We live in a world of practicality, a fact that has produced the marvels of technology that power us along and connect the world in its web. I have a grandson who has grasped some of this connection for many months now, even though he’s a young child. He loves buttons—not the ones on your shirt, but the ones on any device. If there is a button in reach, he will mash it. He’s not alone, I’ve seen the same phenomenon throughout the herd of children that crowd my parish. Push a button; make something happen. If a toddler grasps the magic of a button, so, too, do adults. It’s something of an icon of our culture. If there is a problem, from cancer to poverty, we want solutions; we want buttons we can mash. This is also true of our spiritual expectations. But it’s worth asking, “Does the spiritual life work?”

Chapter three of AA—Alcoholics Anonymous’s Big Book, sort of the guidebook for those in that program, Chapter three is entitled, “How it Works.” It describes the 12-Steps with a commentary. It also assures that its program “works.” What a very American chapter! And it does, for a portion of those who participate. One set of statistics from peer reviewed studies put the AA success rate at less than 10 percent. AA itself describes the success rate as higher—perhaps as much as 33 percent. And I want to quickly say that I endorse their program and encourage anyone with an addiction to participate in a 12-Step program. The numbers, however, are of interest. What I understand from these studies is that addiction is a very powerful force in some lives and can meet with failure even in the face of well-designed treatments.

I have wondered how the “success” of the spiritual life would be measured? I could imagine that the number of persons baptized might be compared to the number of the baptized who fall short of salvation—but there is no way to discover such a thing. In lieu of that, we often set up our own way of measuring—some expectation of “success” that we use to judge the spiritual life. “I tried Christianity,” the now self-described agnostic relates, “and found that it did not live up to its claims.” [Laughter] I’ve seen things like that.

To my mind, the entire question is a little like complaining about your hammer because it doesn’t work well as a screw-driver. The problem is that the spiritual life doesn’t “work,” and it was never supposed to. It is not something that “works”; it is something that “lives.” And this is an extremely important distinction.

In 1859, Samuel Smiles, a Scottish author and government reformer, published a book entitled Self-Help. It was the first self-proclaimed work on self-improvement. His opening line is famous. He said: “God helps those who help themselves.” Wondered where that came from? There you have it: “God helps those who help themselves.” Indeed, many modern people are under the impression that this statement comes from Scripture—and it does not. It is not at all accidental that Smiles’s thought should echo that of the Scottish Enlightenment itself. We can build a better world, and do so more effectively by building better humans, so go out there and help yourself. Christianity was to be harnessed in this great progressive drive. So there began to be versions of Christianity that were sort of geared to a new “self-help” spirituality.

We today look to our faith to solve problems. Whether we suffer from psychological wounds, or simple poverty and failure, we look to God for help. The spiritual life, and the “techniques” we imagine to be associated with it, are the means by which we “help ourselves”—and then God will do the rest.

Well, this narrative is simply not part of the Christian faith. The progress/improvement/better-life scenario does not jibe with the account of the Christian life as given in the New Testament and in the Tradition. Verses such as John 10:10—“I have come that they might have life more abundantly”—are cherry-picked and drafted into the false narrative of an improved existence. So you’ll have—I’ve seen independent churches out there named “Church of the Abundant Life”—well, that’s a big promise! Consider instead this word from St. Isaac of Syria; he said, “Without tribulations befalling us, God’s providence cannot be perceived.” Imagine seeing a small independent church named “Church of the Tribulations”—well, that’s not great advertising, is it?

St. Isaac’s statement is fully in line with the New Testament, though. There, we are not presented with the solution to our problems, nor with the promise of a better world. Think about that. In the New Testament, we’re not [presented] with the solution to our problems, nor are we given a promise of a better world; rather, we are taught how to live in repentance and participate daily in the life of the Kingdom of God. That the life of the Kingdom of God is full of joy and transcendence is not at all the same thing as success or improvement. The lives of the saints are filled with information of an opposite sort. For example:

• [St.] Mary of Egypt is directed into the desert by the voice of the Mother of God. She lives miraculously on very little food. But she tells of 17 years—17 years!—of virtual torture as she battled the temptations that had governed her previously sinful life. Our daily trials would seem as nothing in comparison.
• St. Silouan the Athonite told about a period of 15 years in which he had no sense of the presence of God, but was instead tortured by demons.
• St. Seraphim of Sarov spent years in prayer and fasting, was beaten, robbed and left like a cripple.

