Beholding the Beauty

As you probably know by now, if you've followed this blog at all, I am a member of the Orthodox Church, after having been raised a Baptist. One of the minor struggles for me in entering the Church was that we call our priests "Father". This seems to go against the direct command of Jesus in Matthew 23:9. I'm posting now, because I just came across something in the Scripture the other day that clinched my viewpoint from "well, the Orthodox interpretation makes Scriptural sense, but it's not Scripturally obvious" to "Yep, that's the what the Scripture actually teaches." In other words, it solidified things so that I now see the Orthodox interpretation as actively Scriptural, instead of scripturally ambivalent. But first, let me lay out the two interpretations, and why I'm empathetic to those who hold the standard Protestant interpretation. The Protestant Interpretation For Protestants, it's pretty simple: Jesus said don't d

Introduction Parts ( 1 , 2 , and 3 ) have covered what I was taught growing up regarding the consumption of alcohol, and a few logical fallacies involved with said teaching. Now, dear reader, feast your eyes on the mythbuster passage, the simple command that brings the whole prohibitionist edifice floating (for cards don't "crash") down around them, leaving them to play the dreaded game, "52 card pickup" . *cue fanfare & drumroll* Thou shalt truly tithe all the increase of thy seed, that the field bringeth forth year by year. And thou shalt eat before the LORD thy God, in the place which he shall choose to place his name there, the tithe of thy corn, of thy wine, and of thine oil, and the firstlings of thy herds and of thy flocks; that thou mayest learn to fear the LORD thy God always. And if the way be too long for thee, so that thou art not able to carry it; or if the place be too far from thee, which

Introduction In Parts 1 and 2 of this series, I introduced the subject and gave a listing, along with rebuttals, of what I was taught in my youth from a prohibitive standpoint . Note: I'm using the Masoretic numbering of the Psalms for this series, unless otherwise specified, since that's what the people used who were teaching me growing up. In this post, I will cover the various Scripture passages that seem to support the acceptability of the consumption of alcohol by Christians, the arguments that were used against them, and the rebuttals of those counterarguments. I will not yet, however, reveal the verse that changed it all for me, because it was not discussed at all when I was originally being taught. I'll save that for the next post. "One-offs" There are several verses that seem to support the consumption of wine, but are not explicit about it, such as Ps. 104:14, 15, Judges 9:13, etc.

Introduction I'm going to just caveat this up front, instead of interspersing constant disclaimers throughout: I do not believe the arguments I lay out in this post. I am doing my best to present these teachings the way I received them, not creating any straw men. My motivation for this is intellectual honesty. In my later posts, I will be addressing the key points (and some of the minor points) in this teaching, and I don't want to waste my time or yours with irrelevant arguments. I'm not here to win a debate by rhetorical tricks. For sake of space, this will be in outline form, with some comments here and there. The Arguments From Scripture Anecdotal First, there are the anecdotal arguments. This includes arguments derived from stories in the Bible. The point of these was always, See! If you drink, bad things happen, and when you don't, good things happen. Alcohol is evil. Because this is the basic argument, I will o