What Happened To The Orthodox Church?

 I am starting to wonder whatever happened to the Orthodox Church I love.

I hear sermons filled with admonitions to keep the fast as strictly as possible.  To watch out for those who are trying to destroy the Church from outside, through the influence of secularism in the world.

I have always felt that was hogwash. Secularism is no threat to the Church. Neither is humanism, or paganism, or homosexuality.  The only threat to the Church comes from within. The threats to the Church have *always* come from within. That’s what the Ecumenical Councils were all about.  Some elements of the Church didn’t believe in things that are essential to the faith, things like Christ’s Godhood, Christ’s humanity, the use of icons in our worship, and so on, and so the Ecumenical Councils were held to put a stop to such things.

There has never been an Ecumenical Council bent on trying to change things outside the Church. There has never been an Ecumenical Council making statements about other religions and other forms of belief.  It has always been that “we know where God’s Grace is, and we cannot say where it isn’t.”

There is a lot of noise about the “last days” right now, and about how the whole world is messed up because we are in the last times.

What do the apostles say?

 “But realize this, that in the last days difficult times will come. For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, slanderers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, unloving, irreconcilable, malicious gossips, without self-control, brutal, haters of good, treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, holding to a form of godliness although they have denied its power; avoid such people as these. For among them are those who slip into households and captivate weak women weighed down with sins, led on by various impulses, always learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth. [snip]

Now you followed my teaching, conduct, purpose, faith, patience, love, perseverance, persecutions, and sufferings, such as happened to me at Antioch, at Iconium, and at Lystra; what persecutions I endured, and out of them all the Lord rescued me! Indeed, all who want to live in a godly way in Christ Jesus will be persecuted. But evil people and impostors will proceed from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived. You, however, continue in the things you have learned and become convinced of, knowing from whom you have learned them,  and that from childhood you have known the sacred writings which are able to give you the wisdom that leads to salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is inspired by God and beneficial for teaching, for rebuke, for correction, for training in righteousness; so that the man or woman of God may be fully capable, equipped for every good work.”

2 Timothy 3: 1-17

Note the interesting list of sins that characterizes the last days:  “lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, slanderers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, unloving, irreconcilable, malicious gossips, without self-control, brutal, haters of good, treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God”

Nowhere do I see paganism, or drug abuse, or homosexuality listed as key sins to watch out for in the last days.

Why are there so many sermons these days about how bad things are “out in the world” instead of how bad things are in the hearts and minds of the faithful?

I will bring up the late Archipriest Vadim.  It seems that everywhere I go among the local Orthodox they speak very highly of Father Vadim. It could be said that he had his hand in starting every parish in the local area excluding those of the Greek and Antiochian Diocese. Father Vadim was the priest who brought me into the Orthodox Church. He was my pastor and father confessor for at least the first 15 years that I was Orthodox. Not only can I say that I knew him well, but I knew his sermons, his teaching style, and I knew the man behind the scenes since he trained me to be a reader and I served as a reader and altar server for many years at his parish.

I can assure you, Father Vadim would be rolling over in his grave if he were to hear the Orthodox teaching prevalent in the local area today.  I can say that in all those years that I served with Father Vadim and participated as a member of his parish, I did not once hear a single sermon on keeping the fasts, or how strictly to keep the fast, during Lent.  Lenten sermons were always about forgiveness, not judging others, pulling the twig out of your own eye instead of trying to pull the sprinter out of everyone else’s eye.  He used to give (every Lent) a sermon on how eating a simple baloney sandwich was a better way to keep the fast than going out for lobster. He used to remind us that to fast from foods but not idle words and thoughts was nonsense.  And to fast without doing good deeds just as bad.  This sort of sermon is rare today.  I hear people loving to name-drop their acquaintance with Father Vadim, but none are brave enough to follow in his legacy.

He had a favorite word he liked to bring out every Great Lent:  Prelest.  Prelest is defined as “spiritual delusion” or “spiritual deception” and in the context of Orthodox piety refers to a specific sort of thing.  To quote Wikipedia (who quotes St. Ignati Brianchaninov) “In a broad interpretation, everyone is considered to be in prelest, that is, everyone has some wrong thoughts and views, does not fully understand the meaning of life and the degree of own sinfulness etc.

“When used in a narrow sense meaning that some particular person is in the state of prelest, it usually means that this person, initially being on the path of pious Christian life, became possessed with the strongest pride and self-conceit right up to the thought about personal sanctity.“

And (again from Wikpedia) Ignatius Brianchaninov defines prelest as "a wounding of human nature by falsehood".[2]

“A modern reader can find the most thorough explanation of prelest in the writings of St. Ignatius (Brianchaninov) where he relentlessly keeps the traditions of Holy Fathers. Some of these writings were incorporated into a book, On prelest. The book is dedicated solely to different forms of delusion (wrong way of prayer, trust to dreams, excessive zeal, false humility etc.), which St. Ignatius explains on the basis of the words from Holy Fathers of the first centuries and provides information about different recent cases of delusion.” (Wikipedia)

Father Vadim taught by his sermons and his life that kindness and compassion to others were superior to keeping a strict fast, and that the great danger in keeping a strict fast was prelest - where an adherent strives so hard to keep such a strict fast that they look down upon others and completely lose site of the goal of the fast, to become more Christ-like. And we know that God is love and Christ is the ultimate expression of love, compassion and forgiveness.

Christ did not judge the adulterous woman. He allowed her to enter his home and wash his feet with her tears and dry them with her hair.  I could go on with a hundred similar stories.

I have heard it said that certain priests in the Orthodox Church today have lowered their standards, because they let all sorts of sinners participate in the life of the Church. I have heard it said that certain priests today are even “apostate” for having this lower standard.   The modern movement afoot within the Orthodox Church today, to protect the Church from all sorts of perceived evil wherein certain priests make a lower standard for the faithful is nothing but prelest.

“Judge not, lest you be judged.”

In my opinion, if the Orthodox Church has any risk of being destroyed, that risk is a risk of being destroyed from within by a radicalized element who wants to see absolute strict adherence to the letter of the law enforced by Orthodox Clergy.  Secularism, Paganism, Homosexuality: their only threat to the Orthodox Church is this same prelest.  That Orthodox Christians will grow to see themselves as morally superior to others and shut others out, denying them access to the gifts and beauty and love of God.

The legacy of the Orthodox Church I believe in, that is the legacy of turning a blind eye to my neighbors' indiscretions.  My neighbor’s life is in God’s hand, not my hand. I do not need to have any opinion about it. And if I start to have an opinion about it, well, that is a slippery slope to prelest.

I try to live by the commands of Christ to love my neighbor, and not think much about any of his beliefs or opinions I might not agree with. We pray daily, many times “forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” And yet do we even stop to consider those words?  God does not forgive the trespasses of those who do not forgive others.  In the end it won’t matter how well you kept the fast, but how well you loved your brothers.