Enter the Fiery Furnace

We either slay our dragons or they consume us.

I do not believe in Original Sin as put forth by St. Augustine and the Western Church tradition. I believe in Ancestral Sin, “because all have come of Adam since his infection by sin, and all sin themselves. As from an infected source there naturally flows an infected stream, so from a father infected with sin, and consequently mortal, there naturally proceeds a posterity infected like him with sin, and like him mortal” (St. Philaret of Moscow, The Longer Catechism of the Orthodox, Catholic, Eastern Church).

There is no better example than the infections that are passed down from parent to child. It is a way in which the pattern of birth and death continue living on through the soul of humanity, though Jesus Christ has broken down the doors of Hades, we can still walk through those doors by our own free will. The parasitic nature of sin dwells within us all and if it is not brought forth from our hearts and purged then it spreads through us all like an airborne virus. And it is hereditary.

“Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death came through sin, and so death spread to all because all have sinned—” (Romans 5:12).

This is how the dastardly serpent descends through the tree of our genealogies, tempting us with the same fruits that our forefathers ate. The family tree hoards these sins like gold deep in the dragon’s chambers, emerging like fire from the deep chasm of our hardened hearts.

These are called the passions in Eastern Christianity, the ways in which that dragon fire exhales from our souls burning the world around us like a destructive forest fire salting the earth with venomous flames ensuring there can be no fauna or vegetation. It is a form of destroying Paradise, not even losing it like Adam and Eve, but actively destroying it.

Sin is from the devil, and “everyone who commits sin is of the devil, for the devil has been sinning from the beginning” (1 John 3:8), so it is true that we must “discipline [ourselves] [and] keep alert. [For] like a roaring lion [our] adversary the devil prowls around, looking for someone to devour” (1 Peter 5:8).

This is true; the devil is not in us, but outside us, however I see the soul as guarded by a Hydra, a three-headed dragon, looking through the lens of our perception distorting it to their own needs: each head revealing the eight evil thoughts that are in dialogue with the demons that wage war against humanity. However, this is not about demons, but dragons.

The maps that were used in the Medieval age and beforehand would sometimes have “hic sunt dracones” written in the unexplored areas and apart from the kingdom of Heaven there is no greater uncharted territory than man to himself. And while the old maps may have been hyperbolic when representing these dangerous locales there is nothing more accurate than the deep recesses of man.

Truly, “here be dragons.”

A while ago I was at an AA meeting and someone went up to share, saying that you think that by draining the swamp things would get easier, but what ends up happening is when all the alcohol is gone all that’s left is a bunch of angry crocodiles.

Here are dragons. We do not even appreciate that they exist, we take them for granted; we assume the dragons are a part of our identity so much so that we are not aware that there are dragons here at all. As someone who has had to sober up or die, I don’t have this luxury, I’ve been confronting these bastards in my war against the dragons (or dracomachia) and I’ve been hoping this campaign would end at some point, but St. Peter is right, we must discipline ourselves and keep alert. Not only for the devil who roams seeking out someone to devour, but also to become aware of the dragon that lives in the lair of our souls.

The thing I can offer is that uprooting the passions, the literal work of defeating the dragons festering in our hearts is a lot like the Epic of Beowulf, where we emerge victorious against Grendel, then we have to battle against Grendel’s mother, then we have a respite before the real threat of the fire-breathing dragon arises when we think we have time to sit and catch our breath.

The dragons are like Matryoshka dolls where we slay one only to reveal another, more subtle and insidious doll underneath. It’s enough to drive one crazy and straight back to the bottle or other forms of unhealthy coping mechanisms but see this is exactly what the dragons want. They want to lull us into a sense of contentedness or dejection and despondency. Anything to make us give up our fight. They parasitically live off our ignorance and are realized through our actions in the world: through our sins.

This is how the parasite of death spreads. Down through the generations like a twisting serpent attached to what comes out of us and that can never return. I challenge us to think about what types of interactions we have had in this world, where we have cursed someone in traffic, spoken bad about our coworker, lost our temper with our children, awoken in a stranger’s bed, stolen, cheated, lied…

All these things actualize the potential of the parasitic dragons that are only real when we are led by them. And while confronting and naming them is half the battle, it does not exclude any of us from being led by them. We can map the territory, however that does not change the fact that there be dragons. 

This is why I am interested in warring with them. I keep meeting people who are draining the swamp in their own lives and perplexed and aggravated by the fact that there are angry crocodiles beneath the murky swamp water of Grendel’s bog. We are not these creatures; we are not the dragons that confound our hearts and wrap their tail around it like guarding their gold.

This is what we have to gain, though.

We are trying to uncover the gold that lies beneath the dragons. That is, the heart, anyone who has tried meditation or contemplative prayer that has sought silence and to descend into the heart knows how difficult it is with so much in the way. So, while it is a war a la Beowulf or even St. George I have developed a campaign strategy out of these forms of prayer; the dragons are metaphysical realities that are passed down through generational sins and trauma, therefore they must be met via metaphysics.

I wish there was a fully crystallized dragon waiting somewhere in my ancestral homeland of Scotland or Eastern Europe for me to come wielding a sword and do physcial battle.

That would be easy.

