Deification: a recovery story

This is sort of an introduction to the next few pieces that will come up in the next few weeks. I will introduce this concept enough in the post coming out on Wednesday, so I’ll try not to repeat myself too much. My co-host Jody and I spoke about the strength to change in our podcast this week. I’ll attach a link at the bottom, and it made me review some of the thinking behind the future posts I have lined up regarding a similar theme.

I’ve been exploring different Christian models of salvation and finding differences and similarities that I’ll be sharing this week and next, arguing a position based on my inquiries into the Christian branches as well as self-questioning regarding where I am in relation to these branches and what I am trying to do. 

What I am trying to do is a work in progress and is based on my own soteriological understanding which is influenced by θέωσις (theosis), high magic, and recovery.  While there are a lot of different points made that different Christian branches make to distinguish themselves from one another it often revolves around salvation, and granted salvation is pretty important—it is the why behind our faith—it often seems like we’d all agree with one another if we took time to listen.

It may be pride that gets in the way of our seeing each other, sometimes it feels as if we hold up our respective traditions as idols that obfuscate our ability to have a relationship with God, much less our brothers and sisters. 

But what do I know?  

I pray this is of use to someone and I really do not mean to disparage any doctrine of faith held by followers of the Way, I can only speak to what’s been helpful to me. May it be blessed.

Recovery is a work done in faith; sola fide does not track for my recovering spirit, but the more I have grown to appreciate the Protestant position, mostly from the Anglican tradition, it seems as if we Christians are simply talking past each other, using language that comes from our diverse cultures and traditions that have very similar application and meaning, just different phrases and terminology stir the water sending harsh ripples over all our underlying agreement. 

The argument that it seems we are allowing to frustrate unity is the age-old debate of faith versus works. While I’ll be diving more into the theological similarities between Orthodoxy and Anglicanism, specifically, in the next couple posts I want to offer my own perspective on this debate from the viewpoint of recovery here, because faith versus works is a debate that is completely lost on me because—from a recovery standpoint—it doesn’t matter how we’re justified: both of these things are necessary for our liberation. 

If we understand faith as sobriety and works as recovery then this comes into sharper focus, I’d hope. Sobriety is not slapping the ark doors and yelling safe. Sobriety is realizing how far away you are from the ark as well as realizing how wet your ankles are and how fast the waters are rising. 

Recovery is moving toward salvation, it’s a struggle; the first Noble Truth in Buddhism is Life is Suffering, but where the Rose diverges from the Lotus is that Life is Liberation that is attained through Suffering. Suffering is necessary to our becoming alive and it is what keeps us from awakening to sobriety. Suffering, like Buddhism says, is due to attachment and the Christian perspective is to embrace suffering voluntarily, acknowledging that it is a part of a life worth living. 

Sobriety is not the end. It’s the beginning. 

Where the Rose agrees with the Lotus is that attachments cause suffering, which is what we must understand in order to see through the argumentation of faith versus works. 

Faith is not the end; it is the beginning. Faith does not justify the man without the works that strengthen the man’s faith. My recovery strengthens my sobriety, but neither can be accomplished without the other, neither can be fully realized without the one informing the other. sobriety/recovery; faith/works. These are dialogues that are integral to becoming fully human, like Christ. 

If we look at the Trinity as a blueprint than sobriety and recovery; faith and works—these are distinct persons that are understood in relation with the other, they cannot be persons without the other. The growth of a flower cannot be accomplished with water and no sun. The seed may be planted but it must be tended in order for it to bloom. 

A lot of arguments feel that the faith alone doctrine is as if accepting Christ is all it takes for salvation, but looking to the Trinity we see God-at-work the same that we must also be at-work if we are to attain the likeness of He Who is. 

Sola fide, and I apologize if this hasn’t been your experience, but it has been the experience of many people I talk with, is precisely the problem with the modernized AA system that perpetuates sobriety rather than recovery. AA can become a stand-up comedy open mic with members sharing their horrifically hilarious stories about how they woke up in a running car with their foot on the brake, an empty tank of gas, and in someone’s yard, they’re still not sure who. 

Hahaha. 

So, what are you doing now?

Well… re-telling this story two or three times a week, getting the beats down.

This isn’t recovery. 

This is enfoldment.

We need both faith (sobriety) and works (recovery) for the system to propel us forward to the ark, moksha, or Brahman. 

Wherever we’re going we need both.

Transformation emerges from the fusing of both sobriety/recovery; faith/works. Change simply can’t sustain itself without the two working in tandem, we are in a sense hypostatizing this relationship within us, becoming fully faithful and fully dutiful to our work: fully sober and fully recovering. 

Θέωσις is one of the most important concepts in Christianity, it is to me and it is to the Orthodox, however it does not belong to them and too often the West hears this Greek word, or other Greek terms, and let’s them remain with the Orthodox because it is not a part of our tradition but this isn’t true. 

