THE ORTHODOX WORLD-VIEW
1. THE ORTHODOX
WORLD-VIEW
2. LIFE TODAY HAS BECOME
ABNORMAL
3. TWO FALSE APPROACHES
TO SPIRITUAL LIFE
4. WHAT WE CAN DO
5. THE ORTHODOX WORLD-VIEW
6. CONCLUSION
1. THE
ORTHODOX WORLD-VIEW
Before beginning my talk, a word or two on why it is
important to have an Orthodox world-view, and why it is more difficult
to build one today than in past centuries.
In past centuries—for example, in 19th century
Russia—the Orthodox world-view was an important part of Orthodox life
and was supported by the life around it. There was no need even to
speak of it as a separate thing—you lived Orthodoxy in harmony with the
Orthodox society around you, and you had an Orthodox world-view
provided by the Church and society. In many countries the government
itself confessed Orthodoxy; it was the center of public functions and
the king or ruler himself was historically the first Orthodox layman
with a responsibility to give a Christian example to all his subjects.
Every city had Orthodox churches, and many of them had services every
day, morning and evening. There were monasteries in all the great
cities, in many cities, outside the cities, and in the countryside, in
deserts and wildernesses. In Russia there were more than 1000
officially organized monasteries, in addition to other more unofficial
groups. Monasticism was an accepted part of life. Most families, in
fact, had somewhere in them a sister or brother, uncle, grandfather,
cousin or someone who was a monk or a nun, in addition to all the other
examples of Orthodox life: people who wandered from monastery to
monastery, and fools-for-Christ. The whole way of life was permeated
with Orthodox kinds of people, of which, of course, monasticism is the
center. Orthodox customs were a part of daily life. Most books that
were commonly read were Orthodox. Daily life itself was difficult for
most people: they had to work hard to survive, life expectancy was not
great, death was a frequent reality—all of which reinforced the
Church's teaching on the reality and nearness of the other world.
Living an Orthodox life in such circumstances was really the same thing
as having and Orthodox world-view, and there was little need to talk of
such a thing.
Today, on the other hand, all this has changed. Our
Orthodoxy is a little island in the midst of a world which operates on
totally different principles—and every day these principles are
changing for the worse, making us more and more alienated from it. Many
people are tempted to divide their lives into two sharply distinct
categories: the daily life we lead at work, with worldly friends, in
our worldly business, and Orthodoxy, which we live on Sundays and at
other times in the week when we have time for it. But the world-view of
such a person, if you look at it closely, is often a strange
combination of Christian values and worldly values, which really do not
mix. The purpose of this talk is to see how people living today can
begin to make their world-view more of one piece, to make it a whole Orthodox world-view.
Orthodoxy is life. If we don't live Orthodoxy, we simply are not
Orthodox, no matter what formal beliefs we might hold.
Life in our contemporary world has become very
artificial, very uncertain, very confusing. Orthodoxy, it is true, has
a life of its own, but it is also not very far from the life of the
world around it, and so the life of the Orthodox Christian, even when
he is being truly Orthodox, cannot help but reflect it in some way. A
kind of uncertainty and confusion have also entered in Orthodox life in
our times. In this talk we will try to look at contemporary life, and
then at Orthodox life, to see how better we might fulfill our Christian
obligation to lead other-worldly
lives even in these quite terrible times, and to have an
Orthodox Christian view of the whole of life today that will enable us
to survive these times with our faith intact.
2. LIFE TODAY HAS BECOME ABNORMAL
Anyone who looks at our contemporary life from the
perspective of the normal life lived by people in earlier times—say,
Russia, or America, or any country of Western Europe in the 19th
century—cannot help but be struck by the fact of how abnormal life has become today. The
whole concept of authority and obedience, of decency and politeness, of
public and private behavior—all have changed drastically, have been
turned upside down except in a few isolated pockets of people—usually
Christians of some kind—who try to preserve the so-called
"old-fashioned" way of life.
Our abnormal life today can be characterized as spoiled, pampered. From infancy
today's child is treated, as a general rule, like a little god or
goddess in the family: his whims are catered to, his desires fulfilled;
he is surrounded by toys, amusements, comforts; he is not trained and
brought up according to strict principles of Christian behavior, but
left to develop whichever way his desires incline. It is usually enough
for him to say, "I want it!" or "I won't do it!" for his obliging
parents to bow down before him and let him have his way. Perhaps this
does not happen all the time
in every family, but it
happens often enough to be the rule
of contemporary child-rearing, and even the best-intentioned parents do
not entirely escape its influence. Even if the parents try to raise the
child strictly, the neighbors are trying to do something else. They
have to take that into consideration when disciplining the child.
