Improper use of;
Unfortunate experience of;
Wrongful understanding of;
material experience and the nature of matter itself,
causes damage to character and scars upon the psyche/soul, which is not healed by simple Christian conversion. But which can become healed in time, through spiritual discipline via the synergistic work of the Holy Spirit creating wisdom, knowledge and understanding.
(1) What is improper use of material experience?
All substance abuse falls into this category. All sexual idolatry falls into this category, where people are seen as object of selfish and fleeting pleasure, and not taken in the fullness of their humanity, which is in the Image of God. Improper use of material experience includes every fetish, every idolatry, every excess of lust, perversions, gluttony, obsessions and compulsions, envy, and greed.
(2) What is unfortunate experience of the material world?
Every assault upon the human body and psyche, accidental injury, wounds of war and crime, rape, physical and mental enslavement, hunger, deprivation, want, extreme material poverty, and disease.
(3) What is the wrongful understanding of material experience?
The irrational FEAR that matter is evil. And thus, the fear of good material experience, fear of matter itself like the Gnostics denouncing matter and this earth as evil, this life and its blessings and cursings as just a sort of dream you have to get through to get to heaven, worthless "in toto," except for the hope of blessed release from this illusion of suffering. The Gnostics went so far as to view the material world as the construction of a rebellious god, who created matter as an attack upon the real God, who is purely spiritual and would NEVER stoop to any sort of creation of matter, much less stoop to experience of and BONDING WITH, MATTER as of course Jesus Christ did by his incarnation.
How do these three things distort character?
As Human Beings we are both material and spiritual and there will never come a time this is not so. If one attempts to live strictly on a material plane, one becomes distorted making an idol of matter, seeking from matter and material experience what it is incapable of producing. The soul starves as the body tries to feed it, as the soul wastes toward death so does the body, worn from trying to save its own soul, or maybe trying just to dull pain of the experience as the soul perishes in poverty. It matters not if the person has enormous material wealth or is poor, the person unconnected to the Life Engendering Spirit of God perishes in great poverty.
If one rejects the material world, and tries to live strictly on the “spiritual plane,” without the proper comprehension of the value, worth and blessing of material existence, the goodness of the earth itself, it creates a distorted image of their own humanity. It turns the heart to stone, makes the personality brittle, it makes that person less human, incapable of the experience of all the healthy range of human emotions, it dulls the beauty of everything it sees, it causes a devaluation of ALL LIVING THINGS, plants, animals, pets, people. The earth itself becomes barren of any good, follows isolation and frozen emotions, wrapped in pride and bitterness and constant boiling sometimes demonic boring anger which sometimes passes for “spiritual discipline” and existence on a higher plane. ( I know I'm saved, to hell with the rest of them.) The life is ruined of all promise, potential is destroyed, talents lost, time WASTED.
This is the realm of brittle religionism, where discovery of anything in depth is rejected, learning ceases, one is guided by “verses” used as sophism, each slogan confirming the self-satisfied delusion of “spiritual wealth” and the worthy guarantee of heaven. Just pacing time with the worthless sinners here, until one can get to heaven.
True Christianity which is True Healing and cannot be anything other, is not matter rejecting. Quite the contrary it is the means by which all matter will be renewed, it is the means by which at the present time Christ dwells with us, physically incarnated into this world, present in our BODIES.
“1Co_6:19 Or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own?”
Our Christian God deigns to condescend and dwell in the very matter he has created. In that matter in his creative energies he is “everywhere present and fills all thing, the spirit of blessing and giver of life.” No one single eye sees, or mind thinks, without the cognition he the Living Word gives.
Joh 1:9 That was the true Light, which enlightens every man that cometh into the world.
If you think this thought far fetched and unlikely, to wit:
Speaking of Saint Paul:
Act 19:7 Now all the men were about twelve.
Act 19:8 And he entered into the synagogue and spoke boldly for three months, debating and persuading the things concerning of the kingdom of God.
