Being Broken
The Importance of Orthodox Christianity in the 21st Century
Near my home, in the North Park neighborhood of San Diego, there is a Baptist church. Since I moved into the neighborhood last October the glass encased sign out front has read: “hurting people loved here.” I thought it would change every so often, maybe to reflect each Sunday’s sermon, or just to change things up, because that’s what we do in America — we change things up because we get bored and lose interest in things so easily. But for the last eight months, every time I pass that church — which is nearly every day — I read: “hurting people loved here.”
I think this captures the reason why Christianity, but especially Orthodox Christianity, is important in the 21st century. I hurt. We hurt. And even the most hardened of us finds some flicker of comfort in the slight possibility of being loved.
Our lives are fragmented at best. At worst they are in complete shambles. Somewhere in the middle of these two poles, where most of us reside, our lives are pretty broken. Some of us are rather lost, unsure of the direction of our lives. Some of us are dealing with the traumas of childhood abuse or neglect. Some of us are lugging the weight of our very being through the thick fog of the tediousness of our everyday, routine lives, as though we are robots stuck in a human body. Some of us are angry. Angry at ourselves, at our partners, at our parents, at our children, at our bosses, at our teachers … at God. Some of us are lonely. Some are depressed. Some are just sinking into a haze of melancholy. Some of us have taken to drug use, the abuse of alcohol, over-eating, sex, pornography, or the binge-watching of mind-numbing television serials (which is often accompanied by lots of eating of junk food) to get our minds off of whatever it is that is bothering us. Much of the time we don't even know what is bothering us, so we try to distract ourselves from and numb ourselves to the fact that we don't even know why we want to be distracted and numb. Even the more cheerful of us don’t always know how to best relate to others. And even the cheerful have some brokenness deep inside.
We are increasingly fragmented. It’s the nature of the epoch in which we are now living (or trying to live). The various tasks that we must attend to and the myriad machines that supposedly help us do them more easily, break us into pieces, pieces that seem nearly impossible to put back together. Who is focused on one task until it is completed anymore? Multi-tasking is the name of the game these days. Everywhere we turn we find the gaze of those around us fixed to a screen. When was the last time you looked into someone’s eyes. Real eyes, not virtual ones? When was the last time you noticed the cracks on another human’s face? Even our relationships are not real anymore. In her book Alone Together MIT sociologist Sherry Turkle writes: “we look to technology for ways to be in relationships and protect ourselves from them at the same time” (Turkle 2011: xii). In other words, we don't want the burden of real relationships with real humans. Those can be painful and difficult. We want superficial relationships instead. So we turn to social media, mediums that allow us to relate to others on our own terms and always without depth. These days, many people try to find meaningful relationships with dogs and robots, even robot dogs.
Superficiality. Yes, that’s the problem. No depth. There is a Greek saying that goes: “Every depth has a surface, but not every surface has a depth.” You know, there is that encounter that Peter has with Jesus, when the latter tells Peter, after an unsuccessful night of fishing, to go out into the deep and cast the nets once more (Luke 5). It is in the deep that something good, something significant will be found, not in the shallows. But going into the depth requires work and risk. It’s not easy, and it’s sometimes scary. Imagine probing the depths of your very brokenness That’s what we do with priests and therapists when we become serious about these matters. But for most the response to this is: “No thanks, I’d rather stay in the shallows. I’m perfectly content with ice-cream and Netflix. At least I won’t drown.” That’s a lie. We all know it. There is no humanity in the shallows. There’s nothing in the shallows. Nothing. Only in the deep, only in the deep can the fullness of humanity be found. Yet, there is no way to go out to the deep and not drown, unless love Himself pushes you there and is there with you.
The famous Romanian theologian Fr. Dumitru Staniloae once penned these penetrating words: “The glory to which man is called is that he should grow more godlike by growing ever more human.” That’s what it means to go into the deep, to probe the depths of one’s very being, to find the brokenness that is there and to seek the Physician who can fix it. The True Physician, who is the God-Man Jesus Christ, He is the one who can make us fully human and therefore godlike, because He is God and fully human!
So where is that deep, that deep to which Love Himself directs us? That deep that will help us to become whole once again? That deep that will give our lives meaning and significance? It is in the Holy Church. It’s not in television, or sex, or drugs, or food, or facebook, or instagram, or movies, or music, or the internet, or novels, or poetry, or academic study, or parties, or socializing, or whatever. It is only in the Holy Church where the True and Great Physician abides that we will have our fractures bound together. It is only Christ, Who is broken for us so that the broken pieces of our lives might be put back together, Who can completely heal us.
And it is only the Orthodox Christian Church that can offer complete healing, because it is only the Orthodox Church that has all the necessary means for healing — fasting, prayer, a rich understanding of the Holy Scripture, the holy and divine mysteries, the saints who show us what healed people look like and what they do. It is only in the Orthodox Christian Church where the deepest of depths can be found. We need the Holy Church today and every day because without it we cannot be fully human.
I don't know about you, but I’m tired, even exhausted, of only being part human.