The Cost of Truth Is The Essence of Being Human

The Raising of Lazarus

"The large crowd of the Jews then learned that He was there; and they came, not for Jesus' sake only, but that they might also see Lazarus, whom He raised from the dead. But the chief priests planned to put Lazarus to death also; because on account of him many of the Jews were going away and were believing in Jesus."--- John 12:9-11 NASB

What is the cost of knowing the Truth?
What is the cost of believing the Truth?
What is the cost of  the Truth coming true to you?

WARNING: MASSIVE SPOILERS ALERT!!!

John Chapter 12 is breath-taking. It paints the scene where Jesus Christ ate supper with Mary, Martha, and Lazarus whom he had just raised from the dead. It details Mary's unabashed exposure of herself to Jesus by anointing Him with expensive perfume, the row Jesus had with Judas Iscariot about Mary's non-economy, plotting of the Pharisees against Lazarus and Jesus, Jesus Christ's triumphant entry on a donkey, and His sermon which was described as "thunderous".
Reading the chapter, I felt like reading through a movie instead of watching it; it was so fast-paced. No, it's like a multi-scened Act in a play. Everything just moves simultaneously. Indeed reading John is like listening to a renegade Philosopher; he gets to the point no matter how thorny and poignant it is, cuts you off when you start protesting because he knows he's right, reports what he witnessed, what he knew, and never apologizes for being blunt. Indeed The Book of John lacks Matthew's knack for orderliness, Mark's discretion, and Luke's sophistication.
Now I finally realized why the Church Fathers put Matthew first in the New Testament collection-- John's not a book for the faint-hearted, it's a shocker... LOL.
(Naaah, I don't really know why they put Matthew first, still doing research on that.)

Nope. I'm not done reading John's Book. But Chapter 12 really arrested me.
Which prompted from me the questions:


What is the cost of knowing the Truth?
What is the cost of believing the Truth?
What is the cost of  the Truth coming true to you?


NOTE: Read The Great Gatsby or at least search Wikipedia so you don't get off tangent.

In F. Scott Fitzgerald's magnum opus: The Great Gatsby (the book, not the movie), you will read a scene where in Tom Buchanan, his wife  Daisy, and Jay Gatsby confront each other finally: Tom discovers that Daisy's still in love with Jay Gatsby and that she never forgot her love for Jay, Daisy discovers that she could no longer keep the truth: she still loves her first love Gatsby yet she can't turn away from Tom because she has learned to love her husband (perhaps much to the surprise of the two men) and Jay Gatsby discovers that no matter how much he reinvents himself, there's no way he can win back Daisy. There's just no way he can convince Daisy to leave Tom (this makes Tom believe he has won, seriously, this is in the book).

For Fitzgerald's characters (as Fitzgerald obviously intended them to be), knowing and believing the truth DO NOT end in knowing and believing . The truth must be played on their very person, on their very psych. In  other words they have to work out on that truth.

Human beings are limited, as can be inferred from the Ancestral Sin doctrine of the Holy Orthodox Church. Though we do not inherit the sin of Adam and Eve, we do inherit the effect of that sin which is death. And death according to The Holy Orthodox Church, according to God, is unnatural. The Natural state of human beings is this: That which was shown by Lazarus's resurrection AND Jesus Christ's resurrection. Although Lazarus died again, it was in Jesus that the natural immortality of human beings is displayed: immortal in a new body and with God. Lazarus' death and resurrection was a foretaste of what Jesus would indeed display: His crucifixion, earthly death, bodily resurrection, and heavenly ascension. ALL these are guaranteed by God Himself. 

Knowing THIS truth is risky business (if I may use the crassness of that), how much MORE SO in believing!
Surely this IS more terrifying than anything else if this truth that we know is what we believe and what we live for!          

Now, what is the cost of  Fitzgerald's characters' discovery? Tom promises Daisy to be a better man and husband. For Daisy it means choosing what can save her; by sticking with Tom, she escapes the hounds of justice (she kills her husband's mistress in a car accident), and for Jay Gatsby, this means mustering courage to face the truth and begin shedding off his Jay Gatsby veneer, the mysterious millionaire, to reveal James Gatz, a poor boy blinded by love for a faithless woman. All three of them, in the limited world of the novel, know the truth, believe the truth, act on the truth, no matter how gruesome the results are.

In John chapter 12, the Book concludes the questions in a non-pessimist vein:
knowing the truth means sitting at the table with Christ and giving up whatever we have to Him (Lazarus and Mary), in doing so, we intensify our belief; in intensifying belief, we act on it through the active participation in the Church's mysteries and studies. But the COST of all of these? John chapter 12 gives us the gist of knowing, believing, and acting on the truth... That will cost us everything just as Christ gave everything to defeat death and to restore unto us our true image. 

    

"Salvation is the restoration of the wholeness of God’s image in us, of the possibility of our union with God. It is the restoration of our original essence. “Holy Tradition teaches that… we will be saved when we becomelike Christ… Because of our faith in Him and our desire to become God-like, we are not so much saved all at once as slowly changed into the creatures we were created to be.”[18]"

Frank Schaeffer, Dancing Alone: The Quest for Orthodox Faith in the Age of False Religion (Brookline, MA: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 1994), 207.

http://www.pravoslavie.ru/english/46463.htm

Icons:
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Great Gatsby photo:
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