Conversion and the Desire for Christ

With my soul have I desired thee in the night; yea, with my spirit within me will I seek thee early. (Isaiah 26:9)

A perhaps unusual question to ask a Christian is: Do you desire Jesus? Do you actively want Him? Let us consider this. So many of us live with unclarified commitments, unclear wants, ambiguous inclinations, divided desires, and vague aspirations. As if only passively inclined, we may daily pray, “Lord, have mercy,” but do we actually want either Him or His mercy?

O God, you are my God; earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you; my flesh faints for you, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water. (Psalm 63:1)

Desire organizes the soul, puts in a shape, and gives it a direction, so to speak, relative to the desire. Yet, the question of what we desire as it relates to Christ is often unexamined and undeveloped. We are Christian, but do we hunger and thirst for Christ? It could even surprise some people to consider whether or not they want Jesus, His mercy, His peace, His Wisdom, His Truth, His Light, or His Life. Perhaps the question has never occurred to many of us.  A person may live with the persistent assumption that they are Christian and yet, when it comes down to it, there may be no persistent desire for Christ.

I stretch forth my hands unto thee: my soul thirsteth after thee, as a thirsty land. (Psalm 143:6)

As Christ teaches, “where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (Mat 6:21). Referring to desire, this presents a point of self-examination. Not blandly true, the necessary and dynamic interrelation between heart and desire is existentially inexorable. It is a present and active principle of human nature, and by it we discover where our heart is, that is, when we identify what we are treasuring. In other words, what we linger on in thought and emotion is the barometer for where our heart is and has been placed, and what our soul is aiming towards.

Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled. (Matthew 5:6)

Christ Himself teaches us to desire God’s Kingdom and righteousness: “Seek first His kingdom and His righteousness” (Mat 6:33). He is saying to seek this first, and principally, but so many of us do not find within ourselves this desire. The question then becomes, if you do not desire Christ, are you yet a Christian? This question points to the relationship between conversion and desire, because conversion necessarily includes a conversion of desire, a conversion of wants, aims, and intentions. As St. Innocent of Alaska teaches: “Only those who desire to do so enter the kingdom of heaven” (Indication of the Way into the Kingdom of Heaven, (Jordanville, NY: Holy Trinity, 2013), 19). Do you, then, desire the things of God? For, “whoever does not wish to approach, but neglects to do so, does not love Jesus Christ and will not receive the Holy Spirit, and, consequently, he will not enter the kingdom of heaven” (Indication of the Way, 67). In a sense, conversion is at its root the conversion of desire, and so desire becomes a paramount issue when discussing salvation.

My soul breaketh for the longing that it hath unto thy judgments at all times. (Psalm 119:20)

Again, it must be stressed that this is not a generic, insipid, milquetoast, wishy-washy desire. It is vital and energetic; it is a matter of life and death, of being and of self-knowledge. Christ calls, even commands, us to repent, to be transformed by the renewing of our minds, which implies a renewing of one’s desires: “Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.” (Matthew 18:3) In other words, as St. Innocent states of Christ, that “He does not want to have as His disciples those who are unwilling or those who have no special desire to follow Him,” (Indication of the Way, 19). Speaking as to Christians, then, can you honestly say that you are wanting and willing to follow Jesus? Do you want and desire to be cleansed of sin? Do you feel the need for His mercy? An honest look at one’s emotions is like looking into a mirror: one may not like what they see, and it may not feel very pleasant, but in looking one may see and feel the actual, and not merely abstract, need to repent.

