Arsenios
Well-known member
Arsenios
I am glad you had a wonderful life in a monastery.
I rejoice in your gladness, but I am not a monastic - I have a day job... Serving John Q. Public...
Nowhere in the Bible does it encourage living in a monastery or asceticism.
"Then they shall fast..." [Christ]
"I subdue my body, and not as a shadow boxer beating the air..." [Paul]
"Let him first deny himself, then take up his own cross, and follow Me." [Christ]
"Repent and be Baptized, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand..." [John]
To cite but a few...
Rather we are told to be in the world, but not of the world, engaging with the world, preaching the Gospel to all the world.
To the extent that you are hanging on to your sheckles, you are OF the world...
I believe one "scores more brownie points in heaven" by giving someone a glass of water, rather than spending the day fasting.
It is not at all about scoring brownie points in heaven, but is all about approaching the unapproachable God in repentance, forsaking self and the world for the sake of the Kingdom of Heaven as a member of Christ's Holy Body, the Church...
There are two approaches. One is to focus on fasting, and rituals, which is all self-centred on increasing one's own righteousness.
These are not self centered, but obedience centered, which denies self will...
The other approach is to be others focused, to serve in a soup kitchen, getting dirty, perhaps being tempted and making mistakes. It is this second type of "righteous life" which I believe Christianity encourages, rather than the Pharisaical focus on washing hands, fasting, tassels, chief seats in the synagogue etc.
Such service to others is common in monasteries - Indeed it is the rule... Self-righteousness is a colossal fail... Self-condemnation is the rule, and even this CAN [sometimes] turn into self righteousness...
Self-centred righteousness such as that which monasticism encourages is NOT biblical. Even in the OT it was not biblical.
You do not yet know what Orthodox monasticism entails... It arose when the Church became official in the Roman Empire, and true Christians fled from the influx to the desert where they could have the solitude to pray, labor, and suffer for the Kingdom of God... An effort to flee the distractions of the world and purify the heart that God illumine the mind and deify the person in Him... It is all about becoming one with God... Which is all about the Marriage of the Lamb...
One cannot arrive in the Promised Land unless one first crosses the Red Sea and struggles in the Desert...
Arsenios