Sunday 5 May 2013

On the importance of Christian tradition in a programmer's speak

Christ is Risen!

Imagine you want to create a complex software product composed of a number of modules. You delegate the development of those units to your team, having worked out in detail a common interface which determines the interaction between the modules. Every member of your team develops their own unit. However, if during development the integrity of the common interface is compromised, there will be no product even if every module functions correctly in isolation. This can happen e.g. as a result of removal of some key API in either of those modules.


All this is quite obvious. But aren't people who want to get rid of something they don't understand in spiritual life doing just the same? They may not understand why they need fasting, prayer and other external traditional forms of worship and still want to slacken or remove these things altogether. Especially, in the Russian Orthodox Church today this is relevant to the discussions initiated by some inexperienced Church members about whether we need to pray in Church Slavonic. Such a translation into contemporary Russian, I think, will invariably compromise some "common spiritual interface". As a result, the integrity of the existing religious form will be irrevocably lost. I say irrevocably because if we today cannot fully appreciate the importance of the existing religious tradition, our children will be even less able to reintroduce it tomorrow. To keep what you have got is easier than to recreate from scratch.

Before throwing something away, we should have another look at the big picture in order to keep religious succession.

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