(St John of the Cross)
There is a certain kind of piety which, the more reverence its adepts try to show to God the more offensive it is to Him. This is the “fearful piety”, i.e. the piety that derives entirely from fear.
“Fearful piety” is
certainly not the holy fear of God glorified as
“The fear of the
Lord
is the beginning of wisdom”[1].
Biblical fear is all about God and knowledge of
God and is focused on God; the “fearful piety”
is entirely self-focused although it uses the
word “God” not less frequently than the
Psalmist.
It is the Christian
understanding that the biblical holy fear of God
means the fear of a believer to upset the loved
one (not fear of the loved ones’ retribution).
God is defined as the Beloved in the Scriptures
therefore a believer is supposed to be afraid to
commit a sin which will upset (or even hurt) God
and also pollute the believer’s soul; the latter
would prevents the sinner from seeing his
Beloved. It is noteworthy that, just like a
person in love when separated from the object of
his passion thinks only about her, a sinner who
has lost access to God does not so much think
about himself but focuses on God and on the pain
of his inability to see his Beloved. He does not
want anything purely for himself. He only wants
to see God and to know Him. This kind of holy
ideal, the passionate and selfless relationship
between the soul and God is very vividly
described in the Psalms and ‘Song of Songs’.
In comparison, the
“fearful piety” is always self-centered at its
core. It may not appear to be so, on the
surface. Many years are often spent in the
attempts to get around a strange invisible wall
between God and the believer until the latter
realizes that the wall is within himself,
self-created the so called “fearful piety”. Far
from being helpful to a believer on his way to
God, it has served as an instrument for the
maintenance of his security in faith, an
apparatus which provided him with an artificial
and (highly offensive to God) an image of God.
This discourse has gone too far and too fast
however, straight to the possible spiritual
crisis carried within fearful piety. First the
concept of “the fearful piety” and its likely
victims must be defined. But, before it is done,
I must outline the distinction between the
natural fear of a new convert and the cultivated
fearful piety of an “advanced” Orthodox.
That the selfless
love of God described in Psalms is not so common
in the beginning of the path of spiritual life
is well-known and expected. Indeed, many begin
from the stage of so-called “slaves”[2]
whose piety is largely driven by the fear of
possible consequences of their misdeeds[3].
With time they rise slowly, by the grace of God
who reveals to them His true nature that is
Love, to the stage of the adopted child of God.
It is important to remember that that first
stage is not pointless or fruitless because it
teaches the new convert self-discipline and
other valuable things. However, it is equally
important to remember that, although the
Orthodox soberly admits the inevitability of the
first “fearful” state in the life of a Christian
it is considered to be the lowest and necessary
to outlive. Therefore I am writing here not
about the “fearful piety” as a passing stage on
the path to God but only about the
“fearful piety” which becomes the permanent
stage when being a child of God is no longer
desired but being a slave is the highest ideal.
Here I neither
accuse nor mock, Church or particular
individuals. I am speaking only about the
painful and damaging tendency that becomes
prominent when the circumstances are right. This
tendency does not manifest itself exclusively in
either private spiritual life or in the wider
Church but can be observed in all areas of human
activities because its roots are not in the
realm of faith but in the human psyche. The
relationship with God, being the ultimate
relationship, brings this tendency to its
ultimate ugliness. I add “thank God for that”
because only the extreme misery can make one ask
for healing.
For the sake of
clarity I will construct an abstract case[4].
Let us imagine a person who came from an
ordinarily abusive family, i.e. one of his
parents was an emotionally manipulative or his
sibling bullied him or something similar
occurred that systematically violated the
person’s dignity (which is an image of God). Or
he lost a parent in a tender age and there was
not enough love in his life to counteract the
loss. Whatever it was, a person carries a
certain quite common trauma within himself which
affects his relationships with others making
them continually difficult. A person may be
perpetually anxious because he is afraid to make
a slightest mistake and to be punished as a
consequence, just like his father would beat him
up for a tiny misdeed when he was very young, or
he is unable to trust anyone or allow himself to
be loved because he learnt that trust inevitably
ends up with a trick and that love means
engulfment and suffocation. The variations are
endless just like circumstances and psyches and
this is why the wounding of the psyche is so
difficult to recognize, especially by the person
herself. One tendency is universal though: the
person perceives the present through the pain of
his past; thus the present is distorted
including the best possible things.