When such a child becomes an adult, he naturally
surrounds himself with the same things he was used to in his childhood:
comforts, amusements, and grown-up toys. Life becomes a constant search
for "fun" which, by the way, is a word totally unheard of in any other
vocabulary; in 19th century Russia they wouldn't have understood what
this word meant, or any serious civilization. Life is a constant search
for "fun" which is so empty of any serious meaning that a visitor from
any 19th-century country, looking at our popular television programs,
amusement parks, advertisements, movies, music—at almost any aspect of
our popular culture—would think he had stumbled across a land of
imbeciles who have lost all contact with normal reality. We don't often
take that into consideration, because we are living in this society and
we take it for granted.
Some recent observers of our contemporary life have
called the young people of today the "me generation" and our times the
"age of narcissism," characterized by a worship of and fascination with
oneself that prevents a normal human life from developing. Others have
spoken of the "plastic" universe or fantasy world in which so many
people live today, unable to face or come to terms with the reality of
the world around them or the problems within themselves.
When the "me generation" turns to religion—which has
been happening very frequently in the past several decades—it is
usually to a "plastic" or fantasy form of religion: a religion of
"self-development" (where the self remains the object of worship),
brainwashing and mind-control, of deified gurus and swamis, of a
pursuit of UFO's and "extra-terrestrial" beings, of abnormal spiritual
states and feelings. We will not go into all these manifestations
there, which are probably familiar enough to most of you, except to
discuss a little later how these touch on the Orthodox Christian
spiritual life of our days
It is important for us to realize, as we try
ourselves to lead a Christian life today, that the world which has been
formed by our pampered times, makes demands on the soul, whether in
religion or in secular life, which are what one has to call totalitarian. This is easy enough
to see in the mindbending cults that have received so much publicity in
recent years, and which demand total allegiance to a self-made "holy
man"; but it is just as evident in secular life, where one is
confronted not just by an individual temptation her or there, but by a
constant state of temptation that attacks one, whether in the
background music heard everywhere in markets and businesses, in the
public signs and billboards of city streets, in the rock music which is
brought even to forest campgrounds and trails, and in the home itself,
where television often becomes the secret ruler of the household,
dictating modern values, opinions, and tastes. If you have young
children, you know how true this is; when they have seen something on
television how difficult it is to fight against this new opinion which
has been given as an authority by the television.
The message of this universal temptation that
attacks men today—quite openly in its secular forms, but usually more
hidden in its religious forms—is: Live for the present, enjoy yourself,
relax, be comfortable. Behind this message is another, more sinister
undertone which is openly expressed only in the officially atheist
countries which are one step ahead of the free world in this aspect. In
fact, we should realize that what is happening in the world today is
very similar whether it occurs behind the Iron Curtain or in the free
world. There are different varieties of it, but there is a very similar
attack to get our soul. In the communist countries which have an
official doctrine of atheism, they tell quite openly that you are to:
Forget about God and any other life but the present; remove from your
life the fear of God and reverence for holy things; regard those who
still believe in God in the "old-fashioned' way as enemies who must be
exterminated. One might take, as a symbol of our carefree, fun-loving,
self-worshipping times, our American "Disneyland"; if so, we should not
neglect to see behind it the more sinister symbol that shows where the
"me generation" is really heading; the Soviet Gulag, the chain of
concentration camps that already governs the life of nearly half the
world's population.
3. TWO FALSE APPROACHES TO SPIRITUAL
LIFE
But what, one might ask, does all this have to do
with us, who are trying to lead, as best we can, a sober Orthodox
Christian life? It has a lot to do with it. We have to realize that the
life around us, abnormal though it is, is the place where we begin our own Christian life.
Whatever we make of our life, whatever truly Christian content we give
it, it still has something of the stamp of the "me generation" on it,
and we have to be humble enough to see this. This is where we begin.
