THIS IS LENT: The Christian Journey to Salvation | Embracing Humility | YBT011 CWP056
Mar 21, 2024Episode 56
Cloud of Witnesses cast and crew
What does it truly mean to live with humility in the Christian Orthodox faith? Our latest conversation promises to guide you through the spiritual labyrinth of self-emptying, a journey that is neither about self-loathing nor ego, but about making space for divine grace. Jeremy, Nick, Robert, John, Joshua, Maximus, and Hannah join us to illuminate this contemplative path, revealing that the essence of fulfillment lies not in self-admiration but in becoming conduits for God's presence.
In an intimate and thought-provoking discussion, we navigate the delicate equilibrium humility demands, steering clear of both self-aggrandizement and destructive self-contempt. Our guests share their insights on how an authentic selfhood is not lost but discovered through this process, as we become more human by letting go of our illusions. They emphasize the vital roles of community, spiritual guidance, and confession, as we aspire to see ourselves as God sees us—without delusion. Tune in for a profound exploration of how humility serves as the anchor, drawing us closer to a genuine encounter with the Holy Spirit and a more complete life.
Please consider supporting this ministry: https://www.patreon.com/CloudofWitnessesRadio
What does it truly mean to live with humility in the Christian Orthodox faith? Our latest conversation promises to guide you through the spiritual labyrinth of self-emptying, a journey that is neither about self-loathing nor ego, but about making space for divine grace. Jeremy, Nick, Robert, John, Joshua, Maximus, and Hannah join us to illuminate this contemplative path, revealing that the essence of fulfillment lies not in self-admiration but in becoming conduits for God's presence.
In an intimate and thought-provoking discussion, we navigate the delicate equilibrium humility demands, steering clear of both self-aggrandizement and destructive self-contempt. Our guests share their insights on how an authentic selfhood is not lost but discovered through this process, as we become more human by letting go of our illusions. They emphasize the vital roles of community, spiritual guidance, and confession, as we aspire to see ourselves as God sees us—without delusion. Tune in for a profound exploration of how humility serves as the anchor, drawing us closer to a genuine encounter with the Holy Spirit and a more complete life.
Please consider supporting this ministry: https://www.patreon.com/CloudofWitnessesRadio
Thank you for journeying w/ the Saints with us!
Speaker 1:
Our form of self-emptying can be contrasted with the suicidal self-emptying, and that is my name is Jeremy, I'm Nick. I'm Robert.
Speaker 3:
I'm John, I'm Joshua, I'm Maximus.
Speaker 4:
I'm Hannah.
Speaker 2:
Awesome, you guys. Welcome to this episode. We got a really interesting discussion point.
Speaker 4:
Humility is not hating yourself, it's not looking down on yourself, it's not beating yourself up, it's not afflicting yourself. Humility is to empty yourself. The point of Christianity and Orthodoxy is not to be a good Christian. You're never going to be a good Christian. In many ways, christ promised that no one is good but God alone. The point is to be an empty Christian If you can empty yourself out of egoism, which is where a lot of this self-love movement comes from. If you empty yourself out of egoism, then suddenly your heart becomes an empty vessel that can be filled with the grace of God, and that's what makes man fulfilled. So I don't think self-love is really the path that we need to follow. I think that's a dangerous path and I think that it's way too easily twisted to become greater egoism.
Speaker 2:
What a beautiful message. One of my first thoughts is and we kind of talked about this a little bit, you guys, before we started this and that is, hearing such rich wisdom impacts me right away. And yet I say to myself but man, is that hard to do? Man is that difficult to empty myself of myself, to make room for the Holy Spirit, to make room for God? And so to me it's a very convicting video. I feel like this is a call to action.
Speaker 3:
Yeah, between you and him. You guys said it all. I guess we can hang it up here.
Speaker 2:
This has been Cloud of Witnesses Radio.
Speaker 3:
Yeah, he hit on so many deep themes. So the bud is, I guess the bud is like how does that happen? Yeah, I think it happens through our relationship with Christ, but also with the church that is his body, and that's ultimately where we'll get a correct sense of identity and that, by emptying ourselves and sharing our talents with the community for the sake of Christ, that will then be filled. We'll have a life that feels rewarding, satisfying and complete.