If such an
individual comes to the faith and especially if
he comes to the Church without personal
experience he will inevitably attempt to relate
to God in the way he used to relate to others.
He will treat God with suspicion, unable to
trust and love Him and also unable to accept
God’s love for him out of the unconscious fear
of the hook attached to such a love. The more
perfect is the perceived love bigger is the
imagined hook. The fear of the bad outcome, that
is a product of the believer’s pain coming from
his past, will be standing between him and God.
There is also another problem here, peculiar for
Christians, namely the Person of Jesus Christ.
Being perfect Man and God He is neither “another
person” with their limitations nor an abstract
far-away deity. Being God He gives Himself to a
believer and demands the believer himself (as
much as one can, it is the intention that
counts). Most frighteningly, being Man he
demands a very personal response. It is
impossible to hide from Him behind many prayers,
many fasts or anything else “good” because what
He demands is being truthful – not “bad” or
“good” but truthful to Him and to oneself. This
is the ultimate relationship and this is why it
is so frightening and why the damaged psyche is
unable to withstand it – the personality of
Christ and His ways are the absolute antithesis
to the ways the wounded believer is used to. The
ultimate Love leaves such a person cold or is
perceived as an intellectual abstraction that
does not stir his heart because the believer is
unable to recognize it emotionally. He may know
the theological basis of the Atonement but
remains strangely numb to the suffering of the
Man. This may explain why some Orthodox are
unable to relate to Christ as Person, especially
to His humanity and prefer to think of God the
Father instead. The perceived lack of humanity
in God the Father is somewhat less demanding,
more comforting and, most importantly, allows
for keeping a safe distance. In case with Christ
the believer is unable to face the multiplied
pain of his inability to trust, to love, to
receive so he steps back, being unaware of the
reason behind this.
But even this is not
all. Oh, if only such a person could be left
like this in his pain and loneliness so
eventually he would realize that perhaps
something is not right with him and cry to God
for help! Unfortunately, the “fearful piety”
readily offered to a neophyte as an ideal
by similar to him but “advanced” Orthodox does
not help him to see his inner wall but makes it
even thicker because it backs it up with a solid
pious (albeit theologically wrong) basis.
Here are some random
features of such “fearful piety”. An
overwhelming fear to do something wrong of
secondary importance while being in the church:
“incorrectly” place a candle, to bow at the
incorrect time, to find oneself standing on the
priest’s way, etc. Reading the prayers always
strictly in accordance with the Order outlined
in the Prayer Book, suppressing the desire to
speak from one’s heart out of fear that “I may
say something wrong”. Fear to be angry with God
or to argue with Him because “Who am I to argue?
– Even if the prophets did who am I?” Fear to
have own opinion “because I may fall into the
sin of pride” and because “I may make a costly
mistake” or even because “It is un-Orthodox”.
Rejection of any spiritual/ mystical experience,
any slightest movement in one’s heart because
“Who am I to feel it?” This one may take
particularly sophisticated form of
self-checkmate. “I experienced Jesus Christ very
personally while praying and looking at His icon
– it is the evil temptation, I read demons play
such tricks to unworthy people like I am” or
“Oh, I experienced something like a slight
warmth in my heart while doing the Jesus prayer
– no, I am nothing, it is from evil, a fake to
make me boast”. Consequentially, the people who
do not follow this custom but dare to accept
what they experience are labeled as “proud” or
even “possessed”. Good spiritual fruits among
such people are treated with suspicion or
denied.
In this kind of
spiritual life the fear of making a mistake
defines its every aspect or is entangled with
its every aspect. Do not get me wrong, as an
Orthodox I know how important is the cautious
and careful examination of what one may
encounter during the prayer or at other times.