There are two false approaches to the life around us
that many often make today, thinking that somehow this is what Orthodox
Christians should be doing. One approach—the most common one—is simply
to go along with the times:
adapt yourself to rock music, modern fashions and tastes, and the whole
rhythm of our jazzed-up modern life. Often the more old-fashioned
parents will have little contact with this life and will live their own
life more or less separately, but they will smile to see their children
follow after its latest craze and think that this is something harmless.
This path is total disaster for the Christian life;
it is the death of the soul. Some can still lead an outwardly
respectable life without struggling against the spirit of the times,
but inwardly they are dead or dying; and—the saddest thing of all—their
children will pay the price in various psychic and spiritual disorders
and sicknesses which become more and more common. One of the leading
members of the suicide cult that ended so spectacularly in Jonestown
four years ago was the young daughter of a Greek Orthodox priest;
satanic rock groups like Kiss—"Kids in Satan's Service"—are made up of
ex-Russian Orthodox young people; the largest part of the membership of
the temple of satan in San Francisco, according to a recent
sociological survey—is made up of Orthodox boys. These are only a few
striking cases; most Orthodox young people don't go so far astray—they
just blend in with the anti-Christian world around them and cease to be
examples of any kind of Christianity for those around them.
This is wrong. The Christian must be different from
the world, above all from today's weird, abnormal world, and this must
be one oft he basic things he knows as part of his Christian
upbringing. Otherwise there is no point in calling ourselves
Christian—much less Orthodox
Christians.
The false approach at the opposite extreme is one
that one might call false spirituality. As translations of Orthodox
books on the spiritual life become more widely available, an the
Orthodox vocabulary of spiritual struggle is placed more and more in
the air, one finds an increasing number of people talking about
hesychasm, the Jesus Prayer, the ascetic life, exalted states of
prayer, and the most exalted Holy Fathers like St. Symeon the New
Theologian, St. Gregory Palamas, and St. Gregory the Sianite. It is all
very well to be aware of this truly exalted side of Orthodox spiritual
life and to have reverence for the great saints who have actually lived
it; but unless we have a very
realistic and very humble
awareness of how far away all of us today are from the life of
hesychasm and how little prepared we are even to approach it, our
interest in it will be only one more expression of our self-centered,
plastic universe. "The me-generation goes hesychast!"—that is what some
are trying to do today; but in actuality they are only adding a new
game called "hesychasm" to the attractions of Disneyland.
There are books on this subject now that are very
popular. In fact, Roman Catholics are going in very big for this kind
of thing under Orthodox influence and themselves influencing other
Orthodox people. For example, there is a Jesuit priest, Fr. George
Maloney, who writes all kinds of books on this subject and translates
St. Macarius the Great and St. Symeon the New Theologian and tries to
get people in everyday life to be hesychasts. They have all kinds of
retreats, usually "charismatic"; people are inspired by the Holy
Spirit, supposedly, and undertake all types of these disciplines which
we get from the Holy Fathers, and which are far beyond the level at
which we are today. It is a very unserious thing. There is also a lady,
Catherine de Hueck Doherty (in fact, she was born in Russia and became
a Roman Catholic), who writes books about Poustinia, the desert life, and Molchanie, the silent life, and all
these things which she tries to put into life like you would have some
fashion for a new candy. This, of course, is very unserious and is a
very tragic sign of our times. These kind of exalted things are being
used by people who have no idea of what they are about. For some people
it is only a habit or a pastime; for others who take it seriously, it
can be a great tragedy. They think they are leading some kind of
exalted life and really they have not come to terms with their own
problems inside of them.
Let me re-emphasize that both of these extremes are to be
avoided—both worldliness and super-spirituality—but this does not mean
that we should not have a realistic awareness of the legitimate demands
which the world makes upon us, or that we should cease respecting and
taking sound instruction from the great hesychast Fathers and using the
Jesus prayer ourselves, according to our own circumstances and
capacity. It just has to be on our level, down to earth. The point
is—and it is a point that is absolutely necessary for our survival as
Orthodox Christians today—we must realize our situation as Orthodox
Christians today; we must realize deeply what times we live in, how
little we actually know and feel our Orthodoxy, how far we are not just
from the saints of ancient times, but even from the ordinary Orthodox
Christians of a hundred years or even a generation ago, and how much we
must humble ourselves just to survive
as Orthodox Christians today.
