matter, hailed in one hymn as “our Captain, Queen of War”). Several used the term “martial” or referred to Orthodoxy as the “Marine Corps” of Christianity. (The warfare is against self-destructive sin and the unseen spiritual powers, not other people, of course.)

One contrasted this “robust” quality with “the feminized pictures of Jesus I grew up with … I’ve never had a male friend who would not have expended serious effort to avoid meeting someone who looked like that.” Though drawn to Jesus Christ as a teen, “I felt ashamed of this attraction, as if it were something a red-blooded American boy shouldn’t take that seriously, almost akin to playing with dolls.”

A priest writes: “Christ in Orthodoxy is a militant, butt-kicking Jesus who takes Hell captive. Orthodox Jesus came to cast fire on the earth. (Males can relate to butt-kicking and fire-casting.) In Holy Baptism we pray for the newly-enlisted warriors of Christ, male and female, that they may “be kept ever warriors invincible.’”

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Many intellectually-inclined men began by reading Church history and the early Christian writers, and found it increasingly compelling. Eventually they faced the question of which of the two most ancient churches, the Roman Catholic or the Orthodox, makes the most convincing claim of being the original Church of the Apostles.

A life-long Orthodox says that what men like is “stability: men find they can trust the Orthodox Church because of the consistent and continuous tradition of faith it has maintained over the centuries.” A convert says, “The Orthodox Church offers what others do not: continuity with the first followers of Christ.” This is continuity, not archeology; the early Church still exists, and you can join it.

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A life-long Orthodox priest writes, “Orthodoxy is full of testosterone! We sing, we yell ‘Christ is Risen!’, we shove even adults under water in baptism, we smear them with oil. Two or three things are always going on at once. Unlike what I saw in a Western church, it doesn’t take a huddle of people several minutes of fussing to light a censer. You light it and off we go, swinging it with gusto and confidence!”

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