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Thus saith the Lord: But the Lord of hosts shall be exalted in judgement, and the holy God shall be glorified in righteousness. 17And they that were spoiled shall be fed as bulls, and lambs shall feed on the waste places of them that are taken away. 18 Woe to them that draw sins to them as with a long rope, and iniquities as with a thong of the heifer’s yoke: 19 who say, Let him speedily hasten what he will do, that we may see it: and let the counsel of the Holy One of Israel come, that we may know it. 20 Woe to them that call evil good, and good evil; who make darkness light, and light darkness; who make bitter sweet, and sweet bitter. 21 Woe to them that are wise in their own conceit, and knowing in their own sight. 22 Woe to the strong ones of you that drink wine, and the mighty ones that mingle strong drink: 23 who justify the ungodly for rewards, and take away the righteousness of the righteous. 24 Therefore as stubble shall be burnt by a coal of fire, and shall be consumed by a violent flame, their root shall be as chaff, and their flower shall go up as dust: for they rejected the law of the Lord of hosts, and insulted the word of the Holy One of Israel. 25 Therefore the Lord of hosts was greatly angered against his people, and he reached forth his hand upon them, and smote them: and the mountains were troubled, and their carcasses were as dung in the midst of the way: yet for all this his anger has not been turned away, but his hand is yet raised.
We are surrounded today by those who call good evil and evil good – neighbors, colleagues at work, our own relatives, even, sad to say, people who call themselves Orthodox Christians, even bishops and priests. They believe in sacrificing infants to the demon of fornication and calling it “women’s rights.” They believe in mutilating children and calling it “transgender rights.” They believe in the most gross and unnatural sins of the flesh as legitimate expressions of conjugal affection on par with the chaste acts of a marriage bed sanctified by the blessing of God and ordered towards the procreation of children. They embark upon the Promethean insanity of altering the human genome and they call it medicine. All of this is beyond immorality; it is demonic lunacy. Those who believe in such things and practice such things are not simply wicked. They are trapped in a make-believe mental world of meaninglessness and despair; they live at a spiritual level at which the concepts of “good” and “evil” do not even exist. Their minds being utterly destroyed, their wills have nowhere to go. Thus the “enlightened” society of 2023.
At this point, then, the range of human expedients available to us to survive as free and moral human beings – much less Orthodox Christians – is narrow, and, more than ever, it is obvious that only God can save us. The Good News is that He wants to save us: His will for our salvation is infinitely greater than our own. What lesson can we take from today’s reading to help us do something – that is, to cooperate actively with His gracious election and His all-powerful will that is directed entirely to our eternal happiness?
The first thing to remember is that our minds too are easily led astray; when we look at the benighted folk described above, our first thought should be, “There but for the grace of God go I.” Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn came to treasure his years in the Gulag for the spiritual insight he gained there: it was there that he learned the great truth, that the line between good and evil is drawn primarily not between political parties or armies or governments, but right down the middle of the heart of every man. If we really want to oppose evil, we have to understand what it is, and that means we have to know ourselves. The precondition for self-knowledge is humility, and we can strive successfully to humble our wills only if we begin by humbling our minds. Calling good evil and evil good comes about because of a prior mistake which our prophet today accuses as well: “Woe to unto them that are wise in their own conceit, and knowing in their own sight!”
Among the life-changing passages in that bedrock spiritual classic all of us should read and cherish, Unseen Warfare, here is one we would do well to memorize and repeat to ourselves daily
…pride of will, being visible to the mind, can sometimes be easily cured by forcing it to submit to the yoke of what is good. But when the mind is firmly grounded in the self-relying thought that its own judgments are better than all others, who can cure it in the end? Can it ever obey anyone, if it feels certain that the judgments of others are not as good as its own? When this eye of the soul—the mind—with whose help man could see and correct pride of will, is itself blinded by pride and remains uncured, who will cure the will? Then everything within is so disorganised that there is neither place nor person for applying a healing poultice. This is why you must hasten to oppose this pernicious pride of mind, before it penetrates into the marrow of your bones. Resist it, curb the quickness of your mind and humbly subject your opinion to the opinions of others. Be a fool for the love of God, if you wish to be wiser than Solomon: ‘If any man among you seemeth to be wise in this world, let him become a fool, that he may be wise’ (I Cor, iii. 18). – Unseen Warfare, chapter nine.
