Why Are Christians in the East Losing the Land of Their Saints?
- The Orthodox Ethos Team
- 16 hours ago
- 6 min read
Archimandrite Gregorios (Estephan)
From the Old Testament, we learn harsh lessons: why did God abandon His own people and deliver them into the hands of their enemies, causing them not only to diminish but even to be completely exiled from their land, which was then inhabited by foreign nations? The reason is twofold: First, the violation of faith, meaning the abandonment of worshipping the One True God and falling into the worship of the gods of the nations. Second, the violation of the divine commandments. And this violation is the inevitable consequence of turning away from the true God. When the doctrines that define who God is are altered, the commandments related to Him automatically change as well.
In the New Testament, the matter of the One God and the plurality of gods becomes doctrinally incarnate in the subject of the One Church versus the multitude of so-called churches. Christ came into the world and left one Church and one Faith; and this has been the Church’s struggle until this very day: how to preserve the truth of the One Church, which is the Body of Christ that cannot be divided. If the Church had not vigilantly condemned every distorted and heretical teaching in its Holy Councils, it would no longer be the Church. Each person would believe in a Christ of their own making, and Christianity would become a pagan religion. Christ is present because the apostolic faith is still present and preserved in the Orthodox faith.
Thus, God abandons His people when His people abandon Him, because He respects the sacred freedom He has given man. The primary problem is one of faith, not politics or economics. Christians sell the land of their fathers and emigrate because their sense of faith has weakened. They emigrate due to a lack of faith, and a lack of reliance upon God and trust in His providence—or because they think only of material wealth, not spiritual richness. A spiritually weak Church that surrenders to the spirit of this age is completely incapable of providing any spiritual nourishment to its people. This is why unbelief spreads among the people, who then emigrate, fall into many sins, and apostatize from Christ.
All the corruption, psychological illnesses, and demonic influences that are increasing alarmingly among the people—irresponsibility, rising divorce rates, avoidance of marriage, and if they marry they stay childless, fear of the future—all these are caused primarily by lack of faith. True faith means total surrender to God in facing the challenges of life. When we repent and obey the commandments of faith, this certainty is born within us: that God is with us and in us, and will never abandon us. Repentance has always been linked to faith. God allows wars and severe persecutions upon His people, not so they would fear and abandon the land of their saints, but to test their faith and remind them of repentance.
Throughout history, Christians in this East have suffered far harsher persecutions than those of today. But they faced them with the simplicity of faith and repentance. They remained in their land, not because they were unable to emigrate—for converting to the religion of their persecutors often came with material and emotional incentives far greater than modern emigration—but because their steadfastness was not of human strength, but of a hidden divine power, from God’s Grace. Our forefathers who handed down the faith to us in this region were humble and grateful. Thus, they accepted persecutions as a divine dispensation to know their sins and repent. With deep repentance and contrition, they turned to their Christ and the intercessions of their saints. In the simplicity of their faith and their steadfastness in it, they grew in repentance and love of God, for they experienced firsthand the aid of their Christ, their Virgin, and all their saints, and the swift answering of their prayers.
Many bishops and priests today, instead of preaching about faith and repentance, often preach against religious fanaticism. Knowingly or unknowingly, they kill faith in the hearts of their people. Stubborn adherence to the exact doctrines of the faith is not fanaticism—it is a commandment from God and from the Councils of the Church. Only fidelity to the laws of the faith can nourish the faith of the people and preserve the Church from error and deviation. Sermons that focus only on morality while neglecting matters of faith spread superficial belief among the people. Superficial faith in God has no repentance at all and dies gradually in the soul, for it has no spiritual depth.
This repentance we derive from faith, not from ourselves. And the strength of faith we receive from God, not from men. The power of God is present exclusively in His Church. Truly, the Spirit blows where it wills, but not to leave those He enters in error or deviation—rather to lead them to the truth and to the one true Church, which holds the fullness of the truth.
The Church is the first responsible party for all that happens to its people. The obedience of the bishop and priest to the Church and her faith is what teaches the people to love the Church and be obedient to her. The repentance of the bishop and priest teaches their people to repent and to love God and His commandments. True believers, when they see their bishop obedient to the Church’s laws and faith, rejoice in him and obey him with gratitude. But when they see him transgressing, their trust in him—and in the Church—is shaken. Bishops and priests are those who most need repentance. They must weep for their sins and the sins of their people. They are not lords of this age but penitents. Repentance opens the inner eyes of their mind to know God’s will: that the crisis Christians are experiencing in this East is rooted in faith and God’s abandonment, not in oppressive circumstances or world politics.
Why are Christians losing their presence in this East? Is it not because they are losing the grace of God? And what confirms this loss of grace is their surrender to the spirit of ecumenism and modernization. This ecumenical spirit kills repentance in the human soul, because it first kills the love of Orthodox faith in those souls. In Orthodoxy, the love of God comes from one source: the Church and her faith. The love of God is not emotional, as rationalists portray it, but divine—it is the fruit of the outpouring of divine grace into a soul that is faithful to everything God has revealed to His Church.
The God of the Orthodox is not of this world. He does not seek numbers to boast in power or vain glory. He seeks witnesses to Himself and to the eternal truth that He entrusted to His Church. God abandons us—His own people—because we have become a stubborn people surrendering to the spirit of the age. A people who do not want to preserve the faith handed down to them or bear witness to the truth. Do not say that we have become few in this East; our Christ does not work through multitudes or numbers, but through truth. That is why He said: “I came into the world to bear witness to the truth.” The emigration of our people indicates mutual abandonment: the people drown in religious globalization and do not witness to the truth, and the inevitable result is that God abandons them.
When the people of the Old Testament feared for their existence and made alliances with foreign nations to secure their land, God abandoned them and scattered them. But when they acknowledged their sin and apostasy, repented, and relied solely on their God, He restored them to their land and increased them in it.
Will we in this East return to relying solely on the God of our Orthodox faith—the only faith that has never changed nor transformed? May we be granted a share in this repentance, and may God remember us in our land, preserve the remnant among us, and multiply us again within it.
Just as eternal salvation requires only Orthodox faith and heartfelt repentance, so also our continued presence in this East depends on these two elements: pure Orthodox faith and Orthodox repentance. Strengthen your people in their Orthodoxy, O bishops and priests of God, so that God may strengthen them in their land. Do not let faith and salvation be reduced to humanistic social concepts, but let them remain divine—for they are from the Lord and unto Him. Do not mix our sacred Orthodoxy with all the deviations born from human pride. Orthodoxy is truth and it is light. It is a light to the nations that seek truth. Let this light shine forth to the world. The world needs this light to behold the true God; it needs the truth as a faithful ladder to salvation. God is the One who placed us in this East, with many spiritual talents, to bear witness to the true God. Let us not bury them. Let us turn this land, in which we strive to remain, from a land of apostasy into a land blessed for witnessing to the truth and to the faith of our Christ.
Translation: Wadih Abou Rahal