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No Other God Besides Me

 

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The first commandment the Lord gave to Moses is to have no other gods besides Him. But as the article "Perun, Slavic God of the Sky and Universe" explains, the slavic god Perun is for many Russians "the supreme god, the god of thunder and lightning, who owned the sky and acted as the patron saint of ruling army units. He is one of the few Slavic gods for which evidence exists at least as long ago as the 6th century CE."

Both ancient and many modern Russians believe that Perun is "god" ("bog" in Russian) or the top "dog" spelled backward, equivalent to the Greek Zeus or the Norse Thor gods of war. His consort is said to be Mokosh, goddess of the sun. "As the liberator of atmospheric water... he was worshipped as a god of agriculture, and bulls and a few humans were sacrificed to him."

Not a few Russians still worship and emulate this pagan warrior god Perun. When we lived in Mari El, one of the republics of central Russia, a close friend told us how thousands of Russians gather yearly to reinact pagan battles that include the god Perun. Newspapers are full of ads about non-Christian beliefs and the occult. Even some Orthodox churches in Moscow had booklets about paganism on their literature racks. When seeing this, I realized how deeply entrenched warlike paganism is in the Russian psyche. Mari El, by the way, is the only government in modern Europe that has paganism as its official state religion.

The 2018 article "Russian Soldiers, Athletes Are Turning to Paganism, Top Church Leader Says" tells of a growing trend of soldiers turning to paganism. It also mentions Mari El where we lived. When we moved to its capital city Ioshkar-Ola ("red city") in 2016, I took a walk to explore the downtown area and saw a little souvenir shop. As I entered, I experienced an extremely creepy feeling of evil and saw a pagan idol on display, so I immediately left the shop.

A common feature of both Mari El and the Udmurt republics where we lived is a "dual belief" system: people will baptize their children, marry them off and bury them in the Orthodox Church, while at the same time in their daily lives practicing paganism. Another article, "More Russian than Orthodox Christianity: Russian Paganism as Nationalist Politics," explains this phenomenon:

"The collapse of the communist system in Eastern Europe enabled the few small pagan movements in the region to surface in the public sphere. At the beginning of the 1990s, they gained momentum in virtually all ex-socialist countries. The majority of these groups subscribed to nationalist politics, but naturally the nature of this nationalism varies between countries. Whereas in Central and Eastern Europe native paganism is often seen as an inherently anti-Soviet and anti-Communist force, Russian pagans' relationship with their past is more complex. Despite this, pagans from Slavic countries have cooperated, especially in a yearly assembly, Veche, in advocating a pan-Slavic nationalist ideology." (emphases mine)

So you can see the connection between a rebirth of paganism in Russia and the trend toward an aggressive form of pan-Slavic nationalism. The article also includes a link the free PDF of the 297-page book The Geopolitics of Faith in the Twenty-First Century (Creative Commons license).

The Moscow Times recently published "How Russia's FSB Embraced Religion in the Face of a Baffling War" that details how the FSB (formerly the KGB) that earlier enforced atheism is now using the Russian Orthodox Church to support Putin's "special military operation" – a euphemism for his invasion and crimes against humanity in Ukraine. It cites a Russian Orthodox priest, Fr. Andrei Tkachev, who stated: "it is much better to wipe out some equipment rather than 40,000 alongside it. We are waging war according to Christian principles because we are destroying transformers, not people who have an immortal soul." But Russia is doing both: destroying tens of thousands of people as well as transformers.

A Christian friend in Russia once told me – "There's a big difference between Russian Orthodoxy and Orthodox Christianity." But to be fair, I must add that we have known many Orthodox people in Russia who are deeply Christian, although the "dual belief" system is deeply engrained in Russian mentality. Thus it pains me greatly to watch and read the news about Russia's aggression and genocidal acts in Ukraine.

Fr. Gregory Jensen writes in "Russian War Crimes and Orthodox Moral Education" –

"Accusing the Russian military of committing crimes against humanity in Ukraine is not the same as accusing all Russians of war crimes. Much less is it to accuse individual Russians. At the same time, concerns about not giving offense to Russian[s] or of being misunderstood by those outside the Church should not prevent us from making these allegations when the evidence warrants:

Evidence continues to mount of Russian war crimes and crimes against humanity, including but not limited to:

  * Massacres in occupied Bucha and Izyum.

