I am slowly working my way through Fr. Alexander Schmemann’s marvelous little book, FOR THE LIFE OF THE WORLD. This book is filled with riches regarding the Christian faith expressed in Orthodoxy, so much so that I honestly believe it should be required reading for anyone who is a catechumen in the Orthodox Church. I have constantly had to stop and take time to ponder some point which he has made of which I have never considered before.

In the chapter I was reading today, The Mystery of Love, Fr. Schmemann makes the following statement:

This response is totally obedience in love: not obedience and love, but the wholeness of the one as the totality of the other. Obedience, taken in itself, is not a “virtue”; it is blind submission, and there is no light in blindness. Only love for God, the absolute object of all love, frees obedience from blindness and makes it the joyful acceptance of that alone which is worthy of being accepted.¹

This statement has so much to do with the difference between Eastern and Western theologies and the response we have to God. In the West, the world is told constantly of a God who demands strict obedience and who will severely punish all who do not strictly hold to them. The God of the West is the God of law. He is THE JUDGE. From this distinctly Roman Catholic understanding has come the teaching of penal substitutionary atonement. We have broken the law and punishment is deserved, but Christ is punished in our stead, thus freeing us from the wrath of God, who sends to hell forever all those who will not bow the knee to Christ and obey the Law of God. This also applies to those who have in some form, whether it be through baptism or a profession of “Accepting Jesus as My Personal Lord and Savior,” been entered into the Christian faith. I have spoken more than once about the God who will get even with you, even as a professing Christian, for the slightest infraction of the rules, which rules vary from denomination to denomination. I have heard traveling evangelists at “Revival Meetings,” a freak show ² peculiar only to America, threaten people by telling them that if they do not tithe to their local assembly, God will get it from them in some other way, telling lurid stories of people who withheld their tithe, only to have some car breakdown or doctor’s bill suddenly come up. And, not surprisingly, the amount needed to pay the mechanic or doctor comes to the exact amount as the tithe would have been.

Roman Catholicism is where this noxious understanding of God was birthed. It came from the culture of the Roman Empire, which was steeped like a teabag in the culture of law and punishment. Roman theologians easily transferred this understanding of life to God Himself, making Him the Great Judge, who, in their theology, will eternally punish with torments not only those who refuse to respond to the Gospel invitation, but even those pagans in foreign lands who never heard. Despite references to “God is love,” the overarching theme of Western theology is, “You better toe the line, pal, or God is gonna git you!” This God is like the alcoholic father who is always angry, can never be pleased, and of whom you walk about on eggshells, always afraid that one misstep will earn you a beating. The problem is even worse when you don’t know exactly what the missteps are. Children in this situation obey, but not out of love, but out of a constant fear.

“Oh, but you can’t tell people there is no hell. They won’t behave.” Well, then, you have missed the whole point. Fr. Schmemann’s discourse is specifically about love being the very foundation of all that we do. Or, at least, it should be. The greatest of the saints were motivated not by fear of hell, but by a deep love for He who is wholly and completely beautiful and loveable. A child raised in a pious family has no problem seeing God as love, but those of us who were raised in dysfunctional families see God in this way:

Unfortunately, so much of what I ingested in my early years of Christianity presented God in just this manner. And now that I am in the Orthodox church, I find that this thinking has leaked over into Orthodox theology as well. If you don’t do this, and this, and this, and this, you may not obtain salvation. Lest you think I am kidding, here is a quote from a beloved saint of the East:

“Let us struggle with all our powers to gain Paradise. The gate is very narrow, and don’t listen to those who say that everyone will be saved. This is a trap of Satan so that we won’t struggle.“

So, in other words, I really don’t have salvation, Jesus didn’t really save me, it really isn’t a gift, He just sort of opened the door for me, but now I have to walk through it. The problem is, to use this analogy, that I am completely crippled in both legs, and if I don’t have someone to carry me across the threshold, I’m simply not going to make it. I have to somehow do something, or many somethings (fasting, much prayer, the giving of alms, mortification of my body, etc.) in order that perhaps, at the dread Judgment Seat of Christ, I might find that I still haven’t quite done enough and the sacrifice of Christ on the Cross and my weak attempts at faith have all been in vain, and the God who really, really loves me will send me into an eternal torture pit forever. For someone like me, who is constantly failing in the Christian life, whose life is a hot mess despite my attempts to do it correctly and in the Orthodox manner, this is terrifying! When I compare my life to that of the saints, I fall completely short. Not even close.

And of course, those who never even heard of worshiping Jesus, of fasting, all-night prayer vigils, abstinence from sexual activity, etc. (i.e., the pagans) well, they are just screwed. I kid you not. I have read more than one author who has stated that unless you are in the Orthodox church, you cannot be saved. But that’s their fault, isn’t it, since they had the nerve to be born in a pagan land suffused with false gods, who threaten them with eternal punishment if they don’t believe in them and do exactly the things they command to do in the tenants of the pagan religion they were born into. (Hmmmm . . . that sounds vaguely familiar!).

And the bottom line of today’s rant is this: I have come to realize, much to my dismay and sorrow, that I have never – not even once – done anything for Christ out of pure and unadulterated love for Him. This is what I should have done, this is what the Lord, like any lover, desires from us, the beloved for whom He died. I have never once done anything in my Christian life for any other reason than I don’t wish to go to hell forever. That was the Sword of Damocles constantly hanging over my head. Do it or burn! And now that I have, after many years traveling the Christian highway, come to realize these things, I find that to my sorrow, I not only haven’t ever done anything out of love for Christ, but I am unable now to give Him the love He so richly deserves. This is a byproduct being raised in a dysfunctional family as well as the dysfunctional religions which I was attracted to after my repentance many decades ago. The ACOA “Big Book” acknowledges this as a real struggle for people who have been raised in a dysfunctional family. We simply do not understand nor know how to properly love.

Only love for God, the absolute object of all love, frees obedience from blindness.

I’m sorry, but as long as I am continually threatened with hell unless I do a laundry list of ascetic practices and do them perfectly (remember, this is how dysfunctional people think!), as long as God is only pleased with me if I am constantly doing in perfection the ascetic struggles (fasting, prayer, and alms giving), as long as I am burdened with the need to do everything perfectly in order that a pleased God might turn His love towards me, I will never find myself able to respond in trusting love. It is simply not possible to love someone of who you are always wondering if they love you unconditionally and accept you just as you are, warts and all, or if you are going to be tormented forever by your failure to hit the mark.

This is the feeling I get from Orthodoxy, that unless I get everything right and do everything I can, I will not “obtain salvation.” I had an earthly father whom I could never please. I don’t need a heavenly Father like that!

1. Fr. Alexander Schmemann |For the Life of the World | St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press | Pg. 84 ↩︎
2. Yes, my utter disdain and disgust for these people is in full display. I would need hours to describe to you the horrors that I endured from these people in my ignorance and innocent trust in them that they were teaching me truth instead of poisoning my soul against. God. ↩︎