Don't Get Caught
I'm rooting for you
I was reading an Eastern Orthodox zine called Death to the World (meaning to put to death the passions that lead one to error),1 as recommended by my brother-in-law to check out while I am at the family cottage on vacation. In just a couple of pages, I got to see some really interesting religious perspectives that I haven’t seen in a while as I have been furthering my journey into the Catholic Church.
What really struck me was an article about nihilism as the enemy of the faith. It notes that Fredrick Nietzsche said “there is no truth; that there is no ‘thing in itself’. This alone is nihilism and of the most extreme kind.” As I read this, I saw a parallel to modern expressions of wellness and spirituality that I now believe are actually rooted in nihilism: if there is no truth, than everyone’s personal truth becomes valid. While on the outside it seems like a friendly and inclusive attitude, beneath the surface I am reminded of St. Paul’s warning that Satan appears as an angel of light.2 When we don’t have a common truth to bring order and connection to our communities, we default into silos, and with the subsequent tear down of community, people get left behind and crime rises.
I believe that these modern expressions of “faith”, disguised in love and light spirituality are actually the fruits of nihilism, which is the root that tragically affirms life is meaningless. When we are not firm in what we believe, we become susceptible to evil3, so it is imperative to get clear about who God is and what is possible within his realms. The article goes on to say that we are fighting against the father of lies,4 the one who abides when truth is absent, and that nihilism is the spirit of the Antichrist which leads to suicide, murder, and destruction (which I will name here as addiction).
As I grow in my faith, my prayers change. Today my prayer is that we might all know who we are in Yahweh, so that we can live in dignity and steward this world as was intended. Reading this zine spelled out that nihilism is the reason why I pray for the unification of people to God so that we can be released from the destructive patterns of sin that grips us so oftentimes because we don’t recognize our identity in God - that we are his children and that he wants us to live.5
Today I got to have a conversation with a shop owner in a small to mid sized town. We got to talking about the tariffs and what that looked like in supporting the US during this trade war. Through our chat I suspected he was left-leaning, but we could get along either because he wasn’t radical, or because I am apolitical and if anything do not overtly support the right or any other kind of conservatism. I was wearing my cross today, but my jacket was over it, and even so I know non-conservative Christians (some of whom are subscribing to nihilism without knowing it) who wear one. When we left the shop I felt blessed that I can converse with the “other side” and enjoy it. It reminded me that my prayer is for everyone, not just those who agree with me or those who I am specifically worried about.
This exchange got me thinking about my own shifts into radical faith that come and go, and I realized that I desire to remain “apolitical” in all things, though I am still drawn to orthodoxy. Another article in the zine that warns against hedonism helps to articulate this thought for me: it asserts that when we slay our desires, we slay our sorrows. I have found this to be true, especially through my program of recovery. When I forsake the temptations of the flesh, and instead adapt a mode of service to help others, I became happier.
Instead of doing things that used to harm my position in community, I now do things to help build others up. Whether that be through helping someone at work, through cleaning something up, through volunteering, through getting to know about someone instead of wondering what I could get from someone, through learning instead of mindlessly consuming…I can thwart the restlessness, irritability, and dissatisfaction that attack my mind and what can lead to harmful actions. But I need the truth that God reigns supreme in order to have the strength to come from that place of service.
Because we have a very real enemy that is clever like a serpent6, we must not turn our backs on God. The universe is his creation: it is not him and replacing God with his creation is a serious offence. Rather, we are to stay the course and trust in God alone. Part of trusting in God is knowing who we are in Christ and remembering that all people and all life on earth is sacred. Nihilism is being propped up by the world, by the conglomerates, because when we are away from God and “living our truth”, what we are really doing is polluting the world, our bodies, our souls, and our communities. The freedom that people think they have from this wolf in sheep’s clothing is really just biding his time until this metamodern world comes utterly crashing down which will happen once all the credit has been spent.
I want to be happy, and I don’t want to take what I can’t afford to pay back. That is the only real reason why I am on the path that I am on. I want the peace and the freedom that this world drenched in nihilism can’t offer. This is the world that does not respect life, nature, tradition, or community, and those caught in its clenches are active participants in this culture of death, probably not even consciously knowing it.
But this is not the end. Nature still abhors a vacuum7, and God still sits on his throne. It is worth dying to self to be reborn8 - to rise from the ashes of annihilation and to experience real communion with the Lord who saves all who are only willing to believe. This is where we begin to reap the sweet fruits of the Spirit, which build us up and position us in our rightful place - the kingdom of God.
