CHRISTIAN APATHEIA
By now, I suspect, most of us are aware of the story of John Newton, author of the hymn, Amazing Grace. He wrote the hymn after he became an Anglican clergyman, but before that he was the captain of a slave trading ship. Although he received some early religious instruction from his mother – who died when he was six – he had given up any serious religious conviction by the time he reached adulthood. Then one night, as he attempted to steer his ship through a particularly violent storm, he experienced what he later referred to as his “great deliverance.”
He recorded in his journal that when all seemed lost and he was convinced the ship was about to sink, he cried out, “Lord, have mercy upon us!” Later, he reflected on what he had said, and began to believe that he had actually encountered God in that storm. Perhaps that storm was the source of verse three of his famous hymn:
Through many dangers, toils and snares, I have already come;
‘Tis grace hath brought me safe thus far, and grace will lead me home.
May 10th, 1748 was the day of John Newton’s “great deliverance.” Yet John Newton continued to pilot slave trading ships, although he did come to treat the slaves on his ships a little bit better. Some years later he had a stroke and in the aftermath of that, he again had a profound encounter with God. It was then that he said that he felt truly at peace with God for the first time in his life. Yet even then, he continued to invest financially in the slave trading business. He finally became an abolitionist much later in life. Then he apologized for a confession that, as he put it, “comes too late, and will always be a subject of humiliating reflection to me, that I once was an active instrument in a business at which my heart now shudders.” Perhaps that confession is the source of verse one of Amazing Grace:
Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me!
I once was lost, but now am found; was blind, but now I see.
Ladies and gentlemen, there is more than one kind of blindness. Of course, there is what we call physical blindness. Yet perhaps there is also a kind of blindness we might call spiritual blindness. John Newton was not healed of physical blindness. John Newton was healed of spiritual blindness.
Does spiritual blindness remain in our world today? Perhaps we could say that Bernie Madoff suffered from spiritual blindness with his Ponzi scheme. How could anyone with a conscience do what that man did? I think anyone who suggests that the people of Haiti are only getting what they deserve, because some of them practice voodoo, may be suffering from spiritual blindness. How can anyone see their suffering and think God remains oblivious? And those of us in the wealthiest nation in the history of the world who want to hear our preachers talk about how we can get more out of God – who long for what we call the “prosperity gospel” – may be suffering from spiritual blindness as well. Here we could ask, “How much is enough?” Ah, there seems to be a bit of spiritual blindness in our world today, as well.
Jesus addresses the subject of blindness in the passage we read from the gospel according to Luke. He comes to Nazareth – his own home town – and enters the synagogue on the Sabbath. As he stands up to read, he is handed a scroll from the book of Isaiah. Jesus reads:
The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to
the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to
the blind; to let the oppressed go free, and to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.
Much can be said about the aforementioned passage, but I want to focus on the recovery of sight to the blind. How does Jesus restore sight to the blind? More specifically, how does Jesus heal spiritual blindness?
Spiritual blindness occurs when we suffer from what a fourth century monastic scholar named Evagrius called the eight deadly thoughts. Two centuries later, Gregory the Great revised the concept of the eight deadly thoughts and called them the seven deadly sins, but for our purposes today, we’ll stick with the eight deadly thoughts. Spiritual blindness occurs when we suffer from the eight deadly thoughts. What are the eight deadly thoughts? They are: gluttony, lust, avarice, sadness, anger, accidia, vainglory, and pride.
Gluttony is exactly what you think it is. It has to do with overconsumption. As I said in our staff devotions last Wednesday, many of us who attended the Lunch at First program last Tuesday were guilty of gluttony. The sin of gluttony is that our own overindulgence can lead to a scarcity of resources for others. The second deadly thought – lust – is what you think it is as well. Just the thought of indiscretion can lead to its commitment. I don’t think I need to go into that here.
Avarice is the third deadly thought. Avarice might also be called greed, but there’s a little more to it than that. Our minds become so full of the desire to gain enough material goods to make ourselves secure against every possible calamity that we fail to pay sufficient attention to our neighbor or to God. The opposite of avarice is generosity.
Sadness is the fourth deadly thought. Sadness arises when we compare our achievements with those of others, and we become deeply disappointed with our own lives. This sadness is a form of self-pity, which we may experience as we think about what we might have become had we not suffered with the restrictions that come from being Christian. In other words, if it weren’t for the limitations our faith put upon us, we could’ve gotten more out of life!