My soul longeth, yea, even fainteth for the courts of the LORD: my heart and my flesh crieth out for the living God. (Psalm 84:2)

This conversion of desire is the objective, factual activity of the Holy Spirit when He is present. The Holy Spirit, when He comes, convicts of sin (John 16:8). The fruit of the Holy Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, and self-control (Galatians 5:22-23). The very next verse, however, is key to the current discussion, for it states: “And they that are of Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with the passions and the lusts thereof.” In other words, the desires of the old life have been crucified, rendered inoperable, even dead, which is the essence of baptism, but “how many Christians or, rather, how many people baptized in the name of Jesus Christ have perished and are perishing only because they have and had no desire to turn their attention to the foundations of our Orthodox faith” (Indication of the Way, 21). Although it is a longer quote, it is worthwhile to read slowly and carefully what St. Paul teaches:

“Or do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death? Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have become united with Him in the likeness of His death, certainly we shall also be in the likeness of His resurrection, knowing this, that our old self was crucified with Him, in order that our body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin; for he who has died is freed from sin. Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him, knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, is never to die again; death no longer is master over Him. For the death that He died, He died to sin once for all; but the life that He lives, He lives to God. Even so consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus” (Romans 6:3-11).

Death to the old self, together with its desires, is therefore a necessary part of life in Jesus: “You are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you. But if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Him” (Romans 8:9), therefore, “as far as you can, struggle and ask for God’s help. And the Holy Spirit, seeing your sincere desire, will dwell in you and help you” (Indication of the Way, 64).

We wish to see Jesus. (John 12:21)

A cross is an instrument of execution, and so to crucify the old passions and lusts is to put them to death. Therefore, the lack of conviction for sin, presence of the fruit of the Spirit, or of crucified passions and lusts, points to an absence of the Holy Spirit, and “a man who has not got the Holy Spirit… is always more or less a slave and worshiper of the world” (Indication of the Way, 48). One cannot both have the Holy Spirit and be absent of the effects of His presence and activity, and as St. Innocent states, “without the help and assistance of the Holy Spirit, it is impossible not only to enter the kingdom of heaven but even to take a single step toward it” (Indication of the Way, 51). Another longish quote, it is yet vital to understanding the vital relationship between conversion and desire, and the great need for it:

“For the mind set on the flesh is death, but the mind set on the Spirit is life and peace, because the mind set on the flesh is hostile toward God; for it does not subject itself to the law of God, for it is not even able to do so, and those who are in the flesh cannot please God. However, you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you. But if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Him. If Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, yet the spirit is alive because of righteousness. But if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you. So then, brethren, we are under obligation, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh-- for if you are living according to the flesh, you must die; but if by the Spirit you are putting to death the deeds of the body, you will live. For all who are being led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God” (Romans 8:6-14).

You are unwilling to come to Me so that you may have life. (John 5:40)

One cannot entrust oneself to Christ, which is to say have faith and believe in Him, to lovingly conform oneself to, carefully imitate, and follow Him, if one has no desire for Him, and so, “first of all you need to have a special desire and resolve to do so” (Indication of the Way, 20). St. Innocent declares, “Woe to the man who is listless and who has no desire to awake from such a sleep” (Indication of the Way, 49). Salvation involves far more than the mere speculative assent to the truth about God, for “without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is and that He is a rewarder of those who seek Him” (Hebrews 11:6). Faith is an actual entrusting of oneself to Him, which implies a turn of heart and mind, desire and thought, life and worldview, but without a desire for Christ it is all for naught, and so “if you have not this desire, fall at the feet of our Savior Jesus Christ and with fervent prayer implore Him to give it to you” (Indication of the Way, 22).

Then will I go unto the altar of God, unto God my exceeding joy: yea, upon the harp will I praise thee, O God my God. (Psalm 43:4)

The Jesus Prayer and Conversion

Outside of Christ, our minds are founded on the ceaseless subtle invocation: “I am Lord, I am Lord, I am Lord.” Scripturally, this is rooted in the moment of temptation at the Fall, when the subtle serpent offered the fruit of knowledge as a means of becoming like God. Eating the fruit, man has ever since transferred his center from God to self. As such, man’s center is now self.

Converting to Christ, therefore, refers not to making Christ an ornament to a self-as-center mode of existence, which is to say adding another layer to fallen egocentrism, but refers instead to the process of exchanging self-as-center for Christ-as-center. Conversion is not perfecting self-life, but ending self-life and being reborn into new life, the life of Christ.

