For the Joy of the Journey

Theosis, or divinization (“divinization may also refer to apotheosis, lit. “making divine”), is a transformative process whose aim is likeness to or union with God, as taught by the Eastern Orthodox Church and Eastern Catholic Churches.

Recently I came across a blog post that used the word theosis. I was unfamiliar with theosis and, as is my usual habit, I hit define. I got the above definition.

I was intrigued on a couple of counts. First, since our pastor is currently preaching a series from Colossians, why haven’t I heard “theosis” ? Well, DUH, did you read definition, really? Secondly, I was curious how Orthodox/Catholic views might contrast and/or expand my views of “being Christ-like”. The post is long but worth the read. But, with regard to theosis I have included an excerpt below. I found it helpful and broadening.

We are the culture of “selfies.” We not only want to see how we look, we want to know how we’re doing. We analyze ourselves, measure ourselves, compare ourselves, judge ourselves, in all of which we imagine ourselves to be doing something useful. Modernity is dominated by the image of progress. We have internalized this notion and made it the model and form of our self-awareness.

In 1922, the Frenchman, Émile Coué, proposed the phrase, “Every day, in every way, I’m getting better and better” (“Tous les jours, à tous points de vue, je vais de mieux en mieux”). It remains a popular mantra for self-help gurus. It may or may not be true. The notion is that auto-suggestion can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. It is modernity as prayer.

This same mantra could be taken as a parody of how some view the work of theosis. We do well to take warning from St. Silouan’s single experience of praise for his spiritual life. I do not mean that we do not need encouragement – we do. But awareness of our “progress” is likely to be worse than deadly. The spiritual life, and particularly that which we call theosis, cannot and must not be measured or compared. It is Peter walking on the water. Everything is fine until you notice that you’re walking on water!

How would we measure theosis, were we to undertake something so foolhardy? Would it be by noting that we “sin less?” Strangely, I can think of no saint whose self-awareness is described as “sinning less.” It’s always quite the opposite. I could imagine the suggestion that theosis be measured by whether we know God more. But, given that the knowledge of God is infinite, “more,” is an almost meaningless concept. In truth, there are no measures in these matters. The notion of “progress” in theosis is simply the wrong question.

In my experience as a confessor over the years, I have seen no good come from trying to judge or measure progress in our lives. In a culture that is enthralled to the “self” (a false construct if ever there was one), it is almost certain that the attention we give to perceiving progress is nothing more than feeding an inner delusion. In blunt terms, “Who cares?”

The proper attention of the spiritual life is God as we know Him in the face of Jesus Christ. On a primary level, this attention is expressed as we keep the commandments given to us by Christ.

Our culture forms and shapes in each of us the heart of a “manager.” We want to control, to shape, to predict, to compare, to direct, etc. Such a heart has a habit of reducing its world to the things that can be controlled, shaped, predicted, compared and directed. It diminishes human beings as well as the world in which we live. It has no place in the life of the soul.

The proper attention of the spiritual life is God as we know Him in the face of Jesus Christ. On a primary level, this attention is expressed as we keep the commandments given to us by Christ.

Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me. And he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him.” Jn 14:21

This is not an approach to God through “the law.” The commandments of Christ are a true icon of Christ. All that He asks of us – love of God, love of neighbor, love of enemy – are images of His own character and face. He can be seen “in the least of these my brothers.” But the question, “I am loving my neighbor/enemy more?” is beside the point, a nurturing of a false consciousness. Love them now. Everything else is vanity.

Dan Ariel, a behavioral economist, is the author of Predictably Irrational.  The premise of the book and behavioral economics is that human beings do not always always think and act in rational ways but more often are very irrational in our decisions and actions and those irrational responses are, in fact, predictable. Because current economic policy assumes rational responses, Ariely argues those policies are flawed because our behavior is not rational but irrational and predictably so. The book is interesting and worthy of consideration. Here is an excerpt that I thought interesting not only from an economic prospective but also from a spiritual and religious view.

