4. WHAT IS THE PURPOSE OF THE CHRISTIAN LIFE?

The general purpose of this blog is to explore religious doubts.  In order to do this, we have explore those states of mind which fall short of certitude.  So what are they?

According to Rickaby, the first is sheer ignorance.¹  The only question about ignorance is, as Rickaby observes, culpability:  “A surgeon need not know what the eccentric of a steam engine is, but he ought to know what a tourniquet is.”²  Rickaby’s example implies that blameworthy ignorance depends on whether something is relevant to us.  Therefore, if our doubts about the faith are due to ignorance, we must learn things that are relevant to our faith.  But relevance depends on purpose, so we must first ask what is the purpose of the Christian life. 

There are many Fathers to whom we could turn for this purpose.  I happen to like St. Theophan the Recluse, who says that our purpose in life is to attain to the “blessed life beyond the grave.”³  It follows that we must use every means necessary to secure it.  “The means are the works [done] according to the commandments.”⁴  How do we select these works?  They are presented to us “by each instance of life.”⁵  St. Theophan sternly admonishes us that “it is a great error to think that you must undertake important and great labors.”⁶  He goes on to say that “everything that you do here, no matter what it is, will be a work; and if you do it with the consciousness that such a work is according to the commandments and that God wants such a thing, then the work will be pleasing to God.  So it is with every small thing.”⁷  How small?  “Each step, each word, even each movement and glance—everything may direct one to walk in God’s will and consequently to move each moment toward the ultimate goal.”⁸    

If the purpose of the Christian life is to attain to Heaven, then what we must know at all costs is the means which will serve our purpose.  There is no shortage of opportunities, as St. Theophan says, so why do more people not go to Heaven?  The answer is ignorance of the commandments that turn our daily chores and random circumstances into God-pleasing labors.  Because we do not understand how to look at our daily routine, not realizing that (in the words of Archimandrite Vasileios of Iveron Monastery) we can “in a single moment . . . find eternity.”⁹

Therefore, we can well believe St. Mark the Monk when he ranks ignorance as “the first among all evils”¹⁰ and “the mother and nurse of every vice.”¹¹  In his most vivid language, he says that “Hell is ignorance, for both are dark.”¹²  For if we do not know that it is life beyond the grave that matters, how will we avoid wasting all the time of this life?  If we do not know that “every small thing” is important to God and to our salvation, how will we avoid squandering innumerable opportunities for our salvation and for the salvation of those around us?  How many people hate their jobs because they would rather be at church, not knowing that, as Fr. Vasileios says, “the effort that [they] put into making a living . . . is in itself a prayer”?¹³  

In short, we want to cure the ignorance which makes Christians indistinguishable from nihilists and atheists.  What is its cure? 

ENDNOTES

1.  John Rickaby, The First Principles of Knowledge, 4^th ed. (London:  Longmans, Green & Co., 1901), p. 43 f.

2.  Ibid.

3.  St. Theophan the Recluse, The Spiritual Life and How To Be Attuned To It, 3^rd ed., tr. Alexandra Dockham (Safford, Arizona:  St. Paisius Serbian Orthodox Monastery, 2003), p. 74.  Three caveats follow.  First, St. Theophan is not the only Father whom I could have cited; my choice is to some degree arbitrary.  Second, the letters which I have quoted contain a good deal of information not here noted but which I urge the reader to read carefully to get a fuller picture.  Finally, St. Theophan is not a pietist; he tacitly assumes on the part of his correspondent dogmatic agreement.  Later on, he reminds his correspondent that “the entire order of Christian life is thus:  believe in God, in the worshipful Trinity that saves us in the Lord Jesus Christ through the benevolence of the Holy Spirit; receive beneficial powers through the Divine Mysteries of the Holy Church; live according to the commandments of the Gospel, being inspired with the hope that God, for the smallest, feasible labor of ours, for the sake of faith in the Lord Savior and obedience to him, will not deprive us of heavenly blessings.”

4.  Ibid., p. 75.

5.  Ibid.

6.  Ibid., p. 74.

7.  Ibid., p. 77.  Here as everywhere else in the Fathers, the commandments are short for the commandments of Christ.  The prominence of the Ten Commandments in Orthodox confession manuals seems to be due to modern reliance on Catholic sources. 

8.  Ibid., p. 79.  Cf. Archimandrite Vasileios, who described an old monk at work in his garden thus:  “His digging was a prayer.  Each step, everything he was doing was a prayer.  The dirt—everything—was a prayer” (Archimandrite Vasileios, p. 167).

9.  Archimandrite Vasileios, “Everything Is Prayer,” The Orthodox Word 279 (July-August 2011), p. 164.

10.  The Philokalia, tr. G.E H. Palmer, Philip Sherrard and Kallistos Ware, vols. 1-4 (London:  Faber & Faber, 1979-1995; reprint, New York:  Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1983), 1:133.  But ignorance does not act alone.  In St. Mark’s view, ignorance, forgetfulness and laziness are the “three powerful and mighty giants of the Philistines, upon whom depends the whole hostile army of the demonic Holofernes” (1:158 f.)  The three giants are mutually reinforcing, but laziness “supports and strengthens the other two” (1:159). 

11.  Ibid., p. 157.

12.  Ibid., p. 114.

13.  Archimandrite Vasileios, p. 171.