Faithfully Enduring Suffering

The Lord allows the enemy to tempt us in order to prove us, in order to strengthen our spiritual powers in our struggle against the enemy, and so that we ourselves may see more clearly towards what our heart inclines, whether it inclines to patiences, hope, and love and in general to virtue, or to irritability, incredulity, murmuring, blasphemy, malice, and despair. Therefore we must not be despondent, but must good-humoredly and patiently bear spiritual darkness that descends upon our soul, the fire that weakens and inclines us to impatience and malice, the affliction and oppression, knowing that all these things are indispensable in the order of spiritual life, that by these the Lord is proving us.

Do not let us blaspheme against the true way – the way of holy faith and virtue, and do not let us prefer the evil way. We are free, and must strengthen ourselves by every means and with all our power in faith and virtue, unto the laying down of our life for the way of truth; and how can this be if we have no temptations? (St. John of Kronstadt, My Life in Christ, pp. 189-190)

Demonic Influence vs. Free Will

“…angelic and demonic thoughts as gifts or temptations from the outside involve some degree of free choice. While it is not in a person’s power to decide whether a demonic or angelic thought will pass through one’s mind, people can choose to act on it or to ignore it. Upon determining the origin of a given thought, a person is quite free to reject the thought or admit it by lingering on it. No matter how enticing a demonic thought maybe, it can only urge not coerce. This can be seen both in the account of the fall and of Christ’s temptation in the wilderness.

Being made in the image of God, each human being receives as a royal birthright the sovereign power of the intelligence and the free will. In fact, Saint Nicodemus of the Holy Mountain, well-aware of the radiant examples of the martyrs and great ascetics, writes,

‘God bestowed on our will so much freedom and power, that even if every kind of sensual provocation, ever kind of demon, and the entire world united to take arms against our will and vehemently to make war against it, despite all that, our will remains entirely free to despise that attack and will what it chooses to will or not will what it does not choose to will.’”

(Fr. Alexis Trader, Ancient Christian Wisdom and Aaron Beck’s Cognitive Therapy, p. 60)

The Impulsive: A Zeal which is Not Enlightened

Some aspects of human behavior haven’t changed through the centuries.  St. Isaac the Syrian comments below on impetuousness of youth, something as observable today as it was 1400 years ago.  Another phrase sometimes applied to such impetuosity comes from St. Paul – they have a zeal which is not enlightened (Romans 10:2).

St. Isaac is referring here to young monks who imagine themselves as being spiritual giants and geniuses whereas old monks with years of experience in the spiritual warfare would never make the claims of spiritual progress that the young inexperienced monks imagine for themselves.  It often happens with people new in the faith as well.  They read THE LADDER OF DIVINE ASCENT and though practicing the faith for only a few months rashly judge themselves already to have attained the top steps of the ladder and the heights of heaven.   As St. Isaac says if they continue with their self-deception they will go insane – especially when they find themselves struggling with the most elementary aspects of virtue and purity.

“Even venerable elders, who from youth to old age have exhausted themselves with asceticism in the vineyard of the Son, practicing excellent disciplines, are scarcely accounted worthy of partially receiving one of the gifts of the land of peace. But youths, with the impetuosity of their nature and with disorderly fervor, audaciously rush upon the mysteries of the Fathers hidden in their books. Or else they receive by instruction and hearsay from others that which they ought not. Then grace cuffs them and educates them to delay and not to rush headlong upon lofty things, but, on the contrary, to labor quietly in the vineyard until such a time as they attain to true rest. If, however, they continue in their audacity, grace withdraws from them a little, and they are seized by ten thousand temptations. They are smitten by the passions of the body, the very same passions which they formerly held in contempt, and they are tormented by dark periods of soul and abused by the demons. Violent uprisings, as well as confusion and listlessness of mind, assail them. If they do not recollect themselves and put themselves in order, they will go insane. O how many afflictions, trials, snares, and stumbling blocks in this, our Lord’s, narrow way are arrayed against those who, with the impulses of nature, disorderly fervor, keen wits, and the accepting [or hearsay] from others, wish to enter the abode of life and partake of the honeycomb of the Spirit!” (The Ascetical Homilies of St. Isaac the Syrian, pg. 401)

