We
are living in a demanding world. Demands for better
education, demands for political rights, for the
abolition of all forms of discrimination, for a superior
quality of life; we even
demand to be loved. Our entire contemporary
civilization is based on demands. And we may protest, so
we can have our demands met. And yet, something is
missing. We can feel it every day, when we go to work,
or when we try to sleep at night. Something is missing.
We don't feel as though we are actually living. We sense
there is a void - an existential void. And yet! We are
Orthodox! We may go to Church, attend services, receive
Holy Communion, go to
confession... but something is always missing and we
don't know what it is. To some, this void can draw them
away from the Church, because they believe Orthodoxy
is inadequate.
Others simply pay no attention to this feeling and they
repress it. In both cases, the reaction is exactly the
same as that of atheists or of fellow-citizens who are
indifferent to Ecclesiastic matters and who simply blot
out pieces of their soul in order to conceal the
existential void that they occasionally feel.
Recently,
"atheist buses" made their appearance in London, through
a campaign that was initiated by a young woman - a
twenty year old atheist - a British woman called
Ariane Sherine. Along with their human load,
about 800 buses were also laden with an advertisement
that said: "There's
probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life".
However, that slogan happened to be a response to a
previous slogan by Protestants, which
advertised....Hell! It was not advertising God; it was
advertising the Hell that awaits those who do not
believe in God. In Orthodox theology,
"Hell" and "Paradise"
are God Himself, and not some
"boiling cauldrons of sulphur". That very same Grace of
God is felt by some as a burning flame (love burns those
who hate...), while others feel that it deifies them -
refreshes them. The same thing is observed with
chocolate: when one who is not allergic eats chocolate,
it gives him a sensation of pleasure. But when one is
allergic to chocolate, it will cause him pain and
discomfort. According to Saint Isaac the Syrian, "the
damned are 'chastised' by the whip of God's love... It
is absurd for one to believe that sinners 'in Hell' are
deprived of God's love, for God's love - which is
sequential to one's knowledge of Him - is given to all,
indiscriminately, but it acts in two different ways: it
chastises sinners, and delights the righteous"
[Homily 84]. The chocolate is not to blame; the problem
lies in the organism's reaction to it.
We choose
to be
allergic to God.
The Orthodox Church provides psychotherapeutic means for
curing the allergies of our soul
against
the "chocolates" of God's Grace... In Protestant
theology however, Hell is nothing more than a place
where God will be depositing the wicked, in order to
punish them for their wickedness. That is the reason
they especially like to stress Hell and threaten the
unfaithful with it - i.e., we
,the
"good guys".
are warning you
,the
"bad guys",
that if you don't do what you must, then a hand will
reach down and grab you, and take you away to a place of
punishment. Be good, whether you want to or not,
otherwise you will be
tortured..
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The fear
of Hell is real in Orthodoxy too of course; if we do not
want to be cured, we can choose to remain "allergic" to
God. But this "fear" has nothing to do with God or His
Chocolates, but rather with our own will to be cured.
This type of fear is a creative one and it helps us in
our struggle towards therapy, but it is also accompanied
by the anticipated "reward" of enjoying chocolate in the
future. After all, that is the reason we struggle to be
cured. When "fear" is perceived with its Western
inference, it becomes a fear of punishment; it is the
ominous fear that "if you don't do what I want, you'll
see what will happen to you", or, "if you're not good, I
will torture you". Fortunately, our God is not a
judicial God. Just like every parent who loves his child
isn't even-handed. God's "punishments" are educative,
but He does not desire to punish anyone - not even the
worst pedophile or murderer. In the words of Saint Isaac
the Syrian: "Do not refer to God as 'just', for
God's justice is not made apparent in
your
works... He is benevolent, both towards the wicked and
the impious."
