Posts
 |
| Source: uncutmountainsupply.com |
"Save yourself, and thousands around you will be saved.”
- St. Seraphim of Sarov
“God and the devil are fighting there, and the battlefield is the heart of man.”
- Fyodor Dostoevsky
A major preoccupation for many people today are the so-called “culture wars.” Conservatives and Liberals - or religious and secular - fighting it out on both an ideological and practical level, and claiming to know the truth on issues as far-ranging as political, moral, social, ethical, and ultimately, religious. As the old group Buffalo Springfield sang: “Hurrah for my side.” There is a real shortage of humility as these positions are presented as unassailable and hardly open to “negotiation.” Over time, positions often harden, rather than soften, to a more flexible level of mutual understanding.
I simply bring that current cultural situation to mind as we are asked to meditate on the Parable of the Publican and the Pharisee, and exhorted to “flee from the pride of the Pharisee,” blinded by his self-righteousness. And that is a spiritual condition that is further aggravated by condescension, judgmentalism and hypocrisy. Hardly traits that allow for any openness to the stirrings of the Holy Spirit! Therefore, anyone fully immersed in “culture wars” is put on notice that the temptation to become like the Pharisee is ever-present. That is not to impugn the rightness of a particular position – on the moral and ethical level – we need to bear in mind. Yet, the more “right” one is – and certain of being right – the more that self-righteousness is ever-present and threatening to engulf one in the process.
There is a remarkable passage from St. Gregory the Theologian (+391) who makes this abundantly clear when speaking of his own need to pay heed to himself (as a priest) before pointing out the sinfulness of other human beings. In other words, the “spiritual warfare” of “saving oneself” by honest self-reflection, confession of one’s own sins, and a basic sense of being caught up in the same struggle as one’s ideological “enemy” is the true starting point before venturing out into the dangerous terrain of culture wars. As St. Gregory writes:
“I have not yet spoken about the war within – even within ourselves – that rages among th passions. We are engaged in war with them night and day, brough on by our “lowly body,” sometimes in secret and sometimes openly, and by the turmoil that sweeps over us like a wave from above and below, whirling through our sensations and the other delights of this life, and by the “miry clay” in which we are stuck, and the “law of sin that wars against the law of the Spirit” and is attempting to destroy the royal image in us, as we well as whatever foundations of divine self-communication has been laid in us … Before one has gained control if this, as far as he is able, and has sufficiently purified his way of thinking, and before one has surpassed the others in growing near to God, I am certain it is unsafe to receive the office of leading souls or of mediating between God and human beings … “
Oration 2, 91
Aleksander Solzhenitsyn went right to the “heart” of the matter, when after suffering for years at the hands of a godless and authoritarian regime, he realized the deeper issue before us all:
“if only it were so simply! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being.”
Perhaps blogging away, and crushing the arguments of our culture opponents, is not the surest way to the Kingdom of God. If we begin with the Truth of the Gospel, and a humble acknowledgment of our own sinfulness, combined with a deep awareness of our dependency on the mercy and grace of God, then the acceptance of the “spiritual warfare” within may produce a greater fruitfulness of heart.
