Temptations on the Way
Thou hast said the truth: for there is one God; and there is none other but He: And to love Him with all the heart, and with all the understanding and with all the soul, and with all the strength...is more than all...
(Mark 12, 32-33).
Introduction: With all our Heart
The Resurrection of the Russian Orthodox Church after the Crucifixion and Tomb of atheist persecution and ensuing mass baptism brings with it temptations. These are the temptations that the newly-baptised always have to endure as they are on their way to being Churched, as they are tried by fire and are diverted from ‘seeking first the Kingdom of God and His Truth’.
These temptations come to us all who do not know how to love God with all our heart, which is the first part of the Lord’s commandment. For if we fail to love God with all our heart, then we shall also fail to love Him with all our understanding, all our soul and all our strength. What does this entail in the order in which these temptations are experienced in contemporary life?
With all our Strength
Firstly, if we do not love God with all our strength, then we shall confuse the Church with political and social fashions of this world, with attachments to this world. This means, above all, an attachment to the place of our birth, to our nation, to nationalism. Nationalism, also called ‘phyletism’, the Greek word for ‘racism’, is then the first danger for the newly-baptised who are yet to be Churched.
In practical terms, this means failing to put the Church first and instead putting first our nation. This reduces the Church to nationalist ghettoes, in which local customs take priority over the universal Tradition of the Church. Such an ignorance of the multi-national vocation of Christ’s Church reduces the Church to a mere branch, department or ministry of the local State, to ‘narrowism’. Such is the consequence of not loving God with all our strength.
With all our Understanding
Secondly, if we do not love God with all our understanding, then we shall confuse the Church with the intellectual and ideological fashions of this world, with attachments to fallen, human, and not Divine, understanding. This may mean an attachment to political currents of either left or right. However, at the present time, this more often means an attachment to liberal and ecumenist ways of thought that are now fashionable, an attachment to an understanding devoid of ascetic life and so grace, devoid of the sacred presence of God and so of the miraculous. Intellectualism, associated with a mere liberal, academic understanding, is then the second danger, which generally follows the first, for the newly-baptised who are yet to be Churched.
In practical terms, this means failing to put the Church first and instead putting first our own rationalistic and ungraced understanding. This reduces the Church to intellectual ghettoes, in which fashionable personal opinions take priority over the universal Tradition of the Church. This is an attachment to secular understanding and so to comfort and luxury, to anti-ascetic understanding, for only ascetic understanding through inward illumination can lead us beyond mere rationalistic understanding. Such a denial of the Tradition of Christ’s Church reduces the Church to mere personal opinions, to intellectual fashion, to secular fashion, to ‘narrowism’. Such is the consequence of not loving God with all our understanding.
With all our Soul
Thirdly, if we do not love God with all our soul, then we shall confuse the Church with an emotional and sentimental understanding of this world, with attachments to a superficial, psychic and emotional understanding, masked as ‘spirituality’. This means, above all, an attachment to ‘charismatic’ personalities and personality cults, to sectarian and cultish ways of life. This results in the fakery of charlatanism. Charlatanism, the attachment to fake gurus and so-called ‘spiritual fathers’, is then the third danger, which generally follows the first and the second, for the newly-baptised who are yet to be Churched.
In practical terms, this means failing to put the Church first and instead putting first our emotional state, condemning us to a lack of depth, to instability, to the lack of any authentic spiritual life of the heart. This creates adepts who are unable to function alone, to dependency, to victims who need gurus and so fall away once their gurus are dead. This reduces the Church to personality cults, in which ‘charismatic’ personalities take priority over the universal Tradition of the Church. Such an ignorance of the Tradition of Christ’s Church reduces the Church to a mere cult or sect, dominated by a guru, to ‘narrowism’. Such is the consequence of not loving God with all our soul.
Conclusion: Love God
The authentic approach to Christian (= Orthodox) life puts loving God with the heart first. All other human faculties, strength (physical or bodily force), the understanding (intellectual or rational force) and the soul (emotional or psychic force) have to be subordinated to the heart (spiritual or noetic force. In the Diaspora we have an example of this, in the one authentic missionary saint of own times – the wonderworker St John of Shanghai. St John did love God with all his heart first and so did not fall into the above three temptations.
Since St John loved God with all his strength, he did not fall into narrow nationalism, but he loved saints of all nationalities and worked for the salvation of all nationalities. Since St John loved God with all his understanding, he did not fall into narrow intellectualism, he did not contradict the Tradition of the Church, and he preached and wrote for all. And since St John loved God with all his soul, he did not fall into narrow ‘spiritualism’, he did not establish some personality cult, but instead was persecuted by nationalists, intellectuals and personality cultists alike. And this is ‘more than all’...
St John of Shanghai
17/30 June 2012
