The Modern Project

06b-Persistence-flows-alongWhen I was doing a graduate degree in theology, it was not uncommon to hear discussion of the “project of modernity.” It was an academic catch-phrase to describe the social/philosophical/political/religious efforts to construct the modern world. The Enlightenment  (17th-18th centuries) brought new ways of thinking into the mainstream of Western culture (and now the world). It newly imagined the meaning and construction of the State; it pondered and reinvented Christianity; most importantly, it re-imagined what it meant to be a human being. We are the heirs of that legacy. The most uneducated person in our society shares the assumptions of the “modern project,” regardless of whether he is even remotely aware of it. We are the modern project.

In the modern project, human beings are autonomous centers of consciousness whose choices and decisions bring about their self-actualization. I will explain:

We are autonomous centers of consciousness. My identity is rooted in the fact that I am conscious and aware. It is the center of my self and belongs to me alone. I may choose to share with others and make common cause with others – but I am defined only by myself. This is the heart of individualism.

Our choices and decisions bring about our self-actualization. Who I am in the world is a product of my experiences and the choices and decisions I make. Those decisions create my identity – they are my means of actualization. My decisions and choices are what determine the meaning of my life. I am who I choose to be.

When you look at these critical ideas, it is easy to understand why the primary driving force of modern history is freedom. This definition of what it means to be human makes a certain version of freedom the most essential part of life. Anything that restricts freedom becomes an enemy of individual existence and self-actualization. Only if I am free to choose am I able to properly exist as a self-actualized individual.

These are not necessarily conscious ideas, but they are almost universal in the modern world. We discuss “freedom” and “choice” without the need to define our terms and with a wide-range of social agreement. Just as certain Christian groups played a major role in the development of the modern world-view, so their spiritual heirs have become the dominant modern form of Christianity. Churches that practice infant baptism (normative in Classical Christianity), once the dominant practice even among Protestants, today constantly have to defend a practice that seems to contradict the most basic assumptions of human freedom. “Shouldn’t the child be able to choose for themselves whether to be Baptized?” Anything that impinges or limits choice seems dangerous or questionable within the modern project. A relationship with Christ is something that must be freely chosen. “The Hour of Decision” is a phrase that resonates with the modern heart.

Church discipline on moral matters (or otherwise) has also come under increasing scrutiny. Modern persons may associate themselves with a Church, becoming “Catholic,” or “Orthodox,” or “Presbyterian,” etc. But that the moral details of their lives should be governed by that association seems questionable to them. A majority of Americans who identify as “Roman Catholic” ignore the Church’s teaching on many issues – particularly those that they regard as “private” (sexual issues in particular). The Church serves a function in their lives, but only the private choice of the individual has the power to define and determine true identity. In such a world “Catholic,” “Orthodox,” “Calvinist,” is more a label, a self-chosen identifier, than a community in which identity and life are formed.

There is a civilizational clash between Classical Christianity and the Modern Project.

In the Classical understanding we are not autonomous individuals. We are contingent beings whose existence is a gift with purpose, meaning and direction given by God. We have value as persons, not because of our choices or our ability to choose, but because we are created in the image of God. Thus the least of us, including the incompetent and the vegetative, have true worth and dignity.

We are not defined by our choices and decisions. Who we are is the gift of God – it is a given. Its identity is a matter of revelation and transformation in the Christian life and not a private work of self-construction. Our choices and decisions are not unimportant, but they only have relative merit or power. In the end, we are God’s creation and our decisions only have meaning in relationship to Him.

The civilizational clash is perhaps most poignant at the places where modern choice and classical givenness most contradict one another. The most common points have been on the level of biology and relationships. The instincts of Classical Christianity are to treat biology and relationships as givens. Gender is not a choice. Family is biological rather than associational. Sexual relationships serve a given order rather than private needs. The instincts of the Modern Project are to maximize freedom and choice. Biology is real, but not necessarily determinative (thus some today self-identify their gender). Family is increasingly defined as a set of choices – relationships that we prefer. The givenness of blood-ties with inherent responsibilities are largely disappearing in current jurisprudence. Thus we have the “accident of birth,” which cannot begin to compete with “freedom of choice.”

