Our Great War’s a Spiritual War

During Lent I attempted to write about demons and the origins of evil with the larger project tracing sin and demonic activity through the early chapters of Genesis, but the research revealed how soul-draining it is to dwell in the demonic realm. It weighs to the spirit. While I originally set out to write about the Fall as a pattern throughout Scripture, what came out of this research was a recognition of our tendency to get caught in false dialectics that distract us from more important spiritual work.

This grounded in me the conviction that when we speak of the Faith, we should speak of what it is for: union with God. Not what it stands against. Framing religion merely as opposition reduces it to one more societal sphere, equivalent to culture or politics. As the Slavophiles understood, religion is upstream from culture and politics, not parallel to them.

Philosophy and politics are both downstream of theology. Modernity, however, has both bifurcated religion from public life and conflated religiosity with political ideology. God has been displaced, and politics has stepped into the vacuum as the new god.

This displacement matters deeply because we believe we are the most knowledgeable, free-thinking people who have ever existed, yet we have merely replaced one form of authority with another, falling back into the same cyclical, dialectical trap. Even the intellectually astute often contribute to it: they readily offer the antithesis to society’s thesis, but rarely do they propose a synthesis.

Tyler Durden is a popular figure who exemplifies this very phenomenon. Despite his charisma, he remains deeply embedded in the society he wants to destroy. Yes, conspicuous consumption is bad; modern men are weak; we are not our khakis. Indeed. Tyler Durden’s diagnosis is often correct, especially in the book, where his philosophy is painfully consistent. Nevertheless, Tyler Durden only exists as an antithesis to the Narrator’s thesis.

The Narrator could not stand at the precipice and not blink, so Tyler Durden appeared to give him a push. Yet Tyler Durden, as an extension of the Narrator’s personality, doesn’t himself imagine a creative structure to replace the society that he abhors. For Tyler Durden, the only solution to the corporate landscape is destruction, and in its place, ironically, he seeks to establish a socio-cultural and governing structure in some ways more oppressive than the bondage of consumerism.

Thus, Tyler Durden’s philosophy did not transcend its own diagnosis of society; it merely established a new antithesis to the thesis within the dialectic that continues to capture us all.

Tyler Durden, in this context, is a false—dark—messiah; despite his rhetoric of liberation, he is not saving anyone from societal decay, from man’s fallen state, but is leading many into chaos, nihilism, and anarchy. He cannot transcend the social order; he can only destroy it. Ultimately, the problem with Tyler Durden’s philosophy is not that it wasn’t correct in its diagnosis; it simply was just another socio-cultural, political ideology, meaning that it was simply a product of the very society he set himself against.

The Genesis project made me realize that, by paying too much attention to what we rail against, not only does our spirit take on weight, but we also often become more like that which we revile. Much of this thinking has been in relation to my considering online apologetics risking this very potentiality. In apologetics, an oft-quoted passage from the Pauline epistles is used to justify their approach:

“For though we walk in the flesh, we are not waging war according to the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds. We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ” (II Cor. 10: 3-5).

We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God.

Although, I’m not suggesting that debate is bad, it doesn’t strike me as an apologetic-oriented passage, but one that invites an inward turn. The strongholds and arguments we are exhorted to pull down and destroy are, unlike Tyler Durden’s outward facing destruction, within our hearts and minds. The passions, self-justifications, and our self-exaltation are the arguments and lofty opinions which raise us against, and sever us from, God.

To pull down strongholds is to crucify the self; to destroy arguments is to crucify the mind, acknowledging that God’s ways are not our ways. Our lofty opinions act as a film over the eyes of our hearts, obscuring the very presence of God.

In our modern day of online tribalism, culture wars, and ideological battles, the temptation can be to assume we need to win hearts and minds by… well, by hitting people over the head with our cross, by tearing down others’ beliefs and worldviews. As if St. Paul’s words refer to a modern crusade against degeneracy and anti-Christian religiosity. But that simply trades Tyler Durden’s rhetoric for another, equally destructive antithesis to our societal thesis. We don’t have to embrace what society offers, of course, but we don’t need to attack it, either.