Revealing Temptations

“Those Christians who truly love God prove their love by bearing temptations and are strengthened in love: they are tested, like gold in fire, and by this testing become friends of God. On the contrary, those who do not love God ‘fall away as dross, since giving way to the enemy they leave the field of battle laden with guilt, either because of the laxity of their mind or because of their pride. They were not worthy to receive the power that the saints had working with them…’ In this way, temptations reveal who is a friend and who is an enemy of God, who is faithful and who is not. Temptations are therefore that ‘crisis’, a judgment before the Last Judgment, where the separation of the sheep from the goats takes place.” (Hilarion Alfeyev, The Spiritual World of Isaac the Syrian, pgs. 98-99)

Tempting Those with Power

While cases of sexual misconduct and moral lapses by clergy do grab the headlines in a nation with a voyeuristic appetite for scandal and hypocrisy among church leaders, the church itself needs to learn from those stories of how secular and civil leaders are brought down by moral scandals.  The church assumes the right to make moral proclamations to the nation, but then views the moral lapses of its own leaders as personal failings but not as public spectacles.   Civil leaders on the other hand, in an extrovert driven culture, are always public spectacles and so their personal moral failures are always viewed as of public interest.  Which is why leadership moral lapses by church leaders are viewed by the public as particularly heinous hypocrisy and certainly are considered fair game for how the public should judge the church’s moral authority as a whole.

John Baldoni writing in the WASHINGTON POST suggests If David Petraeus Wrote a Book On Leadership (30 Nov 2012)  it should address “how a leader can recognize when he is too full of himself, and too tempted by indulgence, that it harms not only his character but also the organization’s.”

Baldoni says leaders need some lessons in how to deal with temptation, because for leaders temptation turns out not just to be personal but impacts an entire organization.  He says:

“Every human being is at some point tempted to do things that aren’t right. But when such temptation comes to a leader, its lure may be more potent and its effect, if indulged, more catastrophic. The result is often a loss of that trust, which was the very source of leverage the leader had to get things done in an organization.”

Trust is the true power that leaders have.  In a meritocracy, that trust is earned, and it can be lost.  Some however in positions of hierarchical power forget that trust is earned and they assume the power they have is despotic and so can never be challenged let alone taken away from them.  Baldoni continues:

“When people rise to positions of authority, they grow accustomed to having things their way. One of the unfortunate effects of this is that they often develop a soft spot for flattery and a blind spot for criticism and warnings.”

His warning is certainly echoed by many things one can read in THE PHILOKALIA.

It is interesting in the church that often those in power want the authority of the Apostle Peter – the rock upon whom they believe the church is built.  They see this power as being unquestionable and that it gives them the right to lord it over others.   Yet, Peter was not the disciple whom Jesus loved who laid close to his breast.  The beloved disciple was the youngest of the Twelve, the least of the brethren in an age conscious hierarchical society.

There are many signs of power in the church, not all of them are under a Byzantine miter.   There is the power to bind and loose, to forgive, to show mercy to Christ in the least of His brothers and sisters, to heal the sick, to evangelize, to speak in tongues, to prophesy, to teach, to administer, to bring people to repentance,  to drive out demons and especially to love.

In THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV, Dostoyevsky contrasts the power of the Grand Inquisitor to intimidate and cower people with the power of Christ to love and raise the dead.   Both had power, and the people certainly feared the power of the Grand Inquisitor which was real – the power to arrest and imprison Christ.  It is the power of  secular Rome.   It was not however the power of eternity or of divinity.  That was found only in the love of Christ.

Power corrupts, they say.  Power also weakens, for it lays us open to more temptations.   While, like the famous butterfly effect of chaos theory, each sin committed by any Christian causes the whole body to suffer, the sins of leadership are exponentially more destructive in their effect on the entire Body.  Good reason for church leaders to have a real sense of what power and powers they have access to as they endeavor to lead by example in the church.