The fifth deadly thought is anger. Here Evagrius is referring to the anger that arises from injuries we have suffered – or think we have suffered – from others. They can so possess us that anger becomes our permanent disposition, needing very little to set it off. The very thought of those who have hurt us – or who we think have hurt us – fills us with hatred and ignites the burning passion of anger.
The sixth deadly thought is accidia. Accidia can also be called sloth, but it’s perhaps better understood as boredom or apathy that leads to despair. Accidia arises from discouragement over our lack of progress in the Christian life, the failures of fellow Christians, mean spiritedness, gossip, and even church politics. The point is that love between Christians is not in evidence. No one seems genuinely interested in anyone else. In short, accidia is what tells us that we do not seem to be getting anywhere in the spiritual life, and the church as a whole does not seem to us to be making any progress either.
Vainglory is the seventh deadly thought. It’s kind of the opposite of accidia. As we find ourselves improving in the Christian life, we find that we want others to notice. Perhaps we need to remember here that we are the branches and that Jesus Christ is the vine.
Last but not least is the deadly thought of pride. It’s similar to vainglory. With vainglory, we crave notice for our achievements. With pride, however, we take full credit for the progress we have made as if God had not been involved at all. C.S. Lewis once called pride the ultimate sin. “It’s what made the devil the devil,” he said.
There you have it; the eight deadly thoughts. The eight deadly thoughts are what lead us to spiritual blindness, not to mention, perhaps, a few other things. How are we to overcome those eight deadly thoughts? How can Jesus heal us of our spiritual blindness?
What we need is Christian apatheia. Apatheia refers to a state of mind where one is free from emotional disturbance. When we attain the state of Christian apatheia we are no longer disturbed by the eight deadly thoughts. We are free to love God with all our heart and with all our strength and with all our soul and with all our mind. And, we are free to love our neighbors as we love ourselves.
What does Christian apatheia look like? I’m reminded of a wonderful story that is attributed to Catherine Marshall. She wrote:
There once was a king who offered a prize to the artist who could paint the best picture of
peace. Many artists tried and the king looked at all the pictures. But there were only
two he really liked, and he had to choose between them.
The first picture was of a calm lake. The lake was a perfect mirror for peaceful towering mountains all around it. Overhead was a blue sky with fluffy white clouds. All who saw this picture thought that it was the perfect picture of peace.
The other picture the king selected had mountains in it too, but these mountains were rugged and bare. Above them was an angry sky, from which rain fell and lightning flashed. Down the side of the mountain tumbled a roaring waterfall. At first glance, this picture did not look peaceful at all.
But when one looked more closely, one could see that behind the waterfall was a tiny bush growing in a crack in the rock. In the bush, a bird had built her nest. There in the midst of the rush of angry water, sat a mother bird on her nest – in perfect peace.
Which picture do you suppose won the king’s prize? The king chose the second picture. He explained, “Peace does not mean an absence of noise or trouble or trauma. Peace means to be in the midst of all those things, and to still be calm in your heart.”
That, my friends, is the picture of Christian apatheia as well. As Christians, we seek to be free of the turmoil caused by uncontrolled passions that we might be free to love God and neighbor. The question is, how do we get there?
The ancient spiritual masters believed that we reached such a state through what they called ascetical practices. Ancient ascetical practices included things like prayer, fasting, spiritual study and almsgiving. As Diogenes Allen put it in his book, Spiritual Theology, “As long as our attention is distracted because we ourselves are divided in our wishes, wants, desires, and hopes, we cannot attend to the word of God.” In other words, our spiritual blindness will continue – we will always fall short of the goal of Christian apatheia – as long as we remain distracted by the things of this world.
We must learn to separate ourselves from the things of this world. We must take the time to focus exclusively upon God. How are we to do that? Let me give you one way to get started. The ancients called it lectio divina. Lectio divina consists of four basic things: reading a passage of Scripture to yourself out loud; meditating or thinking about what you have read; praying about what rises up in your heart or your mind in meditation; and then contemplation – simply resting silently in God for a time after you have prayed.
This is spirituality. Spirituality, to me, is one’s union or one’s oneness with God. And where are we to encounter God aside from Scripture? As we grow closer to God, we will find our spiritual blindness going away. It won’t likely happen overnight. Recall, for example, how long it took John Newton to see the error of his slave trading. It won’t likely happen overnight, but you will find yourself being mysteriously drawn closer to God. You will find your spiritual blindness gradually fading away. You may even find yourself encountering Christian apatheia as the things that once seemed to matter so much…suddenly don’t seem to matter anymore. Amen.
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