Many modern readers first encounter the Jesus Prayer in the classic work, The Way of a Pilgrim. It’s a work of pious fiction that offers some basic instruction and incentive towards the practice of the Jesus Prayer. It can also be misleading. In a matter of months, following instruction from a holy elder, the pilgrim finds that the prayer has entered his heart and become “self-acting.” A blind man with whom he shares the prayer masters it in even less time and gains the ability to see things at a great distance. I know of modern cases where the prayer came in what seemed an easy manner, but those cases are not stories of technique—they are singular gifts of grace that seem directed towards a very specific purpose. Most people never, never have an experience of “self-acting” prayer. It is extremely rare, even among monastics.

The prayer and fasting, almsgiving and confession that are the very heart of the Orthodox way of life are not techniques or ways of self-improvement and betterment. They are the embracing of a way of life in which self-improvement and betterment are beside the point. To observe “improvement” in ourselves is to abandon the way of humility and repentance. It is the nature of the Orthodox way that we become increasingly aware of our failures rather than our progress.

Christ said, “When you have done all those things which you are commanded,”—imagine! Doing all those things! Keeping all the commandments, having done all those things which you are commanded, “then say, ‘We are unprofitable servants. We have done what was our duty to do.’ ” This is Christ. Think about what he has just said. If you’ve done all the things and kept all the commandments, still at the end of the day, say, “We are unprofitable servants. We have done what was our duty to do.”

Accepting this represents a change of mind within the modern context. Indeed, the very word for repentance in Greek means a “change of mind” (metanoia). Christianity should not and properly cannot be a subset of the modern lifestyle. Most likely, if carefully followed, it will ruin all our modern plans. Well and good! The Kingdom of God will not be populated by the successful, the well-adjusted, and the wise. It is the failures, the foolish, and the fragile who will enter ahead of us, or at least those who were willing to risk their lives in such a manner. That’s a clear teaching of the Gospel. The modern narrative is not only false, this narrative of success and progress, it creates expectations that are never truly met. Our media torments us with carefully crafted examples of those for whom self-improvement and personal progress seem to work. We can only wonder why it fails to work for us! These are false images that belie the normative struggle of human existence in every day and in every age.

I want to break for a minute here and give a sort of footnote in the middle of a podcast with a fairly long quote with a passage from Fr. Alexander Schmemann, from his book, For the Life of the World. It expands on this, and, mind you, this was written by him I think back in the 1970s, and it also goes to show some things never change. But he writes and says:

Quite frankly, if “help” were the criterion (of what was effective about religion), one would have to admit that life-centered secularism helps actually more than religion. To compete with it, religion has to present itself as “adjustment to life,” “counseling,” “enrichment,” it has to be publicized in subways and buses as a valuable addition to “your friendly bank” and all other “friendly dealers”: try it, it helps! And the religious success of secularism is so great that it leads some Christian theologians to “give up” the very category of “transcendence,” or in much simpler words, the very idea of “God.”

This is the price we must pay if we want to be “understood” and “accepted” by modern man, proclaim the Gnostics of the twentieth century. But it is here that we reach the heart of the matter. For Christianity, help is not the criterion. Truth is the criterion. The purpose of Christianity is not to help people by reconciling them with death, but to reveal the Truth about life and death in order that people may be saved by this Truth. Salvation, however, is not only not identical with help, but is, in fact, opposed to it. Christianity quarrels with religion and secularism not because they offer “insufficient help,” but precisely because they “suffice,” because they “satisfy” the needs of men.

If the purpose of Christianity were to take away from man the fear of death, to reconcile him with death, there would be no need for Christianity, for other religions have done this, indeed, better than Christianity. And secularism is about to produce men who will gladly and corporately die—and not just live—for the triumph of the Cause, whatever it may be. Christianity is not reconciliation with death. It is the revelation of death, and it reveals death because it is the revelation of Life. Christ is this Life. And only if Christ is Life is death what Christianity proclaims it to be, namely the enemy to be destroyed, and not a “mystery” to be explained.

So there he’s describing this attention we have in which the Church, perhaps to sell itself or to get along in the modern world, wants to accommodate itself and present itself as useful to whatever the modern project is, to whatever it needs us to do, and instead revealing the truth of Christ.

If you’re having a difficult time, you are not alone—it is the very nature of human life. But that same struggle, however, united with Christ in his Cross, becomes transformative—not in the manner that the world expects; it will not transform you and make you a better partaker of the modern project—but it will transform you into the likeness of the crucified and risen Christ, the only measure that really matters when it’s all said and done. Glory to God!