One matter that ties up the modern Western Christian in
knots is the fear of appearing judgemental, for did not Christ teach, judge not
lest ye be judged? Essentially the atheistic
liberal, in bad faith, has a strong hand in being able to accuse the Christian
of contradicting his Lord when he comments on matters associated with social liberalism. Nonetheless
the reason the modern Christian is tied up in knots is because his is too modern
and not Christian enough. His problem
has everything to do with the liberal paradigm within which he thinks and very
little to do with the eternal teachings of the Church.
It is not that we judge others, but that we repent of
collective sin. For the liberal, with
his anthropology of atomistic individualism, collective sin is an impossibility. And once you deny collective sin, to attempt
to forgive and to work towards repentance seems to be judging others.
Modern Christianity has become tainted by the idea of
individual virtue, rather than the acceptance of the collective fall and need
for transformation. Once we feel our
virtue belongs to us, in a world premised upon meritocracy, then commenting on
sin appears to be condemnation and judgement of others.
When the world was shaped by the Church and not philosophers and scientists, it would not have
been understood that way. Rather than
atomistic individuals with self-control, self-command and autonomy, we were
once all linked. In that sense, no one’s
sin was completely their own.
The monk spent a life of prayer and repentance for the sins
of the collective human race of whom he was a part and the sin of which and the
fallen nature of which he also partook. There was
no self-congratulatory judging of others, but an act of loving repentance for
the human body of which he was a part.
The Enlightenment and its reductive creed of liberalism
turned everything upside down. Instead
of partaking in repentance for our collective sin, it separated us out into
atomised and disconnected individuals who owned and possessed our sins and
virtues much like private property in the post-feudal era.
As a result to condemn the sins of others is to trespass on
that other man’s property, as though disobeying Christ’s teaching not to
judge. Instead the Church saw everything
the other way around. Because we too
partake in the sin and are all connected, we cannot judge others. We are instead all collectively part of the
fallen nature. We lovingly repent for
each other as well as our own sins, for which we do have a special responsibility. So the Christian repentance is loving and not
judgemental. It is identifying alongside
the sinner in his spiritual sickness, rather than condemning another from a
position of moral superiority. Only with
individualism could that moral superiority exist.
That is not to say moral superiority is unique to the
Enlightenment. The claim to my own
individual virtue was made by the Pharisees and was a continual problem in
Byzantium. This is the reason for the emergence
of the fool for Christ, a figure the modern Western Christian cannot easily
understand.
This unruly saint would deliberately simulate sin and
disrupt the piousness of the hypocritical majority focused upon their own
virtue. This type of saint is most powerfully portrayed in modern times by the
actor Pyotr Mamonov in the 2006 Russian film Ostrov.[1] Here the main character is unruly,
disrupts the life of the monastery and generally offends the respectable
monks. One character in particular, Father Job, seems
to portray that striving for individual virtues; the struggle to attain them
leading to the sin of pride. Instead of
priding ourselves on our religious knowledge and acquisitioin of virtues, we instead
are called humbly to acknowledge our collective state of sin. As Greek theologian Christos Yannaras put it:
“It is enough if someone humbly accepts his own sin and fall,
without differentiating it from the sin and fall of the rest of mankind,
trusting in the love of Christ which transfigures this acceptance into personal
nearness and communion, into a life of incorruption and immortality.”[2]
The Enlightenment and its political expression in
liberalism, breaks this communion. It
turns us into individuals, separated and estranged atoms, dislocated from the
telos, for whom our virtue is our own and to speak of sin and guilt can only
ever sound like judgementalism. Only
when we break out of the liberal paradigm of individualism will we be able to
understand fully the nature of our call to repentance in love.
No comments:
Post a Comment