Should We Be Set Apart From Others?

By the Holy Monastery of the Paraclete, Oropos, Nea Palatia

 

 

By closely examining the social life around us, we inevitably come to the conclusion that in our time, duty and virtue have lost their former glory. What appears to matter today is power and numbers. This becomes especially evident in the political, social, and private lives of men.

The various pressures and injustices are easily forgiven to the powerful of our day. The much-celebrated progress and development often conceal and justify many other things. Frequently, even the slightest objection to a questionable event is characterized as lack of tact. Moreover, the opinion of the masses exerts a remarkable influence on human thought.

Whatever the crowd thinks, decides, and acts upon becomes law to which everyone must submit, including one’s very conscience. Of course, the majority can sometimes be right. Nonetheless, many are under the impression (perhaps not mistakenly) that most of the time, the crowds, the masses, are wrong.

“But why should we care?” many think. “It is wiser to behave like everyone else or, at the very least, it is not unforgivable not to adhere strictly to duty, since others do not adhere to it either. There is no reason to be set apart from others!”

This rule, however, is disastrous because, although it may appear to benefit us in certain circumstances, it ultimately demands of us a triple sacrifice: of our convictions, of our freedom, and of our honor.

THE SACRIFICE OF CONVICTIONS

Those who follow this rule often have to sacrifice their convictions first and foremost. It is, of course, widely accepted that it is usually necessary to adjust to daily demands and conditions of life, as long as they do not infringe upon faith or Christian morals. A Christian who is inspired by true love for his fellow man is always cheerful, polite, helpful, obliging, and willing to endure everything that does not go against his beliefs.

Nevertheless, here is the limit of his magnanimous disposition to conform to the world’s dictates. Let those around him heed neither divine revelation nor the teachings of the Church. Let them be carried away by public opinion to do their provocative deeds. Let them trample upon divine and human moral law without remorse. Let them scorn our Orthodox tradition. The faithful Christian will lament the spiritual disability of his fellow men, but of course he will never imitate them. His personal conscience, illuminated and guided by faith, remains his sole compass.

For how could it be otherwise? Does delusion cease to be delusion when accepted by the majority? Does evil, when done on a wide scale, not remain just as evil? Does moral duty, even if forgotten and unacceptable to the many, lose its transcendent and universal authority for him?

The Apostle Paul emphasizes to the unstable and faltering Christians of all ages: “Be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God” (Romans 12:2).

So, if the whole world has forgotten the divine truths and has sunk into evil—“the whole world lieth in wickedness” (1 John 5:19)—in order for the teaching of the Gospel to be realized and for the will of God to prevail in all things, it is often both necessary and natural to distinguish ourselves precisely from those whose will does not agree with the divine law and whose life is not characterized by an Orthodox Christian spirit.

In this regard, the Old Testament presents us with an impressive example in the person of Tobit.

He lived in an era when the Hebrews, forgetting the countless blessings of God, fell into idolatrous delusion. The apostasy was so widespread that the words of the Prophet David could have applied to that time: “They are all gone astray, they are altogether useless, there is none that doeth good, no not one.” (Psalm 13:4).

However, amidst the deluded crowd, Tobit remains firm in his faith, adhering to the traditions of his ancestors and the divine law given at Mount Sinai. When everyone else was rushing to worship the golden calf, Tobit would go to the Temple in Jerusalem to worship the true God, offering the first-fruits of his fields and a tenth of all his income.

Then came the dark years of slavery, laden with trials, captivity in the land of the Assyrians. Yet, even now, he does not betray the path of truth. He remains steadfastly devoted to the ancestral law. Thus, while everyone else ate the meat of pagan sacrifices, the idol-offerings, which were forbidden by God’s law, he never once did “what everyone else does.”

Tobit’s ultimate testimony of faith, amidst his idol-worshipping nation, was his risky approach—diametrically opposed to that of his cowardly countrymen—on the issue of the burial of the dead, a matter vital to the Israelite conscience. He defied not only public opinion, their comments and mockery, but also the tyrants’ decree that forbade the burial of dead Israelites under penalty of death. Each evening, he would leave his humble home to perform—alone—the sacred duty of burying any unburied bodies of his unfortunate enslaved fellow-countrymen that he might find.

From the Holy Scriptures we know well the blessings with which the Lord rewarded him—not immediately, of course, but only after first testing his steadfast and courageous adherence to the divine law under the most desperately adverse circumstances.

Likewise, we too are called, amidst the formidable masses that are (voluntarily or, usually, involuntarily) mobilized against the faith and the Church of Christ, to distance ourselves as courageous individuals, to set ourselves apart from the others. “Come out from among them, and be ye separate,” writes the Apostle Paul (2 Corinthians 6:17); and Saint John Chrysostom comments: “Let us accept the counsel of the teacher of the world and consider what sort of men Christians ought to be; how they ought to be strangers to the present life, not to dwell somewhere outside and far from this world but rather, while living in this world and interacting with it, to live not as the world lives, thus shining like stars and showing the unbelievers through their works that they have transferred themselves to another polity, and that they have nothing in common with the earth and worldly things.” Therefore, we Christians will not sacrifice any of our principles and beliefs, nor the “jot” or “tittle” of our ecclesiastical life, for the sake of humbly pleasing those who act unlawfully.

THE SACRIFICE OF FREEDOM

It is noteworthy that the harmful rule “we must not stand out from others” is most often followed by people who like to call themselves “liberals,” without realizing that by conforming to this mass mold, they are denying their personal freedom and surrendering themselves to a humiliating slavery.

Saint John Chrysostom writes very accurately once again: “The crowd is, unfortunately, our master and a terrible tyrant... The great crowd, disorderly and insignificant, does not need to give orders; it need only show us its preferences, and we immediately obey everything. ‘And how,’ they say, ‘can one avoid these tyrants?’ If he acquires a mindset superior to theirs, if he carefully examines the nature of things, if he despises the opinion of the many, if, above all, he trains himself so that, in matters that are truly shameful, he fears not men but the ever-watchful eye of God, and in good matters, he seeks again the crowns that He bestows.”

Let us all openly ask ourselves: A person who is afraid to stand out from others, who does not dare to openly express his beliefs—is he truly free? He would be happy if he could express himself without hesitation, according to the voice of his conscience, but he does not dare. He is not free. He is a captive to “public opinion.” The mere presence of people with opposing views paralyzes him.

He is very bold and acts according to his conscience when he is alone or in an environment that shares his beliefs; but observe him when he is among the unsteady crowd. You won’t recognize him! He becomes a different person, thinking and living like everyone else. He denies his personality, his freedom of thought and conscience. He is a slave, and indeed, the most miserable of slaves.

This expression does not conceal any form of exaggeration. Is there perhaps a more wretched form of slavery than not being able to express what you feel and to act as you desire?

He who is fettered by such psychological complexes is often compelled to humble himself greatly. The fear of “standing out from others” forcibly drives him to participate at times in soul-eroding conversations or to occasionally smile at blasphemous and vulgar jokes against the faith. Such a tactic, however, is not only unfree but leads to the complete debasement of one’s personality.

So, these are the inevitable consequences of the rule “there is no reason to stand out from others, but it’s better to behave like everyone.”

The early Christians and martyrs behaved entirely differently. In front of the bloodthirsty judges’ judgement seat and the angry hostile crowds, they did not hesitate to boldly confess their faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.

They would ask the Christian: “What is your name?”

“Christian!” he would answer.

“What is your profession?”

“Christian!”

“Where are you from?”

“Christian!”

Always the same majestic and courageous response, which often put the persecutors in a difficult position, sometimes it troubled them, and not infrequently it led them to Christ.

This is the genuine Christian spirit: a spirit of sincerity, steadfastness, true freedom, a spirit diametrically opposed to the humiliating theory of “there is no reason to stand out from others.” “God hath not given us the spirit of fear, but of power.” (2 Timothy 1:7).

THE SACRIFICE OF HONOR

But does this tactic of “chameleonism,” by stripping the Christian of his principles and of his own self-liberty, at least ensure the respect and esteem of others, for which it primarily aims? It would be completely irrational to assume such a thing. Common opinion on spiritual matters—as we’ve already mentioned—often misses the mark. However, it never rewards characters who vacillate. How can we deny it? People love and in fact admire, even if only inwardly, those with steadfast and clear convictions, and their respect for those who stand unwaveringly by their principles runs deep.

This held true even in the idolatrous world. A pre-Christian wise man, desiring to portray the image of a virtuous person, emphasizes that nothing can deter him from fulfilling his duty: neither the exceeding power of tyrants, nor the pressure of public opinion, nor even the destruction of the entire... world!

The following action of the pagan emperor Constantius Chlorus is very convincing regarding the truth of what we are now supporting. Wanting to test the Christian officers of his retinue, he announced that he would keep close only those who would immediately renounce their Christian faith. Some then, taking a step forward, declared that they were ready to renounce. Then Constantius, casting them a contemptuous glance, dismissed them as unworthy of his trust.

The same contemptuous gaze, whether overt or hypocritically veiled, is the reward of the cowardly and the faint of heart, who are ready to betray their principles at an ironic smile. People disdain them, while, conversely, they respect those whom nothing can deter from the Christian way of life which they have chosen. Not only do they respect them, but sometimes they are ready to emulate them.

One incident illustrates this. At a luxurious hotel, an official dinner was held during a fasting period. Everyone was eating non-fasting foods. Someone, however, ordered fasting food, resulting in many ironic smiles and offensive comments. Nonetheless, the calm and confident demeanor of the faster and his witty and serious responses quickly forced his superficial table companions to fall silent. One person in fact even rose from his seat and, expressing his admiration for the steadfastness of the first, added, “I don’t want only you to have fasting food tonight. I too am an Orthodox Christian, and from today I will follow your example.” He immediately asked them to serve him fasting food.

* * *

We must realize that a great danger to Christian life is posed in our days by the widespread distribution of the mindset that says, “There is no reason to stand out from the others.”

It is worth remembering that the pagan philosopher Plato, in the fifth century before Christ, highlights this danger to ethical life through the persona of Socrates. In the dialogue “Crito,” he personifies this petty concern “lest we incur the disapproval of the majority” in the character of Socrates’ disciple, Crito. But Socrates responds: “We should not give any thought to what most people will say of us. No, we should heed what the person who knows justice and injustice says, that one person, and truth itself.”

Speaking almost prophetically, besides not caring whether he will stand out from the majority, Socrates emphasizes the opinion of the one, the chosen one, who in our case is none other than God, the “One and Truth itself.”

Those, however, who consider Socrates and Plato “obsolete,” as well as the other wise man who said “to me, one excellent man is worth ten thousand,” let them rest their pioneering thought on the “pioneering” Eugène Ionesco and specifically on his “Rhinoceros,” which convey the same message, namely Socrates’s distrust of the opinion of the many and, even closer to us, the apostolic exhortation, “Be not conformed to this world” (Romans 12:2).

We remind the reader that in this work, the famous playwright allegorically presents some originally isolated cases of men who, following a rather beastly way of life, took on the external form of the rhinoceros, arousing of course the abhorrent aversion and dread of “good society.” Later on, however, these cases of metamorphosis increased, until the last ones who did not transform and remained human became the target of… rhinocerotic irony and contempt, feeling insecure because they were “different from the others,” in other words, because they did not become rhinoceroses themselves!

Between the teachings of Plato’s Crito and the pioneering message of Ionesco, for us Christians a remarkable prophecy by the illiterate teacher of the desert, Anthony the Great, holds a central (in terms of time and value) position, which we read in the Gerontikon:

“Abba Anthony said, ‘A time is coming when men will go mad, and when they see someone who is not mad, they will attack him, saying, “You are mad,” because he will not be like them.’”

If we are not already traversing this prophesied era, we are certainly very close to it. Of course, madness should not be our ambition, even if it is collective. Let us be ready to hear many times with philosophic dispassion the words, “You are mad.”

In any case, our collective experience, which is not so small, convinces us that those few and isolated individuals who have not been swept away by the current of mass adoption of ideas (whether social, political, or religious) are not so few, though they are admittedly isolated.

Of course, a very large portion of the world (not “the whole world”) is indifferent to spiritual values, ignores the voice of conscience, and tramples on the eternal law of God. There are many, however, especially among the youth, more than we suspect, who have not submitted to the mentality of the crowd and the leveling of the globalization that is being promoted, who have not deigned to betray their principles for a fake sociality, who have not “bowed the knee to Baal,” who have remained faithful to the worship of the Lord Jesus Christ and uncompromising in the ecclesiastical struggle for virtue. It’s just that, as we said, while they are not so few, they are “isolated” and unknown to the many, who are in need of such support.

It is true that “good does not make noise.” We agree. It is also true that the “remnant of the Lord,” which has not conformed to “this world,” is not—must not be—ostentatious. Finally, let it at least not be... shy!

So, for those of us who have been more or less influenced by the destructive theory that “there is no reason to stand out from the others,” it is an urgent necessity of the times to reject it as soon as possible. Without big words, let our stance, flowing from our genuine ecclesiastical experience, be the denunciation of this theory.

By steadfastly observing the bright commandments of our faith and of our Church, without guilty shame, full of courage, it is certain that we will soon enjoy the appreciation, trust, and respect of our fellow men. Even if this does not happen, the Lord Himself will abundantly reward us for our steadfastness and courage. Therefore, let us confess Him everywhere and always, “Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumbling block, and unto the Greeks foolishness; but unto them which are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God” (1 Corinthians 1:23-24).

 

Translated by Nicholas Nelson (typos corrected) and published by Uncut Mountain Press.