Scott left the evangelical church and went East to Orthodoxy. He is not the first: he had some help in that his family emigrated from a historically orthodox part of the world. He is now finding what I find: the temptation to signal virtue exists in all churches. The Orthodox bloggers can’t handle alcohol, or nicotine, or dropping the occasional swear word.

Yet ignore systematic evil.

When I close my eyes and imagine these men, I see a grand un-drafted army of warriors who would fight for the truth if the leadership of such a church would stand up and carry their very real grievances forward. What do you see?

Usually, it’s something like “red-pill men are a bunch of disgruntled, angry, misogynists who peck away in their parents basements about how screwed up everything is.”

If this is your position, I charge you with blind foolishness.

Because even the most bitter, introverted, hurt men who write and comment there show great strength of conviction and under their pain I sense a deep love of God’s creation–or else they wouldn’t bother.

Do you believe in the ancient teachings of the church? Even the ones about men and women that make the modern world squirm? Will you defend it or cower and tremble in fear while the women in your congregations sneer at you (just like the protestant ministers do)?

If the Orthodox church has written off America and the west, why not just say so, and save us all the trouble? There are roughly 400 million Orthodox Christians in the world, and barely 3 million here. Why don’t we all just give up and move to Russia? (I am not claiming Fr. Joseph has “given up.” I understand and respect his move).

I am no one. A brand new convert to Orthodoxy. You may disregard everything I have written here, and censure me if you like. It is Lenten season, and I may be choosing a poor time to confront like this. If so, please forgive.

But the mouse is still knocking. Can you hear me?

There is one hope: we are not made of metal. We are made in the image of God, and that means that we can create, recreate and subcreate. ((Subcreation is a term coined by Tolkien. When trying to find the relevant quote from JRRT, I found that, to my horror, Tolkien Studies now has a Journal).

But this means that when the church is broken, as with people, it can repair.

Hymn of Breaking Strain

THE careful text-books measure
(Let all who build beware!)
The load, the shock, the pressure
Material can bear.
So, when the buckled girder
Lets down the grinding span,
‘The blame of loss, or murder,
Is laid upon the man.
Not on the Stuff – the Man!

But in our daily dealing
With stone and steel, we find

The Gods have no such feeling
Of justice toward mankind.
To no set gauge they make us-
For no laid course prepare-
And presently o’ertake us
With loads we cannot bear:
Too merciless to bear.

The prudent text-books give it
In tables at the end
‘The stress that shears a rivet
Or makes a tie-bar bend-
‘What traffic wrecks macadam-
What concrete should endure-
but we, poor Sons of Adam
Have no such literature,
To warn us or make sure!

We hold all Earth to plunder –
All Time and Space as well-
Too wonder-stale to wonder
At each new miracle;
Till, in the mid-illusion
Of Godhead ‘neath our hand,
Falls multiple confusion
On all we did or planned-
The mighty works we planned.

We only of Creation
(0h, luckier bridge and rail)
Abide the twin damnation-
To fail and know we fail.
Yet we – by which sole token
We know we once were Gods-
Take shame in being broken
However great the odds-
The burden of the Odds.

Oh, veiled and secret Power
Whose paths we seek in vain,
Be with us in our hour
Of overthrow and pain;
That we – by which sure token
We know Thy ways are true –
In spite of being broken,
Because of being broken
May rise and build anew
Stand up and build anew.

Rudyard Kipling