The often maligned popular version of relativism (“if it’s true for you”) is simply an expression that maximizes choice. Truth that is not chosen is experienced in the modern world as oppressive. The Classical Christian world of doctrine and dogma is thus endangered as a set of extremely inconvenient truths. Why would it be wrong for us to re-imagine God?

The End of Civilization

Christian civilization ended somewhere around the time that the modern world began. The Modern Project has not asked how it could save Christian civilization – that civilization was its enemy from the beginning. The modern question has been: “What do we want the world to look like?” For how the world looks is a matter of choice. Thus Protestant theology (which is itself a modern project) has largely been driven not by deeper exploration of its roots and traditions, but by continued exploration and re-imaginings of the Christian gospel.   Sola Scriptura was never imagined to be a controlling force directing the course of civilization. It was first and foremost a wedge used to dismiss the Classical Church and its Traditions. Like the American Constitution, Scripture has been “evolving” ever since.

Today Classical Christianity has not disappeared. It remains and is a thorn in the side of modernity. The popular media keep a constant watch on the Vatican, hoping for any sign that its classical foundations are slipping. Orthodoxy in its resurrected Russian vehemence is characterized as allied with a “thug,” and as thoroughly reactionary.

Meanwhile, Christianity in its classical form is set upon a difficult road. The temptation is simply to be reactionary – to see itself as the conservative “choice,” in which case the Modern Project will be complete. For if Christianity will simply agree to be a choice then it can be understood (and marginalized). It is, however, the Classical contention that we are not the product of our own choices, that our lives are defined by God’s gracious gift and that all things are relative to God alone that flies in the face of the modern world. It is the place of Tradition – something given that is not a choice – that refuses to yield to modern pressures.

The spirituality of Classical Christianity is that of self-emptying rather than self-choosing. It recognizes that life is, finally, always a given. The demands of blood and kinship are real and rightly lay claim. My imaginings and demands for a world of my own fashioning are seen as temptations that draw me away from the difficult tasks that lay most rightly at hand. The Modern Project has always promised a better world – and for those with the wealth and intelligence to profit most from freedom – the promise has paid great dividends. But the promise has also been a hollow mockery of our existence. For we are, in fact, contingent. And though we may imagine ourselves able to be something other than what we are, in the end the grave refuses to yield to our choices. In perhaps the greatest irony of all, the Modern Project now champions the right to die – as if we actually had a choice.

Next article: A Modern Conversion

About Fr. Stephen Freeman

Fr. Stephen is a priest of the Orthodox Church in America, Pastor Emeritus of St. Anne Orthodox Church in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. He is also author of Everywhere Present and the Glory to God podcast series.


Comments

124 responses to “The Modern Project”

  1. fatherstephen Avatar
    fatherstephen

    Robert Bearer,
    I well agree. Dino’s comments are much to the point as well. The fullness is given to the Church in the gift of the Spirit. The Holy Spirit only comes in “fullness,” which is why we say they were “filled” with the Spirit. This is indeed foundational in the Church’s understanding. We are never “moving forward” in the sense of progress. We are not “moving backwards” either. Rather, the fullness is always unfolding itself, manifesting itself in our midst. We find the truth by moving deeper rather than forward or backwards.

    The limit in the life of the Church is that the life of Christ being manifest in the world is not an “aggregate.” We do not have what the Fathers had, plus what we have. We have what we have. The fullness is of Christ. It is manifest in us as much as we are in Christ.

    Thus there can be such a fullness present at a moment in a life that virtually transfigures everything around it. In a neighboring city there can also be frightening corruption, etc.

    The Myth of Progress thinks of life in the world in the aggregate, that we are always standing on the shoulders of those who came before us – and thus we see more and know more than they did. But every man and woman start at zero and they can only learn so much in a lifetime and their children will stop at zero. As I study history, I see no moral evolution in human society. Certain institutions (slavery and the like) have come and gone. But I find the relative “freedom” of minimum wage workers (they can choose to work at any variety of burger joints, etc., for the some sub-living wage, etc.) to be little better than slavery. Our American public policies have destroyed the African American family more completely than did the institution of slavery. But we congratulate ourselves that we don’t own slaves.

    Would you like fries with that?

    As Solzhenitsyn said, the line dividing good and evil runs through every human heart. It does not run through epochs of time. We are not better than a forebears who owned slaves. And the suffering they endured to free them does not accrue to our credit. What have you done for the slaves in your world?