It would cost me a plane ticket and maybe a trip to a Renaissance Faire, but these damned dragons swim in the waters of my being.

So, what do we do?

The answer lies in the Book of Daniel,

“Accordingly, at this time certain Chaldeans came forward and denounced the Jews. 9 They said to King Nebuchadnezzar, ‘O king, live forever! You, O king, have made a decree, that everyone who hears the sound of the horn, pipe, lyre, trigon, harp, drum, and entire musical ensemble, shall fall down and worship the golden statue, and whoever does not fall down, and worship shall be thrown into a furnace of blazing fire. There are certain Jews whom you have appointed over the affairs of the province of Babylon: Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. These men pay no heed to you, O king. They do not serve your gods, and they do not worship the golden statue that you have set up.’

Then Nebuchadnezzar in furious rage commanded that Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego be brought in, so they brought those men before the king. Nebuchadnezzar said to them, ‘Is it true, O Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, that you do not serve my gods and you do not worship the golden statue that I have set up? Now if you are ready, when you hear the sound of the horn, pipe, lyre, trigon, harp, drum, and entire musical ensemble, you should fall down and worship the statue that I have made. But if you do not worship, you shall immediately be thrown into a furnace of blazing fire, and who is the god who will deliver you out of my hands?’

Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego answered the king, ‘O Nebuchadnezzar, we have no need to present a defense to you in this matter. If our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the furnace of blazing fire and out of your hand, O king, let him deliver us. But if not, be it known to you, O king, that we will not serve your gods and we will not worship the golden statue that you have set up.’

Then Nebuchadnezzar was so filled with rage against Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego that his face was distorted. He ordered the furnace heated up seven times more than was customary and ordered some of the strongest guards in his army to bind Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego and to throw them into the furnace of blazing fire. So, the men were bound, still wearing their tunics, their trousers, their hats, and their other garments, and they were thrown into the furnace of blazing fire. Because the king’s command was urgent and the furnace was so overheated, the raging flames killed the men who lifted Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. But the three men, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, fell down, bound, into the furnace of blazing fire.

Then King Nebuchadnezzar was astonished and rose up quickly. He said to his counselors, ‘Was it not three men that we threw bound into the fire?’ They answered the king, ‘True, O king.’ He replied, ‘But I see four men unbound, walking in the middle of the fire, and they are not hurt, and the fourth has the appearance of a god’” (Daniel 3:8-25).

As far as I can tell I am Nebuchadnezzar wanting to be the three Hebrews. Nebuchadnezzar is the dragon, the furnace is his fiery, destructive breath and the Hebrews are faith, humility, and meekness embodied standing amongst the flames with an angel of the Lord, Who in some traditions is Christ Himself.

The fiery furnace and the story of Daniel in the Lion’s Den point us to the same reality when campaigning through this battleground in our tent, which is to trust in God in all things. When the fiery breath of the dragons seeks to realize itself through our sinful actions, exploding in wrath, stealing in greed, cheating, lying, fornicating, becoming dejected all these spreading death like a virus we must look to God and allow the fire to rage within us. We must feel this flame, let it surround us, and sit with it.

Act like the three Hebrews and be bound within the flames.

The point is to not allow the fire to be realized, but to die smoldering and unfulfilled. By God’s grace and a lot of time patiently working on our reactions, humbling ourselves before our weaknesses and triggers, soon enough we will be able to kill the dragons with smoke inhalation, like being in a car with a carbon monoxide leak.

We are poisoning the parasite with its own form of destruction. We are killing the dragon by sitting with it in its unanswered wrath. We are taming it, effectively, domesticating the dragon until it becomes nothing but a lizard.

My thought is that the dragon within and the lion outside are in constant dialogue with one another and by slaying the dragons the lion does not have access to our internal world; the flaming arrows of the demons do not affect us as much because we have come to know ourselves and doused the fuel tanks waiting to become inflamed.

We do this in silence. This is not a cold war, but a contemplative one. The way in which we slay the dragons is meeting them like Beowulf meets Grendel, unarmed and trusting in God to guide and protect him from his enemies. I can do nothing on my own, certainly not slay any dragons, but through cultivating stillness in communion with God then I can withstand the fire that aims to destroy me, my neighbor, and Paradise. With God’s help I can sit with that fire; sit in it, be surrounded by it, yet not consumed.

No matter how these dragons came to take up residence in our hearts it is not our fault, but it is our responsibility to slay them lest they continue to affect each subsequent generation after us and the area around the family tree, too. We have a moral obligation to slay the dragons in our hearts and with God’s help we can, because we seek their destruction the same way that Jesus destroyed death: condescending and cultivating patience, humility, and trusting in the stillness from which God’s Word emerges.

Ultimately, we have a moral obligation to know who we are, and I believe we can only know who we are in God. Otherwise, we will believe that we are simply angry, lustful, greedy people unable to change, thus enslaved to how we identify ourselves. This is the great lie that the dragons, the lions, and the demons whisper in our ears.

We can change. We can transform. That is the Gospel.

If we do not suffer this war then we will remain ignorant of who we truly are, for the dragons guard the gold that is our heart. Confronting them in the battlefield with silence will reveal how powerless they really are as well as who we truly are, deep down and actualized.

Si comprehendis, non est Deus