Post #3276497

@stavvers@masto.ai Orthodox clergy here. I imagine I am telling you absolutely nothing that you don't already know. I spent my mid-20s as a zealous new convert to Orthodoxy. I was not fash nor adjacent, but I was obsessed with the rules of asceticism, and would have become a monk if I'd been able to get out of stupid-debt. It took me many years to get out of that mindset. Obsessing with asceticism as an end in itself is like wanting to become a cabinet-maker because you like sharp chisels, not because you want to create beautiful furniture. I grew up as a Baptist missionary kid who was taught that it’s all about Jesus. I have some sympathy for neocons who get excited about Orthodoxy’s ascetic “manliness,” but in the end they are misguided, because you have to go round the world the long way to discover that it really is all about Jesus, like I was taught. And the message that Jesus preached is care for the poor and downtrodden.