The reality of the sin of pride that is the root
of all sins is also ever-present. One may think
however that, if he evaluates his experience or
his line of thinking using the Scripture, the
Orthodox Church Tradition, and his own sense he
may make up his mind especially if he prays to
God to guide him, confesses his thoughts
regularly and watches himself for the danger of
the sin of pride? No, the “fearful piety” is
unbeatable: “who you are to understand the
Scriptures correctly”, “who you are to use the
Tradition otherwise than repeating the quotes
from the Church Fathers”, “your confessor may be
deluded or even evil-inspired”, “it is not Our
Lord who guides you – because who are you to be
guided by Him – but the demons”. It is not an
exaggeration by the way, it is a quite common
mainstream thinking inspired by the zealous
reading of the ascetic books of extreme severity
not balanced by the (at least) equally zealous
reading of the Gospels and Church Fathers like
St Gregory of Nyssa, Evagrios, St Makarios, St
Dionysios, St Maximos, and others who speak of
God as Love Who desires to be loved (“Blasphemy!
– How may God wish to be loved by us, dirty
sinners! – Let Him be loved by the authors of
those books, the saints.”).
So the
psychologically bruised person (like many of us)
comes to the Church and often finds there the
theological justification of the unwholesome
features of his psyche. You do not trust anyone
– that’s right, you cannot trust even yourself
now because you are rotten, and God does not
speak to the sinners so anything that may appear
to be a gift from God is from the evil. The lack
of trust is a virtue because if you trust you
may make a mistake and God will punish you
(however, you can trust the vague notion of the
“Fathers” somehow always given to you without a
reference; this depersonalization is to be
addressed later).
If you are hesitant to make your own conclusion (even if you strongly feel it) about certain lines in the Scripture than you are right, who are you to think? – Do you want to fall into the sin of pride and be condemned by God?
If you had a misfortune to think that God mysteriously spoke to you then you are in grave danger, don’t you know that, since you are not a saint, it is most likely to be demonic? The abundant and nerve-wrecking examples of various Orthodox monks who bowed to Satan thinking it was Christ whom they saw in a vision and consequentially ran mad, or sick Catholics with stigmata preaching to the birds as a fruit of their “communication” with God are readily given.
Hence the neophyte
has no other way but to conform to the “fearful
piety” which prescribes every thought and every
move. His own psyche makes this easy for him.
The neophyte sticks to the security of the Law
and also embraces the extreme asceticism,
straining himself with severe fasting and dry
prayer. The books he reads are typically also
extreme and very severe in their approach. (It
is rather ironical that such severity makes a
neophyte a very severe judge, of oneself and of
others; this state is far from the virtue of
humility the neophyte aspires to although it may
look deceptively similar.) First this new way of
life feels good because it justifies all his
faults and provides the security which makes the
stage of the “fearful piety” so attractive,
seducing many into staying with it permanently.
In some time, however, comes the dryness and
petrifaction of the spirit which only the pain
within the soul deprived of the real spiritual
food and God’s grace, together, can overcome.
God’s task to reveal
Himself to such a person is mighty indeed
because the person effectively puts not only
himself in a checkmate situation but also God.
If God literally reveals Himself to him in a
vision then he will deny it out of a fear of
making a mistake or, being tempted to accept
what was given to him (that is, that he
experienced a cool water poured onto his inner
desert) he will exhaust himself with doubts, run
away, or even temporarily run mad thus
fulfilling that what was told to him, that every
vision revealed to the people like him is from
devil.
If God perseveres
and manages to inflame one’s heart with love for
Him then all what is twisted in one’s psyche
will come into play and all the pious
pseudo-truths will ring in a persons’ ears
non-stop preventing him from hearing the quite
voice of God. He may make one step towards God
and yet immediately step back, out of a fear to
make a fatal mistake and to be punished and
ultimately die on the spot. Ironically, God, as
He is experienced by such a person, is a
punishing deity which has nothing to do with the
God of the Scriptures, even with the God of the
Old Testament angry with His people. Usually
this fact entirely escapes the person’s grasp
because he is too scared to think. And so the
ultimate battle for the weak and fearful heart
begins, with God and all that is good in the
soul (i.e. what is preserved of the Christ’s
image within it) on one side and the abused,
twisted psyche and the evil forces on the other.