If Christ truly has overcome the world, the victory has already been accomplished; when we attack the world, it may represent our own misunderstanding or distrust in Christ’s victory over death. It may be a subtle way for us to continue being a god without God.

The spiritual life—theosis—looks quiet. It’s not going to yield spiritual fireworks. Becoming united to God by His grace is quiet. The spadework of repentance and cultivating humility looks like putting our hand to the plow and looking ahead toward the Kingdom, every day.

Repentance, or metanoia, means a change of mind and renewal. In its Christian understanding, this renewal comes through a kind of inner crucifixion: of the idols, demons, and ego that reside in within us. If we really are the temple of the indwelling Holy Spirit (cf. I Cor. 3: 16-23), then the corporate structures that Tyler Durden desired to destroy exist not out there, but in our hearts, distracting us from the presence of God and our striving to unite ourselves to Him.

It is a life of suffering united to God and joyful mourning; the multilevel disintegration levels are whereby man begins confronting his fallen and passionate nature that pulls him away from God and fragments his inner world. Repentance and prayer, similarly, follow this model, feeling like internal disintegration, moving from glory to glory, toward God. As Archimandrite Zacharias writes:

“Man’s awareness of his spiritual poverty is the outcome of the descent of the mind into the heart. This descent requires great courage, because… as man goes downwards, he begins to discern more and more clearly his real spiritual state, his falsehood and his wretchedness, ‘the abomination of desolation’, his ego that ‘standeth in the holy place, where it ought not’, usurping the throne of the Lord Jesus in the heart.”[1]

Genuine change occurs within persons; it is not bound by external circumstances but happens in spite of them. This is the slow, often painful work of the spiritual life—the inner crucifixion that makes true repentance possible. As Geronda Ephraim of Arizona wrote:

“After Christ’s advent and arrival, repentance is not merely regret and confession of sin. It is remission, forgiveness, effacement, and complete obliteration of sin.

Repentance is a lamentation that leads to joy. It is joyful mourning. Repentance is sowing that takes place with tears, and subsequently leads to a liberating harvest.”[2]

This practice is a continual turning of the whole person to Christ, and in His light, our person is increasingly elucidated. As St. Isaac the Syrian captures, writing, “He who has been able to see himself has accomplished more than one who has seen the angels.”

From the Orthodox Christian perspective, continual repentance is the practice of deepening self-knowledge, which is incredibly painful. It feels like dying, because it is a death; it is a putting off the old man and a crucifixion of the self.

Externalities, revolutions, tearing down what’s come before, ideological conflicts, and culture wars remain constant through time. They always fail because they substitute the inner war for the hidden man of the heart (cf. I Pet. 3:4). It is only in and through repentance that we experience the transformative return to God, the reorientation of the soul, and—as our noetic eyes are opened to His presence—we are led deeper into participation in the divine nature, becoming like God in loving communion with Him (cf. II Pet. 1:4).

As long as egotism stands in the holy place, then our external circumstances will play a much larger role in our lives than they ought. Politics, news cycles, online tribalism, and the endless scroll only feed the desire to know and conform. These are powerful distractions from the more spade work of the heart and the care of the soul.

We lose ourselves in “us versus them” narratives and injustices happening halfway across the world. Yet, for many of us, we let these things not only consume our attention and energy, giving the illusion that outrage is helping, but we also abandon our communities, our friendships, and real relationships.

We don’t help anyone by neglecting our transformative relationship with God, our hearts, and communities. All that does is push us further and farther apart, fragmenting us to the point of intense isolation, individualism, and from there, depression, neuroses, and even suicidal ideation.

We see this playing out on a broader scale today through the combination of societal fragmentation, hyper-individualism and the privileging of reason: people are becoming more egotistical, even displaying greater narcissistic tendencies; we’re addicted to our screens, fueling the egotism of our hearts. These patterns reveal the quiet damage occurring in so many lives.

