“So,” Fr. Maximos continued, “we must first struggle to attain our liberation from being slaves to material things, including ideas and ideologies. And I must say that enslavement to ideas and ideologies is much more serious than enslavement to things.”
“In what way?” Teresa asked.
“As I said, you can easily find people who are temperate over external things. They are modest in dress, eat little, and have mastery over physical pleasures in general. They may even appear like ascetics. However, these very people may be slaves to their ideas, to their opinions, to their political beliefs and ideologies. They are rigid and unbending in their views about this and that subject, and they get angry if somebody disagrees with them or contradicts them. They demand that others support their views and desires. They engage more often than not in monologues, expecting others to defer to their brilliance.”
“You have just described Adolf Hitler!” I interjected. “He had all those characteristics and among other things was a vegetarian. You meet people like that all the time. They also sound like some of our public figures. Hitler was the archetype, an extreme case.”
“Yes, ideologically rigid people are quarrelsome and fanatical about the rightness of their opinions,” Fr. Maximos said. “Sometimes people who suffer from such passions can reach the point where they are ready to kill or be killed for the sake of sticking to their positions. They cannot remove themselves from their desires and can never give up what they want to believe in.”
“Their opinions are change-proof,” I noted. “We often celebrate such people as great heroes. Can we include religious martyrs in this category?”
“No. I don’t mean our commitment to God. I mean to be enslaved to opinions and beliefs that have to do not with our salvation but with the affairs of this fallen world.
“Yet,” Fr. Nikodemos noted, “your enemies in Cyprus have accused you of being a fanatic, a fundamentalist.” Fr. Maximos grinned and sighed. “Yes, they did say that and much more. It is fashionable today to accuse people of the Ecclesia of being fundamentalist fanatics and the like. They accuse me specifically of being the leader of the fanatics.” We laughed at his wry tone.
Fr. Maximos alluded to accusations he has faced since his arrival in Cyprus from Mt. Athos, in the early nineties. His detractors accused him of “brainwashing” young people to such a degree that they would give up careers and prospects for a married life and join him as monks and nuns in secluded monasteries. The local Communists were particularly vitriolic against him. They accused him of being a purveyor of “false consciousness.” As far as the Communists were concerned, Fr. Maximos embodied the well-known Marxist aphorism that religion is the “opium of the people.” For them he was also an apostate. His own father, who died in an accident when Fr. Maximos was young, was an active member of the local Communist Party and a relentless opponent of the Church. Fr. Maximos as a young boy had to attend church secretly and against his father’s wishes.
“That is okay,” Fr. Maximos responded. “But I ask the question, can we attach the label of the fanatic to someone who undergoes in an authentic and genuine way the pedagogy of the Ecclesia as dictated by Christ? Can a Christian be a fanatic?”
“Be careful. There are plenty of those around, Fr. Maxime!” I warned, half seriously.
“But I mean an authentic, genuine Christian. I think it is by definition impossible.
“How so?”
“From the very moment that someone is a fanatic, he is into delusion.
“You mean he is not following in the footsteps of Christ?”
“Exactly. Such a person is outside the spiritual teachings as set down by Christ and the great saints who followed in His footsteps. The entire therapeutic pedagogy of the Ecclesia is built on the practice of humility. To follow Christ means to have the capacity to coexist with other people who may be radically different from you.
“This does not mean,” Fr. Maximos hastened to add, “that you give up your own faith. No, you are absolutely committed to your faith and your relationship with God. At the same time, however, you allow the other person to be, to exist. You wish neither to oppress nor to wipe out the other person simply because he does not share your beliefs.”
“Some Christians would love to do just that,” I noted.
“Christians in past ages and present—” Emily began.
“I understand what you are about to say, Emily,” Fr. Maximos interjected. “This is not the problem of Christ or the Ecclesia as a spiritual hospital. It is the problem of flawed human beings.”
~Adapted from Kyriacos C. Markides, Inner River: A Pilgrimage to the Heart of Christian Spirituality