4. WHAT WE CAN DO
More specifically, what can we do to gain this
awareness, this realization, and how can we make it fruitful in our
lives? I will try to answer this question in two parts: first,
concerning our awareness of the world around us, which as never before
in the history of Christianity has become our conscious enemy; and
second, concerning our awareness of Orthodoxy, which, I am afraid, most
of us known much lass than we should, much less than we have to know if we wish to keep it.
First, since whether we wish it or not we are in the world (and its effects are
felt strongly even in a remote place like our monastery here), we must
face it and its temptations squarely and realistically, but without
giving in to it; in particular, we must prepare our young people for
the temptations facing them, and is it were inoculate them against
these temptations. We must be aware that the world around us seldom
helps and almost always hinders the upbringing of the child in the true
Orthodox spirit. We must be ready every day to answer the influence of
the world by the principles of a sound Christian upbringing.
This means that what a child learns at school must
constantly be checked and corrected at home. We cannot assume that
something he is going to learn at school is simply something that is
profitable or secular and has nothing to do with his Orthodox
upbringing. He may be taught useful skills and facts (although many
schools in America today are failing miserably even at this; many
school teachers tell us that all they can do is keep the children in
god order in class without even teaching them anything), but even if he
gets this much, he is also taught many wrong attitudes and
philosophies. A child's basic attitude towards and appreciation of
literature, music, history, art, philosophy, even science, and of
course life and religion—must come first of al not from school, for the
school will give you all this mixed up with modern philosophy; it must
come first from the home and Church, or else he is bound to be
miseducated in today's world, where public education is at best
agnostic, and at worst, openly atheistic or anti-religious. Of course,
in the Soviet Union all this is forced upon the child, with no religion
whatsoever and an active program of making the child an atheist.
Parents must now exactly what is being taught their
children in education courses, which are almost universal today in
American schools, and correct it at home, not only by a frank attitude
to this subject (especially between fathers and sons—a very rare thing
in American society), but also by a clear setting forth of the moral
aspect of it which is totally absent in public education.
Parents must know just what kind of music their
children are listening to, what is in the movies they see (listening
and seeing together with them when necessary), what kind of language
they are exposed to and what kind of language they use, and give the
Christian attitude to all this.
Television—in households where there is not enough
courage to throw it out the window—must be strictly controlled and
supervised to avoid the poisonous effects of this machine which has
become the leading educator of anti-Christian attitudes and ideas in
the home itself, especially to the young.
I speak about the raising of children because this
is where the world first strikes its blows at Orthodox Christians and
forms them in its image; once wrong attitudes have been formed in a
child, the task of giving him a Christian education becomes doubly
difficult.
But it is not only children, it is all of us, who
are facing the world which is trying to form us in anti-Christianity,
by means of schools, television, movies, popular music, and all the
other influences that pound in upon us, most of all in the big cities.
We have to be aware that what is being pounded in upon us is all of one
piece; it has a certain rhythm, a certain message to give us, this
message of self-worship, of relaxing, of letting go, of enjoying
yourself, of giving up any thought of the other world, in various
forms, whether in music, or in movies, television, or what is being
taught in schools, the way subjects are emphasized, the way the
background is given, and everything else; there is one particular thing
which is being given to us. It is actually an education in atheism. We
have to fight back by knowing just what the world is trying to do to
us, and by formulating and communicating our Orthodox Christian
response to it.
Frankly, from observing the way Orthodox families in
today's world live and pass on their Orthodoxy, it would seem that this
battle is more often lost than won. The percentage of Orthodox
Christians who retain their Orthodox identity intact and are not
changed into the image of today's world, is small indeed.
Still, it is not necessary to view the world around
us as all bad. In fact, for
our survival as Orthodox Christians we have to be smart enough to use
whatever is positive in the world for our own benefit. Here I will go
into a few points where we can use something in the world which seems
to have nothing to do directly with Orthodoxy in order to formulate our
Orthodox world-view.
The child who has been exposed from his earliest
years to good classical music, and has seen his soul being developed by
it, will not be nearly as tempted by the crude rhythm and message of
rock and other contemporary forms of pseudo-music as someone who has
grown up without a musical education. Such a musical education, as
several of the Optina elders have said, refines the soul and prepares
it for the reception of spiritual impressions.