Speaker 5:
And also guidance right, not just together in a community, but also under guidance with confession and a spiritual father. Perhaps. That's, I think, really important, so that we're just not doing this by ourselves, thinking that we can do it on our own, and actually mislead ourselves into thinking that we can do this just on our own. So I think that's a danger there. What I really liked about what he said as well, that he started out with it, that he says it's not about hating yourself, it's not about beating yourself up. Right, that's not it. If you mean emptying in the sense of erasing your selfhood, if you will, or changing your personality or erasing your personality, I think that's not where it's at right. I mean, it's actually becoming more fully human. In that sense, it's really strange where you're emptying yourself but you're becoming fuller right, you're becoming more real, if you will.
Speaker 1:
He really did give us. You can say a pointer to what humility is supposed to give us, and that is a sense of reality, a sense of being able to see ourselves objectively, and ultimately, what that means is to be able to see ourselves as God sees us, without any shade of delusion, right? So humility is what breaks us away from delusion, because, again, humility is supposed to be that grounding, moderating middle between two kinds of delusion, and one of which is pride, and that is you having a very high self-opinion, and the other being self-hatred. Self-hatred is also another kind of delusion, where you think that you are the scum of the earth or an abomination, or that you shouldn't exist, and that's also equally as untrue as to have an inflated sense of self-importance. So humility is what brings us back into the real world.
Speaker 1:
I can hear an opposing whisper, and that is the far eastern religions that would say, yeah, you have to completely empty your mind, empty your heart, empty yourself of everything, right, All your desires. And I guess Our form of self-emptying can be contrasted with the suicidal self-emptying, and that is, you're simply reducing yourself to complete an absolute nothingness. Avoid that doesn't have any concrete existence.
Speaker 7:
In regards to self-empting, there's this idea that even before the creation of the world, god knew us, and that doesn't mean we pre-existed creation, but rather that means that before we even were, god knew what we ought to be, and through our sins we fall away from what we ought to be. So this self-empting isn't losing your identity. It's becoming what you ought to be in God.
Speaker 8:
In a sense it reminds me of confession, you know, because we have to completely confess our sins, confess it, lay it out all onto the cross, so that essentially, you're healed. You've healed those sins. I ask for forgiveness for myself and others to help heal us of those sins, and it kind of makes me feel like I'm healed. I am healed of those sins, I'm absolved of those sins because I confess when I put it on the cross. So in a sense, you're now empty of sin, you've now been cleansed. You're empty of sin so you can build up. You can go up from there by continuing prayer, continuing worship, continuing to go to your priest or spiritual father for confessions and continuing the Jesus Prayer where Jesus Christ had mercy on me, a sinner. You can only go up and, yeah, you're going to fall down, but that's what confession is for and that's what your community is for. You can empty yourselves with those sins again, as long as you truly repent it, you can truly be healed and relieved of those burdens.
Speaker 5:
That's beautiful.
Speaker 3:
To kind of make a balance and a distinction between, like what John was mentioning about far Eastern notions of emptying. The difference is that the earthen vessel, the clay pot, it still has a form. It's a space within itself which can be filled Right. So now the question is how is it going to be filled? Are we just going to stuff in everything that we think we need? Are we going to leave room for God to bless us, for our priests to bless us, our spiritual father to bless us, our brothers and sisters in Christ to bless us? Because when we're only focused on ourselves, sometimes we think we know what's best for us and if we just fill, fill, fill ourselves, we might not be filling ourselves with the right things and we're not leaving room for ourselves to be blessed with something that somebody well, god always knows better right, what we really need to be filled with. So we can empty ourselves, but we still have a shape, we still have a form, because in Eastern mysticism it's the idea of formlessness and that form doesn't matter.
Speaker 2:
Joshua, I love that. I want to take your analogy to another scriptural passage that I reminded of, and this is also piggyback enough what Hannah said. I really love that we're told that we need to avoid seeing the speck in our brother's eye and first we should take out the plank that's in our own eye and that idea of taking out this huge piece of wood right, this emptying.
Speaker 1:
And.
Speaker 2:
I feel like that's really what ought to be happening right now, during length, right? Isn't that what we're all called to do? We're called to as Hannah you were saying it so well to get rid of our sin, to confess our sin, to give it to God, to make room, joshua, as you've pointed out, for those blessings and the presence of God within us. And I can't help you guys, but being reminded as well of the Eucharist, right being filled physically with the body and blood of Christ.
Speaker 5:
What I love about that is that you've got, on the one hand, you've got that emptying, that confession, that letting go of things, right, but on the other hand, like Hannah said, there's the building up, there is that healing. So it's like again these two things that are happening. There's many things happening. It's not just an emptying into nothing, but here we've got oh, we're getting filled with something.
