Main news for 4 August 2022

The apostle never tires of reminding us that for a Christian the issue is never one's own successes, achievements, or, conversely, failures. Of course, Christian life is a spiritual path that must be walked. But the main thing on this path is not self-perfection, but the manifestation of the Kingdom to the world. A Christian lives not for himself, but for others. True, not in the sense of that altruism which those around them for some reason often expect from Christians, but in the sense of his participation in the Kingdom.

The Christian's ministry is his very life, if only it is truly Christian. Because in this case the life of the Kingdom shows through his life, further and further, ever more brightly and clearly, and everyone who communicates with a Christian can become partaker of it. But such a life is possible only if from the very beginning a person renounces the thought of living on his own. Not for himself, or for others, but on his own.

The Christian's life ceases to belong to him; it becomes God's, Christ's, flowing into the stream of the life of the Kingdom, which surpasses everything a person could imagine. But the stream of this life must flow freely. It is impossible to hold it for oneself, stop it, separate a few streams from it so that they would be guaranteed to belong to someone specific. Here there is either free movement or nothing. But then one will have to abandon the absolutizing of any forms, methods, and images of Christian life, including one's own.

One must recognize as fact that the life of all Christians, if they are truly Christians, is one, while forms, organizational, liturgical, and generally religious forms, are secondary. And none of them is better than any other: each is good when it is appropriate, when it is adequate for the existence in the Kingdom of particular people or communities. And if so, refusal to absolutize one's own form is not simply a concession to one's neighbor, but a necessary condition of abiding in the Kingdom.

Indeed, even those forms, including religious ones, that we consider our own, native, organic, are in reality relative, and at some point we will quite possibly have to give them up. Then an orthodox Jew may well discover that what he was so proud of and held so tightly to, his own religiosity, gives him no advantage in the main thing over a Gentile who had nothing of the kind. That is why the apostle advises not to absolutize any forms: for absolutizing presupposes self-identification, which in spiritual life hinders more than it helps.