The Wages of Sin is Death

“The classical Christian teaching is that death originated in the sin of Adam and Eve and spread to all of humankind, since all sinned (Rom. 6:23) and the ‘sting of death is sin’ (1 Cor. 15:56). This mystery is deeply and profoundly embedded in human personal and social reality and is not subject to scientific or empirical verification. Yet both common experience and modern medical science tell us something about it. We have established statistical correlations between overeating (gluttony) and heart disease, sexual promiscuity and dangerous sexually transmitted diseases, and excessive drinking and liver disease, to name just a few. We are only beginning to realize how the stresses generated by various kinds of deception, vengefulness, and manipulation in the workplace and in the home can lead to a whole range of life-threatening illnesses. Where the vices rule, death draws near.” (Vigen Guroian, Life’s Living towards Dying, pgs. 42-43)

Judging the Sinner Who is Tempted

“A brother questioned Abba Poeman saying, ‘If I see a brother whom I have heard is a sinner, I do not want to take him into my cell, but when I see a good brother I am happy to be with him.’ The old man said, ‘If you do a little good to the good brother, do twice as much for the other. For he is sick. Now, there was an anchorite called Timothy in a coenobium. The abbot, having heard of a brother who was being tempted, asked Timothy about him, and the anchorite advised him to drive the brother away. Then when he had been driven away, the brother’s temptation fell upon Timothy to the point where he was in danger. Then Timothy stood up before God and said, “I have sinned. Forgive me.” Then a voice came which said to him, ‘Timothy, the only reason I have done this to you is because you despised your brother in the time of his temptation.’” (Poeman in The Sayings of the Desert Fathers, pgs.176-177)

The Eye: Portal for Good and Evil

“If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away; it is better for you to lose one of your members than for your whole body to be thrown into hell.”    (Matthew 5:29)

“The command to get rid of troublesome eyes, hands, and feet is an example of our Lord’s use of dramatic figures of speech. What he was advocating was not a literal physical self-maiming, but a ruthless moral self-denial. Not mutilation but mortification is the path of holiness he taught, and ‘mortification’ or ‘taking up the cross’ to follow Christ means to reject sinful practices so resolutely that we die to them or put them to death.

What does this involve in practice? Let me elaborate and so interpret Jesus’ teaching: ‘If your eyes cause you to sin because temptation comes to you through your eyes (objects you see), then pluck out your eyes. That is, don’t look! Behave as if you had actually plucked out your eyes and flung them away, and were now blind and so could not see the objects which previously caused you to sin. Again, if your hand or foot causes you to sin, because temptation come to you through your hands (things you do) or your feet (places you visit), then cut them off. That is: don’t do it! Don’t go! Behave as if you had actually cut off your hands and feet, and had flung them away, and were now crippled and so could not do the things or visit the places which previously cause you to sin.’ This is the meaning of ‘mortification’.

One wonder if there has ever been a generation in which this teaching of Jesus were more needed or more obvious applicable than our own, in which the river of filth (of pornographic literature and sex films) is in spate. Pornography is offensive to Christians (and indeed all healthy-minded people) first and foremost because it degrades women from human beings into sex objects, but also because it presents the eye of the beholder with unnatural sexual simulation. If we have a problem of sexual self mastery, and if nonetheless our feet take us to these films, our hands handle this literature, and our eyes feast on the pictures they offer to us, we are not only sinning but actually inviting disaster.” (John R.W. Stott, The Message of The Sermon on the Mount: Matthew 5-7 pgs.89-90)

“The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is sound, your whole body will be full of light; but if your eye is not sound, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!”   (Matthew 6:22-23)

Christians: In not Of the World

Writing about Christians under the Roman Empire, Oliver Clement says:

“The attitude of these Christians displays neither aggression nor compliance, neither the temptation to lose their identity in the world by following its fashions, nor the opposite temptation to set themselves apart by making themselves eternally distinct. Christians conform to the law so long as it does not contradict their conscience. In the latter instance – and we have seen this in the case of the martyrs – they disobey, but accept the sanctions of the law. Their basic requirement is not to overturn the law but to rise above it. Their behavior is by way of example and intercession. In a society governed by Roman law which accords an absolute and indisputable value to private property, they practice mutual assistance and, with a free originality, a certain sharing of possessions. In a society that takes eroticism for granted and where utterly heedless cruelty holds sway in regard to the embryo and the new born child, Christians bear their witness to the chastity of conjugal love and they oppose abortion and the desertion of infants. Their communities engender fellowship. They try to return good for evil and to serve humanity even if the State now and then unleashes public opinion against them. In times of widespread anguish and of depressing skepticism they give thanks for life and are able to lead others to give thanks for it. Nourished by the joy of the resurrection, to which the luminous and free art of the catacombs testifies, this Church of the second century is a ‘spiritual republic’ that discreetly but radically transforms human relationships.” (Oliver Clément, The Roots of Spritual Mysticism, pgs.286-287)

This world is not offering God’s Kingdom, but rather offers us a choice: the world or the Kingdom.