    The Kingdom of God confronts every human being. The fullness that was given to the Apostles abides in our midst even now. Either you press ever deeper into that mystery, or you engage in the self-congratulatory “progress” of political correctness and hiring policies (and such things).

    God willing, I’ll have the next installment ready by tomorrow.

  2. Mary Holste Avatar

    Thanks for the chance to clarify my comments about St Xenia. I was not suggesting that she was transgender herself. But I do think that her sainthood demonstrates the church’s historic willingness to accept behavior that does not fit the gender roles of the time. (Although many were scandalized by her behavior at the time.) The tradition of honoring Holy Fools is important. All people can find role models in the vast multitude of saints. All people have hope for salvation, no matter what their background is like, no matter whether they fit into some mold. When someone is different and we don’t understand them, we need not feel threatened by them. They too are made in the image of God.

  3. Robert Avatar
    Robert

    Mr Bearer,

    Behavioral expectations indeed, but what you leave out is that these expectations are *presented as being a fixed traits innate of the female sex* (e.g. “women are not allowed to operate machinery because of their ‘weak constitution’” and other such non-sense).

    I didn’t reference the examples of manhood as provided by Christ, because I consider those a given. 😀

  4. Shelley Armstrong Avatar
    Shelley Armstrong

    I’m completely in over my head here and I don’t want to theorize too much, but I think my issue with the modern project and women’s issues stem from a personal revelation that in my pre-Orthodox feminist years, I couched my problem as one of equality, when in reality I wanted to, pridefully, be the giver not the receiver. Language is tricky here. But I did not want to submit to that that had been given. I wanted to be the agent not the bearer. And that lead me down a dark, angry road. I could not have ever admitted that before becoming Orthodox and I still struggle with the vulnerability that being the receiver requires. I hope I’m not being offensive to anyone here. I’ve tried my best to describe this economically.

  5. Michael Bauman Avatar
    Michael Bauman

    Shelley, what you say makes sense. One of the real problems in the secular world is that it is difficult for women because men have either been pushed away or fled from being men.

    I’m not talking about being macho, that’s bunk. I’m talking about being a leader, a protector, a provider and a mentor to his children, a true lover in a self-forgetting way: both chaste and faithful to God and others.

    That is greatly discouraged in our culture. In the Church it is much more accepted and expected. Still difficult, but much more possible.

    How could feel at all safe outside the Church?

  6. Michael Bauman Avatar
    Michael Bauman

    “Gender roles” is a largely a cultural red herring. Regardless of what function is being performed, a man will do it in a male way and a woman will do it in a female way.

    Even the most effeminate transvestites are still men even though they can do a pretty good job of acting like women.

    Those who are deeply confused about whether they are men or women are just that–deeply confused.

    That type of confusion is only to be expected in a fallen humanity. The confusion has to be revealed and dealt with pastorally but the proper order, the fullness of a Theophonic creation will not be known until the Second coming .

  7. Brian Avatar
    Brian

    Shelley,

    You are not in over your head at all. In fact, in my opinion you cut to the heart of the matter. Who we are – our sex, our race…everything we are – is a gift from the Giver of all good things. We will never find joy unless we accept who we are with thanksgiving to the Giver and offer ourselves back to Him. Everything else is distraction, emptiness, and death.

  8. mary benton Avatar
    mary benton

    Fr. Stephen – This is a wonderful discussion. I particularly appreciate your comment to Robert Bearer at 5:52 pm.

    In once sense, I can see (the other) Robert’s allegation that you paint with a broad brush. In classifying so much under the title of “The Modern Project”, it almost sounds as though you do not believe that we humans can ever progress. Nothing that appears to be progress is really progress.

    And, in a sense, you are right, i.e. we remain sinners. If we try to “improve” our societal life, apart from Christ, we as a species may seem to have made progress (gave up slavery) but our sinfulness just takes a new form (enslave people in more subtle but similarly destructive ways).

    On the other hand, if we as believers recognize this, does not our transformation in Christ have a potential social impact? Trying to respond to my own question, I find myself saying both yes and no.

    Yes- As I strive to live my life more completely in Christ, with selfless love for all people, this would conceivably have a positive impact on people with whom I interact. Since I am a reasonably obscure individual, my impact will be quite limited but some people (such as you) may impact more people. And others may impact still more people. This might imply the possibility of a “true” progress, not the false one built on the false self (ego) and the passions.

