We participate in what we are becoming.
Everything alive is in the process of becoming something. A seedling is becoming a tree. A puppy is becoming a dog. A dog is becoming an old dog. A human being is becoming the image of God — or not, as the case may be.
But only the human being is participating in his own becoming.
The sapling has an end to which it is growing — but it does not have a will to direct toward that end. It does not decide to grow one way rather than the other. God does decide it, of course — but the tree does not have a rational soul to choose how to become.
The dog does not either. It has a conscious soul, and a will which it can direct — but it does not reflect upon what it is doing. It does not consider what it is becoming, and choose to become one kind of dog rather than another. It can control its actions in the moment — but it does not control what it is becoming. It does not have a mind to do that.
Such a mind is reserved to men and angels. I dare not speculate on how this applies to angels, beyond observing that they do have the ability to choose to become evil, since we know that Satan and his companions did this. It does not much matter what angels can do though, because we are not angels — we are men. So the question we are concerned with is…
What are we becoming?
This is the question at the heart of nearly everything I write about here. I think it is helpful to frame it as a question — and a short one — to give our minds something to grab onto; I cannot possibly hope to comment on every possible choice a man might make day to day, and even on the issues that I do speak to — social media, entertainment, conspiracy theories etc — there is so much complexity, and so many variables, and the right thing to do is often so dependent on your own personal situation rather than a general rule, that having a simple question you can ask can be very helpful to navigating these issues wisely.
So the question I think we should all be asking ourselves with everything we do is:
“What am I becoming?”
If you can answer that question, or at least get a general idea of the direction that the answer lies in, then you can compare it with God’s own plan for what you should be becoming. There is an end for which he made us. We should always be trying to move toward that end, because it is an end which is frankly so astronomical, so extraordinary, so wonderful, that it is hard to contemplate, let alone write on, with sufficient gravity. The words of scripture itself scarcely do justice to it — not because the word of God can fail, but because human language is too weak to express the weight of it:
his divine power hath granted unto us all things that pertain unto life and piety, through the knowledge of him that called us through his own glory and worthiness; through which to us the most great and precious promises have been given, that through these ye may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world in desires. (2 Peter 1:3–4)
The end for which we are made is to become partakers in the divine nature. This is what we are — should be — becoming. If we have true faith in Christ, we are becoming partakers of the divine nature.
But it does not happen automatically. I don’t mean that God’s promises to us can fail — Peter says that God has promised that we will become partakers in the divine nature, and he has given to us all things that pertain to life and piety in order to accomplish this promise. But far from making us complacent, far from being able to sit back and let it happen, to “let go and let God,” Peter goes on immediately to say that
for this very cause, all diligence having brought in besides, superadd in your faith worthiness; and in worthiness, knowledge; and in knowledge, self-control; and in self-control, endurance; and in endurance, piety; and in piety, brotherly affection; and in brotherly affection, love; for these things, being abounding unto you, do make you neither inert nor unfruitful unto the knowledge of our Lord Jesus the Anointed. (2 Peter 1:5–8)
We are to add these things to our faith in order that we may enter the eternal kingdom of CHrist. This is a choice that we have: to do, or not do. We must participate in what we are becoming — we must work together with God in making ourselves partakers of the divine nature.
Yet we are easily tempted to trade true participation, which is hard work, for vicarious participation, which is very easy.
As I discussed in issue #156, true participation means actually exercising ourselves in the very thing we are becoming; vicarious participation means, essentially, watching someone else do it, as a proxy or figurehead or representative for ourselves, so that we feel like we have done it, while in fact we have not.
This is a temptation which is far greater today, and a trap that is far easier to fall into, because of the staggering prevalence of both entertainment and social media. Entertainment offers us stories of people exercising themselves in virtue, which we can enjoy and participate in without having to exercise ourselves; and social media gives us enormous opportunities for virtue-signalling, rather than virtue-doing. We live in a world that wants to turn our re-creation in the image of Christ into recreation with whatever counterfeit of that image will pass muster before our eyes; whatever substitute for true participation we will accept.
