Ok, here’s the basic deal with the title – Lex Orandi, Lex Credendi: The Law of Prayer, the Law of Belief. The idea is a simple one; the way we pray and worship defines the way we live and believe.
That may sound like a strange addage, but I’d argue it’s really not all that controversial. If our devotional lives (both publically and privately) are miserably organized and horribly irregular is it any surprise that the other aspects of our lives would be as well? Of course not!
Consider this though: what if, rather than being linear, the phrase is circular? What if the way we pray and worship defines the way we live and believe and the way we live and believe defines the way we pray and worship?! ad infinitum…. What if hectic, stressed out, self-centered lives cause uncentered, unfocused, individualistic worship? AND such worship perpetuates such a life?
It certainly wouldn’t surprise me.
Why a blog? Because the concept deserves more discussion. Because society likes to pretend that faith is somehow disconnected from the rest of our lives. Because I cannot accept the belief that the normal, “mundane” aspects of our lives are spiritually insignificant.
Why a blog? Because I think some of you might agree.
Grace and Peace,
`tim
Oh and by the way, the dog? That’s Carina our Italian greyhound!
Ooh, good title! Welcome to blog-world. Excellent post as well…since we are (as much as we try not to be) whole, integrated beings, the segments of our life are bound to inform and shape one another.
Yes, excellent post!
This _sententia_ is indeed circular, as every self-respecting sencond-year Latin student knows. It is precisely the ceasless interplay between dogma and worship that is the point here: as the Puritans so rightly intuited, true worship and true dogma go hand in hand because their intersection produces whole Christian persons (one might call this formative intersection the “lex vivendi”). But add anything aberrant to the mix, and the results will be not only catastrophic, but also self-perpetuating, as you well note. (By the way, St Irenaeus also echoes the thrust of the _sententia_ when he writes: “Our opinion is in conformity with the Eucharist, and the Eucharist confirms our
opinion”.)
The Lordship of Jesus Christ makes a claim on the entirety of life, and indeed nothing in them can be considered as spiritually insignificant. But the failure to recognize this is not only a problem of our society; I believe it is inherent to our fallen brokenness. Those of us from Christian Traditions such as Eastern Orthodoxy, with its canons and fasting and feasting, often mistake these means for the end; others have different temptations. The final goal is union with Christ, as St Paul so often emphasizes, yet the path to this integral wholeness is never easy. But then, “it is through many trials and tribulations that we must enter the Kindgdom of God” (cfr. Acts 14:22).