"Because I Said So!"

"Because I said so" are the four most dreaded words to any child. Almost every child had that standard confront them at one time or another. To a child, those words are unreasonable. In fact, the very supposition demanded that we forego our self-applied prerequisite to understand before we obey. The Age of Reason, akin to the Age of Enlightenment, has heavily influenced the way modern man discovers and applies truth. All cultures have been so influenced, but western thought has been particularly impacted. The western mind says, I will understand it then I will believe it. The Eastern mind says I will believe it then I will understand it. Christianity is Eastern. Our parents were the standard of truth and living for us as children. So our Heavenly Father and the Mother church is our standard. Why do we obey our parents? Because their reasoning is beyond ours. As we mature, we understand and we find that their standard of reasoning was our protection. So is the way of Christianity. The greatest obstacle to the theosis of man is the elevation of his intellect above that of his Creator. A God-given intellect, void of proper alignment, is assurance of spiritual death. Jesus said, "Blessed is he who does not see and yet believes." The most pivotal epiphany I have experienced on my Journey To Orthodoxy was the realignment of my intellect. When I trusted the reasoning of the Father and discovered that all protective truth is contained in the bosom of the Mother church, my theosis began. Then, and only then, could my intellect digest the precepts of God. One must first believe the truth, then set out to understand it. This is the way of the the Kingdom of God for it is within and not without.