It is fortunate if at that point one finds the
courage to begin thinking and comparing the god
of the “fearful piety” with Jesus Christ, from
the Scriptures and from his own experience. It
may transpire that the former is the extreme of
his father/mother brother/sister any other
abuser from the past – the god of the minuscule
letters, tiny dry rules, the god of the fear and
punishment, scrutinizing every tiny move and
thought, one who must not be trusted, who
withdraws his gifts immediately after perceiving
the slightest disobedience or a hint of failure,
testing and retesting those who believe in him
obsessively with a sadistic pleasure, the
emotional manipulator habitually putting his
worshipers in a checkmate situation, demanding
that the person loves only him but never others,
meaning no other people or anything else, the
god of petrified forms, the enemy of freedom and
life, very much like death or Satan actually.
And the latter – Jesus Christ our Lord who does
not care about the minuscule letters but cares
about the human heart, by His very nature unable
to trick or manipulate, who does not punish, who
is the enemy of a fear of any kind (and whose
apostle wrote “There
is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out
fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and
whoever fears has not been perfected in love.”[5])
and whose very presence drives away any fear.
The later is confirmed by everyone who ever
encountered Him.
Christ our Lord who
is Love Himself, who reduced Himself on the
cross so that the most fearful individual would
be able to love Him, who is reducing Himself in
the most extreme kenosis so that anyone (yes,
the dirtiest and most sinful person) could
approach Him, who first gave Himself to everyone
completely, meaning without holding anything
back. And how are we afraid of this God who is
Truth, Path, and Life? Very simply – because the
practitioner of the “fearful piety” thinks
about himself i.e. he is afraid to do
something wrong and get punished and he
desperately wants to buy his security by any
means. He has not the primitive fear of God
which is useful for the beginner in faith; there
is something more in it than just a simple fear
of being “cast away into hell”, probably because
it is grossly aided by a much suffered psyche
which gives it a certain pathological twist of
absurdity. The beginner may think “I must watch
out not to sin because I may end up in hell”,
the fearful worshiper thinks “whatever I do I am
doomed unless – maybe – I stick to what I am
told by those who know – and yet maybe I am
doomed anyway – yes, I am doomed”. Such a psyche
does not examine the reality but squeezes the
reality into the given rules, otherwise it would
be saved at least by the notion “By their fruit
you will recognize them”[6]
– indeed, if the outcome of “something” is
humility and love how can that “something” be
judged to be evil? But one can, making God His
caricature.
It is hard not to
notice that if such god was true its very
existence would make unnecessary and absurd the
Sacrifice and Atonement. This brings us back to
the unfortunate inability of the “fearfully
pious” to relate to the humanity of Jesus Christ
and to their preference to contemplate Him only
as the Judge. This is a good example how the
twisted psyche paves the way to the twisted
theology and then propagates it corrupting
others. The implications of such theology are
extremely heavy: by the self-centered fear of
God created by swapping Jesus Christ with the
image the abuser from our past whoever they may
be, we rob from ourselves any possibility of
salvation and deification. It is impossible for
the person who cannot allow himself to be loved
to accept Christ’s Sacrifice. It is equally
impossible to accept the gift of deification
from God if one does not trust God completely,
just like Christ trusts us completely and if one
is unable to recognize in himself even the
slightest hint of the image of God. If it is so
than perhaps one can attempt to relate to the
crucified Christ, contemplating, out of his own
painful experience, God’s pain and abandonment?
Unfortunately, the words like “vulnerable, hurt,
abandoned” are often considered by the fearfully
pious to be unacceptable in being applied to God
“because God is almighty” therefore even the
slightest possibility to relate to Christ
through His (and our) own vulnerability, hurt,
and abandonment is denied out of fear. This is
the true dead end, the hell created by people
but not by God and nothing can be done about it
until the fearful pious spends all his pious
supplies and begins suffocating and cries to
God. But then what?
I believe that in a
case of the person who has cut himself from God
by preconceptions the very Orthodox teaching of
the Catholic St John of the Cross may help, his
“Nada – nada – nada”[7].
