I recently had my world turned upside-down—or perhaps right-side up—from contemplating a work I had never read carefully: St. Seraphim of Sarov’s Conversation with Nicholas Motovilov. It is a well-known personal testimony of a man’s conversation with an orthodox saint, often quoted by many, and often heard by me, but I noticed in combing through it something that resonated with me precisely because it doesn’t resonate with me:
“As for fasts, and vigils, and prayer, and almsgiving, and every good deed done for Christ’s sake, they are only means of acquiring the Holy Spirit of God. But mark, my son, only the good deed done for Christ’s sake brings us the fruits of the Holy Spirit. All that is not done for Christ’s sake, even though it be good, brings neither reward in the future life nor the grace of God in this.”
I have always fancied myself as a virtuous person. That hasn’t always meant a nice person, but one who seeks virtue—what is right and good at any cost and without any fear.
Even when I was tempted with atheism, there was never a moment when I thought to abandon good deeds (even if my idea of what those were were flawed). I always had the idea that evil is stupid and short-sighted and self-harming and good might be hard, but will always be beneficial for the living of a proper life.
I even had an internal evolutionary or economic idea of what “good” and “evil” meant, and I would always seek what was right—even when it would damage me to do good, because I viewed myself as an evolutionary organism which was calibrated for social behavior, I viewed that goodness still to be in my best and proper interest. I abstained from all manner of sins and vices, even when difficult or socially inconvenient or un-fun.
I have never really cared if a truth is hard for me to bear, or a necessary change is even an extreme temporary inconvenience: I will seek what is true and right and the good way of living.
St. Seraphim, however, is noting that there is a difference between a good deed and a good deed done for Christ’s sake. Only the later has true spiritual benefit. He continues much later on the same point, quoting St. Anthony:
“Antony the Great in his letters to Monks says of such virgins: ‘Many Monks and virgins have no idea of the different kinds of will which act in man, and they do not know that we are influenced by three wills: the first is God’s all-perfect and all-saving will: the second is our own human will which, if not destructive, yet neither is it saving; and the third is the devil’s will—wholly destructive.’ And this third will of the enemy teaches man either not to do any good deeds, or to do them out of vanity, or to do them merely for virtue’s sake and not for Christ’s sake. […]”
St. Seraphim teaches, in fact, that even the devil will happily tempt us to do good deeds, even for virtue’s sake, if he can keep us from them for Christ’s sake.
This is very bad news for me, because I realize that all my hard-work and sacrifice and militant adherence to my principles and virtues, might’ve been “working for the devil” in some way, or at least squandering the sacrifice of doing principled and good things when it is costly or inconvenient.
Now St. Seraphim’s statement is not so negative for virtuous pagans and people without Christ: He does say in his conversation that virtuous people outside of the church, although their good work and virtue does not directly serve the goal of life, which is acquiring the Holy Spirit—he does say that these works call God’s graces. He gives the example of the pious centurion Cornelius, who sought God and goodness and as a reward, God sent St. Peter to him to baptize him and bring him into the church and to Christ. Of course the point of these good works are a announcement to God that a man seeks Him, and are beneficial in that they bring a person to be able to do the truly beneficial works for Christ’s sake.
However I cannot always say that all of my own virtuous acts were so God-seeking and pure as Cornelius. Especially in my period of atheism, my desire for virtuous, good and efficient living was so total that I was annoyed by “irrational people,” I tended to a kind of elitism and also what we could say autism. Autism, although it has a mental medical meaning, comes from the Greek αὐτός “self” and means literally something somewhat like selfism—an autistic person does things their own particular, opinionated and persnickety way. I’m not talking about the people here with a diagnosed illness, but all of us (of whom I truly am chief) of the modern world who spend years alone and isolated where we gradually accumulate strident desires and “our way” of doing things.
I, of course, managed to convince myself that my desires were actually rational, virtuous and good. Even when they seemed to do harm, that almost confirmed in my own mind my nobility in that I viewed myself as a principled martyr for good—but not for Christ’s sake, or even my own sake, but for the sake of my passionate ego.