  * Deliberate air strikes against civilians, including apartment blocks and clearly marked shelters.

  * The deportation of hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians to Russia, including the abduction of thousands of Ukrainian children from Russian-occupied territory.

  * An ongoing effort to erase Ukrainian culture and cultural heritage from Russian-occupied territory.

These atrocities shouldn't come as a surprise given Moscow's horrific track record in Syria and elsewhere, but they nonetheless remain shocking and appalling in both scope and scale. No wonder high-level U.S. government officials ... have publicly and formally accused the Kremlin of committing crimes against humanity – crimes for which Putin and his cronies must be held accountable, unlike the pass Bashar al-Assad's regime in Syria has received.

I've spoken to many Orthodox Christians – clergy and laity – whose thinking about Russia's Invasion of Ukraine is confused. This confusion, I would ask you to consider, is symptomatic of the poverty of moral education both in our schools and especially in the Church. Many Orthodox Christians – like many American Christians – have never been exposed to the Church's moral tradition beyond a rather bare list of 'do's and don't's.'"

The disinformation campaign by Russia's government and church is designed to sow doubt and confusion in the West by claiming that the new Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU) is uncanonical because Ecumenical Patriarch has no right to grant it autonomy. Yet it is the Moscow Patriarch who has no right to grant autonomy to the old Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC-MP) or to the Orthodox Church of America. This is the old "divide and conquer" disinformation warfare technique, projecting one's own errors onto others. We must pray for a deep repentance and restoration of true Christianity in Russia!

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BROKEN CISTERNS CAN'T HOLD WATER

 

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"Has a nation changed its gods, which yet are no gods? But my people have changed their glory for that which does not profit. Be astonished, you heavens, at this, and be horribly afraid, be very desolate, says the Lord. For my people have committed two evils: they have forsaken me, the spring of living waters, and hewed out for themselves cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water" (Jeremiah 2:11-13).

Imagine yourself to be like the person in this photo: after "having fun" – several "partners": never settling down, getting married, buying a home, and having a family. Now you're 70 – no spouse, no kids, no grandkids, no property, still working. You thought all that was too much bother. Now it's hell on earth, returning to your rented apartment exhausted and nobody greets you, nobody calls you, nobody's a close friend. Fun?

Click on the above photo, and you'll see an article on demographic decline in The Atlantic. It lists several reasons including Covid-19 deaths and it tacitly approves of illegal immigration, but the most important reason it lists is this:

"Finally, yes, Americans are having fewer babies – like basically every other rich country in the world. Since 2011, annual births have declined by 400,000. Two years ago, I wrote that “the future of the city is childless,” and the pandemic seems to have accelerated that future. Just look at Los Angeles: L.A. County recorded 153,000 live births in 2001 but fewer than 100,000 in 2021. At this rate, sometime around 2030, L.A. births will have declined by 50 percent in the 21st century."

What's going on? Pursuing pleasure and possessions has the direct result of decreasing the population: luxury and licentiousness lower the birth rate. The morals in much of the world have been turned upside-down: "Archbishop of Canterbury Promises LGBT Activists to 'Root Out' Certain People From the Church of England." Who are those "certain people"? Members of the Anglican General Synod who oppose same-sex marriage, and Anglican Archbishop of Uganda, Stephen Kaziimba, who wrote "To those who are recruiting children into homosexuality, I want to sound a very strong warning to you. These are not my words, but the words of Jesus: 'If anyone causes one of these little ones…to stumble, it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.'"

The homosexual practices of Roman Catholic priests and resulting charges of sexual abuse of minors has been so broadly reported over the years that I need not quote more articles. But many young Protestants have also suffered from this type of abuse: "1 in 10 Young Protestants Have Left a Church Over Abuse." The LGBTQ movement is even attempting to make inroads among Eastern Orthodox churches but it is being strongly resisted: "Sexuality and Gender: Response to "Orthodoxy in Dialogue" Open Letter."

