Let's accept as a given that we can err by either ignoring the rules of the Church altogether or by treating religious rites as the end goal rather than a means to an end. If someone wants to be a spiritual libertarian and argue against the value of the Church Tradition altogether or if in the other extreme someone insists on a Pharisaic interpretation of the Church's teaching on fasting and other rites, then I cannot address both extremes at once. However if we can agree that the spiritual ascesis that we aspire to is a journey that we travel under the guidance of a spiritual father, then we can agree for the sake of this discussion that there is a progression of which rules we follow at which stage in our spiritual life.
My personal litmus test in answering "which rules should I follow right now?" is first answering "why do I seek to follow this rule?" I say this to the person who says "no" to most of the rules in the same open ended manner as the person who says "yes" to most of the rules. If each of these two people share the same struggle as I do the answer is "I don't really know why I do or don't want to follow this rule or that." We struggle in our self-awareness as we have discussed with the elevator concept so this has a natural negative effect on our capacity for decision-making when deciding whether a certain ascetic act is personally beneficial.
How do I know if I am simply following rules to check a box without really ever experiencing or even expecting an effect of my actions on my relationship with God? For example, I may discuss with my spiritual father whether I should abstain from foods for a certain time as part of my fast. I will discuss elsewhere the effect of this question has on the length of the fast but for now the question is very simple: should I have a cup of tea in the morning on the way to work? I may do so as a result of an inflated sense of self thinking - be it consciously or subconsciously - "I am a good enough Christian to do so" rendering my intended act of asceticism a sin of pride. In contrast, if I follow the words of St. Anthony and do "what I find in my heart to do and follow God" I may still have that cup of tea in thanksgiving, reverence and maybe even acknowledgement before God that I am not strong enough to abstain in my fast. Therefore I argue that the following of a rule or not has no obligatory effect on my relationship with God and must be understood to be dependent on my intent.
The solution comes not when we focus on the religious act itself but on the relationship behind the act. Before I ask "should I do this?" I must first ask "does God exist?" If my answer is no then my doing or not doing of the act has become entirely irrelevant. If my answer is yes then the next question should be "does He want a relationship with me?" If I don't think so then it becomes clear why I don't feel so strongly about religion. Now if, as in the Orthodox concept, I see my religion as a means to engage God then I must ask "will this act bring me closer to Him?" Some may say "you don't know what will bring you closer to God, so you should just do everything and hope that something will work." To me that is like someone who wants to win the lottery and decides to buy every number combination to guarantee his success.
Personally, I don't think our relationship with God is a lottery game that we hope to "win" in the end. It is an ongoing dynamic struggle with ourselves to allow God to work in us. Just as the lack of existence of God renders the greatest sacrifice meaningless, the existence of God sanctifies whatever meaningless little sacrifice I make to be closer to Him. Once again, it really boils down to whether or not I believe He exists and wants a relationship with me. If not then nothing matters but paradoxically if so then once again nothing matters as long as I am sincere in my desire to find Him.
St. Augustine taught us that we can do whatever we want if we love God. The consequence of the Love of God is obedience but the consequence of obedience is not necessarily love. I pray that God gives me strength and helps me to grow in my Love for him so that I may pray and fast more strictly with joy. I also pray that he forgives me for my lack of joy as I follow some rules begrudgingly. But most of all I rejoice that despite my constant inability to follow rules for the sake of rules because of my weakness He is patient with me and allows me to grow in my relationship with Him at my own snail's pace.
Saturday, March 15, 2014
Friday, March 14, 2014
Carrying My Cross
We are told to take our cross and follow Christ. What does that mean?
We know the basics of denying ourselves and practicing discipline through fasting and prayer. Is this the cross? I say no. This is merely the wood. Each individual's cross is more than just the generic raw material that God uses for everyone. My cross is very personal to me and is fashioned by God for me to carry to my personal Golgotha.
I prepare myself in Gesthemane asking for life to be different asking "why can't you make my cross less this or more that?" but the answer is always the same which is "My Grace is sufficient." He does not force the cross upon us but rather calls us as friends to take up our cross and follow Him. He doesn't say "a cross" but "your cross" with the deliberate message that we are not just unique in our gifts but also our struggles.
Do we know our cross? Do we understand what it means to follow Him? Most of the disciples did not. They thought they did. They thought they would see Christ through to the end of His life on earth but only one of them did. I wonder sometimes if that is why all the others became martyrs. I wonder if St. John's martyrdom was at the Golgotha of Christ. One thing I can say with reasonable certainty is that God does not need our martyrdom but rather our desire to put him above all else including our own life. If we can prove, not just to Him but also ourselves, that we are willing to give up our life then He may or may not ask us to follow through.
What keeps us from following him? Do we not want to pick up the cross? Do we put it down when we get too tired? Are we too attached to our Isaac to follow through on God's request? The essence of our personal cross is that it must cut to the core of our being. It can't be a superficial sacrifice like a practicing vegan following the rules of Lent. God knows what we are holding on to. What we don't want to lose. What may be permissible to us but not necessarily beneficial. He wants us to move away from these things and run towards Him. Without looking back. Without taking our hands off the plow. Without wondering what we are missing "out there."