The child who has been educated in good literature,
drama, and poetry and has felt their effect in his own soul—that is,
has really enjoyed them—will not easily become an addict of the
contemporary movies and television programs and cheap novels that
devastate the soul and take it away from the Christian path.
The child who has learned to see beauty in classical
painting and sculpture will not easily be drawn into the perversity of
contemporary art or be attracted by the garish products of modern
advertising and pornography.
The child who knows something of the history of the
world, especially in Christian times, and how other people have lived
and thought, what mistakes and pitfalls people have fallen into by
departing from God and His commandments, and what glorious and
influential lives they have lived when they were faithful to Him—will
be discerning about the life and philosophy of our own times and will
not be inclined to follow the first new philosophy or way of life he
encounters. One of the basic problems facing the education of children
today is that in the schools they are no longer given a sense of
history. It is a dangerous and fatal thing to deprive a child of a
sense of history. It means that he has no ability to take examples from
the people who lived in the past. And actually, history constantly
repeats itself. Once you see that, it becomes interesting how people
have answered problems, how there have been people who have gone
against God and what results came from that, and how people changed
their lives and became exceptions and gave an example which is lived
down to our own times. This sense of history is a very important thing
which should be communicated to children.
In general, the person who is well acquainted with
the best products of secular culture—which in the West almost always
has definite religious and Christian overtones—has a much better chance
of leading a normal, fruitful Orthodox life than someone who knows only
the popular culture of today. One who is converted to Orthodoxy
straight from "rock" culture, and in general anyone who thinks he can
combine Orthodoxy with that kind of culture—has much suffering to go
through and a difficult road in life before he can become a truly
serious Orthodox Christian who is capable of handing on his faith to
others. Without this suffering, without this awareness, Orthodox
parents will raise their children to be devoured by the contemporary
world. The world's best culture, properly received, refines and
develops the soul; today's popular culture cripples and deforms the
soul and hinders it from having a full and normal response to the
message of Orthodoxy.
Therefore, in our battle against the spirit of this
world, we can use the best things the world has to offer in order to go
beyond them; everything good in the world, if we are only wise enough
to see it, points to God, and to Orthodoxy, and we have to make use of
it.
5. THE ORTHODOX WORLD-VIEW
With such an attitude—a view of both the good things
and the bad things in the world—it is possible for us to have and to live an Orthodox world-view, that is, an Orthodox
view on the whole of life, not just on narrow church subjects.
There exists a false opinion, which unfortunately is all to widespread
today, that it is enough to have an Orthodoxy that is limited to the
church building and formal "Orthodox" activities, such as praying at
certain times or making the sign of the Cross; in everything else, so
this opinion goes, one can be like anyone else, participating in the
life and culture of our times without any problem, as long as we don't
commit sin.
Anyone who has come to realize how deep Orthodoxy
is, and how full is the commitment which is required of the serious
Orthodox Christian, and likewise what totalitarian demands the
contemporary world makes on us, will easily see how wrong this opinion
is. One is Orthodox all the time every day, in every situation of life,
or one is not really Orthodox at all. Our Orthodoxy is revealed not
just in our strictly religious views, but in everything we do and say.
Most of us are very unaware of the Christian, religious responsibility
we have for the seemingly secular
part of our lives. The person with a truly Orthodox world-view lives
every part of his life as Orthodox.
Let us, therefore, ask here: How can we nourish and
support this Orthodox world-view in our daily life?
The first and most obvious way is to be in constant
contact with the sources of Christian nourishment, with everything that
the Church gives us for our enlightenment and salvation: the Church
services and Holy Mysteries, Holy Scripture, the Lives of Saints, the
writings of the Holy Fathers. One must, of course, read books that are
on one's own level of understanding, and apply the Church's teaching to
one's own circumstances in life; then they can be fruitful in guiding
us and changing us in a Christian way.
But often these basic Christian sources do not have
their full effect on us, or don't really affect us at all, because we
don't have the right Christian attitude
towards them and towards the Christian life they are supposed to
inspire. Let me now say a word here about what our attitude should be
if we are to obtain real benefit from them and if they are going to be
for us the beginning of a truly Orthodox world-view.
