Greg Craig, The Black Ledger, and the Real Russian Collusion Story. #QAnon #GreatAwakening #NEONREVOLT
I often find myself having a weird perspective on things, coming to an understanding of issues by piecing together information obliquely, or by going “the long way ’round.” I suppose to some degree, that’s just the nature of the human experience – what, with having limited time and experience to draw from, you can only start to solve some of these puzzled from where you are. But it’s not lost to me how… particularly specific and tangential this lead-in will be.
If you’ve followed me for any length of time, you’ll know I’ve advocated for Orthodoxy many times in the past, as I’ve endeavored to live an Orthodox life myself. Really quickly, for those who don’t know, Orthodoxy is like, one of the oldest Apostolic, Traditional forms of Christianity there is. To the average Westerner, you would think they look like Catholics with funny hats, but the truth is, the East (Orthodoxy) split from the West (Roman Catholicism) in 1054 AD, due to all sorts of Ecumenical disputes.
Quick Church history lesson: you had the Pentarchy during the first millennia of the undivided Church. These were the 5 seats of power from which the Patriarchs of the church ruled – Rome, Jerusalem, Antioch, Alexandria, and Constantinople. These guys were supposed to be “co-equal” in terms of authority, but Rome had a ton of money, and a lot of political power, started committing heresies, and wanted to rule over the other 4 Patriarchs.
The 4 were like, “Hey buddy, sorry, it doesn’t work that way.”
The 1 was like, “Well it does now. You’re all excommunicated.”
And the 4 were like, “Fine, you’re excommunicated, too!”
And the 1 was like, “Yeah, but you still got Saracen hordes to deal with and now you have no money, so enjoy losing your armies!! Pffffffttttbbbbtttt!!!” (That’s a tongue noise).
And the rest is basically a pile of BS history and nonsense. And then lots of Catholics got mad at Rome, too, and decided they were doing things wrong (which, in their defense, they were), and like, 400-600 years later, they all spun off their own Churches (under the guidance of people like Luther and Calvin). But then, some of those guys decided Luther and Calvin were bad, so they spun off. And then others spun off from the spin-off. And some came to American and spun-off. And so on and so forth until here we are, in the modern day, with 45,000+ different Protestant denominations, all equally claiming to know the real truth of God.
In short, the whole situation is a mess. And while I was raised in one of those 45,000 competing Prot denominations, I grew increasingly frustrated with many of the teachings and the conflicts I saw; often feeling like I was taking crazy pills, because it seemed I was the only one who was picking up on these things. So, in my quest for understanding, I figured I’d go back to the roots of it all, and Orthodoxy probably has a better claim than any other group over maintaining original, Biblical teachings and practice. I tried to get onboard with that. I was catechized, baptized, and received into the Orthodox communion a couple years later.
Despite that, my experience within Orthodoxy has been nothing short of absolute suckage. I haven’t been able to integrate into the community, or to maintain the desire to even show up to services for some time. If you ever wanted to see a congregation of the “Frozen chosen,” going through the motions because grandma and grandpa did before them, look no further. I’m not trying to be uncharitable to the actual passionate faithful (of which, there are a handful), and to a certain degree there’s a fair amount of families just trying to raise their kids the right way, but in truth, I don’t see a lot of passion or desire to engage within any Orthodox parish. I see a lot of Ethnic legacies, and pointless traditions carried on because… it’s “tradition.”
And the best way I can put it is… It’s like in Japan, where all these elaborate traditions came about for specific reasons, within specific contexts, but that context no longer exists, and so these elaborate rituals have actually lost meaning. No one knows why they’re there, or why they’re doing thing; they just go through elaborate mimicry. In the meanwhile, everyone tunes out and goes back to “the real world” the second the ritual is over. I’ll tell ya; some of the things some “Orthodox” do or say will have you scratching your head, going… “Wait, I thought you were supposed to be Christian…”
In my limited experience, it’s almost like Prots have all the passion despite maintaining all the wrong practices (and many wrong teachings), and Orthos have all the right practices, teachings… and somehow, none of the passion.
So which is better? And why doesn’t a synthesis exist?
I’m gonna pre-empt a particularly cringe-inducing sayings Prots like to repeat, which… please, for the love of God, I don’t want to hear again: that it’s “about ‘relationship,’ not religion,” dozens of times in the comments.
While the sentiment is alright… You’re absolutely 100% wrong on that point for a multitude of reasons I can’t go into in this article, but it’s also why you have 45,000 competing different denominations, instead of one, unified body. And all of these denominations teach outright heresy in one form or another (which many fail to even realize/understand in the first place, and unwittingly accept). No, really – that bumper sticker doctrine sounds good on the surface, but it’s one of the dumbest, shallowest things ever uttered by Prots. So please, don’t spam up my comments with nonsense like that.
And no appeals to a vague sense of the “Holy Spirit” either. You sound like plebian hippies, minus the happy-tobaccy:
“Just follow the s p i r i t, maaaaaan.”
But I’m not here to knock on Prots today. Like I said, Orthodoxy is faaaaar from perfect.
One of the things I had to struggle with is understanding the modern hierarchy, because the Patriarchate didn’t go anywhere. No, see, it’s been maintained for 2000 years. Some of the Modern Patriarchs include Patriarch Bartholomew in Constantinople:
CONTINUE READING