Corruption in the world by lust
There is a connection here which I think is very important. In speaking of our becoming partakers of the divine nature, Peter connects what we are becoming to what we have escaped from:
ye may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world in desires.
Many translations say the corruption in the world “by lust.” Peter is here speaking of worldly corruption because of desire — but this word desire is a tricky one to translate. In the Greek it is epithymia, which I mention because it’s a word you might come across if you read symbolic thinkers in the Christian space: some of them will use this term untranslated, because there is no one English word that captures its full meaning. It refers to the longings of the heart, the lusts of the heart, the covetings of the heart, the desires within us.
It can be used positively, as Jesus tells his disciples, “With epithymia I have desired to eat this passover with you before I suffer” (Lk 22:15); or Paul tells the Thessalonians that he, being bereaved of them for a short season, endeavored the more exceedingly to see their face with great epithymia (1 Thess 2:17).
But more often it is used to refer to longings that are evil: either because they are not properly ordered, and get placed before God; or because they are longings for things that are wicked and perverse in themselves. This is the kind of longing, the kind of desire, that Peter refers to here — the same kind of which the Lord Jesus speaks in the parable of the sower, when he says,
the cares of the world, and the deceitfulness of riches, and the epithymias of other things, entering in, choke the word, and it becometh unfruitful. (Mk 4:19)
Peter does not want us to be unfruitful. He does not want what God has promised to us to be choked by longings for other things. He does not want us to be diverted from becoming partakers in the divine nature, and steered by our desires into becoming partakers of something else entirely. And indeed, he warns us very severely in chapter 2 of his letter that such a thing is possible — as he describes the terrible destruction caused by false teachers:
For, speaking great swellings of emptiness, they entice in the epithymia of the flesh, with debauchery, those who are just escaping from them that live in error; promising them freedom, while they themselves are slaves of corruption; for by whom anyone is overcome, by the same is he also brought into slavery. For if, after they have escaped the defilements of the world through the knowledge of the Lord and Savior Jesus Anointed, they are again entangled therein and overcome [cf. the parable of the sower], the last state is become worse with them than the first. For it were better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than, after knowing it, to turn back from the holy commandment delivered unto them. It has happened unto them according to the true proverb: a dog did turn back upon his own vomit, and a sow, having washed herself, to rolling in mire. (2 Peter 2:18–22)
I want to draw your attention to three things in this passage:
The first is that Peter describes the gospel as a holy commandment. It is something you can break, something you can, in his word, “turn back from.”
The second is that it is a holy commandment you can obey for a while, before you turn back from it. He is speaking here of those who have escaped the defilements of the world through the knowledge of the Lord and Savior, who have known the way of righteousness — before they are again overcome. Yet just a chapter before, he told us that God has promised we will become partakers in the divine nature. How can anyone promised that, then fall away? Does God’s promise fail? No; Peter is speaking covenantally, not individually. It is indeed possible to taste of the heavenly gift, and be made partakers in the Holy Spirit…and then to fall away (Heb 6:4). And so Paul warns us also, in another place, not to be deceived, for the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God. He does not speak of those covered by the righteousness of Christ, of course, for then he would simply be saying that the unbelieving won’t inherit the kingdom of God. Rather, as he makes plain, he is speaking of those claiming the name of Christ who remain fornicators, idolaters, adulterers, effeminates, homosexuals, thieves, drunkards, revilers, extortioners, and — most importantly for our purposes today — covetous (1 Cor 6:9–10).
Covetousness is the chief issue, because it brings us to the third point I want to emphasize in what Peter tells us: which is that the thing which overcomes temporary Christians — those who turn away from the holy commandment — is the enticement of the desires of the flesh: the longings of the flesh, fo the defilements of the world.
