asceticism

Knights of the Desert

Increasingly, I find dissidence and social resistance are considered, among the religious, to be either un-Christian, or somehow an unpleasant aspect of Christianity that is best swept under the rug along with keeping the fasts. Actually, fasting and resistance to the world, in fact open warfare with the world, are related. The very purpose of asceticism is to save us – from the world and unto God. So often, you’ll find those who don’t do one (e.g. fasting or resisting the world) don’t appreciate the other. I’ll be called judgmental for that, but I really don’t care – I only care, at this point, if it’s true. But what is true religion? To relieve the poor and keep oneself unstained by the world. Increasingly, I’m thinking that all of orthopraxy (or orthopraxis for you misguided sticklers) is summed up in that statement.

The other day someone asked a personal question at coffee hour – namely, why I tendered my resignation at a particular company. I explained that I’m not a big fan of corporations and what they’ve done to the culture, the world of work, and people. I find they tend to create a climate of fear and compliance that’s antithetical to what I value. My boss tried to make me afraid and, when faced with an invitation to fear, I tend to break it. So I broke it; I handed in my resignation. You should have seen how people stiffened. You’d have thought I smacked the Bishop. Literally.

So what’s so radical about this? Before you go nitpicking it, I’m not an idiot – this is just one of many examples I could cite, across the interactions of many different kinds of people in many different religious environments. I’m not taking it personally, nor is it about anything personal. Not really. What I’m talking about is the perception that true religion is Mitt Romney, or at least religion should allow for it.

But I see genuine religion quite differently. I see it as much more similar to the placing of a Crusade on laymen-knights who have before them both an ascetic quest in the desert and a moral and ethical battle in the cities of the world. [Just to be clear, ethics is a science, based on those principles necessary to the survival first of the individual and, second, of the species. Morality is a revelation, something that requires a personal source and standard, a person or persons that are of the same image as the species or, more to the point, vice versa.]

Placed on us is not a commission to go forth and blend in, or go forth and adopt the world’s way of life, or go forth and invest your primary energies and essence into the world. Ours is a commission to go forth and do battle, call people out of the world while remaining within it (live in the desert in your own backyard), and defend the downtrodden, the exploited, the weak, and the oppressed. Religion (the kind I would criticize) is simply the translation of the world’s principles into liturgical language. True religion, the kind that is focused on relieving the poor and keeping oneself unstained by the world, is an ascetic warfare on the world and an ascetic conquest of the self, by which in both cases, we overcome the Evil One. True religion is not a sigh of frustration and defeat but a horn of challenge. As C.S. Lewis has said, Christianity is not defense but attack. We defend the weak, but we attack the dragon.

One of the most basic forms of attack, that helps us solidify our sense of resistance and rejection of the world (imo), is boycotting. You can boycott fear in a workplace (like I did), or you can do it in defense of others.

Recently, I was at a restaurant and the manager was yelling furiously at an employee, taunting and threatening him. I walked to the cashier, canceled our order, and explained that I won’t do business with someone who abuses workers, tries to make them afraid, and attacks their dignity. The manager came up and apologized for doing it in public, and I explained that it’s even worse to do it in private, where he’s free from accountability. I cut them off for six months, because it is the duty of Christians to defend the weak, the poor, and the dignity of work and of mankind, and to resist evil and work toward its downfall.

Some months later, I was in a supermarket, and the manager was pacing the front of the store, screaming over a cell phone at an employee who wasn’t coming to work, telling her she was fired. I stepped to the counter and informed the clerk, in the full hearing of all, that the behavior was illegal and immoral. The manager had not only violated the rights of this worker, but had tried to use shame and fear as weapons, and to exude toughness and volatility in the midst of a culture that is already overflowing with it and awash in the resultant blood and violence.

A while back, Yahoo was handed a request by the Chinese government for information that would identify dissidents contributing to internet discussion that was critical of China’s government or form of government (i.e. corruption, abuse of power, exploitation, and a history of genocide, torture, and untold agony). Without the slightest fuss, Yahoo offered up these people, who were then taken from their families (where they were breadwinners) and imprisoned for the best years of their lives. Google, so you know, was given the same request and not only completely refused, but moved their data servers offshore, where they could not even be seized by force. Google’s stated attitude (on this and other repeated occasions), is that there are some things you just don’t do. A common slogan at Google, posted around facilities, used in boardrooms, and guiding the decisions of decision-makers is “Don’t be evil.” That’s not the kind of organization Google wishes to be.

