Blessed Seraphim writes:
Do not trust your mind too much; thinking must be refined by suffering, or it will not stand the test of these cruel times.
Of course, one can always act wrong even on a clear conscience! But even that is not a fatal mistake as long as ones mind and heart remain open and one keeps first things first.
How much our American Orthodoxy needs more heart and not so much mind! I dont know any answer for it, except more prayer and basic education in Orthodox sources.
I see this dynamic all the time on the atheist/agnostic message board I still drop in to from time to time. The Scriptures and Christian dogma are argued over like so much turf, the fundamentalists staking out their positions, the atheists/agnostics theirs. It's not the argumentation that I criticize. I attempt to defend the Faith as I can from time to time (and that sometimes means arguing against the Christians themselves, as well as the atheists/agnostics). But this dynamic is as fatal to non-Christians as it is to Christians: the prioritizing of the mind over the heart.
I know, because I've been doing it all my life. And in the last year in particular, I am better able to see the poison it leaks into my life, distorting my faith and my very person.
Here's how it used to work for me. Being a young, warm-blooded American male in a sex-saturated society, it will come as no surprise that sexual immorality was a temptation to me. But rather than approach these testings from the heart of faith, I went the route of the mind. "The term 'porneia' is too broad to be helpful, and really, the thing a Christian must guard against is not petting and French kissing, but sexual intercourse." I wielded my Greek New Testament and lexicon, did my word studies and concordance work, and in the space of an hour or so, I had laid the intellectual framework which would give me what I wanted anyway: permission to go as far as I wanted to up to but not including sex.
Pretty sick and twisted, isn't it?
But it gets worse. Being a "smart" Christian, I could "see through" my "semi-fundamentalist" upbringing. I could watch and enjoy R- and NC-17-rated movies--after all, what's important are the artistic merits of the work. Indeed, I prided myself on thumbing my nose at some of my former taboos, settling into an air of "respectability" among my fellow (if non-Christian) "intellectuals" yet maintaining my claim to the name of Christ.
More the fool me.
If I suffered, I could intellectualize that such events were merely consequences of choices I made--and therefore would only need to critically examine them so as to have a better outcome, more favorable to my wants and preferences, occur--or merely the result of chance. I had given up the "pious belief" that God in anyway had anything to do with the orchestration of such events, without denying my free will, for my own growth and discipline. I could keep any concerns about sin and guilt separated off from the daily events of my life. I need not worry about "looking for signs" from God.
Needless to say, with all that emphasis on the mind, on the intellect, now that I'm thirty-seven, my heart is pretty hard and empty. This, no doubt, is why I have so many problems with praying.
Thankfully, God is breaking through those stone-hard walls of my heart. "New ears you have dug for me." The birth of a daughter. Being forced to trust God for next week's and next month's provision (instead of not worrying about trusting him at all). The faith that one's prayers and the intercession of the saints have, indeed, been heard and answered.
What is needed is, as Father Seraphim would have put it, an Orthodoxy of the heart. What is needed is a faith that seeks not reason first but worship. What is needed is a faith that seeks not respectability first but obedience. What is need is a faith that seeks not answers first but trust. Jesus did not call us to become as philosophers and intellectuals but to become as children.
Let the atheists, agnostics, the heretics and the enemies of the faith offer up their challenges to our faith. Bible contradictions. Scientific laws. Derision. Sneering. Let them do what they will. It will not be intellectual arguments which uphold us in the martyr's flames. It will not be our apologetics textbooks we carry in our hearts as we are attacked. It will be the Faith, the prayers, the Scriptures we carry in heart.
The life of the mind cannot save us. And without the heart of faith, we cannot know God.
One is tempted at this point to offer the disclaimer: Of course, I'm not suggesting that one preclude thinking altogether; it's both/and, not either/or. But such a temptation, given my history, is best resisted. My mind must descend into my heart, if I am going to be saved. And if that means giving up the life of the mind for the life of the heart, I would not be ill served by the trade.
Posted by Clifton at November 11, 2004 04:08 PM | TrackBackHuzzah Clifton! Well put. It sounds like you (and Blessed Seraphim) are not advocating an anti-intellectualism (another component of the fundamentalist heritage), but a dwelling in the heart which will bear true fruit in the intellect. I wonder just when and why the head and heart were separated, with favor being given to the head? Of course, it is powerfully promoted in the Enlightenment and Modernity, but surely had roots in some (unorthodox) prior tradition? Certainly our modern bias is to separate: the head is valued in one realm, the heart in another, and never the twain shall meet.
The mind is a powerful tool which might head in any direction, and so it needs formation and guidance. Can the heart be false, too? Certainly. It is especially, I think, through the formation in the liturgy and by the sacraments that we are put in the right direction, minds and hearts included. And when the heart and mind are so formed and working together, then we are whole.
This can never be an anti-intellectualism, for to hate the mind would be to hate the creator and giver of the mind.
Blessings! JF+