This should stir up within us a great concern for our own souls, and drive us to greater watchfulness over our care for the holy commandment — because we all know how much desire and longing and craving and covetousness the modern world can provoke within us. We don’t tend to think in these terms, which is itself part of the defilement of the world. The world defiles everything — including language. Think of how the control of the dictionary is at the center of the spiritual war going on in the West today. What does gay mean? Does it mean happy and joyful and carefree? What does man mean? Does it mean a biological human male? Have you thought about the fact that it is actually possible for the same thing to happen to the words man and woman as has already happened to the word gay? Have you considered that English Bibles in the 22nd century might have to do something like transliterate the Hebrew words instead of use our current English ones, because “God made man in his image” will no longer have the proper meaning?
Nor are we immune to the defilement of language ourselves. How often do we obscure the true nature of our desires behind words like “hankering,” or even “craving” — rather than “covetousness” or “lust”?
“One more slice of pizza would really hit the spot.”
Vs…
“I am greedy for one more slice of pizza.”
Or:
“I’m just going to scratch the itch to check my notifications.”
Vs…
“I covet knowing if someone has given me attention in the last few minutes.”
Or:
“I’ve really been looking forward to watching the next episode.”
Vs…
“I have been lusting after the next episode.”
Or:
“I binge watched that series.”
Vs…
“I gluttonously consumed that series.”
Craving, consumerism, and convenience
Now, let me walk back what I have said — a little. I have deliberately phrased it very strongly, very starkly, because thinking in biblical categories doesn’t come naturally to anyone inculturated into the modern West. Scripture speaks plainly and ruthlessly about the defilement of the world and the longing of our flesh, and how deadly these things are; but they are the water we swim in.
However. It does not say that every longing is equally deadly; nor that everything in the world that appeals to us is defiling. Obviously it is not necessarily defiling or dangerous to long for pizza if you are really hungry. It is not necessarily defiling or dangerous to be curious about whether someone has responded to a post you wrote. It is not necessarily defiling or dangerous to eagerly anticipate the next episode of a well-told story. It is not even necessarily defiling or dangerous to enjoy the whole story all at once, by watching every episode back to back. We have to maintain balance, as Paul tells Timothy:
To the pure all things are pure: but to them that are defiled and unbelieving nothing is pure; but both their mind and their conscience are defiled. (Titus 1:15)
The problem is that we are often not as pure as we think, and one way we convince ourselves otherwise is by using defiled language that makes the nature of our desires sound innocent, when they are not.
We must remember that the world — the sinful order of man set up against the Lord and his kingdom — wants to defile us. It wants to ensnare us. It is certainly possible for the things of the world to be pure to us; that is, for us to use them in a pure way. But this will only be possible when we have a clear-eyed and sober view of what it is we are using…and what it wants to do to us.
Let me speak in general terms for the moment. Above, I chose the examples of food and social media and entertainment for good reason — but these are just examples.
Think generally of what characterizes our whole modern world. What kind of spirit is it of? What sorts of patterns are prevalent in it? What kinds of behaviors does it draw people toward and encourage?
The word consumerism has long been used to describe it. That word is even more apt today than when it was first coined, because the spirit of consumerism has grown and advanced and gained strength and power in ways that were literally unimaginable to most people 50 years ago, when the term first became mainstream. Back then, consumption required physical objects. Even music had to be bought on records and then tapes. But today, consumption largely happens digitally, which means that there are no physical constraints on it whatsoever. The only physical constraint is our own ability to stay awake and pay attention to whatever it is that is consuming our desire.
If there are two things that characterize consumerism — and which have been all but perfected by it — it would probably be:
Choice;
Convenience.
These are the gods of our day. In fact, I suspect that if you take any of the degenerate social problems plaguing the West today, from transgenderism on the one side to red profile pics with blue laser eyes on the other, you will discover at its root an idolatrous commitment to either choice, or convenience, or both. You will find that if its adherents had not been thoroughly formed by the spirit of choice and convenience, they would never have ended up thinking the things they are thinking, doing the things they are doing, loving the things they are loving, or demanding the things they are demanding.
But this is likely to then be true of all of us — at least about some things, and to some degree. We are all swimming in the sea of consumerism, of choice and convenience; so the church should be much more concerned than it seems to be with trying to figure out whether and how we are getting wet.
