Iniquity for the Children

“For God is not the author of confusion, but of peace, as in all churches of the saints” -1 Corinthians 14:33

I start today’s brief post with a couple of Scripture passages that pertain to our current situation in the OCA. Please read them now, rather than skipping over them to get to my comments below. If you’re not reading the Scriptures regularly, you’ve got no business even thinking about this situation.

And the Lord passed by before [Moses], and proclaimed, “he Lord, The Lord God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, and that will by no means clear the guilty; visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, and upon the children’s children, unto the third and to the fourth generation.” -Exodus 34:6-7

I therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you that ye walk worthy of the vocation wherewith ye are called, with all lowliness and meekness, with longsuffering, forbearing one another in love; endeavouring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.  –Ephesians 4:1-3

Most of the readers here already know of the situation that has developed between Metropolitan Jonah, the Holy Synod, and the Metropolitan Council. Like me, most readers know little beyond what has been produced by two web sites and a couple of less-than-edifying mailing lists.

The basic trajectory was an internal dispute within the Holy Synod, followed by a leak by a former bishop with less than honorable intentions, a lot of other chatter and documents, and, in the end, the Metropolitan himself postponing the spring meetings of both the Holy Synod and the Metropolitan Council. Since that time, the Holy Synod has been quiet, as has the Metropolitan Council. Perhaps they’re all talking privately, but that’s generally no problem (absent a legal gag order).

Nonetheless, the continuing spitefulness from the retired bishop in a public forum, the ongoing conjectures and accusations from a site claiming to be committed to the truth, resolutions from a diocesan council, more negative gossip in the various mailing lists and discussion fora, has served only to sow discord and distrust in many corners of the Orthodox Church in America.

This discord is already having tragic consequences. The distrust is daily making it more difficult for our leaders – the bishops of the Holy Synod, the esteemed members of the Metropolitan Council, the officers and administrators in Syosset – to be reconciled. His Beatitude talked pointedly about the role of discord prior to his selection as Metropolitan: “If we can build that community of love and respect, seeing how our passions have distracted us from that living communion with God, have turned us against one another, and have created all sorts of hostility between–well, we just saw it, between the body of the All-American Council and the Synod of the Bishops. … Between the Synod of the Bishops and the Metropolitan Council–talk about a sick dysfunctional situation!”

Indeed. We are quickly moving to a position where each of us will be at each other’s throats, every part of it built on suspicion, accusation, and, saddest of all, falsehood. Such would be a position that makes reconciliation and resolution nearly impossible. (Of course, all is possible with the Holy Spirit, but human freedom can and does interfere.)

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