In the chapter entitled The Cost of Social Norms (Why We Are Happy to Do Things , but Not When We Are Paid to Do Them) , the author examines the reality that we live in two different worlds – one where social norms prevail and the other where market norms prevail.

Social norms are wrapped up in our social nature and our need for community. They are usually warm and fuzzy. Instant paybacks are not required: you may help move your neighbor’s couch, but this doesn’t mean he has to come right over and move yours. It’s like opening a door for someone: it provides pleasure for both of you, and reciprocity is not immediately required.

The second world, the one governed by market norms, is very different. There is nothing warm and fuzzy about it. The exchanges are sharp-edged: wages, prices, rents, interest, and cost-and-benefits. Such market relationships are not necessarily evil or mean – in fact they include self-reliance, inventiveness, and individualism – but they do imply comparable benefits and prompt payments. When you are in the domain of market norms, you get what you pay for – that’s just the way it is. It is clear that when we keep social norms and market norms on their separate paths, life hums along pretty well. … When social and market norms collide, trouble sets in.

Ariely developed experiments to explore the effects of social and market norms. There were several experiments cited. However, this statement summarizes, in general, the conclusions of the experiments:

So we live in two worlds: one characterized by social exchanges and the other characterized by market exchanges. And we apply different norms to these two kinds of relationships. Moreover, introducing market norms into social changes, as we have seen, violates the social norms and hurts the relationships. Once this type of mistake has been committed, recovering a social relationship is difficult.

This study illustrates well the point:

My good friends Uri Gneezy (a professor at the University of California at San Diego) and Aldo Rustichini (a professor at the University of Minnesota) provided a very clever test of the long-term effects of a switch from social to market norms.

A few years ago, they studied a day care center in Israel to determine whether imposing a fine on parents who arrived late to pick up their children was a useful deterrent. Uri and Aldo concluded that the fine didn’t work well and in fact it had long-term negative effects. Why? Before the fine was introduced, the teachers and parents had a social contract, with social norms about being late. Thus, if parents were late – as they occasionally were -they felt guilty about it-and their guilt compelled them to be more prompt in picking up their kids in the future. (In Israel, guilt seems to be an effective way to get compliance.) But once the fine was imposed, the day care center had inadvertently replaced the social norms with market norms. Now that the parents were paying for their tardiness, they interpreted the situation in terms of market norms. In other words, since they were being fined, they could decide for themselves whether to be late or not, and they frequently chose to be late. Needless to say, this was not what the day care center intended.

But the real story only started here. The most interesting part occurred a few weeks later, when the day care center removed the fine. Now he center was back to the social norm. Would the parents also return to the social norm? Would their guilt return as well? Not at all. Once the fine was removed, the behavior of the parent didn’t change. They continued to pick up their kids late. In act, when the fine was removed, there was a slight increase in the number of tardy pickups (after all, both the social norms and the fine had been removed).

This experiment illustrates an unfortunate fact: when a social norm collides with a market norm, the social norm goes away for a long time. In other words, social relationships are not easy to reestablish. Once the bloom is off the rose-once a social norm is trumped by a market norm – it will rarely return.

The church has chosen to adopt market norms (consumerism) to achieve what it believed it could not accomplish, or accomplish as well, with social norms. It has subjugated social norms (koinonia, community, love, body) to market norms. The result has been similar to the experience of the Isreali daycare. Once the market norms prevail, church members feel they are paying for their “misbehavior” or they feel a sense of entitlement and expect to receive “what they are paying for”. As I begin to understand how social and market norms interrelate, it becomes clearer why so many churches are struggling.

What bothers me the most is the conclusion that once a social norm is trumped by a market norm – it will rarely return. The implication is that consumer churches cannot just reinstate social norms and expect to return to being the church (become), the body of Christ. For leaders of churches who are searching to escape the grasp of consumerism, this seems to negate a strategy that would simply trash the market norms and expect that koinonia, community, love, body, et al will be restored. It is an interesting and challenging problem. I am going to give it more thought.