If the birth rate stays below 1.6 babies per woman, that society will collapse within just a few generations. In the last decade, the birth rate in the U.S. has fallen to 1.5 babies per woman: see the second chart in "The Mystery of the Declining U.S. Birth Rate," but that article can't seem to explain why this is happening. I believe the main reason that we are witnessing this demographic disaster is explained above: young people are being indoctrinated in schools and in the media to reject traditional morality and instead to march in the LGBTQ parade.

We desperately need to pray for the younger generation and convince them that they will come face-to-face with the reality of demographic collapse – nobody left to take care of them when they grow old – unless they reject this indoctrination and return to Christ, the Living Word of God.

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The Tragedy of Triage

 

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Medical doctors are often forced to make tough decisions: "Vital signs defining the colour-coded triage, T vitals . RR: respiratory rate; SpO2: saturation of peripheral oxygen (pulse oxymetry); HR: heart rate; GCS: Glasgow Coma Score; Tp: temperature; ICU: Intensive Care Unit" (Wikipedia).

"For what if some were unfaithful? Will their faithlessness nullify the faithfulness of God? May it never be! Yes, let God be found true, but every man a liar. ...for all have sinned, and fall short of the glory of God" Romans 3:3-4, 23). When we look at the shortcomings of people, we should realize that we are all that way: we all sin, we all "lack the glory that [we] ought to have from God" (Luther's translation of verse 23).

We are distressed when Christian leaders fail us by falling into sin. But we all have limited resources – physical (strength, health, time, money), emotional (pressures, stresses, failed relationships, etc.), and spiritual (sin and guilt, guilt-projection and self-justification). We are forced to choose what to do with our limited resources: should we be self-centered opportunists "looking out for number one," or should we be idealists "loving our neighbor as ourselves"?

There are casualties in war, often innocent people are injured physically, psychologically, or spiritually – these are interwoven in each person. Go to the article "Metropolitan Hilarion of Budapest sanctioned for 30 years" at our website link https://discover-original-christianity.info/Orthodox-Christian-Laity-and-Unity.htm to read about the one-time rising star in the Russian Orthodox Church, perhaps the next Patriarch, who was suddenly demoted and stripped of all his powerful positions for speaking out against the war:

"And in Russia, there are politicians who remind us [falsely] that our country has never lost in any war, therefore, 'whoever comes to us with a sword will die by the sword.' First, let's remember at what cost Russia [supposedly] won the wars. This price is millions of lives. Secondly, let's remember that every war brings incalculable disasters to people. We must also remember that the outcome of the war is unpredictable." Then, after being demoted for speaking out about the war, he was sanctioned by Ukraine, all for speaking out!

The term "triage" refers to the rationing of limited resources during times of war, plague, or natural disasters. If you do a search for this term or explanation, you'll find dozens of articles about the dilemma faced by doctors, nurses, and hospital administrators during the Covid-19 pandemic: do we use our limited resources – respirators, antiviral medicines, hospital beds, and short-staffed personnel – for the sickest people, or the elderly, or the youngest, or the most likely to survive? Should we "triage" the rest of the people – cull out those most likely to die anyway, or the oldest who've already lived a good life, or the poorest who have no ability to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to keep them alive... or those of another ethnicity or language that our country doesn't like?

Abbas Gallyamov, a former speechwriter for Vladimir Putin up to 2010, who has been living in exile in Israel since 2018, in the article "Russian military chiefs are losing patience with Putin and could soon turn on him in a coup, former aide predicts" is quoted as writing – "It must be understood that the vast majority of commanders in the army of an authoritarian nation are not staunch supporters of the authorities, but run-of-the-mill opportunists. As problems pile up in the country and the army, that the authorities are unable to solve, Putin is more steadily transforming in people's eyes from a great strategist to an ordinary, second-rate dictator."