Both choice and convenience inculcate and train us in covetousness. There is a reason that the ten commandments end with, “Thou shalt not covet.” We should gloss this as, “Thou shalt not long after anything in a disordered way.”
But we do long after many things, and the world has trained us to do so — consumerism is nothing but longing after things, is it not? So how likely is it that we are always longing after things in an ordered way?
I said before, not all longings are disordered or defiled. But how can we tell?
Certainly the longing for continual options, the expectation of being able to choose between so many things, is not generally putting us on a biblical trajectory. This is obvious if you think about the way that scripture speaks of the end goal of our own sanctification. God tells us that his word is sufficient to complete us:
every Writing is breathed out by God, and profitable for teaching, for rebuke, for setting aright, for instruction that is in righteousness, that the man of God may be outfitted — for every good work having been completed. (2 Timothy 3:16–17)
Or Hebrews invokes the blessing of God to “make you perfect in every good thing to do his will” (Heb 13:21).
Or think of John 17:23, when Jesus prays that his disciples “may be perfected into one.” There are actually three different Greek words in these three different passages; all pointing toward the same idea of completion and maturity and wholeness, which of course is imaged in the old covenant with the sacrifices of animals that must be perfect, whole, not having any blemish or shortcoming.
But if you are always wanting more, how can you possibly be complete and whole?
How can you be perfect in this biblical sense?
I don’t mean that we should never desire anything, of course, because that is not only impossible, but actually ungodly in the other direction. God has given us needs and appetites, not to destroy them, but to perfect and complete them. Our appetites and affections, our desires and longings, will themselves be made whole and completely met and fulfilled in the resurrection, and that is what we are training ourselves in now. We are participating — we should be participating — in what we are becoming.
But I am talking about the way in which consumerism, through continual choice, through the constant offering of more, trains us to be always searching, and never satisfied. There’s always another item ready to scroll into view. There’s always another show to watch. There’s always another piece of music to discover. There’s always another rabbit hole to go down.
One of the hallmarks of covetousness is always wanting more. The desire for novelty. But that is what things like social media and Netflix and YouTube are literally training us to always want. It is nothing but novelty — that is how they survive. So these things are not neutral.
They want us to become covetous.
They are training us to become covetous.
They are seeking to form us into covetors.
That does not mean we cannot use them, because we can resist, of course. To the pure, all things are pure. But we cannot be pure if we do not know what is happening, and what the cost is of resisting these temptations.
And it’s not just the novelty that draws us away from biblical perfection, completion, wholeness and maturity. It is the endless customization of the options available. We have come to expect, as a kind of right, that we have access to things which perfectly suit our tastes. We should not have to listen to any music that doesn’t immediately gratify our senses — because, after all, we can find dozens, hundreds, thousands of tracks that do. We skip over everything that doesn’t immediately appeal, in search of what will. Imagine if we let our children do this with food. Imagine how stunted and unhealthy they would become. The expectation that we should always have access to that which most satisfies us in the moment — to whatever we naturally like, and then even further than that, to only what we happen to be in the mood for — is another way in which we are tempted to become incomplete, un-whole, imperfect, immature. It stunts us, because we never learn to appreciate anything beyond what we already naturally do.
It is like a man who only ever tries to deadlift a weight that is comfortable for him. Or a woman who never tries new ingredients or recipes. Or a child who never goes out of his comfort zone, and therefore never really grows up.
Ironically, when we have access to all the choices we could possibly want, we end up spending our time consuming more and more on less and less. The more we want, the more samey it becomes. It makes us banal and boring.
But not only does it do this — it also makes us impatient. “I’m not going to listen to that, I’m not in the mood, NEXT” — you impatiently skip to the next song. “This show isn’t grabbing me within the first minute, I’ll try something else.” It’s the same principle as fast food — we should be able to get everything now, or at least right away.
You see how choice and convenience are intimately connected.
