This is Life!: Revolutions Around the Cruciform Axis

The Struggle in Salvation

Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure.
Philippians 2:12-13 (NKJV)

Do you not know that those who run in a race all run, but one receives the prize? Run in such a way that you may obtain it. And everyone who competes for the prize is temperate in all things. Now they do it to obtain a perishable crown, but we for an imperishable crown. Therefore I run thus: not with uncertainty. Thus I fight: not as one who beats the air. But I discipline my body and bring it into subjection, lest, when I have preached to others, I myself whould have become disqualified.
1 Corinthians 9:24-27 (NKJV)

Part of the reason for my intentional semi-absence from blogging has been a prioritization of how I use my time. Blogging is an important activity--related as it is to the discipline of writing as well as to how it assists me in developing and clarifying my theological and philosophical understandings--but it is not more important than other things. Family (wife and daughter). School. These are primary points of attentiveness. One of those other things is the struggle for the salvation of my soul.

For some months, I have felt a pull toward greater attention to askesis, this struggle for one's salvation. In my better moments, I have "given in" to this impulse. Sadly, I have more often let the moment pass by, let slip the resolution, turned my attention elsewhere. This movement has been both fostered and hindered by my study. I am an academic, both by training and in temperment (and paritally now but hopefully one day fully by profession). I relate to the world through my thinking. So be it. There are great strengths that come with that. But one of the great weaknesses is to substitute analysis and comprehension for living.

In those moments in which I feel contrition for not living the faith more concretely, I tend toward what one might call "heroic spirituality." That is to say, I attempt extended fasts, set aside extra times for prayer (vigils, akathists, and whatnot), vow larger donations.

I come by this honestly, of course, having been raised in conservative evangelical Protestantism which understood salvation in terms of crisis. One had an overwhelming conviction of sin--often brought on by some momentous life event--enacted a public repentance, and--at least in the churches in which I was raised--was baptized. One's conversion could be located in a specific time and place.

Unfortunately, the askesis of such a background was similarly oriented around crisis. Of course one engaged in Bible studies, Sunday worship, and personal devotions, but all these were oriented around the mind, around doctrine. When it came to living one's faith, aside from sermonic practical advice, the only askesis was a recapitulation of the dynamic of conversion: an overwhelming conviction of sin, a public repentance and a normally public act of rededication (say at a revival or special conference). One can, of course, easily make the connections. Significant progress in spirituality, so I learned from growing up, only occurred during times of crisis.

When I discovered the spiritual disciplines (as almost all good evangelical Protestants did: through Richard Foster's Celebration of Discipline), I simply transferred this understanding of askesis-by-crisis to my practice of these disciplines. There was no real sense of regularity, of the daily and mundane.

So recently I asked my priest for a blessing to begin a water-only fast. He rightly refused. The reasons he gave were largely that the purposes for which I was wanting to fast would not only fail to be met, but that such a fast would exacerbate the direct opposite states to what I intended.

But I also learned from my reaction to his refusal. I was angry, irritated and frustrated. Come on! I thought. Fasting! Hello! A perfectly Christian practice, no? I was also somewhat despairing: if I could not make progress because of my lack of consistency, how else was I to progress in the faith? But Father perhaps knew something I had failed to recognize: this very penchant for the heroic. This is not a good foundation on which to build a faith or a life.

As I reflected on his refusal and my reaction, I rather shamefacedly came to see that the quite suitable askeses of the Church were always available to me: Wednesday and Friday fasts (essentially days of vegan dieting), the Divine Liturgy, Morning and Evening Prayers. Nothing heroic. Everybody's doing it. And, um, well, you know, Mr. I-Will-Fast-On-Water-Only, you don't even observe the Eucharistic fast very regularly. (Of course, not yet having been chrismated, the greatest of askeses, the Body and Blood of our Lord, remains unavailable to me.)

So. Apparently I am only going to be saved, if at all, by the most mundane and common of the Church's tools. Well, then, I must turn my attention to the things with which I am daily engaged. Marriage, as M. Scott Peck has observed, is a monastery of two. With the addition of Sofie to our family, we have a full-blown order going now. I must attend more closely to my prayers. Regular Bible reading has fallen by the wayside; it would be good if it returned. I've read far and away enough theology for some time to come. It would be good to read more slowly, more contemplatively. St. Theophan the Recluse's The Path to Salvation awaits, as does the revised biography of one of my patrons, St. Seraphim (Rose) of Platina.

These are more than enough. The passions will rise up of their own accord. I don't need to arouse them by heroics. And when they rise, I must do battle. And if this means anything:

I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now life in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me. (Galatians 2:20 NKJV)

then I may be hopeful, though the struggle be difficult. It is true that I "have not yet resisted to bloodshed, striving against sin" (Hebrews 12:4 NKJV). So I should settle in for the usual and mundane. If bloodshed is to ever come, I won't meet it by critical endeavors. I can only meet it in the face of the everyday circumstances in which I must live.

Still, I suppose the Protestantism is too strong in me to get rid of all at once. So I swore off all soda till Pascha.

God have mercy.

Posted by Clifton at September 30, 2003 08:48 AM | TrackBack