Frankly, I sent a gmail invite to every yahoo user in my contact list, suggesting they upgrade to a provider with better features and superior intangible benefits. I realize it’s a greed-based grabbing culture, and people flock to Walmart (one could write books on the evil giant) for a few dollars and change, helping sentence its workers, and all employees of companies who follow their model, to low wages, laughable insurance and benefits and, essentially, a shorter lifespan and poorer health, inadequate medical prevention and care, and all the attendant ills of chronic poverty. For a few dollars, we don’t care if we deal with the Devil himself. But we should.

You start talking boycotts, and the apostles of the dominant culture in our midst will pull out every “bible” verse about compliance and meekness they can lay hands on, not caring if it really adds up to the Christian worldview or just a bundle of proof texts that help prop up the world with religious stakes and servants. Expedience rules, just as it does at the checkout counter. Why would we expect any other kind of behavior from those in the line? It’s quite predictable. They’ll conjure up shibboleths of evangelical radio or left-wing newsletters, but in fact they’ll never talk of St. John Chrysostom and scores of other Saints who publicly denounced illicit behavior and worked diligently and openly to have it stopped. This will either have escaped their notice or be dismissed as the very proof-text piffle they’re offering at the outset.

Amazingly, you’ll even hear that boycotts is ‘participation in the world’ instead of resistance to it! You’ll hear it in the car on the way to Walmart, ironically, but that’s what’ll be said. In the end, the lines are drawn not between those who attend our churches and those who don’t, but rather between those who worship at the altars of the world and those who smash them, because they’re altars of human sacrifice. You’ll hear all kinds of “but we should be tolerant” until you realize they’re chewing on human bones.

The question is the same question Google asked, to our shame: What kind of people do we choose to be? The Walmarts of the world would dress up expediency as virtue: “Do something for your family, save money at Walmart.” If you haven’t heard the ad their running, you should. They ask you to look only at the surface, think only of instant gratification, consider only the end and ignore the means. The very basis of the conversation is anti-Christian.

Pretty it up, dress it up in a cassock, and lay it on the altar, but it’s still excrement with the stench and stain of the world. And we’re still facing the question of whether, as more and more people are gobbled up, pressed down, turned into means to an end that all good men must reject, we will get up off our lard asses and fight back, for ourselves and for them. For the very dignity of being human beings, made in God’s image, and for the sanctity of even the basic quest for goodness. If we can’t save the world, and deliver it from The World – the dominant culture – the world system – the evil artifice and Babel of principalities and powers, can we at least get up the gumption to get off the sofa and chuck a spear at it? And refuse to eat its dead.

That’s what it is. Eating the dead. And when the apostle said to at least stay away from blood and from strangled things, I see in that exhortation a command to correct, admonish, and resist the world’s edifice that it builds on the backs of the poor, the minds of all men, and the souls of the weak. It is hard to be a knight in the desert. If it were easy, everyone would be doing it. Remember the 80/20 rule, and hold the line. And I for one will be made stronger and more likely to stand, because you’re standing.

Happiness

“The doctrine of beatific vision, borrowed by St. Augustine from the Neo–Platonists, whereby man’s destiny is to become completely happy in the possession of the vision of the divine essence, is unknown to the Greek patristic Tradition. Man’s desire is rather the transformation of the desire for happiness into a non–utilitarian love which does not seek its own.” – Fr. John Romanides

Living Sermons on the Mount

“The most interesting thing about Christianity is the ascetics, because they make all of Christ’s talk about the Kingdom of God make sense.” (From Not of This World, St. Herman Press)

Patristics is Asceticism

“The patrisitic tradition is neither a social philosphy nor an ethical system, nor is it religious dogmatism: it is a therapeutic treatment… The spiritual energy of the soul that prays unceasingly in the heart is a physiological instrument which everyone has and which requires healing. Neither philosophy nor any of the known positive or social sciences is capable of healing this instrument. That can only be done through the Fathers’ neptic and ascetic teaching. Therefore those who are not healed usually do not even know of the existence of this instrument.” – Fr. John Romanides

