Love has been perfected among us in this: that we may have boldness in the day of judgement; because as he is, so are we in this world. I John 4.17
In many ways the word “society” serves to summarize most or all of that which a non-monastic Christian encounters on a daily basis, but which a desert monk seeks to avoid as a general rule. This includes constant interaction with other human beings, as well as direct engagement in their complex social structures, economies, politics, and the like. It would obviously be a mistake to assume that any monks, including the fathers of the Conferences, are cut off from such concerns completely. Far from it! When they were not themselves forced to go into the world at times, the fathers found society constantly coming to them by way of pilgrims and visitors. Reading the Conferences, one sees that the desert fathers knew well the goings-on of their time, and indeed affected them at the very least through their prayers, and often in direct ways as well. Yet the monks of the Conferences do seek to minimize their interactions with society and maximize their time of solitude. This basic, if imperfect, separation from society is one defining characteristic of a monk. Conversely, lay Christians engage society head-on, finding at most a few moments a day in which to set aside the cares of the world. Essential to the call of the lay person, then, is the decision to embrace a full, if occasionally hesitant, engagement with society. In this chapter we will explore some of the ways that such an engagement can and should become a tool for salvation.
If we are to draw any wisdom at all from the Conferences on this point, though, we need first to sharpen our way of thinking about society somewhat. While it is by no means the case that socially constructed realities (such as economies, nation-states and the like) are unimportant, the teachings of the Conferences hardly ever really address these kinds of topics. Even if they did, the texts from the Conferences are ancient enough now that much of what they might say would be unlikely to apply very well to Christian life today. What the Conferences do talk a lot about, however, is human relationships.
Relationships are the basic material out of which society is built. As mind-boggling as the task would be, a truly exhaustive description of any society would need to include an account of every interaction between every person within it. We cannot be without the broad categories that we use to discuss these relationships in groups (categories like “corporation,” “political movement,” or “nation”) but every such group is composed of people and their relationships. The fathers of the Conferences are therefore most helpful to our thinking about society if we do this thinking in terms of the relationships that make it up, in other words, at an atomic level.
We will focus, then, on society as a network of relationships. We can break down these relationships into two broad categories. First are those that we will call “direct relationships.” By this we mean those that exist between ourselves and everyone with whom we are acquainted personally (and thus have probably met face to face), from our friends, to co-workers, to those we meet on the street or at the store, to neighbors, to anyone else who happens to be around us. The second category comprises what we will call “mediated relationships.” These are relationships that we have with people whom we do not really know personally. These can be people like government officials, other voters, people in the media, journalists, entertainers, or even other drivers on the road-anyone we might connect with through various forms of media, hear about in the news or merely see from a distance without meeting. Mediated relationships have a very different character from direct relationships, as we all know intuitively. They tend to be more fragmented and disembodied. We are often less patient with people in our mediated relationships, more willing to judge them or lionize them, more capable of seeing their actions and character in black and white. Yet, they remain relationships. They are connection points between people, as weak and distorted a picture as they might give us of the other person at times.
It will be our basic assumption…that transforming life in society into a tool for salvation is best begun by transforming the individual relationships, both direct and mediated, that make up our connection with society. In short, every relationship we as Christians have, no matter how close or distant, must become a tool for salvation.
~Daniel G. Opperwall, A Layman in the Desert
