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The AbyssThis word "Abyss" seems a little melodramatic for my purpose. I use it to refer to our current situation approaching the Third Millennium. However, first a warning: millennial 'fever' is commonplace at the moment and I have no wish to be part of its gloomy predictions. Its practitioners too often seem to exhibit a morbid delight at the prospect of "things going wrong." These are the people I suspect who might be tempted to gawp at accidents or who are simply misanthropists. I'm sure for example that the Millennium computer bug is a very serious matter but we are not about to be thrown into anarchic chaos as planes fall out of the skies, basic services fail everywhere and looters take to the streets with home made weapons. Even if this was in prospect, (which it is not); this is not what I mean by the "Abyss." The Abyss is much more serious than that. So what do I mean by the Abyss? Well, I mean that in our western cultures we are now experiencing the anxiety of vertigo as we peer into an uncertain and admittedly dangerous future spiritually unarmed. The Abyss is not the danger itself; it is being "unarmed." The armoury of which St. Paul speaks in Ephesians 6: 10-20 is vitally important for all Christians in all ages. The Abyss has been created by Christians themselves in the West neglecting this all important emphasis on spiritual combat against the "principalities and powers." We are tottering and falling into our own nothingness because we regard not the Word of God, Christ. A great 19th Century theologian, Metropolitan Philaret of Moscow put it like this:- "All creatures are balanced upon the creative Word of God, as if upon a bridge of diamond; above them is the abyss of divine infinitude, below them, that of their own nothingness." Notice that there are two "abysses" here. The first, upward, is glorious; it is God Himself and His inexhaustible love and power, our armoury and goal. The second, downward, is our vertiginious descent from the Word, Christ .... naked and alone, falling into hell. Not to put too fine a point on it, we are already falling and the fall will not readily be broken. Even normally upbeat non-Orthodox Christian voices, (themselves in some ways part of the problem), are making their concerns public. The Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. George Carey, spoke recently of Christianity in the West "bleeding to death." (The Church of England stopped publishing its attendance statistics recently because they were allegedly misleading. Uhmmm!). The Anglican Bishop of Oxford, the Rt. Revd. Richard Harries, sees a bright future for faith in the next century .... but for Islam not Christianity! Now, Orthodox could at this point stand back smugly and say: - "Defeatism! Give us a hand on the tiller!" This misses the point entirely. Even if the Pope was to become Orthodox tomorrow and Dr Carey hand over the keys to Lambeth shortly afterward, the Abyss would still be in prospect. Too much is now too far gone in the West. There is a pathetic element in the collusion of hard bitten godlessness, secularism and a weak 'watered down Christianity.' Howls of protest were heard recently from the ecclesiastical establishment at the absence of any televised act of worship on the BBC on Christmas Day. "Oh!" said a successor of Lord Reith, "didn't you know, this is the 6th year we have not broadcast anything on Christmas Day?" Religion has been privatised ... OK between consenting adults in private but not for big grown up boys and girls in the public domain. Here the Beast rules. For a culture so seemingly rational in its denial of "supernatural Christianity" anything supernatural or spooky is acceptable provided that it is not Orthodox / orthodox Christianity. Neo-paganism has returned. The masses worship in the hypermarkets, shopping malls and soccer grounds or prostrate themselves before the all powerful technocracy, the new "priests" in white coats. Make no mistake about it, the Abyss waits ... but (and it's a big BUT), there is no Abyss whatsoever for those who walk that diamond bridge which is Christ in faith, hope and love ... no Abyss at all, only heaven on earth. This is the ultimate paradox which the world does not see. The "nothingness" of faith is explosive and bright with possibility. The seeming brightness of earth-bound optimism is in reality a never ending abyss of darkness and despair. St. Paul put it well in terms of his own experience of being a Christian. Would that this was the reality which all Christians knew. It is the reality of Orthodox Faith and Life, deliverance from the Abyss, resurrection ... "Therefore we do not lose heart. Even though our outward
man is perishing, yet the inward man is being renewed day by day. For our light
affliction, which is but for a moment, is working for us a far more exceeding and eternal
weight of glory." Fr Gregory |