[Homily 60] He allows punishments to befall us, but not
because He desires it. Thus, when the time comes, He
will distribute His "Chocolates" to everyone, regardless
whether they deserve them or not. He will hand out His
chocolates to our common, human nature. He will not mete
out His Judgment in the manner that we imagine, but as
the Elder Paisios had said: ".... I mean, Christ
will not say, 'hey you, come here! what have you done?'
or 'you are going to Hell and you are going to Heaven';
but rather, each one of us will compare himself to the
others and will proceed to where he knows is his place"
[Elder Paisios the Hagiorite, Homilies, Vol.4]. Saint
Simeon the New Theologian says exactly the same thing,
when writing: "....and quite simply, when faced
with that terrible Day of Judgment unto eternal life and
in that ineffable Light, each sinful person shall see
the one who is the same as him, and shall be judged by
him." [On Repentance, Homily V, Sources
Chretiennes 96, 434.]
Given the
above clarifications, we can perhaps comprehend why the
the atheists' exasperation is justified, to a certain
degree. They object to the "religiose" Protestants'
insistence on depriving them of their freedom! Because
it is one thing to be afraid and to urge yourself to be
cured of your deadly allergy against a sweet loving God,
and another thing to be forced to do what you are told,
or else "The Master" will submit you to torture. The
former involves a freely-chosen struggle, and the latter
involves enslavement to an oppressor. Since God is such
a dynast according to that kind of theology, certain
atheists were under the impression that with means such
as this slogan, they would be signalling liberation as
well as a path towards the joy of life.
That both
Protestantism and
contemporary Atheism have their roots in the
16th century may perhaps be a coincidence. But it also
may not. Protestantism implies "protesting". It began as
a protest against the arbitrariness of the Latin "Church",
which demanded to have an infallible human - a Big
Boss - in the place of Christ. That boss had taken
it to himself to impose and to mete out - according to
his judgment - both Hell and Heaven. The Protestants
protested, and, instead of correcting the wrongs and
returning to the Orthodox Tradition, they decided to
protest against almost the entire tradition of the
Saints and to hold on to only certain parts of it,
selectively (for example the Holy Bible).
Interpretation would again have meant human involvement,
except that now, there wasn't just one "Big Boss",
but many, smaller bosses. Each one of them protested
against whatever didn't suit him personally, and would
thereafter begin his own "church", demanding his own "truth".
In this
sense, the contemporary atheist movement is likewise a "protest"
- but of an extreme nature. They are no longer
protesting against the Holy Traditions of God, whose aim
was (and is) the healing of our soul's allergies; they
are protesting against God generally, and against (whichever)
Religion. This phenomenon began with the
unweaving of the theological "Carpet"
of the Latin "Church" by people inside her who sought
worldly wages and knowledge, and ended in the rug being
thrown out of the window altogether, since it was
gradually ruined by the Protestants who had undone the
biggest part of the fabric and left behind large gaping
holes... The atheists of the West in turn regarded the
shredded old rug a useless thing and threw it away
altogether, demanding total freedom. They brought
protesting to its natural end.
So, we
now return to the "void" that we often feel inside us. I
wonder, are we truly Christians? When someone
once said to the Elder Sophrony "Elder, I have become a
Christian!" he replied "I have been trying to for years,
and I don't know if I have managed to." The Elder
Porphyry spoke in the same way. Are we Christians? Do we
look at Christ? Do we have any experience of His
Uncreated Light? Do we at least see Christ in the person
of our fellow-man? If not, then what kind of Christians
are we? Is it really enough for us to be baptized? "No",
says Saint Simeon the New Theologian.:
"...Here I am
again, addressing those who claim that they have
the Holy Spirit without being sure of this, and
who
think that they acquired it
inside them,
through Holy Baptism.
They, who think
they possess the treasure (2 Cor.
4:7) but are aware that their self is entirely vacant of
it; (...) those who admit that
they felt absolutely nothing during Holy Baptism, but
who nevertheless believe that from that moment, the gift
of God has resided inside them and continues to remain
inside their soul, without them perceiving it and
feeling it; (...)
and not only those , but also
those who claim that
they never had any awareness of the Grace of the Holy
Spirit through theory ('sighting')
and revelation, except through their faith and their
contemplations alone, and who have not received Grace
through experience but have held it inside them, by just
listening to divine words. (...)
