When the Homily is about Immunology

What am I?

I heard a radio interview this morning that was once again lamenting contemporary american christianity. Honestly I am not even sure who the guy was (it was some small time local AM Christian Talk radio show), but his words were all too familiar to me (my lame paraphrase): Christianity has just become a handy philosophy for pampering SUV driving middle class republicans. It's time for something new, it's time for a change, the church must become something new in order to affect change...etc etc.

It's always time for something new....always...so they say.

But as the guy went on and on to describe "pampered american christians' lives" today, I found what he was saying to be more and more unfamiliar to me. As I listened, I sat in my chair craving sausage, eggs, and milk...from which I have only been abstaining for less than a week. At the same time I find myself daily struggling with not praying enough and sinning too much. I read about Saints and Martyrs and their heroic struggles with themselves and the devil and I long to see and wrestle for similar victories in my own life. I lust for women, money and STUFF too much and strive to avoid temptations which I so easily succumb to. I note, weep for, and work on my many failings as a husband and father. I stand in the mirror and stare at my own hypocrisy and sometimes I defy it - but always I struggle to be aware of it. I try at every moment to be aware of God...to never forget Him as the Father's so often suggest. In a word, I am learning what it means to try and live an ascetic life and though I am by no means succeeding, I am indeed trying. Am I a "pampered american christian"?

Maybe...well certainly in the same sense that ALL americans (christians or not) are pampered...but man I am telling you my religion does not pamper me. My father, who is an agnostic, tells me that I became a Christian because it "does" something for me...something that makes me feel good. Well, maybe...but keep in mind, for us Orthodox we have no guarentee for eternal life after having prayed the "sinner's prayer." When we enter into the Faith, that is when the real work begins! Let me be frank...Orthodoxy is kicking my ass...like a friggin drill seargant. Everywhere I turn I find things in my life that need improvement. We are not allowed to shrug our shoulders and say "ahhh....everyone sins", for I believe such an attitude is responsible for our evangelical collective forgetting about the saints: "they were miserable sinners just like the rest of us...so what need is there for some serious kick-ass work on improving?"

My priest warned me at my first Confession (again my lame paraphrase): "James, do not listen to people who tell you there is an easier way...there isn't...take the hard path, the steep path, the path fillled with boulders and thistles. Follow the path of the Father's which they have laid out over the centuries...the way of ascesis...self denial...the way of life."

Is this what "pampered american christians" need? A rediscovery of the path of the ascesis? I have come to believe it is most definately what I need. But, if it is what we need, then we cannot say that it is time for something new...instead it is time for something very old.