Comments by "Ivan Engel" (@ivanengel8887) on "Heavy Things Lightly"
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@olgakarpushina492 So "feels" basically. You feel my comment is unkind so it must be untrue. Ok, perhaps you're sensitive and think that other people's behavior should fit your sensibilities. Not very loving on your part, quite tyrannical in fact. Are your sensibilities ever wrong that you seek so fervently to impose them on others? You are not going to shame me to change, least of all like this.
Let me offer you this, since you offered your opinion so carelessly and without saying anything substantive other than "I didn't like it, I thought it unkind even though I couldn't explain how or why", which amounts to mere mudslinging. Why should anyone care about "your litmus" or your opinion that you offered so freely? Self-referentiality is meaningless on the internet and not very appreciated in real life either. I don't know you, why should I care about your personal standard. Who are you that I should?
You say other people are judgmental... you're the judgmental one, judging them and expecting others to fit your idol of God. You seem to worship niceness, not Christ, and you expect others to bow down to your idol. You're also definitely out of place, since we're not equals. Why would you even think we were? Oh, your culture tells you that. Well, your culture might be wrong.
So, again, who are you that you go around offering thumbs up or down on others? God save me from this sanctimonious bullshit, you say other people judge, you're the one judging. You literally judge and shit on what other people say based on your feelings without offering anything of more substance than your impression, and yet they're the judgy ones. Lord have mercy. Peak self-importance.
Since you wanted to cut me to size, I'll do you the same favor: I doubt anyone cares about your opinion in your own personal life, you don't sound like a leader. Does anyone follow you willingly? Cause I have people who do follow me willingly, who appreciate and respect me.
I'm going to keep leading people who seek me for my wisdom and my strength of character, while you post passive-aggressive nothings like "I don't like what mean man say on the internet because it does not feel nice" into the void. Good luck with that. "My litmus test" lol. Self-important, whiny and weak. Why should your sensibilities be imposed on others? You think too much of yourself and give very little of yourself to others. Your idols of God must go, or you'll never know Christ.
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@mikealrodriguez6907 Oh, nice, another passive-aggressive, entitled and cowardly manlet joins the thread. Don't lie now, those people aren't your friends, by how you judge them they repulse you while you claim "they repulse women". Sneaky. And if those people, if they're even real, knew how you talk about them behind their backs (if they really knew you), they wouldn't like you very much either.
I've had no problem dating anyone I've wanted to, I've probably turned down way more women than you've probably ever dated in your life. My face is on the internet, I've been told I'm quite attractive (though I don't believe it's because of my looks). Also, I'm a leader in my community, and my spiritual father who is a priest has recommended me for ordination. I'm curious about your physiognomy, since you like offering opinions on other people's characters. Maybe seeing your face can explain your low testosterone opinions.
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@heavythingslightly First I appreciate you taking the time to read the long comment and responding. What I meant is probably more nuanced than what "love of the temporal" would superficially seem to imply. Yes, it would ultimately boil down to that, but in emotional terms I'd express it more as a fear of losing the body than a pleasurable love for the body.
Who can honestly say they don't fear losing their lives ever? Perhaps we're fearless for a second, or we're bargaining with the world wanting a "good death", but the cross is hard.
I didn't mean to disrespect Fr Silouan who I hold in high regard, but I think it's the same issue that Pageau has in regards to the arts and the "fairy", his djinn theory. They get so close to the arts and the icon that they begin to confuse the icon for the real person, mistaking the body for the spirit, the man with the angel, and ultimately fearing more for the body and its possibility for expression, than accepting that the body must die in order to bring fruits.
They have really great points within their own perspective, but the pattern of hesychia, to me, implies letting go of the body, not in a gnostic sense, but in the sense of truly accepting the inevitable corruption of the world without condoning it.
I think that acceptance of being lowered is what the angels and men could share without erasing the differences between man and angel. I think their perspective ends up wanting to give the created spirits leeway to repent, and it becomes like a nephilim confused version. God bless!
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@heavythingslightly Thanks for the reply! I can definitely see that in Putin's case. I hear that in his speeches when he puts Islam and "democracy" in a similar place than Orthodoxy (as if they were intellectual commodities). Sounds very much like a politician who wants to play geopolitics instead of a truly devout Christian. On the Patriarch's part, however, I don't know. To me he sounds like he wants to defend the Church against outside forces that are definitely trying to infiltrate it (intelligence and globalist forces). I haven't made up my mind, and I go to a ROCOR church which has him as Patriarch, so my obedience is to them and to him by extension. But I say this not as a defense of any of them, just as a "humble" opinion of someone who not so humbly believes themselves to be a good judge of character.