“Our culture of comfort and convenience offers allurements altogether as personally enslaving as totalitarian regimes are politically imprisoning.”    (Ralph Wood,  The Gospel According to Tolkien:  Visions of the Kingdom in Middle-earth, pg 74)

Free will and Freedom

This is the 15^th blog in this series which began with Adam & Sin, Paradise and Fasting.  The previous blog is Free Will.

“In other words, ‘Paradise is the state of being in which there is no valuation or distinction’ between good and evil: likewise, the kingdom of God is ‘beyond’ good and evil.  … One can say, Berdyaev continues, that  ‘it is bad that the distinction between good and evil has arisen, but it is good to make the distinction once it has arisen; it is bad to have gone through the experience of evil, but it is good to know good and evil as a result of this experience.”  (John Witte & Frank Alexander (eds), THE TEACHINGS OF MODERN CHRISTIANITY, p 583)

The effects of Eve and Adam having exercised their free will are obvious in the Book of Genesis.  Keeping in mind that Adam’s story is also a typology, and that Adam represents all who are human, we recognize that Eve and Adam’s use of free will to reject God’s lordship is the story of each of us.  We each behave this way.  We make choices which are self serving rather than loving God and neighbor.  The effect of our choices breeds even more choices, each of which also can lead us further away from God, or not.  That choice, that exercise of the free will, is still ours.  Though admittedly now with the image and likeness of God in us being buried under the mud of sin, it becomes increasingly difficult to recognize let alone choose the good.   Melitio of Sardis (d. ca 170AD) notes:

“But when Adam tasted of the tree… His legacy is ‘not chastity but promiscuity, not imperishability but decay, not honor but dishonor, not freedom but slavery, not royalty but tyranny, not life but death, not salvation but destruction.’”  (Peter Bouteneff, BEGINNINGS: ANCIENT READINGS OF THE BIBLICAL CREATION NARRATIVES, p 67)

Humans now must navigate their way through a world in which no choice we make might necessarily lead us to God.  Torah for the Jews was one answer to this dilemma – simply obey the Law rather than making choices and one can find one’s way back to God and to following God’s will.  Christianity recognized a further difficulty with this – something was still wrong with human nature.  Whether or not humans follow Torah, humans still die, and the effects of sin, namely death, are not dealt away with by either obedience to Torah or by repentance.  Something more needed to be done to save humanity from its own sinfulness and from death.

“For we must always remember this—neither the world nor the devil can violate our freedom; they can only subject us to temptation.” (Jack Sparks, VICTORY IN THE UNSEEN WARFARE,  p 75)

Even following Torah completely did not automatically regenerate in humans a love for God and for one’s neighbor.   Humans might follow Torah selfishly – to get God’s favor or even to try to manipulate God into “having” to bless the person.  Humans might use Torah to condemn others who they feel don’t live up to Torah’s standards.  Humans might use Torah to argue that they have nothing to repent of or change in their hearts.

“We were not created by our heavenly Father to sin but to share in His goodness and life.  Therefore, sin is profoundly unnatural!  Sin is a distortion of living that is especially beneath the dignity of those who are called to follow Christ. … Yes, the gift of freedom can be abused.  The story of the fall in the Book of Genesis points to the tragic consequences of the abuse of freedom.  When Adam and Eve chose to disobey the commandment of God, they sinned.  Their action expressed a self-centered desire to live apart from God, to live autonomous existences.  Unfortunately, their sin- their abuse of freedom—has consequences that effected their relationship not only with God but also with each other and the whole of creation.  The story points to the danger of seeking to live apart from God.  As such, it is a story that has a profound significance for everyone.  … Sin can distort our identity and can harm others as well.  As St. Gregory of Nyssa says, sin creates ‘an ugly mask over the beauty of the image.’”  (Kyriaki Karidoyanes FitzGerald, PERSONS ON COMMUNION, pp 32-33)

Christianity understands Christ as not simply forgiving past sins, but restoring humanity to the glory God had given it from the beginning.  Christ brings an end to all that separates humans from God – to healing what was distorted in the human heart.  Christ also ends death’s tyranny over humanity.  Death no longer holds humans captive, for Christ is risen from the dead, destroying death and Satan.

Next:  Sin and Death