I had an interesting chat with guy at CU yesterday,
He is a Syrian Orthodox priest and is studying for his doctorate in UCD. So I got talking to him about the church whose liturgy is Aramaic!( the language of Jesus), its 2 000 year history, his struggle for survival under more than a thousand years of Muslim domination. It was interesting we talked almost an hour SO I will give you a gist of it. OF course I got round telling him about the Malaysian church and well its lack of tradition and hisotry which made it easier to connect with other denominations.
He is an Arab! Now don't be surpirsed but Arabs have been Christians longer than they were Muslims. When the apostles went to Damascus they reached out to the Jews and the Syrians who were there and set up one of the first churches which continued to day as the Syrian Orthodox. Then Arabs were added to the church because they were traders and Damascus was a trade centre. Come on even Muhammad traded in Damascus. Once upon of time Syria was 90% Christian though this must be qualified that modern Syria came from the division of the Ottoman empire but it was called a church of martyr because through the long years they were persecuted and now they are about 10% of Syria.
We talked about the Iraqi war. Now I know I have quite pro-war because of the positive effects in Sudan but yesterday I was shown another side of the coin. Christians are leaving Iraq because under Saddam they were protected. Saddam was in the minority so in effect he also protected the minority..ditto for Syria..now he agrees Saddam is an evil man but now with Shiites coming into power we expect the Christians to get even more persecuted. Why? Take a look at their cousins in Iran and it is happening..sigh..nothing is as easy as it seems....my support sapped a bit listening to that....in the end I guess only God will have the wisdom to know whether there will be net good effect in a war or not.
Talked a bit about The Passion. He also like me didn't like the extra-biblical stuff and illutrated with the scene where the thief who spoke against Jesus got his eye pecked out. Now he said that that didn't reflect the gracious and merciful Jesus who had ask the Father to forgive those who crucified Him! Maybe it was to show that evil will be punished in this life but the effect could be that Jesus was vengeful and yeah he said the Aramaic is bad..sounded like Americans speaking it.
Talked about Syrian orthodox hymms then he had to rush home to finish his Hebrew homework.