I should have known this when I often heard the Beatitude: “Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake.” Christ doesn’t speak of as blessed those who are reviled, persecuted and slandered for their own principles or alleged virtues.
The tell-tale sign of ill-motivated “good”
I remember in Tito Colliander’s Way of the Ascetics, he makes the point that we know that we have impure motivations in doing good if even preparing a good work, we get upset if God makes it impossible for us to finish it.
Suppose I prepare a surprise birthday party for a friend, but he is absolutely unable to make it: it would be not only foolish for me to be upset at the birthday boy if he couldn’t actually come, but it would also show that my motivations might have been more to just having my own fun or seeing other friends or maybe looking good and sociable by throwing a fun party.
In the same way, if my alleged virtue makes me irritable at others who don’t follow the same principled virtue, my virtue is not a Christian one. It is just vice masquerading as virtue. I am just a more intelligent and conniving selfish man, who lacks the simple nobility of a selfish person who just does what they want when they want it.
Fallen man is disordered.
Ultimately, fallen man is disordered in a literal sense. Think of order in a quasi military sense: a general or commanding officer gives orders to his subordinates who implement those orders, often having to flesh out specific details. Those subordinates might give orders to their own subordinates to implement these orders. Those lower on the chain of command don’t always understand nor could exactly what role their orders are fulfilling, but if they fall into the proper order and do what they are told, the whole military organism acts properly as its ultimate authority wants.
God designed man as one of His agents: We (1) hear God’s commands, (2) our soul understands and (3) has the will to conform to the command which (4) has the body follow through with the command.
👑 God → Our soul → My will → My body
When we are run by our appetites, our body, which we allow to usurp the position of ultimate boss, comes to command our will, which comes to command our soul, which purports to command and judge God.
God ← Our soul ← My will ← 👑 My body
Although this is a common orthodox teaching, it never “clicked” for me until I read the first chapter of Fr. Daniel Sysoev’s Talks on the Passions (which I highly recommend). Here he says:
“Why did Anthony the Great say that a monk must ask his superior’s blessing before drinking even a few drops of water? In order to free a monk’s mind as much as possible from earthly cares. The object of obedience is the direct opposite of that of yoga. Whereas [a] yogi or an occultist tries to control his body with the aid of his mind, an Orthodox monk completely frees his mind from care for the body in order to turn his mind fully over to God.”
This is perhaps one of the clearest examples. A monk is trained to demote his body from the position of command to such a degree that he is not even allowed to listen to his own body’s thirst without the orders of his superior. If a monk follows his obedience, his soul and will necessarily cannot and are not allowed to obey his body.
Fr. Daniel relates the soul of a fallen man to a university professor who is made to do the janitorial work at his college. We think that it is a good thing for our soul to be fixated on lower things. We feel like we should spend a lot of our mental energy thinking about “what [we] shall eat, or what [we] shall drink; [or] for [our] body, what [we] shall put on,” (Matt 6:25) and on gratifying the ever-changing desires of the senses, but in truth, this is the absolute opposite of what we should be doing: our souls should be receiving the higher orders of God and enforcing those commands on our lower bodies. This is a properly ordered and healthy man’s soul.
“A healthy soul’s mode of operation is as follows: God says: Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obstain mercy (Matt 5:7). ‘I will be merciful,’ a person responds. He commands his will to show mercy, to find some unfortunate person, to serve, clothe, and feed him. The mind received a command from God, contemplated it, transmitted it, and passed it over to the will and feelings: to feel pity for that person. That is what a healthy person does. And the body, on receiving the command from the soul, goes with its feet and carries it out with its hands, showing mercy. This is an example of functioning normally, an example of functioning properly.
“Abnormal functioning is when reason is dominated by the will or feelings. A willful person’s approach is: ‘I want to, so I will.’ Many say that a good person is a willful person, but this sort does not deserve to be praised. There are people that are sentimental, who are dominated by their feelings. This is a disease of the mind, of the intellectual faculty, that occurs due to one’s thoughts taking their cues from the appetitive faculty instead of from God.”