Is that what opportunism is like? Is "doing the most good for the most people (including myself)" opportunism, or is it really an honest ethical dilemma? As you see from the above examples, this isn't just airy-fairy speculation: it has real-world consequences. Also, we are facing a population implosion – a "demographic winter" of limited numbers of young people to care for the disabled and elderly. China now is facing a decrease in its population, as is Japan, Russia, the United States, and Western Europe. The birth rate for stable population is 2.1 babies per woman, but if the birth rate falls below 1.6, that society will vanish in about two generations. For decades now, I've been warning about this but few people have responded: almost nobody wants to think about our own or society's eventual decline or death. Just this week, I've finished updating our sketches of "Agape Restoration Communities" – go to our short article on "The ARC's BRIEF OVERVIEW" that ends with a link to "The ARC" Chat/Video Forum.

We were created for community, for koinonia-fellowship, to share in the glory of God and to share His glory with others. But we have fallen short, we all have sinned, we have limited resources and abilities. What will we choose: to "look out for number one" or to love our neighbor as ourselves?

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Russia: Once Unthinkable, Capitulation Is Now a Possibility

 

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Leonid Gozman's article in The Moscow Times states – "The war started by Vladimir Putin has no goals that can be achieved. It's not about trying to prevent Ukraine from joining NATO — that can’t be resolved through warfare. It’s not about ensuring that people can speak Russian in the Donbas — they could do that anyway. It’s certainly not about destroying U.S. labs manufacturing infertility viruses targeting Russian women: those simply do not exist.

This war is solely about destroying Ukraine: as a state, as a culture, as a nation. Putin does not like Ukraine: it's as simple as that. He has also never tried to hide his goals: Putin has said repeatedly that Russians and Ukrainians are one, speaking the same language, and that Ukraine is the invention of Lenin.

We have grounds to believe that destroying Ukraine is just an intermediate goal to be followed by another war to subjugate the entirety of Western civilization to Putin. Though I doubt he plans to incorporate France or Spain into Russia, Putin is serious about restoring the former Warsaw Pact states to Russia's "sphere of influence" and perhaps taking Finland "back."

As Ukraine can never agree to Russia's demand that it cease to exist as a state, the war cannot be ended by signing a peace treaty.

This war can only be followed by peace if it ends with the complete military and political defeat of Putin’s Russia and the dismantling of the current regime. Putin’s state must cease to exist: not Russia, but the current state, hostile to the entire world, itself included. Any other outcome would only result in a temporary ceasefire, as once Putin’s regime will simply go on another attack as soon as it's replenished its strength."

Read the rest of this article for yourself. Yevgeny Prigozhin, sponsor of the paramilitary Wagner Group, has stated his goal is to retake the former central-european Soviet empire, then Germany, France, the rest of Europe, and eventually the whole world. Newsweek's article "Could 'Putin's Chef' Yevgeny Prigozhin Be Russian Leader's Biggest Threat?" reports that Prigozhin's officials have asked his fighters returning from recent assignments "if they would agree on engaging in military activities on the territory of Russia proper, including 'urban warfare battles with automatic weaponry and mortars on the streets of Moscow.'" Things are not looking good for Putin!

Russia has offered various reasons to justify its invasion of Ukraine: NATO's eastward expansion, Ukraine's westward orientation and its request to join NATO, rampant pro-homosexual and -transexual movements encroaching upon Russia, etc. These usually call for an immediate ceasefire and Ukraine ceding territiory to Russia: see "Getting the Suffering in Ukraine Stopped" – a leftist Evangelical viewpoint. The basic issue isn't NATO or homosexuality: the countries that have joined NATO have done so voluntarily in order to protect themselves from an aggressive Russia. And Russia – a "self-proclaimed paragon of virtue" – has its own homosexual community, as we know from living in Russia for 17 years.

BTW, a good article on a Christian approach to homosexuality is "Seven Questions to Open People’s Ears to the Truth About Christianity and Homosexuality (A Practical Ministry Explainer)." This contemporary contentious issue should be seen in in the perspective of Matthew 10:14-15 – "Whoever doesn't receive you, nor hear your words, as you go out of that house or that city, shake off the dust from your feet. Most assuredly I tell you, it will be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah on Judgment Day than for that city." There are plenty of other sins as equally sinful as sodomy (homosexuality): greed, lust for power, fornication, gluttony, blasphemy, etc., but the greatest sin, as verse 14 states, is rejecting the Good News of salvation in Jesus Christ.