Act 19:9 But when some became hardened and disbelieving, speaking evil against the Way before the multitude, he withdrew from them and separated the disciples, each day debating in the school of a certain Tyrannus.
Act 19:10 Now this took place for two years, so that all who were dwelling in Asia heard the word of the Lord Jesus, both Jews and Greeks.
Act 19:11 And God was doing extraordinary miracles by the hands of Paul,
Act 19:12 so that even handkerchiefs or aprons from his skin were brought to those who were sick, and the diseases departed from them, and the evil spirits went out from them.
Can you not see, that this tells that every atom of the Apostle Paul's Body was so filled with the uncreated energy of God, that the rags with which he wiped his sweat were capable of producing mighty healing wonders and deliverance from evil?
Our object as Christians is not to "hold on here" so that we may get to some floaty place which we hold in our collective imagination, but to become HEALED, and so imbued with LIFE, with the uncreated, life generating energy of God that our very sweat becomes Life Creating. Why? So that we become LIKE HIM, like the Divine Human Person Jesus Christ, able to stand in his presence with the shield of his grace and mercy, removed, seeing him in His Glory Face to Face.
1Jn_3:2 Beloved, now we are children of God; and it has not yet been revealed what we shall be, but we know that when He appears, we shall be like Him, because we shall see Him as He is.
Those not prepared will also stand in his presence, and that Divine Energy, that Glory, that Consuming Fire, will be to them the reality of hell.
2Co_13:4 For although He was crucified in weakness, yet He lives by the power of God. For we are weak in Him, yet we shall live with Him by the power of God in us.
Are you beginning to understand that heaven is not our goal, but to become imbued with HIS LIFE is? This life is NOT about pacing time till we get there, or enduring till we get THEIR, but TRUE HEALING REDEMPTION IN HIM, Here and NOW bringing HIS power, His reality, to this World HERE and NOW. Not through campaigns of religions and programs of evangelism, but for REAL in REALITY, in MATERIAL BEING, in our OWN PERSONS, HERE AND NOW.
He is our healing/salvation and WE become a healing presence HERE and NOW, IN HIM.
Eph 1:7 In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace
Eph 1:8 which He made to abound toward us in all wisdom and insight,
Eph 1:9 having made known to us the mystery of His will, according to His good pleasure which He purposed in Himself,
Eph 1:10 for an administration of the fullness of the times, He might bring together all things in Christ, those in heaven and those on the earth--In Him.
Read that again, "For an administration of the fullness of times, He might bring together all things in Christ, those in heaven and those on the earth-- In Him.
Salvation is not the “saving of souls” and escaping evil matter with our soul in tact to the next life, that is the LEAST form of rescue. True Salvation is Purification, Enlightenment and finally Deification also called Sanctification and Glorification, the HEALING of the complete and whole person, Spirit/Mind, Soul/Body. Some bodies of saints have become so imbued with God's uncreated energy so Sanctified, that when the Soul slept, the corpse without embalming was preserved in part or whole, permanently, for a witness of the truth of sanctification, of Sainthood, that even the FLESH of those who have become truly healed, remains for centuries in a state, not living, not decayed to dust, but in a state the Church calls "uncorrupted."
Only those Christians, so damaged in CHARACTER by the misuse of Material being, that they cannot battle their damaged Character, and are enslaved to passions, so much so that nothing but hellish suffering may awaken their resolve to God, Saint Paul says, “deliver such a one to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, in order that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus.”
Those who think this sort of man and those people who have in this life become a living presence of Jesus Christ Himself, will occupy the same places, live in the same manner with total equality in the next life are deluding themselves. What we DO, in this life, how we, “inherit this earth” by Christ's power, how we first take possession of our own material being, and subdue our passions and participate in the healing of our deformed character, makes a difference and very much governs what the next life will be.
There is a companion piece coming, explaining The Way, The Path, The Discipline of the spiritual life, as created and outlined by Jesus at the Sermon on the Mount.
Archpriest Symeon Elias.
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