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The Uncaused Severity of God

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When I wrote this piece I felt the presence of St. Anthony of Egypt helping me to choose the words. Anthony lived from 251 to 356 CE and has been called the Father of Christian monasticism. Here he delivers a lecture as though he were living in the 21st century.

The phrase "uncaused severity" first came to me from a Muslim writer whose name I cannot remember. I would say that he was a saint except that Muslims do not wish to call any man a saint, for only God, Allah, is great. I would like to apply this idea to myself and not be called a saint. Even Jesus, a nearly perfect human being, asked "Why do you call me good? No one but God is good."

If you would know the truth, God is severe, but I consider His severity to be uncaused because it does not derive from any man's failings. In other words, He is not severe because of sin.

Let me say a few words about asceticism. It is a topic that is relevant to our discussion, for the God who is severe must be approached by someone who has become holy, insofar as that is humanly possible. The word "asceticism" comes from the Greek word meaning "labor". Everyone accepts the idea that labor is necessary to become proficient at a musical instrument, or to become a doctor, or to plant and harvest crops. It should be obvious, then, that we must labor if we are to find the Most High.

Asceticism is not a matter of harming one's body by depriving it of its legitimate needs. The labor that is necessary requires, more than anything else, that we overcome what I consider to be one of the roots of sin: sloth, lethargy, or laziness.

If lethargy is not the root of all evil, it is at least a root, for it is because of spiritual lethargy that the mortal man, the lump of flesh that we are, does not wish to be changed.

Let us consider how much damage we do to ourselves through lethargy. It is the practice in the modern world to virtually eliminate silence and stillness by a constant recourse to television, movies, and radio. For my part, I cannot conceive of a successful quest for God without silence, and silence is as fundamental for a child's growth as physical food. It is in silence that the spirit grows within the heart and creativity becomes possible.

Perhaps you can see that it is really because of mental lethargy that we do not wish to live with silence, because silence requires us to be mentally alert, aware of our thoughts, aware of our feelings, aware of what we are doing with our hands. It is because the parent is lethargic that he or she places the child in front of the television set.

You may object and say that the parent is too busy or too tired to guide the child in creative forms of play, and must use the television set. Somehow I doubt it. Humanity existed for hundreds of thousands of years, if not millions of years, in silence--and suddenly there is a generation that says that it cannot survive without television.

I will not argue the point further because I am an old monk and I do not claim to know everything there is to know about raising a child in the 21st century. I do know, however, as an expert in monasticism, that the child that was raised without silence must one day learn silence as though it were a foreign language; and if he does not learn this language he will not speak the language of God.

It is the simple truth that God wishes us to be holy, insofar as that is humanly possible, for He is holy, and only someone who is like Him can know Him and become absorbed in Him. God does not require us to have all manner of psychic gifts. He did not ask us to use the power of thought to become wealthy. He did not ask us to have a website and innumerable followers. He simply asks for our holiness.

What is holiness but attention to the first of all commandments, "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and all your strength." Here is a subtle point: there are some who have psychic gifts, wealth, and followers because God accomplished these ends through them. But it is hard to have these things without caring about them, and it is certainly easier to acquire them than to have the right attitude while acquiring them. That is why God told me that He prefers it if His sons and daughters have a "moderate poverty".

In every case it is presumptuous to think that "I am doing something important", when only God acting through us can accomplish anything worthwhile. I remind those who teach that one sentence from a Godly man or woman will do more to improve the world than ten books from someone with a prominent ego. The Hindu saint Ramana Maharshi is a perfect example of this principle. He asked the single question, "Who am I?" and that question and its answer taught the world more than an encyclopedia could have. When I consider him I wonder if I, myself, am far too wordy.

Let me summarize what I have said so far. If we would approach God, the God Who is severe, we must be severe with ourselves and become ascetics, which does not mean that we should harm ourselves but that we should overcome the cardinal sin of lethargy. In this sense, the "severity of God" is akin to the severity of science, of musicianship, of the military, of any field that requires excellence.

But our asceticism, our labor, cannot enable us to fulfill the first commandment to love God with all our heart, soul, and strength. The only legitimate striving is the striving of the Spirit in us, and only the Spirit of Love within us can truly love. If we do not know this we may succeed in acquiring psychic gifts with the same worldly attitude that might have helped us to succeed in business, but we will miss the one thing that God asks of us, which is holiness.

When the spiritual life is business as usual for the human ego, it is not really a spiritual life.

The Reformation of Islam

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