If baptized ones “don Christ”
(Gal.3:27), then what are they
donning? God. So, doesn’t one who has “donned God”
mentally understand and “see” what he has donned? (...)
If the one who dons God doesn’t feel anything, then what
has he donned?
Therefore, to you, God is a…. “nothing”!
(…)
Because only the
dead do not feel anything when they are being clothed
and I am afraid that
perhaps those who assert these things are indeed dead
and naked.".
[Saint Simeon, Ethical Homily 5, 'Orthodox Kypseli',
Thessaloniki 1999].
It is like having a
house - the house of our soul - in which, through
Baptism and Chrismation, we have cleaned and installed
Light inside! A huge lightbulb. We also have the
lightbulb switched on. The house is flooded with Light.
But sadly, we keep our eyes - the eyes of our soul -
tightly shut! That Light does not exist for us! We move
about in the house and we trip over things and injure
ourselves. We are not actually blind; we just refuse to
open our eyes and see. We don't want to. We don't try.
The result is the same. Whether we have the Light (which
we do), or we don't have it, nothing changes. The
difference between us and someone who has no Light
whatsoever (e.g. an atheist or unbaptized person) is
that even if the the latter wanted to open his eyes, he
would still not be able to see. He has not acquired
electricity or Light. We (the baptized) can open our
eyes whenever we want, and be able to see. If the
unbaptized opens his eyes , he might just notice the
Light in neighboring houses and wish to likewise install
electricity and a lightbulb (=be baptized). But what
about us? Where is our God? Where is our Light? Why
don't we see it? God must indeed be a "nothing"
to us, as Saint Simeon wrote. Aren't we in fact "atheist
Christians" in that sense? We need only to open our
eyes and see Him. God calls to us every day, every hour,
every moment, to do just that. (See
the chapter titled "Experience of God" from the book "The
Gurus, the Young Man and the Elder Paisios", by
D.Farasiotis).
We might say "But the
Saints were special cases! Spiritual champions! What can
we, the plain and ordinary athletes of Christ achieve?"
Well, the Saints were also ordinary people like all of
us. By idealizing them to such a degree might not imply
respect at times, but also weakness and truancy from
labours on our part. There are not only the "official"
Saints; there are thousands of "next-door" saints who
could well be even greater than many familiar saints.
The Elder Paisios had spoken of a man working as a
porter, carrying luggage,
a lay person, who had actually resurrected someone from
the dead or of a Greek-American family man , who,
out of ignorance did not even observe the formal fasts,
and yet, because of his love, patience and selflessness,
was
blessed with a vision of the Uncreated Light,
without even realizing what he had seen! Finally, the
learned and extremely educated fr.Nicholas Loudovikos
had met
simple folk in tiny villages talking about the Uncreated
Light with unprecedented simplicity, as though
it were an ordinary, everyday occurrence for them!
All of the above incidents tell us that the sighting of
God is neither that distant, nor is it only for the few
and chosen. There may be a Saint, filled with the holy
spirit, hidden inside the little old lady who is working,
sweeping the stairs, next door to us, while we go
searching for God in the mountains and the deserts.
Recently,
while walking through the streets of London, I noticed
that certain "Christian religious organizations" had
likewise mounted their own responses on buses, in their
passionate desire to answer the atheists' message. It
would have given me great joy, if I had seen a bus with
an Orthodox response, such as:
THE
GRACE OF GOD IS PARADISE TO THOSE WHO LOVE AND HELL TO
THOSE WHO HATE.
IT IS
HIS UNCREATED LOVE. GET TO KNOW AND LIVE PARADISE, IN
YOUR EVERYDAY LIFE
-The
Orthodox Church-
