Lack of authenticity and experience produces Christians who, rather than being saved in the Church, feel that the Church needs to be rescued and saved by them. Rather than consider those around us as Christ’s brethren, we view them as enemies to be destroyed or allies obligated to support our opinions. Rather than entrust our soul to the power of God’s grace, we (with an inexcusable naivete) subject it to the dubious scalpels of psychotherapy, academic theories, and rationalistic diagnoses and interpretations. Rather than nourish our faith with humility of heart, we supply it with the learned responses of knowledge and reasoning. In the face of contemporary social and ethical challenges, which touch on and intrude into our life and daily existence, we—instead of affirming a love that liberates, and a mindset of sacrifice that would transfer problems to another sphere of logic—adhere slavishly to scholastic legalisms which stifle the activity of grace, or we insist on secular compromises that nullify grace completely.
Instead of functioning as the transparent cells of the body of Christ, we view the Church as an organization with members, rules of association, rights and responsibilities, which, indeed, has even more need of our help than other organizations. And this is why, finally, instead of living within the Church as if it were the tomb which gives birth to our resurrection, instead of living with deep humility, a disposition of self-offering, self-effacement, honor, patience, forbearance, and faith only in the grace of God, we behave as transients with an earthly perspective, putting forward claims and demanding rights, possessed by unrestrained and unexamined emotions, hidden egotisms, hypocrisies, petty selfishness, making facile comparisons, embroiled in thoughtless conflicts, filled with insecurities, maudlin sensibilities, yielding to unexplainable compromises, psychological misery, and unjustifiable worldliness.
It is this sort of mentality that leads us to imagine a God who is readily doubted: a God who can only be an object of endless doubt and denial; a God who closely resembles a psychological fabrication marked by morbidity and inadequacy, or an ideological shelter notable only for its temporary usefulness and spiritual opportunism; a God who is not a loving father, but a servant summoned to solve our foolish problems; a God who does not exist to support us, but one which we invented in order for us to support, manipulate, and exploit. It is this sort of mentality which leads us to a «Church» which is our own creation and not God’s. Such a Church combines all the flaws of a mythical pantheon with all the untrustworthiness and unreliability of a social organization. Such a Church is not worth, and in any case cannot elicit, your trust.
However, in the midst of this unnatural and «irrational» rationalism, it seems that the individual does not bear complete responsibility. The main burden of responsibility falls instead on the omnipotence of the prevailing impersonal (and indeed depersonalizing) societal mentality, and in general on the unchecked frenzy of our age.
Our age has its own distinctive characteristics, and its accomplishments are truly striking. It set for itself unbelievable limits, which it has succeeded in approaching. It broke down the barriers of earth’s gravity. It manufactures men and women with hitherto unknown characteristics, with artificial or animal organs, with the pieces and parts of other human beings. It produces substances that until now had never existed. It alters nature, abolishing her laws. It penetrates into our bodies, it influences our souls, it creates attitudes and habits, it prescribes forms of behavior. It reaches into inconceivable dimensions, penetrating into sub-microscopic worlds with methods, speeds and means beyond all imagination. Its chief characteristic, however, is that it militates against all that is authentic, integral and true.
~By Metropolitan Nicholas (Hatzinikolaou) of Mesogaias, Anthropos Methorios (Athens 2005), cited by Father Maximos of Simonopetra (Mount Athos), Professor of Theology, Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology
