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anglomedved
Increasingly I seem to see a problem of church structures blocking the road to spiritual maturity. Let me test out a hypothesis on spiritual development. The consequences are different in Russia and in Western Europe, but the underlying pattern is the same. I tried it on our mixed-confession group of English-speaking clergy in Brussels, and they reacted positively.
Let me start with a basic three-stage model of Christian development, for both lay people and clergy outside monasteries:
1) Stage 1: An initial stage, in which the structure is largely provided by the Church, its services, its feasts and fasts, its standard patterns for home and private prayer.
2) Stage 2: After a period, there is a shift from external to internal structure: we begin to develop a structure based more directly in Christ, rooted in Him, in which we are less dependent on the outer structure. We thirst for Christ in a different way, and slowly come to know Him independently of the external structures. The process can be a messy one: we feel dissatisfied with the outer structure, may go into reaction against the Church, become less regular in our churchgoing. Western Christianity knows this as the ‘Dark Night of the Soul’.
3) Stage 3: At the end of this period we have gained sufficient spiritual freedom to return to the structures, but now as mature people, moving towards the ‘stature of the fullness of Christ’ (Ephesians 4.13), psychologically free and able to maintain a critical distance with the form structure where necessary. This includes being able to differ with one’s priest or bishop without walking out of the Church.
My contention is that, in both Russia and the West, until the 1950s, the overwhelming majority of lay people traditionally spent all their lives at stage 1. Today, however, in particular as a result of large-scale higher education, many lay people feel the urge to move further into stages 2 and 3.
I would argue that this is a normal psycho-spiritual development for intelligent and educated people. Stage one is a natural place, for both lay people and non-monastic clergy to be in until, perhaps, their mid-thirties. After about that age, it is time to move beyond. If one is still in stage 1 by age 50, one is heading for serious trouble.
In Russia, a major problem seems to be that most parish priests are ordained while still in stage 1, and have very great difficulty themselves in moving beyond it. What a Russian seminary teaches you, first and foremost, is to be a guardian of the structure. If a priest cannot move beyond stage one, individual members cannot do so properly, and either remain immature and unhappy, or simply quit. Tragically, some people are made bishops in this stage (no one should really be a bishop unless and until he has safety landed in stage 3). The result is spiritual stagnation for themselves and their flocks.
In Western Europe the problem is different: intelligent lay people want to move directly to stage 2, without the thorough grounding in liturgy and word that stage 1 provide. But without this engrained in one, you will not get through stage two.
In both Russia and Western Europe, there often insufficient flexibility for a priest who is ordained while still in stage 1, but is naturally moving beyond it, to make the necessary adjustments. He has to remain the guardian of the structures, even if he is losing his own belief in and dependence on them. It may be that that many priests need to move out of parish ministry for a few years into teaching or social work.
Stage 3 is the goal for all, bishops, priests and intelligent lay people. But for priests and bishops it means accepting to deal with intelligent lay people who have their own maturity, who do not go running 'batushka, batushka' for everything, who can largely structure their own spiritual lives, who are co-workers with him, rather than his servants. For most western priests this is generally not a problem, in Russia I suspect it can be a very serious one.
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no subject
Date: 2010-11-23 06:55 pm (UTC)Даже перевести тебя захотелось, для ширшей аудитории.
no subject
Date: 2010-11-23 08:22 pm (UTC)Имхо, в России бывает еще нулевая стадия, когда человек не может понести свободы протестантизма, идет к структуре Православия, и тогда становится ярым защитником ортодоксии 1 стадии, и тогда - держитесь те, кто на 2 или третьей стадии!:)
no subject
Date: 2010-11-24 09:30 am (UTC)First, quite a lot of Protestantism is quite structured. There is a tendency in Orthodox circles – including the DECR - to equate Protestantism with traditional Lutheranism and Anglicanism (which is relatively ‘free’), whereas a lot of Protestantism, more at the Southern Baptist end of the scale, is pretty rigid.
