Patience with God

     I read this sometime ago, and I don’t remember who wrote it, or where it’s from, or if the writer was even Orthodox (probably not), but I thought it was fairly insightful:

Patience with others is love.

Patience with one’s self is hope.

Patience with God is faith.

     If I was going to add anything, or change anything, then perhaps I would also say that faith is actually a combination of patience with God and patience with one’s self.  We are, after all, made in the Image and Likeness of God.  And God, as much as we may come to know Him, will always remain a mystery in His Essence.  Likewise, we will all remain somewhat of a mystery, even to our own selves.  At the innermost part of our own being, there is always something unfathomable and beyond the ability to know.

     But what I would really like to explore here is how we know God – as much as it is possible to know God in this life; and we most certainly can know him – through patience, and therefore through faith.  And I would like to explore how this patience we must have with God sometimes appears as doubt – or at least goes hand in hand with doubt.  And since it has a lot to do with doubt, it also has a lot to do with many of the current ailments that plague our society: secularism, atheism, and non-theism.  (I think that most people who claim to be atheists aren’t really atheistic – at least not of the Richard Dawkins type.  Most are simply non-theistic – God just isn’t part of the equation.  And if He is part of the equation, He’s not a very big part, or maybe you could say that He is beside the point.)

     First, we need to realize that doubt is not in opposition to Christianity.  I realize that it’s all too often presented as such, but it shouldn’t be.  For instance, growing up attending a Southern Baptist church, I heard plenty of sermons that emphasized why the Bible is the literal word of God – as if it was written as some kind of history text – and why we can be certain that the tomb really was empty, and this can be proven by stringing point A with point B with point C, and so on and so forth.[1]

     The truth is that the opposite of Christianity is not atheism.  The opposite of Christianity is anything that makes God – and by extension the Church – something that He is not.  This means that many forms of “Christianity” – prosperity gospels, views of God as vengeful and wrathful, “churchless” Christianity – are actually the true opposites of true Christianity.

     The problem with atheism – or at least one of the problems – is that it lacks patience.[2]  Many atheists grew up in rather “fundamentalist” Christian households – or they grew up in secular households, in which the only forms of “Christianity” that they came into contact with were those of a fundamentalist bent.  They become impatient, and ultimately have disdain, for this form of Christianity.  They then either reject God (and therefore Christianity) altogether, or they find what for them seems to be a suitable replacement.[3]

     When a Christian – or someone who is exploring theism of God as Person – begins to doubt, or begins to feel as if God is no longer present, this is where patience comes into the picture.  The patience must be with God, and the patience must be with one’s self.  If there is no patience, then two things could happen.  The first thing, atheism, is obviously not the correct outcome.  The second thing, to not question, is less obvious as the inappropriate choice.

     Not questioning leads to a faith that is no longer faith, for it becomes belief.  Belief and faith are not the same thing, otherwise our definition of patience with God as faith would not be true.  If anything, belief is what you have when you lack faith[4].  Faith as belief is not possible, whereas faith as trust, faith as surrender, faith as a way of being is not only possible, it is how faith must be lived in the daily life of the Christian.

     To choose atheism is to choose not to endure.  To choose belief over faith is to take the wide road.  And to choose faith is to take the narrow path.  It is hard and it is difficult, but it is infinitely more rewarding.  It is the choice to not settle for shortcuts – to not settle for anything other than the God of Christ, not the mythic sky god of so many “believers.”

     So what does the narrow path look like when it’s put into practice?  What does it mean to live by faith as a way of being, and as a way of being patient with God, patient with one’s self?  Some of it can be explained, and some of it cannot, because some of it is mystery that can only be lived as mystery.

     This is where we encounter faith as praxis.

     For the Orthodox, faith as praxis is faith as asceticism.  Asceticism should not be confused with the “moralism” of Protestantism.  Here is what the late Orthodox priest and writer John Romanides has to say on the matter:

     “The biblical tradition as preserved by the Fathers cannot be identified with or reduced to a system of moral precepts or Christian ethics. It is rather a therapeutical asceticism which is not daunted by any degree of malady of the heart or noetic faculty short of its complete hardening. To take the shape of this asceticism without its heart and core and to apply it to a system of moral precepts for personal and social ethics is to produce a society of puritanical hypocrites who believe they have a special claim on God's love because of their morality, or predestination, or both. The commandments of Christ cannot be fulfilled by any simple decision to do so or by any confidence in having been elected. A person with broken legs cannot run in the race no matter how much he wants to. One can do so only when one's legs have healed and have been restored to a competitive degree of power. In the same way, one cannot fulfill the commandments unless he undergoes the cleansing and illumination of his noetic faculty and reaches the threshold of glorification.”[5]

     The most important aspect of an ascetic life is repentance.  In fact, repentance is the beginning and the end.  It is the one aspect of “spirituality” that must utterly infuse all other aspects: prayer (for prayer to ever be noetic, it must be repentant), reading of Holy Scripture, liturgy, and work.  A Christianity that doesn’t have repentance is, to be blunt, not Christianity at all.  It may be a Christianity with plenty of belief, and it may be a Christianity with plenty of “good” people, but it is not a Christianity infused with faith.