Of course war is a terrible thing, I think that if Orthodoxy puts the worldly over the spiritual (and the spiritual I believe includes the idea that worldly authorities rightfully carry the sword) then it has lost its salt. To me, to question the State's authority in regards to things like the death penalty and just war (in an absolute sense) comes from a modern "goody-two-shoes" logic based on Enlightenment ideals that carefully subvert and replace Christian morals in the spirit of Judas. Because they ignore God's law they lead us into self-delusion (where we hide our transgressions from ourselves) and end up paralyzing good people (who fall into self-doubt because they cannot delude themselves as easily as bad people). The modern state is then paralyzed because it does not have any true authority, because this modern rationalism makes us constantly hide the fact that to rule anything means to sacrifice something (which sounds icky), so these gimped populist authorities become unable to function because they cannot sacrifice anything (especially not what they need to cut off). This worship of "democracy", globalism, and "international law" are just propaganda for a shadow banking elite that weaponize compassion, just like Judas, to rule over confused peoples. And I see the Patriarch as trying to fight this, but I might be mistaken.
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@heavythingslightly I'm sorry if my comment takes too much of your time. I too see a spirit that's really alive nowadays in people who lean left and are "too charitable" to the outside, where they surreptitiously take unto themselves the role of priests and usurp authority to forgive others of their sins, without repentance. You see it in ecumenicism, in universalism, in perennialism, etc... An excess of "kindness", mercy without authority. They believe themselves to be loving, they idolize their own love and replace it with Christ's, subverting the hierarchy (which is something that you seem to be trying to recover and I commend you for it). They take authority that does not belong to them to absolve others of their sins. And it's the spirit of Judas which is alive in protestantism, because you can say their motivations are to save others, but I don't doubt part of Judas wanted to help the poor when he said that he wanted to sell the perfume, but another part of him wanted to take authority from Christ and keep the money for himself. I'm definitely not accusing you of this, nor am I saying we should purge the Church either. I'm saying we need to remember the parable of the wheat and the tares, and really study it. Therein lies the key of how to identify and deal with the tares.
The tare's growth does not truly impede that of the wheat, it's the right kind of competition, and God will know what to do with the tares. We don't need to uproot them. But, we also do need to be wary and not forget that God's law does not change and that he gave us authorities for a reason.
I don't believe Christ changed lex talionis in His Sermon on the mount, I think that's a modern reading of His teaching. And I do believe that excommunication is an act of love, as is the death penalty properly administered (however crazy it might sound). I would love for you to talk with your brother on this topic. I don't believe the death penalty precludes repentance, I believe it aids it. So that's something to ponder. Does the Church and the State have the authority to say "enough, I'm cutting you off"? Because otherwise, under the guise of compassion, the other person always deserves a second chance regardless of whether or not they repented. And that is where modernity leads, the defense for unrepentance, a confusion between the Virgin and the whore.
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@heavythingslightly Agreed. I'll add two things if you will indulge me because they are pertinent to what you seem to be aiming at with the whole old-world-new-world dialogue...
One of the least appreciated but most important aspects of hierarchy is that having someone above you, and having an anchor in a tradition, make that burden of being aware of this much, much lighter. His yoke is easy and His burden is light. I'm definitely not above you in this path, I'm a wayward young man. But I know you will take it at its worth... I tend to try too hard sometimes because I'm ambitious and lack hierarchy in many areas of my life. But hierarchy would naturally curtail that drive and paradoxically "free me" by reducing my responsibilities to a more manageable size. So I think humility and hierarchy make that challenge of loving much easier. We don't need to save mankind by ourselves. I think it's about finding and making the opportunities that we can actually manage to bring about what the Lord wants of us. Accepting small opportunities for love.
And like you said, we need to walk in both love and truth. I've heard from people like Pageau that love should be above truth, and from people like Peterson that truth must be above love. I think God does not sacrifice one for the other. I don't think rigor is truth and neither is mercy a synonym of love. You can love someone who is above you, but mercy is truly only and always given from "above". To which I have to add that hierarchies are not set in stone either. Sometimes we need to show mercy to those who are otherwise normally above us, because being human means our authorities are fallible and we need to be flexible. We don't need to erase differences to allow flexibility, sometimes your wife or your children will be your rock, and it would be pride to deny them. But if we know that truth is embedded in love, then it's not "true" to speak truth at any cost whenever. It's only true to speak the right amount of truth in at the right time.
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