    No – My efforts (and that of most sincere Christians) is still going to be marked by sin, both my personal sin and that of the society in which I live. Sometimes we can sincerely believe that we are making “progress” (perhaps because we have helped some individuals resolve real problems), but we may have unwittingly added to a societal problem on different level.

    Having thus painted myself into a corner, I will gladly go to bed now, trusting in Christ our Savior. And hoping that your next article will be there tomorrow to help me find my way out!

  9. Dinoship Avatar
    Dinoship

    Mary,
    if, in wishful theory, a large enough number of people set foot on the road to Sainthood (through immutable conscious vigilance) – at some point they would reach a “critical mass”. In theory this would indeed overturn the direction of the entire world and its culture. Certainly.
    However, this would last as long as it lasts and then the pendulum of this inconstant and fickle world would swing another way. Even if it lasts for quite a long time as it (sort of) did in the Byzantine Empire (for a time and a certain place), “forever” is something to be tasted the other side of the grave in such a “cosmic” sense.
    We do all, indeed desire this unconsciously though.

  10. Eleftheria Avatar
    Eleftheria

    Thank you Fr. Stephen for continuing to raise our awareness through your brilliant articles!

    Shelley,
    Much of what you wrote REALLY resonated with me. Although I am a “cradle” Orthodox, I often refer to myself as a “converted cradle” – one that went to university in the late ’70s, when feminism was still at its most militant and angriest..when what was instilled in us was that it was necessary for us “to be the agent not the bearer.” That is precisely what led so many of us first-in-the-immigrant-family-to-attend-university “down a dark, angry road.” We were being told to assimilate – and assimilate we did, only to continue to reap destruction to this day: of our own heritage and its traditions, of our parishes, of our own families, our own marriages, and worst of all, of our own children.
    It was only by learning to stand fast and hold firm (holding on for dear life!) to the traditions which I had been taught – in church and at home (by women who had survived wars and earthquakes and widowhood and miracles)- that I am able to withstand the thoughts that go through my head – yes, even now…after 25 years of marriage.
    But the worst thing for me now is that I get to watch this wholesale destruction of families, marriages, children all over again – here in the Republic of Cyprus (which is where I now live). It’s an Orthodox country, but you wouldn’t know it. Here, as in the US parish we attended, the churches fill up 3x a year: Pascha, Christmas, and the Dormition. The divorce rate has sky-rocketed (50%+); the EU and its laws have encroached; and worst of all, that ’70s style feminism, with its emphasis on careers first, empowerment, and all the rest of its accompanying nonsense has made its way over here (via TV, internet), such that young women today put career (I am not talking about those that absolutely need to work for economic reasons.) first – in spite of having at least 2 toddlers, who are raised either by private and state daycare centers or ‘yiayia’ (but only until they’re 2, which is when they’re farmed out to those institutions), with nary a word about the psycho-social damage inflicted by those places. And these women here – they’re not listening either – not even to those of us who have survived the brainwashing…
    “Some of us didn’t listen and found out too late what we’d been sold as women and that instead of oppression, it is really quite an honor and a privilege to be a mother. I’m not harkening back to the days when we couldn’t vote, but women have not been done any favors under the “social construct” banner.” Truly, we have not been done any favors – and neither have the children.
    (Sorry for the length of the comment Fr.)
    In Christ,
    Eleftheria (Talk about irony in a name!)

  11. LI Avatar
    LI

    Robert,

    I would not dismiss anatomy so easily – what we perceive while we perceive ourselves as man or woman is more than 80% the result of our anatomy and physiology. This is very insulting truth to our ego, but it’s nevertheless the truth. The only ones escaping this bondage of the flesh are the saints (both men and women) who are moving closer and closer to God’s design for a human being.

    Yes, the Church has been dragged into this male/female ad-versity (which God created as di-versity) because when Christianity was adopted by kings, plenty of people were baptized and converted following their example, without the inner metanoia, bringing in the Church much of the world, too much.

    Given the nature of my activities I often think in analogy to the bodies I study (and I have permission and encouragement to do so from my spiritual mother) – the Church is the Body of Christ, and as in each and every body in this fallen world there are plenty of cells dead or dying. If for some reason a great number of cells would become infected or dysfunctional, the whole body would suffer (and so does the Church). Now if the body of a human or animal may die of such damage, our certainty for the Church is the promise of Christ that the Church is immortal. The solution for us as persons is the one that Father Stephen mentioned – hold on to the Truth, stand and bear witness (struggle be one more healthy cell).

