I don’t believe. Help my belief.
What do Johnny Rotten and Fr Thomas Hopko have in common?
“I could be wrong, I could be right”. I remember hearing that Public Image Limited (PiL) song by John Lydon, front man for the forerunners of Punk Music and thinking to myself, “It is amazing how much that reflects what I learned from my long-time teacher and mentor, Fr Thomas Hopko. I found Fr Hopko’s faith and his public expression of it refreshing: completely committed, and yet humble. Provocatively humble—two words which don’t often go together. I recall him saying, “I could be wrong….” “We could be wrong”…. “but this is what we believe.”
The PiL song, I learned, was basically the singing of diaries of folks tortured during interrogations in South Africa. Horrible stuff.
I am not writing and pursuing these interviews because of song meaning and and what is behind them, but I am moved to think that Musicians and Artists, especially those who are coming towards the finish line of life, might be looking back and asking themselves questions about life and its meaning. Or hoping that I could contribute to the asking. I surely have these thoughts myself. Am I right? Am I wrong? How do I have the confidence and humility of Fr Thomas Hopko—who is an image of his namesake, “doubting Thomas”: “I believe, help my unbelief”! And what might I as an Orthodox Christian, do to try to help others connect these dots—especially when they might say, “I don’t believe”? Is there a witness, a way, that is different from all the evangelical “if you died today, would you go to heaven?”
Orthodox Christians don’t approach salvation with that question—we don’t see it that way…. Could I as an Orthodox Christian help someone move from “I don’t believe…” to “I don’t believe, help my belief?” Perhaps it is only from there that one could then move to “I believe; help my unbelief.” And from there to “My Lord and my God.”
This two-way interview idea of mine began with a question one Sunday night: “I wonder what Johnny Rotten is up to today?” So I wrote him. I had several interchanges with his publicists, including a phone call with one, and ultimately have not (yet?) arrived to interview him. Dum spiro spero. But I have learned a lot in the process, including asking myself a million questions to move towards compassion and understanding in the lives of others.
For example, I learned that I should have read John Lydon’s autobiography before trying to contact him—though that wouldn’t likely have resulted differently. Still, what I found in his autobiography was a confirmation of an intuition—that, at least in part, a terrible, perhaps irreversible problem with a Christian leader, lies behind his unbelief. As a kid, he had a friend who was substantially abused by a Catholic priest. Mercy! So terrible! And then, in another incident in his life, when a boy, he was hospitalized for a disease he contracted as a poor child playing in rat-infested streets of his neighborhood—and while hospitalized, had terrible nightmares of a figure hovering over him in a long black robe. Mercy! I wear a cassock….
These two insights alone are enough to explain why someone might stay forever away from the Church—and even write vile songs against her. Again, as Fr Hopko often said, “there are probably people in heaven who are there because they reject jesus”—but, I add jesus with a little “j” because, as Fr Hopko would continue, “it wasn’t the real Jesus they rejected—”. It was a false jesus, a portrayal of someone who shares the Name of the Lord, but does not love or act like He did and does.
Or imagine, as I also came to find out, that your best friend as a teen—in this case, Sid Vicious—the notorious bass player of the Pistols, who later died of a heroin overdose with his girlfriend, Nancy—although that is all surrounded by various suspicions—imagine that your 13 year old teenage best friend was given heroin for his birthday from his mother. When I read that (well, listened to audio book), I burst into tears—not something I am particularly known for. His teenage birthday present was his deathblow not too many years later.
So I ask myself: can this help me learn to be compassionate towards others in the name of Jesus? Long-suffering? Realize that repentance (“turning one’s life around”) might be a long journey—and perhaps one even stumped by reckless pastors and priests? What can I do not do be one of those reckless priests? And what if folks have never had a reasonable, honest, conversation with an Orthodox Christian—in my case a priest? Could we help such folks see the real Jesus as we understand him? Maybe only if we can present ourselves, somehow, like Fr Hopko spoke and John Lydon sang, “I could be wrong….”, but could we talk about it?