And yet, even in saying this, I risk falling back into the false dialectic by setting religion against the world. This is a subtle but powerful temptation. Yet the answer is not to fight the culture more fiercely, but to turn inward. We should speak of what Christianity is for, not what it is against. Christ, the lover of Man, revealed the Faith to liberate us from death and unite man to God. That is what it is for: theosis.

In following the prescriptions of the Church, we slowly go to war with the passions and draw closer to Christ, in Whose light we are revealed. The tension that manifests in external circumstances exists more profoundly in our hearts, where transformation occurs.

Looking out into our external circumstances, the bread is stale, and the circus is boring, anyway. The visible decay in our society—the red-pill, the blue-pill, online rabbit holes, constant diagnosis and rage-loops feeding us through mind-numbing and addictive scroll—need not drive us to despair. Instead, they can be sobering reminders of what is truly important.

Paradise is not achieved by standing above others, assuming that we see what others do not and using that to tear them down, but by seeing our society and its decline as a reflection of our own fallenness. A reflection of our own sins and passions and egotism. Paradise is not found in standing above others or victoriously standing atop their crumbled strongholds, but in descending to be among all, bearing the burden of sins shared by all, for all; it is becoming less—becoming sin for the sake of all to be reconciled to our neighbor and, together, to God (cf. II Cor. 5:21).

Here we find the profound insight of Fr. Zosima in The Brothers Karamazov:

“There is only one salvation for you: take yourself up, and make yourself responsible for the all the sins of men. For indeed it is so, my friend, and the moment you make yourself sincerely responsible for everything and everyone, you will see at once that is it really so, that it is you who are guilty on behalf of all and for all.”[3]

What many views as signs of societal decay can be thus seen as apocalyptic signs, in the original sense of unveiling; they invite us to turn away from the distractions, noise, and endless loops of rage and despondency toward the quiet work of the heart: repentance, prayer, and kenotic love. To pray, as Sts. Silouan of Mount Athos and Sophrony of Essex teach, for the entire world:

“[A] prayer in which man reaches the summit of his likeness to Christ-Man; in which he passes from the level of “individual” to that of person, of hypostasis; that is, in which he too becomes an Adam, bearing within himself, in prayer, all of humanity—the entire Adam.”[4]

“Behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation” (II Cor. 6:2); therefore, we can use this time, instead of fighting, judging people we’ve never met, and being outraged about things we can do nothing about, to focus on our hearts, our families, and communities.

Take a break from scrolling and parasocial relationships and call an actual friend. Go meet up with a real person, pray before the living God. Do not worry about tearing down another’s stronghold, but take care to listen; to get to know them, not seeking to refute them, but be with them. If we simply start opening our eyes to the person before us, then God’s grace may abound, that we may abound in every good work (cf. II Cor. 9:8). In doing so, our eyes will be opened more and more to the Person Who is always before us.

In this light—His light—the noise and outrage of a collapsing culture lose their power over us. The false dialectics become sand running through our fingers. The endless feedback loops become mere reminders that this world is not our home, the people within it are not our enemies, and the only exit is Christ: the entry into the quiet life of theosis, a renewal of the mind and the return to the hidden man of the heart, letting His light shine through us onto the world, transfiguring it rather than destroying it.

Ο ΧΡΙΣΤΟΣ ΕΝ ΤΩ ΜΕΣΩ ΗΜΩΝ! ΚΑΙ ΗΝ ΚΑΙ ΕΣΤΙ ΚΑΙ ΕΣΤΑΙ

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[1] Archimandrite Zacharias, Hesychasm: The Bedewing Furnace of the Heart (Essex: Patriarchal Stavropegic Monastery of St. John the Baptist, 2022), 81.

[2] Elder Ephraim of Arizona, The Art of Salvation, trans. St. Nektarios Greek Orthodox Monastery (Roscoe, NY: St. Nektarios Greek Orthodox Monastery, 2014), 240.

[3] Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, trans. Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1992), 320.

[4] Grig Gheorghiu, “Saint Sophrony: A “Renewer” of Orthodox Asceticism in the Modern Age.” Sayings of the Romanian Elders. July 10, 2025. https://romelders.substack.com/p/saint-sophrony-a-renewer-of-orthodox-834