The Prodigal

This last Sunday for all those who follow the Byzantine Rite was the Sunday of the Prodigal Son, one of the days intending to prepare the congregation for the incoming Lenten season by means of introspection.  The Sunday revolves around a very famous parable that you have no doubt heard if you have spent time in church at some point in your life, or maybe even if you haven't.  I won't go into detail with a recap of the parable, but I would like to take a look at the ending of it.  In it, the older son grows angry that his father has received his younger brother with such compassion after he returns home.  He complains that he has served his father faithfully for many years and has received nothing in return, while his brother wasted his inheritance with frivolities and is now having a banquet laid out for him.  From an outside standpoint, the older son seems absolutely correct; why should his irresponsible brother be rewarded for his foolishness?  However, he misses the point of this story, which is about redemption of those who have strayed from the righteous path.  The younger son, after having spent his inheritance, has accepted his folly and the consequences that came of it, and returned to his father's house with the intention of begging him to at least be able to work as a servant just to put food on his table.  The older son's indignation at his father's compassionate response reflect his true sins of jealousy and Donatism.  He does not believe his brother has the capability to change and earnestly repent of his sins, even though we know that is not the case.  In the case of this parable, it should be pretty self-apparent who the father and the prodigal son represent: God and the man who lapses away from Him in sin but ultimately repents.  The older son represents the faithful, the body of Christians who have not lost themselves to sin, and his reaction to his brother's repentance shows the faithful what they should not do.  A sinner rejoining the Body of Christ is a time for joy, not a time for condemnation.  Sadly, it seems like many today who call themselves Christians have not taken that lesson to heart.

On the internet, especially among the Orthodox community, you will see a great deal of vitriol hurled at converts from Protestant denominations.  Many of them claim that converts can never be "true Orthodox", whatever that means.  Usually, the people making these statements don't even try to hide the fact that their condemnation of Orthodox converts from western countries comes from their Greek ethnocentrism.  This kind of thinking has actually been condemned by Church authorities as heresy and it's best that those who preach it be ignored- rebuking them is the job of men much more holy than us.  Sadly, there is a much more insidious form of convert opposition within the Church, and one that is espoused not only by a great number of laypeople but even by clergy.  This states that converts are mainly "traditionalist" fetishists who only desire Orthodoxy because of its aesthetics and because it supports their fantasies of turning the world into a reactionary state like Tsarist Russia or the Byzantine Empire.  These people, state the proponents, are using Orthodoxy as window dressing to their politics and are trying to subvert the Church by joining in large numbers to sway it toward more conservative viewpoints.  Putting aside the fact that a massive concerted effort by thousands of people to politically infiltrate a religion that constitutes about 1% of the US Population and has no measurable effect on politics at any level is blatantly absurd, putting politics over Christ is not exactly a solely right-wing issue, and never has been.  Yet it is only "right-wing radicals" that the proponents of this theory point out.

Enter Rev. Stephen De Young, the rector of the Church of the Archangel Gabriel in Lafayette, LA.  In his spare time, he writes a blog on Ancient Faith Ministries, one of the largest Orthodox websites in the world.  I have no issue with the site or the theology it publishes, and I have no doubt that Fr. De Young is a godly man in his personal life.  He certainly does not seem like some bile-spewing leftist radical.  However, over the past week, he was guilty of making some pretty horrendous comments about right-wing converts, which can be viewed below.

His opening to these statements says that if a Protestant chooses to join Orthodoxy just because his denomination has ordained women, then he shouldn't become Orthodox.  This is a strawman of a real problem.  First, a significant liturgical abuse like ordaining women should be a cause for concern among Protestants.  This change almost never happens on its own.  You will never see a church with traditionalist, high church, little o orthodox dogma that just so happens to ordain women as well.  Such a change is just the most visible face of Christological decay.  The ordaining of women was one of the many theological and liturgical reasons that I am no longer Anglican today.  According to Fr. De Young, apparently my concerns about the validity of apostolic succession and the Mass were not a reason for me to convert and I should go back to attending Pride Masses with transgender women priests.

He goes on to state that someone joining Orthodoxy because of "traditionalism", including opposition to ordination of women and homosexuality, is "damaging to the church".  Therefore, out of "love for the Church and compassion for them", those who seek to join Orthodoxy because of its adherence to Biblical teachings about social mores, a.k.a. the foundations of Christianity, should be turned away.  Out of love.  He then goes on to state that he totally doesn't mean they should be turned away when he spent the last few paragraphs talking about how they have no place in the Church!  He even throws in a Russian bot insult.  You can almost see him about to call the converts Nazis and bigots.

The true problem with these comments is like the older son in the parable, they are presumptuous and arrogant.  Fr. De Young holds the converts' pasts against them and states that they're incapable of joining Orthodoxy "the right way" due to their political views, even if they no longer hold them in the present.  Whether or not a convert coming from a radical right-wing background has earnestly repented of his sins is of no importance to Fr. De Young- what he wants them to repent of is their politics.  Many who I personally know, and many more who I don't, have come to Orthodoxy from a far-right background.  Many of us still hold right-wing political views, but we have learned to put Christ and the Cross above all.  We have learned to no longer despise our brethren in Christ, and we have come to understand what He meant when He said "For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law” (Matt. 10:35): there is not one earthly human or group or concept, no state or nuclear family or ethnicity that is more important to us than Jesus Christ.  There are those I know and others know who have been saved from likely violent ends in far-right extremism due to His grace.  Yet to Fr. De Young, none of this matters, and because of our past we should have never become Orthodox in the first place.

One wonders if he would have dared to say the same thing about far-left radicals who desire to join the Orthodox Church.  Attacking “far-right” and “white-nationalist” bogeymen offers no penalty.  We see this in the news in secular life, and it looks like it has spread to the Orthodox sphere as well.  It is punching down in the purest sense; attacking left-wing radicals will draw too much criticism, but going after the right is openly encouraged in modern life.  Fr. De Young is not the only clergyman to put his foot in his mouth like this in the past year.  We have seen the OCA’s synod of bishops, when rioters were getting close to burning down churches in Minneapolis, choose to side with Black Lives Matter, an explicitly Marxist organization that was doing the burning, over giving guidance to its parishioners.  I can’t say this reaction is too surprising, as sad as it is.

What should the Parable of the Prodigal Son teach us, and how does it relate to Fr. De Young’s comments?  As members of the Body of Christ, we should rejoice when a sinner comes to Him in repentance, saying “I was lost, but now I am found”.  Fr. De Young, just like the older son, forgets that.  He assumes that those who come to Orthodoxy from a certain background are incapable of any real repentance, and attacks them.  He first assumes insincerity when these people seek Christ, just like the older son assumed of his brother’s repentance.  But is this the way to respond to those who seek Christ?  No!  For this came from the mouth of God the Father Himself: “Have I any pleasure at all that the wicked should die? saith the Lord GOD: and not that he should return from his ways, and live?” (Ez. 18:23).  Fr. De Young places each of these converts’ pasts over their present, and refuses to grant them the benefit of the doubt in their repentance.  So, after having heard already the wrong way to respond to sinners returning to Christ, we should instead entreat each other to behave like the father, running to greet our lost sons who have pledged their hearts to the Lord and renounced their sins.  For that, not turning them away because of their past, shows true love.