    “If we want to create and retain converts we must engage them and address their concerns. We must demonstrate why Christianity, and in particular Eastern Orthodox Christianity, is the better choice, the best choice. The best choice intellectually, spiritually, physically.”

    No, we don’t. The Church is the bride, the female part in this God-Church relation. God alone makes converts (mostly through other people – by birth and personal example, but not through demonstration as you suggest) and then the Church, together with God, nurtures them step by step into spiritual adulthood = sainthood.

    I hope this is in any way helpful to you, I don’t know more so keeping talking would be pointlessly “multiplying the words”. Please forgive me if I have been offensive.

  12. Shelley Armstrong Avatar
    Shelley Armstrong

    Thank you, Eleftheria. Your writing means a lot to me. My life is littered with the corpses of the modern project. My extended families life is like a modern project parable, multiple divorces, abortions, addictions, same sex marriages etc. while looking quite successful economically. You would think I was writing fiction if I told you the details.I deal with this on a daily basis. It can be overwhelming. And you can start to feel like you’re the one who is crazy. The loneliness has been the worst; in my job, in my family. So I go to work everyday in a college that preaches the modern project and then I come home to the carnage that it has spawn. When I’ve told people in the past about what was going on in the universities they mostly think I’m exaggerating. Going to church could sometimes feel like I was coming back a shell shock victim and well meaning people tried to talk to me about the best fasting dishes. I just couldn’t do it. But I find it hard to believe that the feminist movement had any clue to the pain it was to cause women and men. And yes, 25 years later, I can still hear those thoughts in my head. So this blog and the people here have been a beacon. I think until recently I had just started to go numb. Worn out. Weary. So now “we pray” and “stay faithful.” I feel like I have a friend in Cyprus now and really, that means so much. I have found much healing, though, through my local priest and my parish. I probably wouldn’t be still going to church at all if it were not for that.

  13. fatherstephen Avatar
    fatherstephen

    Eleftheria,
    Were my English surname to be Hellenized – it would Eleftherios. Is there such a surname in Greek?

  14. fatherstephen Avatar
    fatherstephen

    Shelley,
    Your honesty and the depth of feeling are very encouraging. The Modern Project has indeed created quite a muddle. No sooner does it spawn a theory than it seeks to legislate it. In some matters, such as those surrounding gender/partner choices, there are genuine pastoral concerns, and caring priests both care about these things and seek to minister in a caring manner. Many whom I know stretch economy to its limits in making every possible effort to care for their flock (and rightly so I think).

    I feel great sympathy for those who labor through their own pain and confusion viz. sexuality in these days – and I’ve pastored and counseled a number. How confusing the situation is. The Church asks us to suffer – we shouldn’t call it anything else. The Modern Project announces that it will end suffering and condemns the Church for its refusal to cooperate. The pressure on the Church and its priests and bishops to continue to pastorally teach the need to embrace suffering (chastity) increases all the time.

    A very important understanding was given to me years ago by a mentor, Stanley Hauerwas. He noted that human suffering is a given (despite the promises and dreams of the Modern Project). He said that the primary question for the Church was not how to make suffering disappear, but how to help someone become the kind of person who could faithfully bear suffering. It is also a question, how do we become the kind of communities that can support each other in the inherent suffering of this life?

    His words have been a godsend to me through the last 25 years. They have helped me think correctly about many, many difficult pastoral problems. Our modernist instinct is always to think first how to “fix” things. There are things that should be appropriately fixed. But there are many things, indeed the hardest things, that cannot be fixed.

    Having cancer cannot sometimes be fixed. I served as a hospice chaplain for a couple of years. Had I not known what Hauerwas told me, I would have daily despaired. For my ministry was precisely to care for those for whom no “fix” was possible. The Modern Project’s solution (final solution) for this is to kill such people (“euthanasia” – what a blasphemous use of the Greek!). In fact, Hauerwas taught that murder would always be the final solution for the Modern Project – given its assumptions about the world and human beings.

