Thursday, November 30, 2006

Reality Check

Julio over at Hispania Sancta has posted an extremely powerful essay. This brings introspection to a new level. I will only excerpt a small part of it. This is one of the better blog posts I have run across in a while.

I haven’t been writing anything of theological content because I can’t stomach the hypocrisy of theologizing and pontificating when I don’t even live a moral Christian life. I started writing something smart-sounding the other day and had to stop myself. Sorry, but I just burst out laughing and deleted the whole thing. I’m starting to wish I had never learned words like “hesychasm”, “monologic self-repeating perpetual prayer of the heart”, “energies/essence”, “penal substitution theory of the atonement”, “hermeneutic”, or “ceasaropapism”. In short, I wish I’d never learned a word that I could use as a weapon towards someone else or as a way of making myself feel like my praxis-less Christianity actually means something. Maybe if I can acquire the moral awareness of a 10 year old catechumen, I’ll talk theology. It has been exceedingly stupid of me to speak at lengths about an interior life the likes of which I have no firsthand knowledge, and I intend to remedy that.

1 comment:

123 said...

I read a quote about someone asking a saint whether so and so was a fool-for-christ. The saint said, he curses, how could he be? As one who learned to curse like a sailor at an early age, I notice that sin and passion go hand in hand, for me, with this simple 'tell'. When I cannot be trusted with this little, I cannot be trusted for much.

Jumping prematurely to deification, hesychasm and the most austere practices is like premarital sex. It feels good and right at the time, but is, in fact, empty, founded on self, and simply an impersonation of real marriage.

I think that this is a lesson that most devoted and/or internet Orthodox learn in the end. I know this is why I have tended more and more to simply re-post articles and selections of others that I like on my blog.