In this light, the Jesus Prayer serves not merely as an expression of piety, but as a divinely prescribed means for uprooting the self from its position as the practical center of one’s being. It is the practical means, so to speak, of training the mind, heart, and will to find its center not in self, but in Christ.

The essence of humility, the Jesus Prayer thus expresses the highest form of repentance, conversion, and cross-bearing, and likewise the highest means outside of the Eucharist for realizing Christ as the central point and ground of our being, as in truth He is.

The Anatomy of Schism: How Advocating a Female Diaconate Divides the Church

David sings in Psalm 101: “Every morning I will destroy all the wicked of the land, so as to cut off from the city of the LORD all those who do iniquity.” Spiritually, this can be understood in the Church as rooting out schism and heresy early, not waiting until it has gathered its full strength. As such, it will be important to know the tactics of the enemy, the methodology of those who would seek to set the Church against herself.

The Orthodox Church currently finds gestating among certain of her members a Modern, progressive feminist movement, really an unclean spirit, that is manifesting itself as advocacy for a female diaconate. It is especially pernicious because it can only result in division. If not merely naive or unaware, the advocates of a female diaconate are either willfully ignoring the division they are insinuating, or are very aware of it and as such are intentionally maneuvering as if to imperceptibly entrench themselves in a position of political advantage so as to thus champion their cause. This is done while those who, focusing on the faith as received, would rather not speak of or research such things, and so typically remain uninformed and unaware that people are actively and intentionally coordinating efforts to change the practice of the Church.

Given that others have well highlighted important issues related to the problems of a female diaconate (also here and here), it is yet vital to understand and expose the anatomy of how this liturgical progressivism creates enemies out of the Orthodox faithful. To begin, notice that the advocacy group is a para-Church organization. In short, it is outside the Church. And yet, other than being mostly comprised of female academics, by including among its advisory board at least one metropolitan together with two archpriests, it seeks to lend ecclesiastical authority to itself. This is one of the ways that progressivism acts, like a cancerous cell which attaches itself to a body and seeks to insinuate itself into said body's functioning.

By being a para-Church organization, progressivist advocacy can eschew all actual ecclesial oversight. Posing as Orthodox, it is yet outside of the Church's authority structure, therefore maximizing its freedom to advocate while minimizing its accountability. With this methodology it can unilaterally extend its reach into the Church without actually being of the Church. By wrapping itself in a cloak of legitimacy it thus seeks to transform the Church by inserting its ideas into the members of Christ’s Body, all the while acting as a foreign body. Note carefully, however, that it will not present itself this way, but will instead present itself as a friendly and responsible group of like-minded Orthodox Christians compassionately concerned about their concern, which will of course be made to sound neutral and non-threatening.

A major element of this diaconal progressivism is feminism, and so a brief digression concerning how feminism functions as a social reality seems appropriate. Quite simply, feminism is a pseudo-virtue, and essentially a Rorschach, meaning anything from the simple affirmation that women compliment and share equal dignity and opportunity with men, on the one hand, a meaning that is moral but hardly justified by such a binary term as feminism, to the vociferous hating and displacing of men and masculinity, on the other. Such a plastic term is hardly grounds for a moral rallying cry, and its ambiguous import certainly has no place advising the Church or revising her liturgical practice. One characteristic mark of this feminism is that there is no objective “need” beyond the “felt needs” of certain men and women for such a radical change. Emotionally charged, feminism poses as a great virtue, sometimes even as the great virtue, when really it is an empty term which is filled in by the passionate imagination of its adherents. Thus it is a pseudo-virtue, and since it is not a true virtue, it will tend towards vice, a fact amply demonstrated by the successive mutations or “waves” of feminism.

Returning to the manner in which progressivism functions to divide, a key set-up to keep in mind is that progressivism functions to move, always, in the name of some “ideal,” which on the surface appears innocent enough. Ideals, like ideas, have consequences, and so does their promotion. Progressive movement being by nature relative, “progress” always implies a moving beyond others, the non-progressors, so as to achieve said progress, therefore creating at least two groups in the process. Predictably, the group which embraces progress implicitly places themselves in the “moral” group, separating themselves from the non-progressors, which renders those outside the progressive movement backwards, recalcitrant, and submoral, if not evil.