Speaker 6:
Yeah, the Fathers never talk about self-love, and even Saint Pius, I mean, he even said that it's like an inverse, that's just like it's almost like an oxymoron to have this self-love. You kind of just see this too, because I was in, you know, I studied psychology in college, so I know this world very well and that's kind of that's kind of just a consequence of living in a society where everyone's very individualized and atomized and just doing their own thing, rather than actually being in the community where they're accountable for their actions and where they can actually be of service to other people.
Speaker 2:
That's a great point, dom. I loved how you touched on the community aspect. That's something that we were discussing a little bit earlier. Can I mention one more phrase that he talked about? I'd love to get your guys' thoughts quickly. He said our job is not to be a good Christian. I really thought that was striking, you know, because you think well, no, I got, I suppose I'm supposed to be a good Christian. The way he described it was none of us are a good Christian, right, because only God is good.
Speaker 5:
Yeah, I think that being good is not good enough. I think it's just that's not the object. That's not our goal. In Christ, in God, Recall to become fully human right, To be you know the abundant life, if you will, and to be good is a far cry from that. It's just simply a correction of behavior or something like that. To me, that is just like putting a band-aid on a gaping wound.
Speaker 1:
Yeah it sounds like you're supposed to tick all these boxes and then suddenly, once you've finished ticking all those boxes, you've made it, you are now good, you qualify as a good Christian. You can say good by participation. We are made good, very good, according to the Book of Genesis. But that goodness, where is it derived? What is the basis for this idea called goodness? Obviously, it's grounded in the infinite goodness of God, and so we are growing closer to God to an infinite degree, to an infinite extent, to where there is no finish line and there is no stop to the growth. The growth is going to be infinite and it's going to be extended beyond the eschaton, beyond eternity, so that we will continually know more and more about the goodness of God and we will continually become good like Him. And yet we won't be properly and naturally good like God is because we're creatures, we're finite and we'll only be good insofar as we participate in it.
Speaker 9:
Yeah, one of the problems with being good is that's exactly what the Pharisees and the scribes tried to be, which was simply good. They wanted to be outwardly good, but they were afraid of being transformed by what Christ was offering to them, and that is a complete inner transformation. That was, in many ways, actually antithetical to what they were doing, because it was like they had the cart before the horse as opposed to the other way around, like what you were saying, john, about how we only participate in the good by being rooted in God, as opposed to outwardly checking boxes, but inwardly, right, the vessel is still unclean there was a young man that asked Christ what is needful for me to enter into eternal life?
Speaker 7:
And Christ essentially recapitulates the Decalogue, tells him the commandments, and the young Jew tells them I do all these things. So if true, then by all accounts he is a good Jew. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, but then Christ tells him OK, but one more thing give away everything you have and follow me. So he essentially asks him to in a sense self-empty. But the man was too married to his great wealth, and you can understand this great wealth more than just literally. He probably was quite wealthy, but on top of that he was married to the fruits of his good adherence to the law. But he didn't actually love God, at least not at that moment.
Speaker 3:
So it reminds me of a CS Lewis quote where he said Christ did not come to make bad men good. Christ came to make dead men live. And so all you've got is the segue into Christ's own words that I think speak most into this, most deeply into this. Christ said whoever seeks to save his own life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it.
Speaker 2:
I want to say quickly to those of you listening right now that maybe are not Orthodox or are interested in Orthodoxy or curious about it, that priest is actually interviewed by Gospel simplicity, austin Suggs. We have seen that. So I would recommend to go check out Gospel simplicity's channel because his talking with that priest. He's a wonderful priest and he has a tour of his parish and everything. So I would just recommend that to any of you guys out there that are interested in Orthodoxy.
Speaker 3:
I'm Joshua. I'm in the works of creating a channel. It exists, but there's zero videos up yet. But when the channel comes up maybe you'll see this later, when the channel actually has content on it it's called Son of None N-U-N. I've been Joshua's son of none from the Old Testament.
Speaker 9:
This is Nick, and I just want to say blessed let to everyone.
Speaker 5:
And this is Robert, and thank you for listening and we'll see you soon.
Speaker 1:
I'm John and you can find me on Cloud of Witnesses. Screwtape returns.
Speaker 6:
I think you can also find me on Cloud of Witnesses, and I would also tell people to visit your local Orthodox Church in the chance, amen.
Speaker 2:
Well, this has been an awesome discussion, so grateful for all you guys. Thank you for listening this long into the episode. Again, my name is Jeremy. This is Cloud of Witnesses, radio Nick. Take us on out.