But this is training us to be impatient…and impatience is the epitome of faithlessness. Unwillingness to wait is deadly to faith:
Be still for Yahweh, and stay thyself for Him…
Wait for Yahweh, and keep his way
And he will exalt thee to inherit the land. (Psalm 37:7)
Wait for Yahweh:
Be strong, and let thy heart take courage;
Yea, wait thou for Yahweh. (Psalm 27:14)
My soul, wait thou in silence for God only
For my expectation is from him. (Psalm 62:5)
Wait for Yahweh, and he will save thee. (Proverbs 20:22)
What does Peter say we must add to our faith? One of the things he lists is endurance. This is translated in many Bibles, patience. In Luke’s version of the parable of the sower, Jesus speaks of the seeds that fell on the good ground, describing them as “such as, in an honest and good heart, having heard the word, hold it fast, and bring forth fruit with patience” (Lk 8:15). Romans 2:7 says that to them that by patience in well-doing seek for glory and honor and incorruption, God will give the reward of eternal life. The author of Hebrews exhorts his readers “that ye be not sluggish, but imitators of them who through faith and patience inherit the promises” (Heb 6:12) — and warns them that “ye have need of patience, that having done the will of God, ye may receive the promise” (Heb 10:36); and so he exhorts them to “lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us” (Heb 12:1). And James tells us, “let patience have its perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, lacking in nothing” (Jas 1:4).
Impatience is thus antithetical to the gospel. The whole pattern of salvation, the whole pattern of the gospel, the whole pattern of Christ, is the opposite of the pattern of the world. The world wants instant gratification. It wants the quick and easy win. But the gospel pattern is delayed gratification. It is the short-term loss for the long-term victory. Enduring the cross because of the joy set before us.
Again the Devil taketh him to a very high mount, and showeth to him all the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them, and saith to him, “All these to thee I will give, if falling down thou mayest bow to me.” Matthew 4:8–9
This is the essence of what consumerism promises. The short-cut to glory and dominion without having to go through the cross. Don’t take the bait. Those who try to save their lives will lose them.
Without patience, we cannot have endurance. And without endurance, we cannot persevere to the end.
The more we consume and the more choices we have before us, the harder it becomes to choose anything — and the less we are able to make hard choices.
We gradually lose the ability to say no to the easy things, and yes to the hard things.
We gradually lose the ability to direct ourselves, and start to become directed.
We stop participating in what we are becoming, and we simply become.
Endless choice and endless consumption turns us into animals.
The scientific term is ego depletion. The inability to exercise our will because it is tired out. Overwhelming choices cause us to be unable to choose things that are going to be harder, or more work, even though we know they will also be more fulfilling and rewarding; we end up always going for the “safe,” entertaining option instead. We become numb. We become inert. We become unfruitful. The very things Peter says we ought not to be, because of God’s power that he has given to us:
for these things, being abounding unto you, do make you neither inert nor unfruitful. (2 Peter 1:8)
Happiness and meaning
Is it any wonder, then, that we also become unhappy? My chief objective in some past issues was to understand happiness from a biblical perspective: what is it, and how can we get it?
This is still on my mind. To comprehensively answer this, we need to first comprehend the severity of the challenge that we face — and the danger of the sorts of longings that the world has perfected stimulating within us; longings which we have come to take for granted to such an enormous degree. It is precisely because of how natural and normal they seem to us that we must meditate on how unnatural and abnormal they are in the light of scripture.
If we do not take that seriously, neither will we take seriously the solutions that scripture offers.
Until we stop taking the patterns of the world for granted, we cannot take for granted the patterns that Christ gives us instead. They are hard patterns — in the nature of the case, sanctification is hard, and the world wants to offer us easy panaceas instead. It wants to heal the wound lightly. But it is only through the stripes of Christ that true healing is offered; and true participation in those stripes is how we become partakers in the divine nature. So next issue, I want to move on, and start to examine how scripture’s teaching on fasting can heal us of the boredom, the lethargy, the unhappiness, the general malaise and ennui, the fruitlessness and inertness of modern man — and teach us to participate in what we are becoming: partakers of the divine nature.
Until next month,
Bnonn
Are you more or less in agreement with the Orthodox idea of theosis here? Or do you see yourself as having a different spin on it?