The danger of easiness

Easiness is nowadays promoted on all possible channels, and is infiltrated in all areas of human activity. We are witnesses of – if not even participants in – a race for comfort and simplicity, which is alarming at best.

This “philosophy” also directly affects the way we understand and experience our faith. Under the mask of modernizing and harmonizing Orthodoxy with the so-called standards of civilization and modernity, we are ready to expose our ancestral tradition to the most absurd and dangerous metamorphoses that in the end, as Petre Ţuţea puts it, will degrade to the kindergarten level of morality.

Very few people are aware of this danger, but even fewer are those who attempt to do something to stop this tendency, at least, at the personal level. Exposed to a toxic – but still, luring – treatment, we don’t even bother to ask ourselves any questions about the modern trend, idealizing and idolatrizing modernity and “progress”.

It is “progress” that is the key of this equation; in their rhetoric, the detractors of Orthodoxy accuse the Church of being a hindrance in the development and persevering of civilization, due to its obsolete and limited teaching it spreads. Fortunately, the reality is completely different from we are being presented; the Church has always been with all those who had noble intentions and dedicated their lives for the well-being of the humanity. This is true progress, necessary and blessed, while today’s pseudo development is nothing but a way to numb the feelings and lull spiritual vigilance. Then why do all these happen? Due to a simple reason that a person who is well-anchored on spiritual and moral principles that guide his life and relations with other members of the society is harder to be controlled and determined to act in a manner that opposes authentic values and standards of life.

To maintain ourselves in the light of the truth and not to become victim of such fluctuations of values, we are not required to become revolutionaries and hide away in catacombs. The only thing recommended for us to preserve spiritual integrity is to remain faithful to the teaching of the Orthodox Church and trust its authenticity, regardless of the temptations of the times.

The easiness mentioned above is nothing more than an anaesthetic that paralyses our spiritual and psychological capacity to react to the phenomenon of soul disintegration.

This is why we are required to remain sober, in prayer and living according to the principles of faith, to arm up with the truth of the Gospel and to guard our set of values that created us as nation and society, that developed and resisted to all disasters of history, only due to the faith in Christ.

We have a moral duty before the Creator, before our ancestors, and before our own selves, to maintain and promote the spiritual and cultural values that define us, and to resist, in faith, and for the sake of faith, to any attempts at our individual or collective integrity.

 Archpriest Octavian Moşin

Source: Altarul Credinţei (Altar of Faith) Magazine