20/20

When I was in 6th grade, I was told that I had failed an eye exam and would need to get glasses. I thought this was patently absurd. For one thing, I just didn't fail things. Granted, I never really tried to pass tests, but it wasn't that hard for me to get by without really working at. And I worked at that vision test. I squinted and leaned forward, but those damn letters were just too small.
The test and the test results did not convince me though. I insisted that the reason I couldn't see the board was because it was white chalk on a green background. There's no contrast! Everyone has problems seeing those colors. And the teacher writes so small. Maybe they should get an actual black board. Or one of those fancy new white boards I saw on TV (this was the eighties).
But the glasses were fitted and no classrooms were renovated. I was not immediately impressed by the improvement. Sure I could see better, but what was I seeing that I had previously been missing? Its not like I really cared what was happening across the street before. Now that I could see it I still didn't see why I needed to. And then I went to school.
I had not worn the glasses into class. They sat safely encased in the pleather case in my backpack. I wasn't ready to face my classmates through two pieces of glass. So when class started and the chalkboard began filling up, I slipped them on hoping no one would notice. And my world changed.
I had never before realized how much stuff decorated the walls of my classroom. I knew what all the posters said because I had stood before them at one point or another, but now I could see every single one of them from my seat in the middle of the classroom! And the chalk board! Crisp white lines formed perfectly legible words. I could see every dot over every i. I could see the pattern the teacher had wiped the board with the last time it was erased. I could even see the chalk in the tray--the chalk the teacher wouldn't even use any more because it was too small. I was suddenly seeing so many details about a place I had spent so much time and had never realized they were there. I must have spent the whole day just gawking around me at everything in the room. I probably looked like a fool. But I felt as if I had seen God.
That feeling of absolute astonishment at finally seeing something I had been looking at for so long has always stuck with me. To think the world exists a certain way, only to find out that nothing is as it seems is quite a trip. I recently read an article by Father Freeman that gave me a similar feeling. Actually, I lot of the things I'm learning as I journey towards Orthodoxy (even before I knew that was the likely destination) feel this way.
The article was about PSA--Penal Substitution Atonement theory. PSA is the dominant, dare I say only, theory of atonement in Protestant churches. Other theories exist, but at least as an Evangelical, they all border on heresy compared to this one. PSA states that our sin has caused us to be in debt of some kind towards God. "For the wages of sin is death", Paul says, so according to PSA, the sins we commit require us to die, or more accurately, spend eternity in the debtor's prison of Hell. The negative account can only be balanced out by the shedding of blood. And that blood has to not have debt of its own, or it won't be enough. Hence, Jesus had to die. His innocent blood paid our sin debt.
Since this is they way we've all been raised as evangelicals, most of us don't even question this. At least not very hard. Any serious inquiry is usually met with claims that you just don't have enough faith. But the theory is riddled with questions I've never been able to answer, despite faithfully believing it for so long. To whom is our debt owed? Why does God tell us to turn the other cheek, but cannot do so himself? Why does God tell us to forgive each other's debt without payment when he doesn't do so himself? Why does he have to kill his own son in order to fulfill a legal requirement that he himself set up? Why can't God be...God? Why can't he just do whatever he wants? Why can't he forgive without compensation-- especially when he tells us to do exactly that?
These questions were, to be honest, never quite expressed so bluntly in my evangelical days. But they always sat there at the back of my conscious, quietly troubling my soul. Like the fuzzy patches of color around the room in my pre-glasses days, they never really bothered me too much but also never let me forget they were there.
Orthodoxy presents a different story of Atonement. In their take on things, the real miracle in the story of salvation wasn't so much the death and resurrection, but the incarnation that made the death and resurrection possible in the first place. They see sin as apart from us. It may be something I do which is wrong, but it is also much more than that. It is a broken world, a twisted body, a weakened will. It is not me so much as it is a condition that I have. I am not my sin the way that I am not my Diabetes. Or my Cancer. These things govern my life in ways I wish they wouldn't, but they are not me. They are apart from me. I may struggle with them fight them, give in to them, but I am separate from them. (for the record, I do not actually have diabetes and am not aware of having cancer). Christ became Human. He gave up all it meant to be God and took on flesh. My flesh. And then he went through all of the sucky things in life that I have gone through, passed me by going into death itself before finally being resurrected. Scripture even says he "became sin for us". Jesus, the holy, immortal and sinless God became Sin for me. And after dying he was resurrected into life. He trampled down death by death. He became what we are so that we might become what he is.
Then he told us to take up our own cross and follow him. And so the Orthodox believe that our life as Christians should be one of continually dying to ourselves and to the world around us. We follow Christ into the grave because we know that our resurrection lies on the other side. This is the good news. That salvation is hard. But it is possible because Christ has led the way and he will take us to the other side.
When I was first introduced to Orthodoxy, I heard the story of a saint who on his deathbed claimed to be frightened by the prospect of dying and laying eyes on God. His fellow monks tried to pacify him, saying that since he had spent years repenting of his sin, surely if God would accept anyone He would accept him. But the saint replied that he "had not even begun repenting!" To my evangelical ears, this was a sad state to die in. As evangelicals we revel in our salvation. "Everything is permissible"! There is no more consequence for our action, at least not on a spiritual level. There is no reason to fear God because God never actually sees us. He only sees Jesus who has paid our debt and stands before us. To spend a lifetime repenting without the assurance of salvation is such a pity. Better to live in the victory that Christ has brought.
But in PSA, its not really a victory, is it? At least no more a victory than finally paying off those school loans or a house mortgage? And what about the part where God doesn't see you, he only sees Jesus? How sad is that? We now spend eternity hiding behind Jesus, pretending that we're not actually there? We never actually see God and he never actually sees us.
As I've come to understand the Orthodox view of salvation more, I see the continual repentance (and it is continual, nearly repetitive) in a different light. Because we are not our sin, because sin is a condition we live in, a sickness within ourselves, we repent not (just) as a confession of our wrong doing, but an acknowledgement of our situation. The Orthodox are like AA members who have been sober for thirty years. They have not touched alcohol for so long, but they still introduce themselves at every meeting (which they still go to) as "an alcoholic". Because they recognize that they still need saving. They may not be actually sinning, but the Sin is still there, threatening to pull them down at every turn. It still brings sorrow and pain. It still warps our view of the world around us in ways we aren't even aware of.
In this view of Sin, we can actually do what the Evangelicals say we should do-- rejoice in the victory that Jesus has brought-- while at the same time remain aware of the great peril we are still in. This is the Narrow Road that Jesus talks about (in my opinion, anyway). On one side lies the depth of arrogance and pride which comes when we live as if there are no more consequences. On the other lies despair and hopelessness when we fail to trust God to save us.
And this is how my world has changed in the last few years. I have put on a new set of glasses and cannot stop gawking at the world around me. Everything I see in a new light and when people talk about the things across the street, I wonder why they don't put on their glasses too. Leaving PSA behind for the Orthodox viewpoint has changed the way I read scripture, the way I relate to the people around me (especially the non-christians), they way I actively pursue God. I can honestly say that God is Love now. Those pesky fuzzy questions in the distance are not what I thought they were and the i's are finally dotted. I can finally see. May all of this lead one day to my seeing the very face of God!