The Royal Path of Moderation in our Age of Excess

From Words of Counsel by Archbishop [Metropolitan] Chrysostomos of Etna to the Brotherhood of the St. Gregory Palamas Monastery

 

Regarding our society, if anything aptly describes it, it is the word “excess.” We have more than we need. We greedily find no satisfaction in our surfeit. We do not hesitate to exploit and defile our environment. The media no longer report the news with objectivity and in a spirit of constraint, so that what we hear about world events is tainted by sensationalism and unrestrained emotion, dampening any sense of the circumspect, moderate contemplation of all phenomena—spiritual or secular—to which the Church Fathers beckon us. As a consequence, some voices even espouse hatred, divisive vengeance, and ugliness in the name of Christ. In the guise of piety and righteousness, inspired and mocked by the Evil One, various firebrands fulminate against ills in the Church with unwise zeal, thinking that they are upholding traditional Orthodox teaching. In fact, the general spirit of excess in the world around us has utterly blinded us to the meaning of Christian moderation (which is grounded in, accommodates, and fosters love) and has produced a crazed vision of the world and of the Patristic spirit that is as shocking as it is dangerous.

Our society has come to call peace, silence, reserve, careful consideration, and reflection “lukewarmness,” abusing Christ’s admonition about the needful warmth of our confession, our love, and our fellowship and confusing that “warmth within the heart” with the cold, disrespectful, bombastic discourse of the world—discourse, again, that has entered into the Church in a spirit of spitefulness and hate contrary to Christianity. Indeed, when St. Paul, writing to the Hebrews, calls us to zeal in “holding to the Faith,” he immediately juxtaposes this exhortation with a clarion call to “love” and “good works” (see Hebrews 10:23- 24—Editor). Those who separate zeal from love he describes as “having trodden on the Son of God” by their wrath and vengeance, reckoning them worthy of punishment for having insulted the spirit of Grace: “τό πνεύμα τής χάριτος ένυβρίσας” (Hebrews 10:29—Editor). Indeed, moderation in love is necessary even in the defense of our Faith, however misunderstood and ignored that point may be today.

Yoked to the indispensability of moderation in Orthodox spiritual life, I inexorably and sedulously enjoin our faithful to follow what ancient wisdom and the Greek Fathers call the βασιλική οδός, or the Royal Path; i.e., moderation in all things—μηδέν άγαν (nothing in excess). Moral virtue, the acquisition of love, and union with Christ, the means and ends of true Christian life, rest flatly on the foundation of moderation and an avoidance of excess in all things. The Patristic imperative that we remain moderate in all things, as I said earlier, also applies to public life. If souls are threatened by excess and extremism in the name of fidelity to the Faith, minds and values are imperiled by political and social extremism. We have seen this in America of late. We have been witnesses to a hateful, mean, condemnatory polarization of views in our society. I would like to comment on this problem.

As, in the realm of faith, atheism has taken on a bellicose and offensive tone—a paradoxically intense preoccupation with God by individuals who claim that He does not exist—and Christian rejoinders to it have at times been far too polemical, so in American political life a similar extremism has taken hold on both the right and the left. It is wholly inimical to democratic principles, decent discourse, and respectful disagreement of the type that should be cultivated by good citizens. Crude, disgraceful rhetoric in political campaigns is nothing new to American politics. However, the continuation of inter-party enmity and vulgarity into post-election politics manifests itself today with an intensity heretofore almost unknown. On both the left and right, we hear partisan rhetoric that is divisive, seditious, wholly reprehensible, and reminiscent of political disputants in some “banana republic,” not the American Republic. All of this, as I have said, is reflective of a society of excess and extremism and the antipathy and selfishness that they reinforce.

Let the Orthodox Church not seek the power to speak decisively to political issues in a pluralistic democracy, in rendering to Caesar what is his; but neither let it relinquish its right to uphold Christian standards of conduct and to advocate that spirit of moderation and love that is a foundation of Patristic teachings. The Church does have a right to oppose such things as abortion, to confront secularization, and to express its opinion of the violation of moral laws dear to the Christian witness, though in a moderate way. In opposing abortion we cannot countenance the killing of physicians who perform abortions. In calling for a lawful society and order, we are not permitted to endorse fascism and racism. In justly guarding our country’s borders and security, we cannot lose the Christian high ground by refusing to share our wealth with others and by ignoring the poor. Moderation and love must prevail in all things; otherwise, our conservatism, traditionalism, and firm moral teachings— having been defiled by excess and extremism—will become “as sounding brass,” to quote St. Paul (I Corinthians 13:1—Editor.)

Politicians or leaders who lack an Orthodox outlook, who speak— whether from the extreme right or left—in language that is turgid, degrading, pompous, inflammatory, excessive, hate-filled, and repugnant, we should not follow. When we follow them, we defile our faith, reduce ourselves to social refuse, and render to Caesar what is not his. A Christian cannot, in the name of freedom, make gods of tyrants and demagogues. We should not follow those who preach in the words of atheism gone wild or of religion gone astray. In supporting a political ideology of any kind, a Christian must not show conduct that makes a mockery of our Orthodox confession or the teachings of Christ, Who, while on earth, acted with discipline, respected order, advocated lawfulness. Christ asked of His followers, as He does those of us who cling to Him now, moderation, love, forgiveness, sacrifice, and a recognition of the dignity and free will of all. He would have as vehemently opposed depraved non-believers on the left who hate and compromise our Christian beliefs as He would have chided those on the right who, in some twisted, cult-created travesty of Christianity, call upon His Name to preach and foster hatred.

A true Christian, standing in the middle of a two-way road, risks the onslaught of those in the left and right lane. A true Christian awaits such an eventuality as part of the life in Christ. Orthodox in Byzantium died in huge numbers at the hands of misguided, rapacious Christian Crusaders and marauding Islamic invaders bent on the extermination of Christian “infidels.” Untold millions of Orthodox perished in the concentration camps of evil Stalin’s Godless socialist paradise, while Hitler’s fascist death camps claimed, in the name of Rechi und Ordnung (law and order), the lives of countless Orthodox Greeks (including some of my own relatives), Serbs (under the Nazi Croatian state), and Russians— not to mention millions of innocent Jews, Gypsies, and social and religious dissenters of all kinds. These things attest both to the evil of immoderation (in these instances, of a political kind) and the price that we must pay in witnessing to the malevolence of extremism.

The liberal or conservative in the service of hatred and violence is an inevitable product of the abandonment of moderation and love. Reckless militarism and reactionary theocracy—of which we Orthodox are not just victims, but of which, in our lesser moments, we have also been guilty—are similar products. Every liberal utopian fantasy that eschews God, a vision of Supreme Good, or a grounding in Divine Law, spawning anarchy and amorality, is likewise such a product. Liberalism and conservatism that violate the Royal Path work in consort with iniquity, eventually leading to such deadly ills as Communism and fascism. In fact, extremism in the service of anything is a precursor to evil.

Heed we must—and with great care, given the intemperate undercurrents in our country today—the message of the Gospel and the Lathers in every aspect of our lives, whether political, social, or religious. It is a message of moderation and love. The Royal Path avoids all extremism and excess, avoiding the lukewarmness of those not formed in love and those unstirred by heated action in love. We must seek the fervor of constant moderation and love, following God, Who repudiates “extremity” even in His righteous wrath (Job 35:15—Editor).

 

Source: Orthodox Tradition, Vol. XXVIII (2011), No. 1, pp. 9-11.