    But I return to the sexual issues. We must be patient and sympathetic (truly sym-pathos) with those who have various inner states dissonance. And we need to be sympathetic while not heaping shame on them. This is truly difficult. While holding to the faith and the unwavering revelation (in word and in lived lives) of chastity, we need to ourselves be persons who can help others bear their suffering.

    All of this is extremely difficult because the Modern Project is never satisfied to deal “pastorally” with something. Everything necessarily becomes political because that is part of the Modern paradigm (choice/power etc). So we try to live out the pastoral solutions of the Tradition while being hammered politically, ever complicating the attempts to be pastoral.

    It is difficult indeed. And it has only just begun. But Orthodoxy has lived through many terrible times. Eleftheria’s wonderful allusion to the bravery of women comes to mind. But an important way forward in this is to recognize that much of our own pain is begotten in us because we ourselves have at least one foot in the Modern Project. We worry about how all of this will turn out and we fear losing, etc. This amplifies our pain and frustration. But it is delusional. We don’t know the answers to such things and are not meant to consider them.

    We should live one day at a time (Matthew 6:34). We should endure our own suffering one day at a time. We should love all with sympathy and compassion while offering the medicine (sometimes bitter) of the Gospel of Christ. And in that daily life, Christ will console us and sustain us. There is nothing else.

    Mary Benton,
    Of course there is no progress. There is technology – which has an aggregate quality – but technology is not progress. We can build nuclear weapons, but the people who have their fingers on the buttons are no more moral than those who once had nothing but swords and spears.

    And there cannot be progress of the moral sort – if by moral we understand “becoming better people.” Because no matter how good you are, we do not inherit moral progress. What we can inherit are moral structures. Such structures have laws as one component. But the Law Project, it seems to me, long ago broke down. Euthanasia and Abortion, Eugenics, etc. are always but a vote away. The primary structures that can be passed down are things like the structure of extended family and community. We destroyed these things in the late 20th century. And it takes generations! to put them back.

    I grew up in a county in which my families had lived for over 200 years and the extended family dwelled there as well. Now, even my immediate family is scattered across a continent. Thank God for advanced communication, else we would be becoming but memories to one another. I saw one set of grandparents every day as a child. I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve seen my grandchildren – and it’s not anyone’s “fault” except for the nonsense of the Modern Project’s disdain for primary human structures in favor of economic efficiency. That women decided to make service in the Modern Moloch’s industries more important than their children has been astounding.

    If an enemy had come in and done it, we would count him the worst of all time. But because we did it to ourselves to prove how important freedom of choice is – devastating.

    But we allow words like “economy” and “career” “education” mean something that they should not mean. We use them like they were forces of nature and not just manifestations of an economic system designed to make a few people insanely rich. We put our kids in daycare so that Bill and Melinda Gates could give obscene amounts of money to the Modern Project. (an example).

    In America, we were taught to see through the propagandized rhetoric of the Communists. Their hollow promises of a new day sounded funny to us. But we believe the propaganda piped in to us. We let economic rhetoric actually take our children away from us!

    Nope. No progress. But we can always return to sanity – that is the gospel.

  15. Albert Avatar
    Albert

    Father & new friends, I am so happy to have found you. There is so much in your words, including the gives & takes (probings, challenges, direct speech). I find myself thinking about them much of the day. More important, those thoughts often towards prayer.

    I never thought God would approach us on the Internet! How limited my faith has been. With e.e. Cummings, “i thank you god for most this amazing” (gift).

  16. Eleftheria Avatar
    Eleftheria

    Fr. Stephen,

    Yes indeed; there are such surnames. Although your surname being Freeman, it might appear as: Eleftheroanthropo! Back in the states, we knew a family with the last name of Eleftheriades. In Cyprus however, it is very common for men to have similar first and surnames, ie: Ioannis Ioannou (John, grandson of John), or in the case of your surname, Eleftherios Eleftheriou.