What ascesis means for alms

“The bodies of fellow human beings must be treated with greater care than our own. Christian love teaches us to give our brethren not only spiritual gifts, but material gifts as well. Even our last shirt, our last piece of bread must be given to them. Personal almsgiving and the most wide-ranging social work are equally justifiable and necessary. The way to God lies through love of other people and there is no other way. At the Last Judgment I shall not be asked if I was successful in my ascetic exercises or how many prostrations I made in the course of my prayers. I shall be asked, did I feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit the sick and the prisoners: that is all I shall be asked.” – Saint Maria Skobtsova of Paris [source]

Mysterium of Holy Matrimony

“Where the flesh is one, one is the spirit too. Together they pray, together prostrate themselves, together perform their fasts; mutually teaching, mutually exhorting, mutually sustaining. Equally are they both found in the Church of God; equally at the banquet of God; equally in straights; in persecutions, in refreshments. Neither hides from the other; neither shuns the other; neither is troublesome to the other; the sick is visited, the indigent relieved, with freedom. Alms are given without danger of torment; sacrifices without scruple; daily diligence without impediment; there is no stealthy singing, no trembling greeting, no mute benediction. Between the two echo psalms and hymns; and they mutually challenge each other which shall better chant to their Lord. Such things when Christ sees and hears, He joys. To these He sends His own peace. Where two are, there withal is He Himself. Where He is, there the evil one is not.” – the Christian Tertullian [cited here]

Theology as Theosis

“This aspect of theology is especially emphasized by St. Maximus the Confessor. According to Maximus, theology is the last and highest “stage” of spiritual development in man; it is the accomplishing mode of a Christian’s experience of deification. Maximus interprets this experience as a liturgical one, exercised by man in the world before God. As a culmination of this “cosmic liturgy,” man receives in grace God’s communication, that is, the knowledge of the Holy Trinity in theologia.” – p. 42 [Light from the East: Theology, Science, and the Eastern Orthodox Tradition, by Alexei V. Nesteruk]

“It is clear from this passage that theology for Maximus–that is, the knowledge of God as he is in himself–is granted only in the mystical union with God, at the last stage of deification, which is not an instant act but is preceded by a long spiritual development (katharsis). This highest state of union with God was granted to saints–for example, to Moses, who on the Sinai mountain, entered the mysterious darkness of God, and to apostles at the mountain of transfiguration. Developing this insight by Maximus, St. Gregory Palamas argued later that it is the saints who are the only true theologians, for only they received the full communion with God: “Through grace God in His entirety pentrates saints in their entirety, and the saints in their entirety penetrate God entirely. By virtue of the saints and the Faithers, theology acquires, so to speak, an extended historical dimension, because “the Fathers are liturgical persons who gather around the heavenly altar with the blessed spirits. Thus they are always contemporary and present for the faithful.” This is why Patristic theology is the living, incarnate Orthodox faith, which never agest and is always present in the mind of the church.” – p. 42, Ibid.

Theology vs. Academics

“We see that this approach to theology, based on the personal and ecclesial experience of God, makes it clear that authentic Patristic theology radically differs from what is understood by the term theology among modern academics.” – p. 42, [Light from the East: Theology, Science, and the Eastern Orthodox Tradition, by Alexei V. Nesteruk]

“According to The Philokalia’s definition, in order to receive a gift of theologia one must be nearly a saint.” – p. 43, Ibid.

Runway Lights in the Desert

“Angels are the light of monks, and monks are the light of men.”

Comment: Orthodoxy is not actually a belief system; it’s more closely understood as an asceticism. The essence of the Faith, in every aspect, is ascetic. Even our theology is apophatic – or negative theology – a theology of prayerfully removing from our minds all false images. In fact, standing in prayer is our most basic ascetic activity and study of theology, and the Church’s prayers are monastic prayers. Our fasts, likewise, are the monastic fasts. So it is with the many pious labours of the faithful. Our Bishop, who stands with us as our champion, like David calmly facing the giant Goliath, is usually a monastic. Unlike him, we may be married, but even marriage, lived out in an Orthodox manner, is an ascetic feat. With the monks, we are all engaged in a continual war with the passions, remembering that, in a war, it is possible to be defeated. The Orthodox are at war with Death, the ultimate affliction, the Enemy, the ultimate foe of creation, and the World, the ultimate delusional system. The monks are the warrior caste among us, training us in the strategies and tactics of battle. The monks go before us in theosis, as runway lights in the desert for all we “lay-ascetics’. We refer to the monks as earthly angels, the earthly hosts, surrounding us at all times with prayers, amid more angels than stars. There are banners in the invisible world, trumpets in this seeming silence, incense thick in the air, and the din of heroes. – DD

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