{"id":6937,"date":"2020-12-24T13:52:34","date_gmt":"2020-12-24T03:52:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/?p=6937"},"modified":"2020-12-24T13:52:36","modified_gmt":"2020-12-24T03:52:36","slug":"a-subtle-snare","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/a-subtle-snare\/","title":{"rendered":"A Subtle Snare"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>\n

A Subtle Snare<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Fr Antonios\nKaldas<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Originally\nseen on Fr Antonios Kaldas blog site, 11 June 2012<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere\nhave been men before now who got so interested in proving the existence of God\nthat they came to care nothing for God Himself \u2026 as if the good Lord had\nnothing to do but exist! There have been some who were so occupied in spreading\nChristianity that they never gave a thought to Christ. Man! Ye see it in small\nmatters. Did ye never know a lover of books that with all his first editions\nand signed copies has lost the power to read them? Or an organiser of charities\nthat had lost all love for the poor? It is the subtlest of all the snares.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

CS\nLewis. The Great Divorce.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

We live in an age\nof knowledge and of great power, and the individual citizen today can do things\nthat the most powerful of heads of state could only dream of fifty years ago.\nThis power brings with it opportunities unimagined, but also a raft of new\ntemptations, or rather old temptations adapted to new situations (is there ever\nanything new under the sun?)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today, I can sit in\nmy living room and order a rare book from London or read a paper written by a\nscholar in Zurich at the click of a button. I have access to a marketplace of\nideas that is so huge its very size smothers me if I stop to think about it.\nFor the curious mind, this is intoxicating! How easy to lose oneself in an\nocean of stimulating knowledge and new ideas! How wonderful to acquire new\nunderstanding, to see old things in new ways, to penetrate the depths of\nignorance and shine the light of comprehension upon their previously dark\ntreasures!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Apologetics is a\nmarvellous revelation for those whose mind is so inclined. We drink the heady\nmead of rationality and find that the logic of this world points to its\nCreator! How wonderful! How sweet! And yet, apologetics is only medicine for\nthe doubting soul; and no one can live on medicine alone. One needs heavenly\nbread and living water. Apologetics points the way, it heals the wounds of\nconfusion, but then it is time for the daily bread of communion with the\nexistent to carry out the process of nourishment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Service in the\nhouse of the Lord is honourable and fulfilling. It provides the servant with a\ndeep sense of belonging and achievement, whatever the nature of that service\nmay be. I am doing something good for the Lord! Yet it is so easy for that \u201cfor\nthe Lord\u201d to turn quietly into \u201cfor me\u201d. The very satisfaction and fulfillment\none derives from service can become in itself an end, usurping its proper role\nas a means for the crucifixion of the ego and the losing of the self in the\nocean of love that is God. And soon, God Himself is forgotten.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Intoxication is a\ndangerous thing. It\nhas a life of its own, and unless it is tamed and subdued to the will, it will\ntake over in its own right. It is so easy for us to fall into the trap of\nmistaking the means for the end. So simple is this trap that one wonders how\nanyone could ever fall into it all, and yet, it daily claims its thousands and\nten thousands of victims. The quote above from CS Lewis\u2019 imaginative little\nclassic describes this temptation perfectly. If the devil cannot keep you away\nfrom doing good, he will engross you in it and turn it into a lust. Yes, even\nserving God can become a sinful lust.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We are all\nsusceptible. The priest and the deacon are susceptible to being so caught up in\nthe beauty of the tunes of the service that they forget the One whom those\ntunes honour. The Sunday School or Youth servant can be so engrossed in lessons\nand activities that they lose sight of the Friend to whom they are supposed to\nintroduce those they serve. The person praying in her room behind a closed door\ncan become so concerned with fulfilling her duty to pray this prayer and that\nprayer that she can no longer see the Lord listening to her empty words with\nsadness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And the subtleness\nof this pernicious trap is that it doesn\u2019t look like a trap. From the outside,\nit looks for all the world as though you are doing everything right; more than\nright in fact. How many empty vessels like this are praised constantly in our\nchurches for all the wonderful work they are doing? Which only goes to\nreinforce this cycle of emptiness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cFrom the outside\u201d\n\u2013 that\u2019s where the illusion lives. The solution, on the other hand, is to be\nfound on the inside<\/em>. In the solitude of one\u2019s heart, in that place\nwhere the heart is laid mercilessly bare and naked before God, where truth can\nno longer be hidden and pride has no substance to give it form, there is where\na person awakes from his false dream to the reality of God.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And there, one\ndiscovers the true purpose for which intoxication was invented by God. Here is\nthe addiction that truly adds life instead of taking it away. It is the\nintoxication with the Lord of Joy and Love, of which all earthly intoxications\nare just shadows and corruptions, cheap and nasty imitations that take away\nlife rather than bestowing it. When one is intoxicated with the love and joy of\nGod, every \u2018drug\u2019 loses its attraction. There is no longer any danger of\nmistaking the means for the end.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

Original blog available at- http:\/\/www.frantonios.org.au\/2012\/06\/11\/a-subtle-snare\/<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A Subtle Snare By Fr Antonios Kaldas Originally seen on Fr Antonios Kaldas blog site, 11 June 2012 \u201cThere have been men before now who got so interested in proving the existence of God that they came to care nothing for God Himself \u2026 as if the good Lord had nothing to do but exist! … Continue reading “A Subtle Snare”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":6938,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[60],"class_list":["post-6937","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorised","tag-service"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6937","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6937"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6937\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6939,"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6937\/revisions\/6939"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6938"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6937"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6937"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6937"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}