I was reading St. Nicodemus of the Holy Mountain this morning, specifically the second chapter of Unseen Warfare in which he talks extensively about self-esteem, self-love as gateways to pride that are the ultimate sin and how grace only comes to those who are humble...
Let me qualify one thing, first: self-esteem is not used in the sense of
I am good enough to succeed at my job, or
I am good enough to be a parent, etc. These are normal, practical things that
of course you are! is the only answer, and it actually reveals that our postmodern society has lacked the basic security that premodern peoples could have in themselves...
Which is ironic: we are a people confident enough to cast off God but everywhere you look there's people doubting whether or not they are good enough to be a
parent or a
cubicle worker. My brothers & sisters, of course you are good enough to be either of these things - there are exceptions, like, YES, I would have massive confidence issues if I suddenly got a job I wasn't qualified for through lying (lol), or I would also NOT be a good parent if I was currently battling a fentanyl addiction... But you need to be like your ancestors:
- Of course I can do a task.
- Of course I can be a parent.
Self-esteem, rather, in the sense that one has some special characteristic or trait that puts oneself above others, is what's being talked about...
Of course, it's an absolute fact that Michael Jordan has a very special talent in basketball, and Magnus Carlsen in chess. But the actual conclusion is that
Michael Jordan and Magnus Carlsen's innate characteristics that made them superstars and even the drive that they had to become that comes from God, or theoretically, it could have been magnified by sins (a crass desire for fame or money causing them to put in all those hours)... But, certainly, at the level they are at, they have undeniable natural gifts, and ...
they are in the physical person of Michael Jordan and Magnus Carlsen, but they are not their souls. The nous of both of these men is something that exists far away from their physical reality because if both of these men were in radically different circumstances and suffered physical or mental ailments preventing their success, they would still have their same soul...
So what makes them outstanding is not "their soul," but their "gift" which is distinct...
So the star athletes who remain humble and deny their specialness or elite status are not being corny... They're being theologically correct.
Dare I say, a crazy burden would come from having made tens of millions (or even billions which I think is the case of Michael Jordan) from their skill, and to have such fame and legendary status. Now the small things they do matters to everyone... Imagine, for a second, a man who became rich & famous and his life spiraled out of control, resulting in drug and sex addictions, public shame and embarrassment, negatively impacting millions who look up to him and follow his lead... Maybe he will have a change of heart and this was the very lesson he needed to save himself from hell and that is why God gave it to him, or maybe he is condemned to hell forever...
And then imagine a poor man who had very few opportunities to advance himself and led a simple life with simple pleasures, never traveling more than a 50 miles from his home, but his poverty prevented him from ever being able to even
afford an addiction, and the boring conditions of his village facilitated his spiritual life... And he dies, too poor to be buried in the Cathedral cemetery, and instead interred in a small family cemetery on the farm, nothing remaining of him to future generations but his birth date (which is actually listed incorrectly), his baptismal date, and his death date (also listed a day off - nobody was sure if he died before or after midnight and they guessed wrong)... Yet, he enters the Kingdom of God...
So, I guess, the curse of many people now - even people in poor countries - is their ability to become drug or booze addicts at a very small price and, if they can afford a smartphone like most people even in the third world, they can become pxrn addicts. Not to mention, they curate a super unique identity and personality that really is just Consumerism + Self-Vanity - it's literally the demonic forces of greed and pride preying on them....
Yetttttt, they do not have self-confidence enough to be a parent and they need to take self-improvement classes and books to have the confidence to
face the world at all.Pride is so useless it probably
inversely correlates with the ability to do tasks adequately and be a parent. So corrupting.
So with that background in mind, you have on one end of the spectrum an idea of the modernist " End of History" where there are no possibilities outside the contemporary secular consensus view of reality, and on the other the " really real" or " welcome to the desert of the real" of Lacan and Baudrillaud and others, the Real that imposes itself and eventually cannot be hidden behind Symbol and Simulacrum, Simulation or Metaphor.
This is a super difficult point because it is understandable how secularism became a mean of
diverse Christian groups living in peace, undisturbed from each other, but it ends up cultivating a world view actively hostile towards religion...
Antidisestablishmentarianism is a the last pill to swallow, and it's the hardest.
This is why the principle of oikonomie is so difficult - the human condition is frail and requires sympathy and adjustment of the standards, but when we adjust them wrongly, we end up in places far darker than we ever intended to.
- By Rancid
- By Rich
- By Skynet