Historical Insights: Thoughts on Asceticism

With Constantine's conversion, the Romans stopped persecuting Christians--in sum, being Christian became easier.

And Christians got worried. Without martyrdom, how does one show one's profound feelings to God or about God?

 

Asceticism and celibacy arrived, set in motion--to an extent--by a chap named Antony who became the first well-known hermit of the Christian experience. 

 

Asceticism and celibacy existed beforehand, of course, including in the pagan world, but Antony accrued celebrity status, especially once someone published a kind of "Life of a Saint" about him (not by his choice, in all fairness).

 

And then everybody wanted to be an ascetic celibate! (Not really--without ordinary families doing their thing, no social order can survive.)

 

But here is where the ongoing tension within human nature makes itself felt because Antony's whole point, and much of the thought behind asceticism and celibacy, was to get back to something "real" or "authentic"--to worship God in a pure, hippie, non-corporate, sacrificial kind of way. 

 

Except groups of monks living together almost immediately became (1) regulated; (2) wealthy. They gained oblates (young children given to monasteries) who liked the not-starving-to-death aspect of abbey life but found asceticism rather tiresome. 

 

I personally find the whole thing rather tiresome. Life is hard enough--getting up, going to work, being safe, being kind, all while remembering God and adhering to principles: all that is hard enough. Why complicate it with desert living?

 

I also consider asceticism a worldly reaction rather than a virtuous one. Without the constant compromises of mortal life and the needs of the mortal body, the spirit becomes a self-satisfied, pride-ridden, abstracted notion--

 

And a review of history will reveal what happens when self-satisfied, pride-ridden, abstracted notions take over a society: Witch Trials, elitism, Reigns of Terror, genocides, the unhealthy and unlikable practices of judging a person's inherent morality, rather than a person's outward lawfulness, the former based on supposedly seamless conjectural ideologies and pigeon-holing labels.

 

Yeah, not exactly religious or spiritual. 

 

For all their faults, the Renaissance artists were nonetheless closer to the mark: God is more, not less.