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[1] As an Orthodox, I certainly believe in the whole of the Paschal Mystery: the crucifixion, the death, the descent into hell, the resurrection on the third day, the ascension into heaven, and Christ’s Second and Glorious Coming as an event that forever changed the world, altering the very fabric of reality, and allowing me to attain union with the Uncreated Energies of the Incarnate Logos.  However, this doesn’t mean that Holy Scripture is meant to be read as history lesson.  Holy Scripture, rather, is meant to be read as a letter, written to me from the Eternal Logos.  Holy Scripture is the Word of God, but not in the way that most Protestants understand it to be.  Protestantism, unfortunately, is severely tainted by the stain of scholasticism – as is the Roman Catholic Church.  But, to be fair, not all the Western Christian writers were/are guilty of this.  Personally, I have been sustained by writers such as Soren Kierkegaard, Dietrech Bonhoeffer, the Czech Catholic Tomas Halik, and the esteemed 20^th century theologian Hans Urs Von Balthasar.

[2] I am not the first writer to suggest such a thing.  Thomas Halik wrote an entire book about it, and the Orthodox writer – and convert from evangelical Christianity – Frank Schaeffer has written about it, as well.

[3] For me, this was “Eastern” religion – Buddhism and Taoism, specifically.  When religion is thought of as a way to make life more tolerable, or to bring about happiness (and this is the way Christianity is often presented in the majority of books that are popular today; self-help masquerading as Christianity) there are certainly better religions than Christianity.  Taoism, Buddhism, or the philosophy of ancient Greece (such as Stoicism) are more viable than the current trend of self-help Christianity because they tend to bring about a longer-lasting happiness – although it is a happiness that, in the end, cannot be sustained, for it lacks union with the Logos made flesh.

[4] Several Orthodox writers of the last few decades, such as Alexander Schmemann and Stephen Freeman, have made the point that Orthodoxy is not a “religion” because it’s not a belief system.  To paraphrase Father Freeman: Orthodoxy is not a religion, because religion is a belief system.  Orthodoxy is not a faith, either.  You have faith, faith sustains you, but that is different.  Orthodoxy is a life lived in Christ.  And that is altogether not the same.  I have discussed the issue of what exactly is meant by faith in more detail in previous posts.

[5] From “Jesus Christ: The Life of the World.”

Elder Paisos on "Spiritual Study"

Elder Paisos on Spiritual Study

— Geronda, what books should be read by those who are beginning their spiritual search?

— First, they should read the New Testament to learn the meaning of Christ, to be shaken up a little; later they can read the Old Testament. Do you know how hard it is when they have read nothing and yet they come to ask for help? It is like an elementary school child going to a university professor and saying, ”Help me.” What can the professor tell him? ”One plus one equals two”? Others, again, are not spiritually restless; they come and say, ”Father, I have no problems and I am just fine; I only dropped by to see you.” Man can never say that he has no problems, no concerns; he will have something. The struggle for the spiritual life never ends. Or some people come and tell me, ”Tell us spiritual things.” It is as if they went to the grocery store and said, ”Give us some groceries.” The grocer is at a loss and needs to know what they need. They need to say, ”I want so much sugar, so much rice, and so on, but they only say, ‘Give us groceries.' ”It is like going to the pharmacy and saying, ”Give us medicines,” without first saying what their illness is, or whether or not they went to the doctor, and what he advised them to do. Go figure! You see, whoever is seriously concerned over his spiritual condition knows, more or less, what he is lacking, and once he seeks it, he benefits.

As a novice, when I read something I liked, I wrote it down so as not to forget it, and I would try to apply it to my life. I didn't readjust to pass my time pleasantly. I had a spiritual restlessness and, when I could not understand something, I would ask for an explanation. I read relatively little, but I checked myself a great deal on what I read. ”What point am I at? What must I do?” I would sit myself down and go through such a self-examination. I did not allow what I read to pass me by untaxed.