This “abnormal functioning” is what we are told is how we should be working by the modern world. We are supposed to be evolutionary beings, whose very essence is more or less “feelings.” How we feel what we identify with or our preferences are thought to be those things most essential to us. These are supposed to be the sociobiologically rational desires of natural selection.
But this isn’t us at all. In fact, it is the least essential aspect of us. If I start talking to you about pizza and promote memories of pizza to you, suddenly, you can very easily start lusting for pizza. Your appetitive aspect is so suggestible and passible that anyone can change it by putting thoughts in your head.
This is what especially the modern world does to people.
If you put an exploitable idea in someone’s head, a fallen person, especially one told that “their” desires should be or “must” be the ultimate deciders of their soul, will feel like this implanted desire is actually essential to themselves. People begin to identify with their sins and desires and flatly told that feelings must dictate their behavior.
Okay, stop thinking about pizza. My point is proven.
Note that what has happened with “pizza” now is only a minute instance of what happens dozens of times a minute to anyone using a cell phone and scrolling on internet sites. People are now voluntarily putting themselves in such a passive state where they are constantly fed emotions, temptations, ideas and various clouds to cover the nous that they almost seem to entirely act as a human apart from their impulses.
Love and Depravity
I remember distinctly a certain YouTube comment I got in response to a video years ago I did on free will. It was from a Protestant, specifically a Calvinist, who said that he was a Calvinist because they believe that man has no real free will and he felt utterly incapable of being able to love people as a commandment of God.
This is a great post because it purely distills this absurdity.
Modern people, including this one, have come to define “love” as some kind of emotional feeling or impulse, and perhaps worse this person is so entranced with the idea that the impulses and feeling dictate behavior that he couldn’t even grapple with the idea of disobeying his feelings, specifically here is lack of fuzzy feelings for others.
In truth, we might have certain passions and feelings, but a properly ordered man is one whose soul consents to obey God’s will regardless of the feelings that associate with it—but more, those feelings which do emerge: feelings of love or anything else, form when the body learns to obey the soul obeying God.
Calvinists define themselves and all people as “totally depraved.” That is, unable to follow God, unable to do anything for the sake of Christ, unable to do anything but follow evil passions. This is such a strong illusion for them because they have been talked into perceiving the soul in the same way an atheist perceives a soul, as a emergent property that bubbles up from an assortment of selfish passions that has no other existence aside from putting a clever spin on self-interest. All they have done is adopted the above disordered sequence of command and have even talked themselves into rationalizing it as necessary.
Remember this is the true way:
👑 God → Our soul → My will → My body
But this is the disordered way we often want to convince ourselves is normal:
God ← Our soul ← My will ← 👑 My body
In the Name of the Father, and the Son and the Holy Spirit.
Tito Colliander’s above-mentioned book Way of the Ascetics begins simply as following:
“If you wish to save your soul and win eternal life, arise from your lethargy, make the sign of the Cross and say: In the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.”
How many times do we say that in church forgetting what it means? To do something in the name of the Holy Trinity, or for Christ’s sake is to do something not for our own supposed virtue or because it seems to us good or rational.
Will I show mercy to someone who wronged me or obstinently hold it against them out of my own sense of justice? Will I give to or help someone in need or rationalize as to why I should save my time and money because it won’t make a difference or make them worse? Will I confess Christ when it might be awkward or will I chicken out and pretend it is for long-term optics?
If you have trouble giving to the poor, cross yourself in the name of the Trinity, withdraw some extra cash and keep it on hand or in the car for such a purpose, each time distributing it in the name of the Trinity. I grew up in Atlanta—I have become or jaded and cynical to the poor than anyone else, but you don’t have to do it in your name because it doesn’t make sense to you. Do it in His.
Fasting Is Not a Life-Hack.
Many years before I ever really learned about actual Orthodox Christianity, I remember reading the books of Nassim Taleb, who incidentally is also Orthodox. In I believe Antifragile, he made a passing remark that there is some ancestral wisdom in the very rigorous fasting schedule that the church prescribes in which nearly a third of the days of the year are days of fasting. He posited that the fasting serves as a kind of natural hormesis and is beneficial.