St John maintains that to experience God one
must first be stripped from everything else he
possesses and “embrace the most feared thing”. I
understand “everything” as not just material
attachments but also everything that separates
us from God including the comforting ideas of
Him one has got used to. It may be argued that
there may be correct and worthy ideas among
those habitual and comforting thoughts. Very
possibly, but if they do not help one to come to
God then two things are likely: they are either
wrong or the person embraces them only
intellectually. There is a difference between
stating coldly “Jesus Christ sacrificed Himself
for all humanity” (here is the impersonal
thinking similar to the abstract “Fathers said”)
and feeling the horror of the thought “He
agreed to be crucified for me”. Because, there
is not much implication for me personally in the
first notion – I may pass unnoticed together
with “all humanity” – but if He did it for me
it is clear that He loves me and desires my love
or, if I am unable to love, then my any
personal response. That very personal,
honest, and passionate relationship with God
Incarnate is what Christianity is all about. And
here comes the second notion of St John, “the
necessity to embrace the most feared things”
that is to see my own psyche with all its twists
and rot. Without such self-honesty the personal
relationship with God is impossible. To give an
example, if one habitually denies the pain and
shame of his past how he can feel the pain of
Christ or even allow Christ to reveal His pain
(and Sacrifice, and Atonement, and Love) to him?
“Embracing the most
feared thing” brings us back to the notion of
“stripping oneself from everything for the sake
of knowing God”[8].
It quickly become obvious that anything
incompatible with Christ must be given up or cut
off including everything that distorts His image
in ones psyche. Such self-sacrifice is
impossible for a human being but possible for
God if the human being attempts to trust Him.
But how is it possible even to begin to trust
God if one is full of mistrust? – Only via
“embracing the most feared thing”, namely
standing before crucified Jesus Christ without
pretense and simply looking at Him. We must
approach Jesus Christ on the cross because this
is the only way to begin to contemplate His
humanity and see ourselves reflected in His
humanity. What a horror sight! – Our psyche is
either unable to recognize His Love (this may
explain why so many hate Him) or able but
impotent to allow ourselves to be drawn into it,
let alone to allow Him to pour it in into our
twisted souls. Worse even, it is impossible to
predict what is going to happen next and this is
the pinnacle of horror.
If, despite the
fear, we wish to be with Christ and manage (very
much by His grace) to make a weak cry “I want to
be Yours, save me from myself”, everything that
is not His image in ourselves begins burning
away and falling apart because it is
incompatible with Him, very painfully and very
slowly. This is what St John meant by his “nada
– nada – nada” – rejoicing in the pain of being
nothing, being purified through the extreme of
real self-denial (i.e. not out of some
imaginary piety but out of the impossibility to
go on like before, out of thirst for the love of
God suddenly granted by Him), even to the state
when nothing seems to be left. Being released
from all that was false and twisted we may start
recognizing our own potential full humanity in
Christ and feel its pecking in us through the
ashes. This in turn can start bringing us in
touch with our potential divinity which is the
ultimate wish of God for all of us, not the fear
and eternal bending of a false fearful piety
which is nothing more than the self-love of a
slave.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
[1]
Psalm 111:10
[2]
The Orthodox metaphor of spiritual
progress from a slave to a servant to
son/ daughter of God.
[3]
It is not the universal rule; which kind
of piety a person embraces very much
depends how they discovered Christ first
and which kind of piety is encouraged in
their particular church.
[4]
Many may find the case and the spiritual
outcomes extreme. Even if it was so the
ultimate relationship with God, as it
was stated before, tends to bring every
feature of a person’s psyche to its
extreme and cause a spiritual crisis so
the case is still relevant.
[5]
1 John 4:8
[6]
Mathew 7: 16-20.
[7]
“Nothing – nothing – nothing”, the sum
of St John’s doctrine of raising to God
through the “the dark night of the soul”
during which a soul is being purged by
God from all without and all within thus
making the soul able to receive God in
the most fully and in the most direct
way.
[8]
One may notice the loop “stripping
oneself off everything for God” –
“embracing the most feared thing”
“stripping oneself off everything for
God” etc. St John stated that the path
of spiritual progress is a spiral; the
same points are revisited on a different
level.
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