What God do you meet in those moments of transcendence?
Humans are built with the ability to enjoy and bask in the glory of God
- (brief warmth of sun after a long winter)
- Was meant to be a permanent reality; but we chose another way
- But we still have moments when we feel a special warmth, a sense of belonging, of comfort, of transcendence.
- Could happen at any time, but most of us have times when it is more likely (church, music, gardening, teaching, enjoying well-earned creature comforts after a well-worked day)
But who is the god that we are meeting in such moments? Even as Christians, we cannot assume that it is the true God.
- Feelings are unreliable. We have a sort of sixth sense, a spiritual sense, but why do we assume that it is reliable? Why do we assume that when it is triggered – in this case, when it offers a sense of euphoria – that it is pointing to God?
- Think about how easily our other senses are misled. A couple of examples should prove the point:
- Taste meant to keep us alive and enjoying the foods we need; but our culture has manipulated our senses and perverted our foods so that we most enjoy and crave foods that destroy our health. It feels real and good, but it isn’t. We are misled.
- Pleasure in sex is meant to bring married couples even closer together and to give the world children and families; but our culture has manipulated our senses and created sexual experiences – most notably pornography and every kind of sex outside marriage – so that we most crave the very experiences that destroy us. If feels real and good, but it isn’t. We are misled.
- So it is with our spiritual sense. A culture of deception and our own spiritual pride (prelest) manipulates us to enjoy experiences that can kill us.
- Worse yet, just as we can become so accustomed to food that is engineered to deceive us that we find it hard to enjoy real food;
- Just as pornography, pre-marital sex, and affairs make it harder for married couples to experience the true intimacy they should
- So it is that cotton-candy and delusional spirituality makes it hard to get to the kind of experience of God that the spiritual sense was designed to encourage.
With Great Lent, the Orthodox Church is trying to prepare us for a time of incredible transcendence: the celebration of the Resurrection of our Lord, Jesus Christ.
- In this, we can see how this is done:
- Fasting, continual denial of our cravings towards a purpose
- Frequent, continual repentance (most notably, St. Ephraim’s prayer)
- More frequent worship; more earnest prayer
St. Gregory Palamas defended the fact that we can experience the grace of God through prayer and the services of the Church.
- This is part of our inheritance as children of God.
- But he also taught that it would require training, and that there were many false experiences that would tempt people away
- We need the Church to train and guide us.
It’s not just about feeling good in prayer or worship, or any other time. It is coming to know the true God who loves and saves rather than a created idol of our imagination or the world’s doing that promises glory but cannot deliver anything more than transient satisfaction.
Even if we do not train our spiritual senses, we will, one day, meet the true God. It is best that we prepare accordingly.