First of all, Christian spiritual food, by its very
nature, is something living and nourishing; if our attitude towards it
is merely academic and bookish, we will fail to get the benefit it is
meant to give. Therefore, if we read Orthodox books or are interesting
in Orthodoxy only to gain information—or show off our knowledge to
others, we are missing the point; if we learn of the commandments of
God and the law of His Church merely to be "correct" and to judge the
"incorrectness" of others, we are missing the point. These things must
not merely affect our ideas, but must directly touch our lives and change them. In
any time of great crisis in human affairs—such as the critical times
right in front of us in the free world—those who place their trust in
outward knowledge, in laws and canons and correctness, will be unable
to stand. The strong ones then will be those whose Orthodox education
has given them a feel for
what is truly Christian, those whose Orthodoxy is in the heart and is
capable of touching other hearts.
Nothing is more tragic than to see someone who is
raised in Orthodoxy, has a certain idea of the catechism, has read some
Lives of Saints, has a general idea of what Orthodoxy stands for,
understands some of the services, and then is unaware of what is going
on around him. And he gives his children this life in two categories:
one is the way most people live and the other way is how Orthodox live
on Sundays and when they are reading some Orthodox text. When a child
is raised like that he is most likely not going to take the Orthodox
one; it is going to be a very small part of his life, because the
contemporary life is too attractive, too many people are going for it,
it is too much a part of reality today, unless he has been really
taught how to approach it, how to guard himself against the bad effects
of it and how to take advantage of the good things which are in the
world.
Therefore, our attitude, beginning right now, must
be down-to-earth and normal.
That is, it must be applied to the real circumstances of our life, not
a product of fantasy and escapism and refusal to face the often
unpleasant facts of the world around us. An Orthodoxy that is too
exalted and too much in the clouds belongs in a hothouse and is
incapable of helping us in our daily life, let along saying anything
for the salvation of those around us. Our world is quite cruel and
wounds souls with its harshness; we need to respond first of all with
down-to-earth Christian love and understanding, leaving accounts of
hesychasm and advanced forms of prayer to those capable of receiving
them.
So also, our attitude must not be self-centered but
reaching out to those who are seeking for God and for a godly life.
Nowadays, wherever there is a good-sized Orthodox community, the
temptation is to make it into a society for self-congratulation and for
taking delight in our Orthodox virtues and achievements: the beauty of
our church buildings and furnishings, the splendor of our services,
even the purity of our doctrine. But the true Christian life, even
since the time of the Apostles, has always been inseparable from
communicating it to others. An Orthodoxy that is alive by this very
fact shines forth to others—and there is no need to pen a "department
of missions" to do this; the fire of true Christianity communicates
itself without this. If our Orthodoxy is only something we keep for
ourselves, and boast about it, then we are the dead burying the
dead—which is precisely the state of many of our Orthodox parishes
today, even those that have a large number of young people, if they are
not going deeply into their Faith. It is not enough to say that the
young people are going to church. We need to ask what they are getting
in church, what they are taking away from church, and, if they are not
making Orthodoxy a part of their whole life, then it really is not
sufficient to say that they are going to church.
Likewise, our attitude must be loving and forgiving.
There is a kind of hardness that has crept into Orthodox life today:
"That man is a heretic; don't go near him;" "that one is Orthodox,
supposedly, but you can't really be sure;" "that one there is obviously
a spy." No one will deny that the Church is surrounded by enemies
today, or that there are some who stoop to taking advantage of our
trust and confidence. But this is the way it has been since the time of
the Apostles, and the Christian life has always been something of a
risk in this practical way. But even if we are sometimes taken
advantage of and do have to show some caution in this regard, still we
cannot give up our basic attitude of love and trust without which we
lose one of the very foundations of our Christian life. The world,
which has no Christ, has to be mistrustful and cold, but Christians, on
the contrary, have to be
loving and open, or else we will lose the salt of Christ within us and
become just like the world, good for nothing but to be cast out and
trodden underfoot.
A little humility in looking at ourselves would help
us to be more generous and forgiving of the faults of others. We love
to judge others for the strangeness of their behavior; we call them
"cuckoos" or "crazy converts." It is true that we should beware of
really unbalanced people who can do us great harm in the Church. But
what serious Orthodox Christian today is not a little "crazy?" We don't
fit in with the ways of this world; if we do, in today's world, we aren't serious
Christians. The true Christian today cannot be at home in the world; he
cannot help but feel himself and be regarded by others as a little
"crazy." Just to keep alive the ideal of other-worldly Christianity
today, or to get baptized as an adult, or to pray seriously, is enough
to put you into a crazy house in the Soviet Union and in many other
countries, and these countries are leading the way for the rest of the
world to follow.