No doubt we all agree with this, but how do we do it? We know that all virtue is a mean between extremes: How do we acquire this saving distrust of our own opinions without falling into the opposite extreme of so great a distrust of self that we give up our convictions and fail in our resolutions, because of the opinions of others? On the one hand, we don’t want to be the tiresome know-it-all that the prophet decries above, wise in our own conceits. On the other hand, each of us, according to his own station in life, must firmly and courageously make moral and practical choices to fulfill his responsibilities without the incubus of a foolish self doubt ever riding his back and vitiating an active life that should by rights consist of a well-directed, unremitting, and intransigent combat against the visible and invisible enemies of our salvation.
Here are a few words of advice:
1. Learn to distinguish between revealed and natural truth on the one hand, and practical applications of truth, prudential decisions, on the other hand. Never give up your Faith and never give up fundamental commonsense insights into the nature of reality. When you must make spiritual and moral choices in the practical sphere, ask the Lord for a saving humility about your own capacity for judgment and for His divine inspiration to make good choices. Ask Him also for the supernatural grace of true Christian courage, which paradoxically always reveals itself as genuine by its combination with meekness, to carry out your resolves. This is a divine grace, and as such it is not within the capacity of fallen nature. But we are Christians, we can ask for it with a good hope of getting it, and God wants to give it to us.
2. If you do not have a wise counselor or counselors in your life, pray earnestly and repeatedly until God sends you one or more, and sends you the insight to realize that “Yes, these are the ones.” When you find them, don’t let them go. Usually the consensus of a few wise counselors will steer us right. That doesn’t mean to hand over to them your will and your mind: that’s not spiritual discipleship; that’s just mindless slavery. It means to defer to their judgment in most cases, unless your conscience screams “No!”
3. Remember the words of the wise Ss. Barsanuphius and John: When faced with important choices, “Pray three times and do as your heart inclines.” But once you make a firm resolve, don’t look back.
4. Never think that you have already learned all you need to know about Orthodoxy or about life. Constantly immerse yourself in some kind of spiritual study as well as fruitful practical studies. “Exceedingly spacious are Thy commandments,” as we read in the psalm. That is, truth is inexhaustible. Not only the infinite perfections of God, but even the truths found in His creation, are the study not only of a lifetime, but of eternity. Always consider yourself a learner not a teacher.
5. When you find that your thoughts have been mistaken, and that by being corrected you have acquired some new and genuine wisdom, rejoice. You have now become more of a grownup (much less a Christian!). What freedom, to be absolutely unattached to the idea that I am right all the time!
Let us close today by reading carefully this passage from our Holy Father Gregory the Great, the Dialogist, Pope of Rome:
Consider how holy men have a remarkable ability to keep before their inner eyes what they do not know in order to safeguard the virtue of humility. On the one hand they consider their weakness, and on the other they do not allow their hearts to be puffed up just because they have done something good. Knowledge is a virtue, but humility is its guardian.
One’s mind, then, should be modest about everything it knows, lest the winds of pride blow away what the virtue of knowledge has gathered in. When you do something good, always call to mind the evils you have done. If you keep your faults in mind, your heart will never be heedlessly happy because of its good works…Let everyone strive to be great in the practice of virtue, but nevertheless let each one know that to a certain extent he is in fact nothing. If not, one will attribute greatness to oneself and lose whatever good one has done. This is why the prophet warned: Woe to you who are wise in your own eyes, and prudent in your own sight (Esaias 5:21). And Paul: “Do not be prudent in your own sight (Romans 12:16).” And because of his pride, it was said against Saul, “When you were little in your own eyes, I made you head of the tribes of Israel (I Kings 15:17).” It is as if he had been told, “When you considered yourself little, I made you greater than the rest; but when you thought of yourself as great, I considered you little.” – Homilies on the Gospels 7.4
May we always consider ourselves little before God and man, and pray to be made great in the inner man, in the humility of wisdom. Thereby shall we dispose ourselves to be taught what is truly good and truly evil, and to act with a God-pleasing resolve on the wisdom we shall have undeservedly received from the right hand of the Most High, unto our salvation.
Holy Prophet Esaias, Holy Apostle Paul, Holy Father Gregory, and All Ye God-inspired Teachers of the Old and New Testaments, pray to God for us!