Mystical union is not copyrighted by the Orthodox. 

The reason it is so important to me is because of the theology behind it: we are striving, suffering and becoming one with God’s essence through His uncreated energies revealing the image of God within us. It is a reflection of the revelation of Christ, God’s Word, through the Incarnation of the Godman, we are, like the Theotokos, revealing the image of God within us that we may be completely united with God made manifest through us. 

This is significant because it rejects a Calvinist theological model, for one, which is important to me due to the idea of total depravity predestination also being an affront to my views of recovery and soteriology. Θέωσις is revealing the image within us, that is there already but does require works to cultivate and realize it. 

Me, drunk, was the same as I am now but with alcohol on top of the image of God, obscuring the glory of God and darkening it ever more through bender after bender, but this light is always there—and so θέωσις, using a recovery model in alignment with its theological truth, is burning away the proverbial drink that covers all of us in some way or another and allowing the emergence of what already is. 

I believe in the sacraments, personally, and the reason I affirm them is because of their self-realizing properties. This is the work that acts like a squeegee on our mirror, wiping away the dross of the world and revealing to us who is actually there, and Who dwells within, Who is with us. Because the sacraments deepen our relationship with God which in turn deepen our relationship with ourselves. 

“But be doers of the word and not merely hearers who deceive themselves. For if any are hearers of the word and not doers, they are like those who look at themselves in a mirror; for they look at themselves and, on going away, immediately forget what they were like. But those who look into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and persevere, being not hearers who forget but doers who act—they will be blessed in their doing” (James 1:22-25). 

This is recovery. 

This is also why I feel protective over the sacraments, not exactly one hundred percent supportive of closed communion, but it is our responsibility to be instructive to people who do not understand what the purpose of these sacraments is. They are not going to have the same effect when done without faith. Works are important and faith is necessary for the fulfillment. 

It’d be like me attending to my recovery outwardly while covertly drinking at the end of every day. The external recovery may look good on the surface, but underneath I am moving backwards, what the Bible calls backsliding. There were plenty of nights when I told my fellow comedians that I was quitting drinking, getting validation from that decision, then finding my way to a rocks glass later that night. Almost as if in the same breath. And because of the validation I received and the dopamine it produced I hit the bottle with a certain zeal that was allowed by the coupling of neurotransmitter rewards and shame.  

“Formerly, when you did not know God, you were enslaved to beings that by nature are not gods. Now, however, that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God, how can you turn back again to the weak and beggarly elemental principles? How can you want to be enslaved to them again?” (Galatians 4:8-9). 

This is because change is difficult, embracing change and letting go of control is difficult but that is a part of suffering; there is struggle in letting go. That’s a part of it. 

It’s easier to present external changes as indications of internal change than allow us to give in to vulnerability that is a part of opening up to transformation. Lasting change comes from within, though, and I’m afraid sola fide does not facilitate that sustainability. To me, sola fide is just the same as believing that people do not change, because it puts too much on God and not enough on us.

I’ve known people who do not believe that people can change, I don’t believe they actually think that—what I think they really want is to not take responsibility for their lives and own up to who they have been and where they are. It’s a lot easier to ignore the flood waters than admitting we’re scared of liberation. 

It is similar to dismiss θέωσις as an Orthodox curiosity and not positioned properly in the rich livelihood of Christianity. If one follows the doctrine of sola scriptura, it shows ignorance of Scripture which is why by scripture alone is seen so heretically by the East and Rome. God calls us to change. Faith, once put on, opens us to the responsibility of works. Sobriety does not exist for very long without recovery. 

Faith without works is the same as being a dry drunk: it is being a dry Christian. 

It’s like finding a hill in the flood waters that is not yet covered and assuming safety while the ark sits many horizons away from where you stand. It’s stubbornness and that same stubbornness will keep one not drinking but never changing just the same as never realizing the glory of God within and without. 

It’s the same stubborn enfoldment that will keep us perpetually telling the same story romanticizing our inability to see reality for what it is because of the darkness that we draped around us. There’s a time for storytelling but take it from me—the stories we tell often end up being the lives we live. It is our want to perpetuate suffering that keeps us clinging to who we were yesterday, but we must suffer the present moment if we are to truly change. 

“I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us. For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God, for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its enslavement to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God” (Romans 8:18-21). 

This is a long-winded way of saying looking at the arguments and polemics of all the Christian camps lobbing various pejoratives at one another it seems that we’re all talking past each other. This will be the guiding force in the next few posts coming in the weeks ahead. 

Θέωσις is a part of all our traditions because we agree that we are, as Christians, called to change and by His grace we are capable of this most holy vocation of transformation. Selah. 

Si comprehendis, non est Deus