Obedience

[karcy]

Elder Porphyrios on obedience:

I can't give you an example of what real obedience is. It's not that we have a discussion about the virtue of obedience and then I say to you, 'go and do a somersault' and then you obey. That's not obedience. You need to be entirely carefree and not thinking at all about the matter of obedience, and then suddenly you

Comments

[mysterious_joy]

Sorry Catalina, but I don't understand that at all. A monk who moves stones around is showing obedience in the sense of a godly value? You must be kidding. Are we some kind of wild horse whose will must be broken? Really, this is making me feel very uncomfortable.

Seeing God means to see the good and loving God as opposed to the angry god, the hating god, the god of judgment, the god of the law, etc, and this doesn't require proofs of obedience but just that we have a friendly and kind and humble image of our God. And purity of heart is nothing that I can work myself into, it's like in 80's songs when they say you need to believe in love, in the wondrous, in the mystical and stuff like that. The pure in heart here can be actually very dirty people, it's just that in their inside they don't give up believing in the good God. And since that is a necessity when living in a hard world, pretty much all christians are pure in heart and dont give up believing that God is good and loving. It's only that we so frequently work from unkindness and harshness that we get mistaken about the purity of the inward man. We issue orders instead of asking, we assign guilt instead of excusing people, we consider something unclean rather than understanding its reason for coming up, we argument from authority instead of gathering all opinions, we go by demand and command instead of practicing the wisdom from above, and so on. Paul writes about how the spirit is willing, and he also speaks about how our inward man is renewed daily. So we're all pure in heart because of God's influence thru the Holy Spirit that we get when we believe.

It's not something I can reach through obedience. Obedience is for making us able to act and to receive instruction, but there isn't all that much that we need to get instruction in.

[karcy]

Hmm. One of the things I am concerned about when I post stuff like these is that many people can misinterpret the ascetic life.

In your case, you've had continual problems with imagining God as a very harsh, judgmental, cruel individual who will condemn yourself or your loved ones to eternal torture and pain. And I don't want to encourage that image of God in you, either. When an Orthodox becomes a monastic, this is not what they believe.

To understand what the monks are doing, think of it less as 'obedience to an angry God' and more as 'self-discipline'.

For an example, do you get up at a certain time every morning? Do you try to get to some place on time? Do you brush your teeth?

Do you pray in the morning, at night, and before meals?

All of these things are things we do by discipline. The monks have simply taken a harsher path of self-discipline than us. Their desire is to simply remove the passions and find inner peace.

So for an example, some of us may be disciplined enough to wake up at 8 a.m. every day, but there are some of us who want to wake up at 5 a.m. every day. They are not waking up early to appease an angry God. They are doing it because the self-discipline is good.

It does not mean that God will punish Christians who do not follow the monastic path. There are many Eastern Orthodox who are not monastic, such as myself! We are all called to live our own personal 'ascetic struggles', meaning we learn to grow closer and closer to Jesus in our own way, every day.

And if, somehow, we do not become perfectly pure in this life, Orthodox believe that we can still become pure in the afterlife. Our salvation is a journey.

So for me, being Orthodox, I think that being a nun is very good. But if I don't become a nun, I am not worried. God will not punish me for not being a nun.

[mysterious_joy]

Ok, Catalina, it's just a form of christianity that I couldn't take up myself. I'm just trying to get by and believe in God and be acceptable. Asceticism doesn't fit in there for me. I think after 3 days at Athos or some similar place would make me really upset at the faith life. I guess I rather want to write poetry and do my stuff.

I'm not even sure I buy this idea of purity through discipline. It's like learning a 10 page poem by rote ... is that really purity or am I making myself into a trained monkey? Purity is for all, not just for monks, and it's given by the Holy Spirit. In Barclay's Commentary it says that perfection and purity is just about being fit for a task. IE, a screwdriver is called perfect in greek when it's fit for the job. Doesn't have to be the most expensive model or the most modern one or a screwdriver with internet access.

[karcy]

I definitely agree that not everyone is called to the ascetic life. What I was hoping to achieve with this is to help us re-evaluate some things we night be doing as non-ascetics though: for example, whether we are working or doing our duties with a lot of personal grousing, and think that we are being 'okay' just because we did them when in our hearts we are being discontent.

Of course, this is the writing of a monk -- don't confuse it with being on par with the Gospels or anything. I find it useful for me, but if it hinders your walk instead of help, just dismiss it :).

[martiancyclist]

The weird arbitrary-seeming obediences are generally given early in monkhood, particularly to novices, sometimes to disabuse them of any romantic notions of a life of prayer unconnected to worldly concerns (monks need clean toilets too), sometimes to startle them into listening, sometimes for reasons only apparent to the abbot. But they're all given specifically and individually, according to what the abbot thinks is most needed.

I also agree, Daniel, that you don't seem to be the best fit for monastic life at this point (from what I can tell over the Internet, and with the caveat that people change).