Therefore, let us not be afraid of being considered
a little "crazy" by the world, and let us continue to practice the
Christian love and forgiveness which the world can never understand,
but which in its heart it needs and even craves.
Finally, our Christian attitude must be what, for
want of a better word, I would call innocent.
Today the world places a high value on sophistication, on being
worldly-wise, on being a "professional." Orthodoxy places no value on
these qualities; they kill the Christian soul. And yet these qualities
constantly creep into the Church and into our lives. How often one
hears enthusiastic converts especially, express their desire of going
to the great Orthodox centers, the cathedrals and monasteries where
sometimes thousands of the faithful come together and everywhere the
talk is of church matters, and one can feel how important Orthodox is,
after all. That Orthodoxy is a small drop in the bucket when you look
at the whole society, but in the great cathedrals and monasteries there
are so many people that it seems as though it is really an important
thing. And how often one sees these same people in a pitiful state
after they have indulged their desire, returning from the "great
Orthodox centers" sour and dissatisfied, filled with worldly church
gossip and criticism, anxious above all to be "correct" and "proper"
and worldly-wise about church politics. In a word, they have lost their
innocence, their unworldliness, being led astray by their fascination
with the worldly side of the Church's life.
In various forms, this is a temptation to us all,
and we must fight it by not allowing ourselves to overvalue the
externals of the Church, but always returning to the "one thing
needful": Christ and the salvation of our souls from this wicked
generation. We needn't be ignorant of what goes on in the world and in
the Church—in fact, for our own selves we have to know—but our
knowledge must be practical and simple and single-minded, not
sophisticated and worldly.
6. CONCLUSION
It is obvious to any Orthodox Christian who is aware
of hat is going on around him today, that the world is coming to its
end. The signs of the times are so obvious that one might say that the
world is crashing to its end.
What are some of these signs?
—The abnormality of the world. Never have such weird
and unnatural manifestations and behavior been accepted as a matter of
course as in our days. Just look at the world around you: what is in
the newspapers, what kind of movies are being shown, what is on
television, what it is that people think is interesting and amusing,
what they laugh at; it is absolutely weird. And there are people who
deliberately promote this, of course, for their own financial benefit,
and because that is the fashion, because there is a perverse craving
for this kind of thing.
—The wars and rumors of wars, each more cold and
merciless than the preceding, and all overshadowed by the threat of the
unthinkable universal nuclear war, which could be set off by the touch
of a button.
—The widespread natural disasters: earthquakes, and
now volcanoes—the newest one forming not far from here near Yosemite
Park in central California—which are already changing the world's
weather patterns.
—The increasing centralization of information on and
power over the individual, represented in particular by the enormous
new computer in Luxembourg, which has the capacity to keep a file of
information on every man living; its code number is 666 and it is
nicknamed "the beast" by those who work on it. To facilitate the
working of such computers, the American government plans to begin in
1984 the issuance of Social Security checks to persons with a number
(apparently including the code number 666) stamped on their right hand
or forehead—precisely the condition which will prevail, according to
the Apocalypse (ch. 13) during the reign of antichrist. Of course, it
doesn't mean that the first person to get himself stamped 666 is the
antichrist, or the servant of antichrist, but once you are used to
this, who will be able to resist? They will train you first and then
they will make you bow down to him.
—Again, the multiplication of false Christs and
false Antichrists. The latest candidate just this summer spent probably
millions of dollars advertising his impending appearance on world
television, promising to give at that time a "telepathic message" to
all the world's inhabitants. Quite apart from any occult powers that
might be involved in such events, we already know well enough the
opportunities for presenting subliminal messages by radio and
especially by television, as well as the fact that this can be done by
anyone with the technology for breaking into normal radio and
television signals, no matter how many laws there might be against it.
—The truly weird response to the new movie everyone
in America is talking about and seeing: "E.T.", which has caused
literally millions of seemingly normal people to express their
affection and love for the hero, a "saviour" from outer space who is
quite obviously a demon—an obvious preparation for the worship of the
coming Antichrist. (And incidentally, the movie editor of the official
Greek Archdiocese newspaper in America, an Orthodox priest, has
heartily recommended this movie to Orthodox people saying that it is a
wonderful movie which can teach us about love, and everyone should go
see it. There is quite a contrast between people who are trying to be
aware of what is going on, and those who are simply led into the mood
of the times.)
I could go on with details like this, but my purpose
is not to frighten you, but to make you aware of what is happening
around us. It is truly later than we think; the Apocalypse is now. And how tragic it is to see
Christians, and above all Orthodox young people, with this incalculable
tragedy hanging over their heads, who think they can continue what is
called a "normal life" in these terrible times, participating fully in
the whims of this silly, self-worshipping generation, totally unaware
that the fool's paradise we are living in is about to crash, completely
unprepared for the desperate times that lie just ahead of us. There is
no longer even a question of being a "good" or a "poor" Orthodox
Christian; the question now is: will our Faith survive at all? With
many, it will not survive; the coming Antichrist will be too
attractive, too much in the spirit of the worldly things we no crave,
for most men even to know
that they have lost their Christianity by bowing down to him.
Still the call of Christ comes to us; let us begin
to heed it. The clearest expression of this call today is coming from
the enslaved atheist world, where there is real suffering for Christ
and a seriousness of life which we are rapidly losing or have already
lost. One Orthodox priest in Romania, Fr. George Calciu, is now near
death in a communist prison for daring to challenge young seminarians
and students to put off their blind allegiance to the spirit of the
times and come forward to labor for Christ. After speaking of the
emptiness of atheism, he tells today's young people: "I call you to a
much higher flight, to total abandonment, to an act of courage which
defies reason. I call you to God. To the One that transcends the world
so that you might know an infinite heaven of spiritual joy, the heaven
which you presently grope for in your personal hell, and which you seek
even while in a state of non-deliberate revolt… Jesus has always loved
you, but now you have the choice to respond to His invitation. In
responding, you are ordained to go and bear fruit that will remain. To
be a prophet of Christ in the world in which you live. To love your
neighbor as yourself and to make all men your friend. To proclaim by
every action this unique and limitless love which has raised man from
the level of a serf to that of a friend of God. To the prophets of this
liberating love which delivers you from all constraint, returning to
you your integrity as you offer yourself to God."
Fr. George, speaking to young people who had little
inspiration to serve Christ's Church because they had accepted the
worldly opinion (common also among us in the free world) that the
Church is only a set of buildings or a worldly organization, calls them
to a deeper awareness of Christ's Church and of how our "formal
membership" in it is not enough to save us.
"The Church of Christ is alive and free. In her we
move and have our being, through Christ Who is her Head. In Him we have
full freedom. In the Church we learn of truth and the truth will set us
free (John 8:32). You are in Christ's Church whenever you uplift
someone bent down in sorrow, or when you give alms to the poor, and
visit the sick. You are in Christ's Church when you are good and
patient, when you refuse to get angry at your brother, even if he has
wounded your feelings. You are in Christ's Church when you pray: 'Lord,
forgive him.' When you work honestly at your job, returning home weary
in the evenings but with a smile upon your lips; when you repay evil
with love—you are in Christ's Church. Do you not see, therefore, young
friend, how close the Church of Christ is? You are Peter and God is
building His Church upon you. You are the rock of His Church against
which nothing can prevail… Let us build churches with our faith,
churches which no human power can pull down, a church whose foundation
is Christ… Feel for your brother alongside you. Never ask: 'Who is he?'
Rather say: 'He is no stranger; he is my brother. He is the Church of
Christ just as I am."
With such a call in our hearts, let us begin really
to belong to the Church of Christ, the Orthodox Church. Outward
membership is not enough; something must move within us that makes us
different from the world around us, even if that world calls itself
"Christian" and even "Orthodox." Let us keep and nourish those
qualities of the true Orthodox world-view which I mentioned earlier: a
living, normal attitude, loving and forgiving, not self-centered,
preserving our innocence and unworldliness even with a full and humble
awareness of our own sinfulness and the power of the worldly
temptations around us. If we truly live this Orthodox world-view, our
Faith will survive the shocks ahead of us and be a source of
inspiration and salvation for those who will still be seeking Christ
even amidst the shipwreck of humanity which has already begun
today.
Reprinted from The Orthodox Word
Vol. 18, No. 4 (105) July-August, 1982