Abba Ammonas taught us that the narrow and hard way (Matthew 7:14) is to "control your thoughts, and to strip yourself of your own will, for the sake of God." Every time we pray Our Father we say "Thy will be done" but too often we want Him to make His will our will. I pray that I allow my will to be broken through my struggles. I pray that He makes His will more clear to me. I pray that I may accept that will as hard as it may sound at first. I pray that He gives me the strength to carry it and follow Him to the end.
We know the basics of denying ourselves and practicing discipline through fasting and prayer. Is this the cross? I say no. This is merely the wood. Each individual's cross is more than just the generic raw material that God uses for everyone. My cross is very personal to me and is fashioned by God for me to carry to my personal Golgotha.
I prepare myself in Gesthemane asking for life to be different asking "why can't you make my cross less this or more that?" but the answer is always the same which is "My Grace is sufficient." He does not force the cross upon us but rather calls us as friends to take up our cross and follow Him. He doesn't say "a cross" but "your cross" with the deliberate message that we are not just unique in our gifts but also our struggles.
Do we know our cross? Do we understand what it means to follow Him? Most of the disciples did not. They thought they did. They thought they would see Christ through to the end of His life on earth but only one of them did. I wonder sometimes if that is why all the others became martyrs. I wonder if St. John's martyrdom was at the Golgotha of Christ. One thing I can say with reasonable certainty is that God does not need our martyrdom but rather our desire to put him above all else including our own life. If we can prove, not just to Him but also ourselves, that we are willing to give up our life then He may or may not ask us to follow through.
What keeps us from following him? Do we not want to pick up the cross? Do we put it down when we get too tired? Are we too attached to our Isaac to follow through on God's request? The essence of our personal cross is that it must cut to the core of our being. It can't be a superficial sacrifice like a practicing vegan following the rules of Lent. God knows what we are holding on to. What we don't want to lose. What may be permissible to us but not necessarily beneficial. He wants us to move away from these things and run towards Him. Without looking back. Without taking our hands off the plow. Without wondering what we are missing "out there."
Abba Ammonas taught us that the narrow and hard way (Matthew 7:14) is to "control your thoughts, and to strip yourself of your own will, for the sake of God." Every time we pray Our Father we say "Thy will be done" but too often we want Him to make His will our will. I pray that I allow my will to be broken through my struggles. I pray that He makes His will more clear to me. I pray that I may accept that will as hard as it may sound at first. I pray that He gives me the strength to carry it and follow Him to the end.
Saturday, March 1, 2014
Spiritual Depth
In the study of physical motion, human beings can only perceive acceleration and are able to quickly accommodate to fixed velocity. An example of this is the constant motion of the earth which we never perceive because earth never slows down or speeds up. Another example, the motion of an elevator, can be likened to our spiritual lives.
If an elevator had no numbers to light up and tell you what floor you are on you would only appreciate motion when the car is accelerating or decelerating, and you would only know that the elevator is moving by keeping track in your mind of the sequence of acceleration and deceleration events. If you put Dori from Finding Nemo on a long enough elevator ride with no numbers (because remember she can read) she would eventually think that the elevator is perfectly still even though it is still moving. In our spiritual lives we notice the acceleration events that stand out in our minds as "something that brought me closer to God." We also identify sins as deceleration events that either slow down our progress or if after enough deceleration events our direction changes to moving further away from God. This may be why in Revelation 3:16 we are warned about being lukewarm, a state where we are stagnant and not moving towards God (hot) but we do not have the wakeup call of a deceleration event that tells us we were actually moving away from God (cold). You know when you are trying to go up and accidentally get into a down elevator? Sometimes it's not until the elevator slows down at the bottom of the descent that you realize you are going to the basement.
Another challenge of our spiritual elevator is that it is infinite and does not have a "top floor" that we will arrive at in our physical bodies. Anthony Bloom explains this at the start of the Knocking on the Door chapter of Beginning to Pray: "we should think ... in terms of a progression from depth to depth, from height to height, whichever formula you prefer, so that at every step we already possess something which is rich, which is deep, and yet always longing for and moving towards something richer and deeper." There is also, unfortunately, no bottom floor. We say "hitting rock bottom" as an analogy but this is only a perception of deceleration at an otherwise arbitrary point in time. We didn't have to wait to stoop so low and we certainly could have come up with new and even more creative ways to sin - we stop not because it's truly the bottom but because God's Grace has shown us a glimpse of our true selves.
In our quest to be a relationship with God I commonly fall into two traps: 1) wondering why I am not growing spiritually and 2) comparing my spiritual growth to others. If we realize how little insight we have into our spiritual state (this infinite elevator with no numbers) we will avoid doing both of these things because if we cannot discern if our elevator is going up, down, or standing still then how can we even begin to comment on someone else's elevator? The only thing we can really do is pay close attention and not miss the awareness that comes with an acceleration or deceleration event, the former to encourage us and the latter to chasten us ... but this is not the best news.
St. Paul experienced the same struggle and contemplated in Romans 8:26 - "Likewise the Spirit also helps in our weaknesses. For we do not know what we should pray for as we ought, but the Spirit Himself makes intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered." The Holy Spirit is with us on the elevator. Even when we are going down. Even when we are jumping up and down to make the elevator go down faster. Even when we are curled up in the corner of the elevator hiding and pretending there is no elevator ride. He intercedes for us when we do not know how to do it ourselves. How much more will He help us when we are participating in the journey.
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