Hands Up!

I suppose I am hardly the first person to notice that the ancient posture for prayer is largely identical to the universal posture of surrender.  That is, the ancient posture for prayer consisted of raising both arms and hands to heaven (the later clasped or “praying hands" is derived from the feudal gesture of submission of a vassal to his liege lord). 

We see this ancient posture of raised hands in the Old and New Testaments:  in the Psalm 141:2 we find the prayer “Let my prayer be counted as incense before You; the lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice”.  Isaiah 1:15 we find a prophetic denunciation of prayer arising from a wicked life: “When you spread out your hands, I will hide My eyes from you. Yes, even though you multiply prayers I will not listen.  Your hands of full of bloodshed”.  A happier example can be found in Paul’s counsel in 1 Timothy 2:8 in which he says, “I want the men in every place to pray lifting up holy hands, without wrath or dissension.”  Note: Paul assumed the men would pray by lifting up their hands; the only issue was whether their hands would be holy or not.

       It hardly needs demonstrating that similarly raising one’s arms and hands is the universal posture of surrender, doubtless because it allows the observer to know whether or not the one observed is holding a weapon.  When a police officer says, “Hands up!” or “Keep your hands where I can see them” he is inviting the surrender of all opposition and of overt hostility.

       I mention this cultural coincidence because becoming a Christian (the first step of which in Orthodoxy is joining the catechumenate) involves just such a surrender.  That is, embracing the Christian faith means a complete surrender of oneself to Jesus Christ, turning over to Him the totality of one’s life and one’s future so that thereafter one no longer lives for oneself but for Him.  Without such a radical  commitment, one is not truly a Christian, but only a mere dabbler.  Without such commitment, Christianity is not one’s religion, but one’s hobby.  And hobbies cannot save.

       This much is perhaps not really controversial, since it is found throughout the Gospels.  What is perhaps less widely acknowledged is that this surrender to Christ also involves surrender to His Church, for the Church is His Body, the place and family in which Christ is savingly and sacramentally encountered.  That is, a Christian is required as part of his or her surrender to Christ, to accept and conform one’s thought, heart, and life to the teaching of His Church.  If the Church teaches that (for example) extra-marital sex is wrong, then it is wrong, and the Christian will not do it.  If the Church teaches that abortion is wrong or that racism is wrong, then they are wrong, and the Christian will avoid them.  If the Church teaches that icons are to be venerated, that the saints should be honoured and invoked, and that women may not be ordained, then the Christian will accept these teachings too. 

       In other words, the catechumen will come to the Church having surrendered his heart to Christ and will come to have his errors corrected and his true insights confirmed.  This requires humility, which makes the process difficult and often unpopular.  That is why there exist liberal Christians in all churches, including (sadly) even in some Orthodox churches.

       The liberal temptation, of course, is to bypass humility and assume that everything one believes is right and not in need of any correction.  Such a person will come to Orthodoxy with an internal checklist of beliefs and doctrines.  If Orthodox teaching coincides with enough of them, one can convert, and ignore the bits where Orthodox teaching contradicts one’s own beliefs.   

For such a person Orthodox teaching consists of a kind of smorgasbord, a buffet table from which one can choose whatever one wants.  “Let’s see:  I’ll have a little of the icons and the incense, a helping of exotic symbolism, and of course the Creed.  But I’ll pass on the teachings about sexuality and a male-only priesthood.  That non-glutin Philokalia looks interesting.” 

For such persons the Church’s teaching is not authoritative, but only helpful, and the true authority for such a person remains their own private views, for their personal autonomy has not been surrendered.  They have (in their mind anyway) surrendered to Christ, but not to His Church and they retain the freedom to disagree with the Church’s teaching if they feel they know better.

St. Paul, along with the rest of the apostles, assumed that the Church’s teaching was authoritative and that all Christians must conform themselves to it or get out.  This is presupposed in all the epistles and dissenting from Paul’s instruction (or from that of the wider Church) was not allowed.  Paul simply did not grant his readers the freedom to reject his teaching.  His rebuke of dissenters in 1 Corinthians 11:16 may stand for his rebuke of all internal dissent: “If one is inclined to be contentious, we have no other practice, nor have the churches of God.”  The Church was not a debating society but the pillar and bulwark of the truth (1 Timothy 3:15) and all Christians must accept its teaching.  Surrender to Christ therefore includes surrender to His Body the Church.

To some people (such as the liberals mentioned above) this seems to involve intellectual suicide, like turning off one’s brain upon entering the narthex and rejecting one’s God-given faculties of intelligence.  But does it really?

It would involve intellectual suicide if the Church had no claims to a superior wisdom.  For example, if I decided to join the Jehovah’s Witnesses and accept without question or demur everything taught in the local Kingdom Hall, this would indeed necessitate intellectual suicide, since there is not a shred of evidence that anything approximating Biblical scholarship, depth, or intelligent exegesis exists among them.  In short, they have no credibility, nothing to inspire confidence that they have any clue to what the Bible actually teaches.  Joining their ranks and placing myself in their didactic hands would indeed require something like a lobotomy. 

But that is not the case with the historic Church.  In the Church we find a community that has existed for two millennia throughout the entire world and which had among them scholars from many nations and languages.  This community has been reading the Scriptures, meditating on them, praying them, analyzing them, and debating its fine points across many generations and it has reached a settle consensus about its central teachings.  This consensus, accessed through the consensus found in the writings of the Fathers, constitutes the mind of the Church, and Christians believe that this Church is guided not only by its own human wisdom, but ultimately by the Spirit of God (see John 16:13).

But even if you leave aside the notion that the historic Church is ultimately guided by God’s Spirit, consider this:  humanly speaking, who is more likely to be right?—a community of millions spanning twenty centuries that has been reading, thinking, praying, and debating the meaning of the Scriptures across the generations—or you?

Let me apply this to myself.  When I joined the Orthodox Church I was about 31 years old and had studied the Bible and theology for six years at university, earning a B.A. and an M. Div.  And I had read a few books and done a little thinking.  Compare this to the massive amount of reading and scholarship done by countless of thousands of scholars, teachers, monks, and bishops across continents throughout two thousand years.  If that Church teaches one thing and I believe something different, who is more likely to be right?  Presumably not even a born gambler would bet on me rather than the Church.

Trusting in the Church therefore does not involve intellectual suicide.  Or even, if one thinks about it, much humility, but only common sense.  That is why I put my hands up and surrendered when I joined the Church, accepting its teaching as a part of my acceptance of Christ.  And it is why you should too.