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Is the Church the New Israel?

 

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(← click) In the article "Israel and the Church – What's the Relationship?" we read of several different views on this important topic. Does the Church replace Israel as the heir of God's covenant? That's "Replacement Theology." Or do Israel and the Church refer to separate groups of people? That's "Separation Theology." Or do Israel and the Church overlap in some manner? That's "Remnant Theology."

A recent post on my social media said – "The Orthodox Church is the true Israel - Paisios." This "Replacement Theology" is the viewpoint of many Orthodox Christians; in fact, I've heard it stated quite forcefully in church by an Arabic Christian guest speaker. But this reflects the dislike of Arabs for the Jews. And it's not only the default Orthodox viewpoint, it's also the view of many Catholics and Protestants. So, what is the correct view on this touchy issue?

The first two above options – "Replacement Theology" and "Separation Theology" – are too simple-minded. They both illustrate dualistic thinking: it is a simple "either-or" decision. That type of thinking, however, is lazy logic. It's more difficult to think up a "some-of-this-and-some-of-that" type of solution: ask any computer programmer how hard it is to code such an "if-and/or-if-and/or-if-and/or" decision tree! Remnant Theology is this type of complex answer.

I've come across some rather virulent antisemitic posts by so-called Christians on social media lately, so I decided to write an answer: https://Agape-Biblia.org/Good-News-Jewish-mouse.htm – "How the Jewish mouse ate the Greco-Roman elephant." Here it is:

Did the Greco-Roman Empire assimilate the Jewish nation and hellenize this new faith in Yeshua? Or instead, did this new version of the Jewish religion adopt and assimilate the Greco-Roman Empire? Here's how the Jewish mouse ate the Greco-Roman elephant: one bite at a time, one martyr – or hundreds – at a time, over a period of three hundred years, until which time what we now call "Christianity" was considered a Jewish sect. Yeshua was a Jew who came as the fulfillment of the Jewish Bible's prophecies about the Jewish Messiah, the Annointed One. All twelve Disciples and the Apostle Paul were Jewish, and many thousands of Jews were converted in the book of Acts to believe in him as their Messiah. For almost 400 years after the Messiah's birth, the Jewish Bible – what we now call the "Old Testament" – was the only Bible that believers in the Messiah, the Khristos, knew. It had been translated into Greek (the Septuagint) about 200 years before his birth, making those prophecies available to the Greek-speaking world.

As the Apostle Paul wrote in Romans 1:16 – "For I am not ashamed of the gospel of the Anointed One [the Khristos], for it is the power of God for salvation for everyone who believes; for the Jew first, and also for the Greek." In Romans 10:1 he wrote – "Brothers, my heart's desire and my prayer to God is for Israel, that they may be saved." Also in Romans 10:1-2a he wrote – "I ask then, Has God rejected his people? May it never be! For I also am an Israelite, a descendant of Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin. God has not rejected his people, which he foreknew."

And as Paul wrote to Gentile converts: "So the [Jewish] law has become our tutor to bring us to the Khristos, the Anointed One, that we might be justified by faith. ...For as many of you as were baptized into Khristos have put on Khristos. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Yesous Khristos, the Anointed One. If you belong to Khristos, then you are Abraham's seed and heirs according to promise, ...so that He might redeem those who were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons" (Gal. 3:27-29; 4:5).

Bear in mind that "Yesous, the Khristos, the Anointed One" is simply "Yeshua, the Messiah" translated into Greek. We, believing Gentiles ("Greeks"), are now adopted Jews, children of Abraham! And when Emperor Constantine the Great accepted this new faith, he said – "You have conquered, O Galilean!" See the Introduction of https://Agape-Biblia.org/First-Century-View.htm and https://Agape-Biblia.org/First-Century-View-Augustine.htm for more details on the thorny issue of being "the chosen" or "the elect" – ethnic superiority, both Jewish and anti-Semitic.

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