In their minds, at least, the progressives are not progressing for no reason, but for some strongly held reason, typically an ideal. Thus the very energy which motivates their desire for progress creates as an automatic consequence a proportionate “othering,” if not an “enemization,” of those who do not join them in their efforts. The problem of note here, however, is not only the bare fact of creating two necessarily opposed groups, but the insidious way in which the progressives, by intentionally moving out of sync with others, transform them into their opposing “other.” By refusing to cooperate with progressivism, one has quite simply done nothing and yet, remarkably, in doing nothing one has become the enemy of an entire group of people, all through a type of passive-aggressive enemization or “othering.”

As a psychological phenomenon, the schism that is necessarily generated by the progressives is therefore not seen by the progressives as their own fault. In their mind they are innocently and virtuously - even heroically (considering what they are up against!) - seeking their ideal. In the process of creating an “other” where there was none, the progressives end up paradoxically accusing said other of immorality, those whom they acted against, even turning themselves into the victims of those whose only sin was not to agree with their innovation, those who would consciously choose to remain without the supposed “progress.” As a consequence, in the progressive mind, to refuse to “progress” is not simply to be a stick-in-the-mud or old-fashioned, but to commit a manifest wrong.

Of course, outwardly, the progressive may be found to object to the accusation of creating schism. How they are described and how they describe themselves are not the same. They will naively claim that there “need” not be any division… if only the others would agree with them.

To apply the above to the feminist deaconess movement, the function of advocacy of the deaconess will necessarily create schism. With sophistical eloquence, an increasing number will advocate for it, and yet an increasing number will oppose. The progressive will say something to the effect of “but it does not need to be this way, you do not need to resist us, it is ‘traditional,’ you have no need to worry, do you not want women to feel included,” etc. People will fall for this nonsense. The spirit of the age, the unclean spirit of progressivism, will thus wreak havoc in our parishes.

Schism is the inevitable result of the current deaconess movement, and merely seeking to maintain what has been rightly received from our holy fathers and mothers will be treated as if it were the problem. The fault line will run deep, and those who stand outside the Church will relentlessly attempt to appear as though they are inside, and attempt to deceive Orthodox Christians to move away from sacred Tradition. By refusing to truly heed the inevitably divisive consequence of implementing their ideal, their advocacy is actually rendered a sin, even if on the surface the "ideal" appears neutral or even praiseworthy. There is no "progress" in the Church, for the faith was once for all delivered to the saints, and its life is hid with Christ in God (Colossians 3:3).

To conclude, if it has not been made clear, despite its sophistry to the contrary, the female diaconate is not only wrong theoretically. Its great sin is schism. To try to make this clearer, even if, for the mere sake of argument, one were to consider the tenuous web of arguments woven by the progressives, this would not change the schismatic nature of their proposal. In short, even if the progressives were correct in their interpretation of the roles of the historical deaconess, they are still in the wrong in seeking to "restore" it. They are wrong because they knowingly move in a way which will create division and factions. They place their idealizations above the unity of the Church. By seeking to innovate actual received practice on the basis of their historical research and progressive theorizing, they needlessly divide the Church according to the contours of their research and their subsequent theoretical proposals.

The progressives would sacrifice the unity of the Church for the sake of “exploring” their idea, split the Church in persuading to their cause, divide the Church in trying to implement it, and set brother against brother, sister against sister, all for the sake of advancing a “felt need.” Their exegetical arguments are thus not merely for the sake of clarifying history, but of lending weight to their carnal, schismatic progressivism. Capitulating in the least to the unclean spirit of progressivism only emboldens it in further endeavors, until it progressively possesses the whole Church and so destroys it from within by factions and internal divisions. Since there is no "need" for a deaconess, then there is no "need" for the change. To insist that there "needs" to be a change when there is no "need" is inevitably divisive, especially on such a socially charged issue. The Church does not adopt sweeping changes without an actual, objective need.