Second, I am not sure that the ‘freedom’ of Protestantism is always good for the neophyte. It seems to me to demand a certain intellectual rigour and a degree of internal discipline which are not widespread in society.
On the other hand, for some it may be a good place to spend some of stage 2.
no subject
Date: 2010-11-24 09:43 am (UTC)В действительности протестантизм отличается от православия большей свободой от структур, и эту малую свободку все могут понести, это не бином Ньютона.
Вот Свободу с большой буквы, свободу отношений с Богом, понести могут не все и не всегда. И в православии ее не меньше, чем в протестантизме.
no subject
Date: 2010-11-25 04:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-25 05:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-25 05:34 pm (UTC)Я Вас понимаю, но, по моим наблюдениям, люди с настроем "Православие или смерть" довольно редко способны вникнуть в текст на английском языке, и потом дискутировать по его теме :-)
no subject
Date: 2010-12-03 05:01 pm (UTC)As for my experience, I started believing in something during Soviet times. I hated ideas of openly worshipping evil or performing human sacrifice but apart from that I thought any spiritual path is right. As my mother started going to the Orthodox Church so did I. But gradually I found myself spiritually "drowned" by fears, rules and regulation, killing, as it appeared to me, my heart and mind, starting juging people based on their "fitting" into the structure. It scared me. For me, this was the ‘Dark Night of the Soul’. Maybe I really started on Stage 2 but tried to go back to Stage 1 I don't know. It didn't work very well.
Now I feel bad when I hear "heretic" in church. I don't want to call anybody "infidel". One reason for this is that I like to admire good deeds or work of art made by people of any believes. I can't do this if I think they are very wrong in their understanding on the Universe. Many people say "I did my choice and the destiny of other people is not interesting to me". I can't think like that because once you connected in any way to a person I feel he or she is my "neighbour" now and I do care for her or his destiny. Basically I still need to belive firmly that any journey may bring a person to God. Are there any people on Stage 3 who believe like that or its not Christianity at all?
I hope I make sense.
no subject
Date: 2010-12-03 09:34 pm (UTC)Yes, people in stage 3 do believe that there are heretics. But they use the word cautiously and they have no wish to burn them at the stake.
For me heresy is a way of thinking that leads people away from the way to God, leaving them wandering in the desert to die for lack of water. And unfortunately heretics exist, and the Church says: don’t follow them.
I hesitate with your ‘needing to believe firmly that any journey brings a person to God'. Yes, we both agree on the vital importance of setting out on the spiritual journey. But I do suspect that some people rather want to travel first class the whole way whereas there are places where you have to get out and walk over rough ground.
This rough ground includes facing some rather nasty things inside ourselves: anger, fear of emptiness, repressed sexuality and the like. The Christian believes he can face them in Christ and with Christ and - this is important - in Christ's good time. It is this that gives the freedom of stage 3.
Let me say one thing for which some people will want to burn me at the stake: our first priority is to be Christian. Being Orthodox is second to this. If the form in which Orthodoxy presents itself in a person’s particular situation blocks their way forward, then it is better to go part of the way with another confession than to quit the Christian faith.
no subject
Date: 2010-12-04 08:08 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-12-04 12:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-12-06 06:10 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-12-11 02:38 pm (UTC)Yes, the other three are ‘not quite right’ (though serious theologians do not fight over the filioque). They are, though, part of the standard repertory of heterodox errors regularly spouted out by a certain type of Orthodox zealot who believes that outside Orthodoxy you are damned.
Personally I find this type of zealotry juvenile and stupid, in particular in countries like England and Wales, where very clearly people have remained faithful to God, and God has blessed them in this faithfulness, outside the Orthodox Church.
no subject
Date: 2010-12-12 09:22 am (UTC)I even see evil in this zealotry. Thank you for your reply.
no subject
Date: 2010-12-14 09:28 pm (UTC)