Christianity 014: The Greater Hermitage

Many Christians seem preoccupied with identifying the sinful things about the world in which we live in an attempt to renounce or reject them. Whether it is the attitudes about gay marriage, or making the acquisition of material goods a life’s priority, or the immoral values of our modern society - some Christians devote their lives to fighting against the vile vices of this world. To be sure, we are called to fight “against the principalities, against the powers, against the world rulers of this present darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places” (Eph. 6:12). But for some reason this fight all too often turns into a battle against “flesh and blood” (ibid.). It is certainly easier to fight against the vices of others than against the sin that lives in my own heart and to find something to renounce in others rather than to cultivate virtues in my own soul. But on a certain level, I find such an exercise counterproductive. I think it a much more worth-while pursuit to describe that which must be adopted.

One reason for this is that after describing that which is to be renounced we would still have to describe that which is to be adopted. The emptiness left by an eradicated vice must be filled with virtue, for nature, including human nature, abhors vacuum (cf. Matt. 12:43-45). If you see someone struggling to do something you could explain to him what he is doing wrong or you could teach him how to do it right. I find the latter to be a more productive approach.

The second reason is that the more one thinks about something - even about renouncing it - the more one... thinks about it and thus brings it into his life. A young Buddhist monk came to his teacher and asked for a lesson. The teacher told him not to think about monkeys for three days. The young monk was puzzled: he thought it a very easy lesson since he was not in the habit of thinking about monkeys in the first place. Three days later he returned exhausted and the teacher asked him whether he was able to complete the lesson. The young monk cried out: "All I now think about is monkeys!"