Today with so much reading people end up like tape recorders, filling up their cassettes with superfluous matters. According to Abba Isaac, however, Wisdom not based on righteous activity is a deposit of disgrace. [1] You see, many who are interested in sports read sports magazines and newspapers while they are sitting. They may be like the fatted calf, but they still marvel at the athletes. ”Oh he is marvellous! He is great! Bravo!” But they don't work up any sweat, and they don't lose any pounds. They read and read about athletic events, and then they go and lie down; they gain nothing. They are satisfied with the pleasure of reading. Some worldly people read newspapers, others romantic literature or an adventure novel, still others watch a football game at the stadium and pass their time. The same thing is done by some people who read spiritual books. They may spend the whole night reading spiritual books with great intensity and be content. They take a spiritual book, sit comfortably, and begin reading. ”Oh, I profited from that,” they say. It would be better to say, ”I enjoyed myself, I spent my time pleasantly.” But this is not profit.

We profit when we understand what we read, when we censure ourselves and discipline ourselves by applying it: ”What does this mean? Where do I stand in relation to this spiritual truth? What must I do now?” After all, the more we learn, the more responsibility we have to live up to what we have learned. I am not saying that we should not read so that we can plead ignorance and therefore be free of responsibility, for this is a cunning deception; I am saying that we should not read merely to pass our time pleasantly. The bad thing is that if someone reads a lot and has a strong memory, he may remember many things and may even talk a lot about what he has read, and thus deceive himself into thinking that he also personally observes the many things he reads. So he has created an illusion toward himself and others. So don't be comforted by the thought that you read a lot. Instead, turn your attention to applying what you have read. Much reading alone will only educate you encyclopaedically. Isn't that what they call it?

— Yes, Geronda.

— The goal, however, is to be transformed in a God-centred manner. I am not aiming to be a university professor where I would need to know many things. But if I ever need something from this worldly knowledge, I can easily learn it once I have acquired the God-centred knowledge. Do you see what I mean?

— When one has a distraction, is it beneficial to concentrate through study?

— Yes, one should read a little, something very demanding, in order to warm the soul. This keeps distractions and concerns under the lid, and the mind is transposed into a divine realm. Otherwise, the mind is diverted by whatever task is preoccupying it.

— Geronda, when someone is tired or upset, he usually wants to read something light and easy, a short story or a novel, perhaps, or something like that.

— Is there no spiritual book that is appropriate for such times? The purpose is not to forget one's worry, but to be redeemed. Such light reading does not redeem. Novels, newspapers and television have no value in developing a spiritual life. Quite often even some religious periodicals are damaging to Christians, because they stir a foolish zealousness that leads to confusion. Take care. Do not read unnecessary things during your free time. Some reading matter is completely hollow, like a water-pumpkin; it is like looking in a haystack to find a kernel of wheat. Some people say, ”Yes, but they relax me.” But how can they be relaxing, my good man, if they make you dizzy and cause your eyes to ache? It is better to rest by sleeping. You can learn much about a person's spiritual state from what he reads. One who is very worldly will probably be reading indecent magazines. One who is less worldly will read less indecent magazines and newspapers. One who is religious will read religious periodicals, or contemporary religious books or patristic texts, and so on.

— Geronda, which spiritual books are the most helpful?

— The various patristic texts, which thank God are available by the thousands today, are very helpful. One can find whatever one needs and desires in these books. They are authentic spiritual nourishment and a sure guide on the spiritual path. However, in order to be of benefit to us, they have to be read with humility and prayer. Patristic texts reveal the inner spiritual condition of the soul, much as axial tomography reveals the inner structures of the body. Each sentence of the patristic texts contains a multitude of meanings, and each person can interpret them according to their own spiritual state of being. It is better to read the ancient text rather than a translation, because the translator interprets the original verse according to his own spirituality. In any case, in order to understand the writings of the Fathers one must constrain oneself, focus and live spiritually, for the spirit of the Fathers is perceived through and by the spirit only. Especially helpful are the Ascetical Homilies by Saint Isaac the Syrian, but they must be studied slowly so that they can be assimilated little by little as spiritual food. The Evergetinos is truly of great benefit, because it gives us insight into the Whole spirit of the Holy Fathers, it is helpful because it describes the struggles of the Fathers against each and every one of the passions, and, by learning how they worked on the spiritual life, the soul is greatly assisted. Also, the Synaxaria, the Lives of the Saints, are sacred history and very helpful, especially for young people, but they should not be read as stories.

We do not need great knowledge to be devout. If we concentrate and meditate on the few things we know, our heart will be spiritually embroidered. One may be profoundly affected by a single hymn, while another may feel nothing, even though he may know all the hymns by heart, as he has not entered into the spiritual reality. So, read the Fathers, even one or two lines a day. They are very strengthening vitamins for the soul.

An excerpt from “Spiritual Awakening”