I must say, I now strongly disagree with his assessment. I did implicitly assume that it was true when I became Orthodox, but I think it is mistaking doing something for Christ as doing something for mere virtue.
Fasting, of course, is a trial and temptation, and that, I believe, is the point. We don’t do it “for our sake” or for virtue or to get a natty physique. We do it for Christ’s sake. We subject our impulse to divine command to assert the natural and proper order of life. It is little different from the monk who may not drink water without his spiritual father’s blessing.
If a person is rationalizing the hormesis and health benefits of fasting, an unchristian calculus has entered into their behavior. They are placing their own calculus above that of the church and that of God. They are implicitly saying, “Well maybe God, my commanding officer, actually intended this, which is different from what I was told to do, so I won’t do what I was actually told to do.” I don’t say that Taleb was doing this, nor do I think there are practical goods of fasting, but it is certainly wrong to approach fasts exclusively with this practical mindset.
I believe now that it is wrong to look at fasts as if they are some kind of virtuous and optimized diet in some euhemeristic way. No, it is a trial to abstain. They are a burden that does work some benefits, but benefits that come in a higher spiritual way: specifically overcoming passions for food and immediate desires. After all, food is good and benefits you. If a person can learn to say “no” to something generally good for Christ’s sake, they have gained something spiritual.
If I start Lent or another fasting period, even with the backgrounded notion that “it will be good because maybe I can lose some pounds and it will be good for me,” I am not following the fast with the most pure and proper mind. The saints who rigorously followed a stricter fasting rule did not do so to have optimized natural physique, but often ended up quite skinny (although they often still were very capable of good labor).
When we occasionally hear of saints who had arduous ascetical feats, living in the desert, being a stylite (i.e., living on a platform on a pole), wearing uncomfortable hairshirts, etc. none of these are “life hacks.”
We also shouldn’t approach things like fasting as some mere lifestyle change. We should be abstaining from our desires spending more time in prayer, and trimming time by eating simple potatoes and rice and fruit and easy to prepare foods—not as the temptation is to make exotic Mediterranean or Middle-Eastern meat-substitute foods that end up turning all of Lent into a prologed cooking festival to produce mediocre foods anyway.
Passionlessness
So one of the goal of the spiritual life—in acquiring the Holy Spirit of God—is achieving a degree of passionlessness, that is, having one’s soul being unaffected by the vagaries of the changing world and evil (and sometimes non-evil) things. What this causes is a person who can endure evils and be unaffected in soul.
If you saw the pictures and talk of pizza above and got hungry, or will be making or ordering a pizza after finishing this article, you necessarily are not passionless. Your desire for pizza might not be sinful in itself, but it is an example of the impressionable body whining, begging the soul to consent to give it what it happens to want at this particular moment (which will inevitably change). In every case, the soul can say “no.”
But when it comes to sinful passions, it is our goal to overcome them entirely, St. Nikolai Velimirovic of Ohrid writes in the Prologue (August 22):
“It is said of St. Ammon that he attained such perfection that from much goodness he was not aware that evil exists anymore. When they asked him what is that ’narrow and difficult [sorrowful] path’ (St. Matthew 7:14), he replied: ‘That it is the restraining of one’s thoughts and severing of one’s desires in order to fulfill the will of God.’ Whoever restrains sinful thoughts, does not think of his own sins or the sins of others neither of anything corruptible nor of anything earthly. The mind of such a man is continually in heaven where there is no evil. Thus, in him, sin gradually ceases to be, even in his thoughts.”
Remember again the formula:
👑 God → Our soul → My will → My body
This proper order is the “restraining of one’s thoughts and severing of one’s desires in order to fulfill the will of God.” The soul focuses on God and implementing the commandments, and not on things sinful or corruptible. We too often build the universe the opposite way: that my impulses dictate the laws of the universe.
I will continue this writing in the future. I’ve already spilled this over into a different article.