    Shelley,
    WOW! I don’t think you’re writing fiction; I feel like you’ve just described my side of the family back in the states! It is very wearying indeed to deal with it all…and my siblings’ children – those poor children going round and round with their parents’ multiple spouses/live-ins or their parents’ newest fads! Any time I’ve ever described my shellshock at whatever’s the latest horror story from my family to anyone from my husband’s side of the family here, they stare at me in disbelief. Thus far, my husband’s side (and most people in this village, I should add) have remained true to their family, and especially true to the Church. (Many families have priests/monastics.)
    You write: “But I find it hard to believe that the feminist movement had any clue to the pain it was to cause women and men.” Perhaps at the start, the feminist movement was clueless; but as Geronda Paisios would surely say,”The tempter had a hand in it.” Still, no one ought to be blind to the fact that the children of that movement were and remain traumatized. With so many studies having been produced on the impact of institutions on individual and societal life, I wonder where the studies of the impact of daycare upon children are.
    You also say: “So this blog and the people here have been a beacon. I think until recently I had just started to go numb. Worn out. Weary. So now “we pray” and “stay faithful.” I feel like I have a friend in Cyprus now and really, that means so much.”
    First, this blog is indeed a beacon and is one of the things for which I say, “Glory to God!”
    Second, prayer and faith- keeping faith – is all we’ve got to get us through this world and hopefully into the next.
    Last,for the Orthodox, we are not merely friends, but parts of the same ONE Body…how could we not care for each other?
    (…which is not to say that we do not care for the non-Orthodox, for they too will be “made living, exalted and made shining through purification by the Threefold Oneness in a hidden manner” -from the Supplicatory Prayer to the Theotokos)
    In Christ,
    Eleftheria

  17. Eleftheria Avatar
    Eleftheria

    Fr. Stephen,
    One last comment while night falls here…
    In alluding (in my previous comment)to my grandmothers and great aunts and the wars and terrors through which they lived, I remembered that all of them danced at the weddings of their children and grandchildren; that all of them laughed easily and heartily; that their eyes shone with love; and that not one of them was depressed or required any “pills to make their skies blue”…
    I am struck by their strength, their resilience.
    How/Why have we become such weak specimens? Is it that the Modern Project has poisoned us all? Is it, as you say above, the result of what we have done, or allowed to be done, to ourselves?
    In Christ,
    Eleftheria

  18. Robert Bearer Avatar
    Robert Bearer

    Shelley and Eleutheria, thank you for sharing. Both of you are in my prayers. My heart aches for you and yet rejoices to have you for sisters and for the lgiht of love that illuminates your words even while we physically separated by half a world. My family, our parish, are touched by the carnage you describe and, still, in both there are signs of rebirth of faith and gratitude, humility, love and koinonia. Now that is a cause for hope and joy accompanied by repentance, vigilance and courageous ascesis.

    Christ is in our midst.
    rlb

  19. Anna Avatar
    Anna

    Thank you father stephen for this. My mind has been turning this over and over. I recently turned thirty, and I am ashamed as I look inwardly, at how successfully the modern project has done its work in me. I am a child of immigrants on my mothers side, and lately in my growth towards ‘independence,’ I have been pushing hard at our families. All the while, I have been worried about what it is I am trying to collapse, and if I get what I think I want, what I will have lost in the process.

    I am truly confused, and I am thankful you continue to write, because you have begun to unravel many threads of what I thought was important. I will need help to even begin to see.

  20. Robert Avatar
    Robert

    Li,

    Thank you for your response.

    By demonstration I do not mean anything at all contrary or opposed to “personal example”. The Lord, the Apostles and the Church Fathers all used the written, spoken and the lived word to demonstrate the Good News.

  21. fatherstephen Avatar
    fatherstephen

    Anna,
    You are describing the experience of discernment. May God give you grace as you come to understand yourself and the faith. Be gentle.

  22. Arvid Avatar
    Arvid

    With our modern choices, we do have more freedom, but to what end? Today on a TV courtroom show, a lady and a most spoiled daughter were suiing a nanny for not giving the daughter whatever she wanted. The daughter was a spoiled brat. Is this an example of the freedom modern life wants? I hope not. We’re all screwed if they do.

  23. […] have written previously about various aspects of the “Modern Project.” It is the world we live in. Its ideas and […]

  24. […] whose “choices and decisions bring about self-actualization,” in the words of Fr. Stephen Freeman.  We are all about individualism, self-expression, liberty and freedom to choose “all the […]

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *


Subscribe to blog via email

Support the work

Your generous support for Glory to God for All Things will help maintain and expand the work of Fr. Stephen. This ministry continues to grow and your help is important. Thank you for your prayers and encouragement!


Latest Comments


Read my books

Everywhere Present by Stephen Freeman

Listen to my podcast



Categories


Archives