Orthodox Reflections

Feelings of frustration and betrayal are prevalent in Gen Z (those born between the years 1996 and 2010), and this is understandable.  Many of the institutions and ideals in which they were told to place their trust have not provided them what was promised.

The political system of Americanism – Voting in elections, supporting a political party, checks and balances, etc., are supposed to bring about a peaceful and stable social order.  It has brought the opposite:  polarization, anger, and instability.

Capitalism – The invisible hand of the free market is supposed to distribute goods and wealth in a way beneficial to all.  All too often it allows them to concentrate in the hands of a few to the detriment of most.

Scientism – The Enlightenment trust in rationalism and the scientific method is supposed to dispel lies and usher in an era of human flourishing.  Instead, it actually serves to advance lies (sophisticated propaganda/psychological operations), smother truth (AI to fight ‘misinformation’), and promote products that are harmful to living creatures in this world (mRNA shots, genetically modified crops, etc.).

Gen Z really has been brought into the world at a difficult time, when so many things are going awry.  And yet, in their quest for solutions, many of them are doubling down on the very things that are causing them so much loneliness and anxiety in the first place:  burying themselves more deeply in the ‘hyper reality’ of the digital online world, embracing faddish ideologies, and so forth.

The answers they are seeking lie in the opposite direction, in something that has been vilified for many years now in the West – in a word, tradition.

There are many aspects to it that will help give stability and meaning to Gen Z (and every other generation that is wise enough to embrace it).

Family – This is the primordial society, the most basic social unit.  It is usually presented in a truncated form, as the nuclear family (mother and father + children), but it is much more than that.  It extends horizontally to embrace all living relations (aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents, etc.) and vertically to embrace all the departed generations.  In the meaning of one’s last name, in the journey of ancestors from one place to another, in the knowledge of one’s country of origin; in inheriting family heirlooms, learning about the lives of one’s forebears, hearing the stories and jokes they told; walking in the old house of one’s relations – in all of these and similar things there is deep meaning and satisfaction.  One will find practical help in the family also, such as a job or a gift or a loan when faced with financial hardships, care when sick, and so on.

Ethnos and Monarchy – All the extended families that share a common land, a common history, common speechways and other folkways, and a common religion form an ethnos.  This is distinct from modern nations, which are usually artificial constructions based upon loyalty to a pseudo-religious ideology of some kind.  The United States, China, France – these and others are examples of modern nations built upon ideas: the Declaration of Independence, socialism with Chinese characteristics, and Liberty-Equality-Fraternity, respectively.  These are not organic ethnoi, the outgrowth of the family.  There are places within them that meet this criteria, however.  In France, Celtic Brittany is an authentic ethnos.  In the US, there are many, from the large cultural zones we have mentioned before (Pacific Coast, Spanish Southwest, Dixie, Great Plains, etc.), to the individual States, to the smaller subcultures within the larger ones (Ozarks, Acadiana, upper peninsula of Michigan, etc.).  These are all authentic ethnoi in the US.

And just as the father is the head of the little family, and the patriarch the head of the extended family, so too is the king the head of the great family, the ethnos.  But his importance goes beyond his position of authority.  He is the living embodiment, the living icon, of the ethnos’s past and all her good traditions.  As such he serves as a point of unity for all the people of the ethnos.  But the mysticism goes beyond this as well.  He is a reflection of the Divine Ruler, the Great Father – God – Who rules over all of creation, visible and invisible, upon His throne in heaven.  It is in fact God’s anointing that gives a king his special status amongst his people.  The king is therefore much more than a mere government apparatchik or chief executive who executes laws and manages bureaucrats.  He is a mediator between God and the people of his ethnos, guiding the latter to noble deeds, onto the ascending path to the heavenly Paradise, and also interceding for them before God should they falter while on that journey or should they undergo any other hardship.

In the ethnos and the monarch, one will find more of the deep fountains that nourish his true identity.

Church – This same God of Whom we have spoken, Who consecrates the king and Who created and rules the cosmos, has been badly distorted in the West.  In Roman Catholic and Protestant congregations, He is variously presented as an unknowable, impersonal essence; as an angry father-lord who is so offended by, and angry with, mankind for their sins and shortcomings that the only way his wrath can be placated is by torturing and killing his own son; as a wise and humble man called Jesus who will sympathize with us in our difficulties but not much else; as a spirit that is a strange chimera of the angry father and meek son and that is of lesser divinity than are they, but that can nevertheless impart some strange gifts like incomprehensible tongues to some folks.

This is not the True God, the God proclaimed by and found in the Orthodox Church.  He is, as the Apostle John described Him, the God of Love.  Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, three Persons sharing one divine essence and living in a communion of love; three Persons equal in glory and divinity; Who created the universe and mankind out of a desire to share Their overflowing love with other creatures; the Son, in loving agreement with the Father and the Holy Ghost, united Himself forever with human nature and underwent death, Resurrection, and Ascension, in order to heal and deify it, so that all men and women and children who wished to, despite the Fall, might be able to share and participate in the inner life of love of the Holy Trinity by being united to His Body.  That deified divine-human Body of Jesus Christ is still mysteriously present in the world as the Orthodox Church, the Church not merely faithful to the teachings of the Apostles but the actual Church of the Apostles, the same Church manifested in the world on the Day of Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit descended upon the Apostles in Jerusalem.

As one progresses through the stages of the spiritual life – purification, illumination, and deification – he will, if God allows it, be able to perceive the inner essences of created things, the logoi (plural of logos) as the Orthodox Church Fathers call them, the words spoken by Christ at the beginning of time that called each creature into being, and that remain at the center of each one, and that also remain united to the Lord Jesus, the Logos, Who said them.  This noetic world that is invisible to the carnal-minded is the higher, more authentic world, undamaged by sin, that man may experience if he advances far enough along the path of the Orthodox spiritual life.  It is in contrast to the false digital world of social media, online stores and games, etc., that is held up to Gen Z and others as a comforting utopia.

But the experience of union with God, union with His divine energies rather than His essence (which will always remain beyond the knowledge of created beings, whether men or angels) – this stage of deification, the vision of the Uncreated Light, far exceeds the spiritual joy of seeing the logoi – far exceeds any other joy a man or woman may know.  And it is possible even now, in this life, if we strive hard enough to attain it, and if God deems it helpful for our salvation for us to see His Light, the Light that the God-seer Moses saw in the Old Testament, which made his own face shine; the Light which the Holy Apostles saw on Mt. Tabor; the same Light St. Symeon the New Theologian saw on a number of occasions at the turn of the first millennium, as have many other saints, right up to today (St. Sophrony of Essex, for example).

In the Orthodox Church, one will find the ultimate source of his identity, the ultimate source of meaning, eradication of anxiety and worry and loneliness, provision of bodily needs (He Who created the cosmos from nothing can and will give us what we need to survive in this world if we ask), inexhaustible joy, true communion with God and His angels and saints, and with man and the creation.

A number of researchers make note of Gen Z’s strong sense of nostalgia, which they speculate is a result of their desire to forget the cares and troubles weighing upon them.  This is not altogether a bad thing; it only needs to be oriented in the right direction:  not towards vinyl records and Members Only jackets but towards authentic tradition – the traditions of family, ethnos, and king, and ultimately the Divine Tradition of the Orthodox Church, traditions that will in truth vivify these young men and women so beaten down by modernity, and give peace to their souls so long tormented by uncertainty.

–Walt Garlington is an Orthodox Christian living in Dixieland.  His writings have appeared on several web sites, and he maintains a site of his own, Confiteri: A Southern Perspective.