Direction
- Michael Haldas
- May 21
- 4 min read
“Jesus Christ unites all things in Himself, things in heaven, on earth, or in any of the spiritual regions of the cosmos including hell. This union of all things in Christ is God’s great and mysterious plan for all that exists. This union of all in Christ is what God envisioned before anything had been created. It is what God has always determined that we are moving towards. None of us could ever understand creation itself or God’s purposes until this union is fulfilled. Which tells us once again that if we look to the Genesis creation story to understand humanity or what it means to be human, we are looking in the wrong direction. Humanity’s perfection happens in the future eschaton. We will know the meaning of life in the eschaton, not in the Genesis creation story. It is in Christ in the eschaton that we come to understand Adam and Eve and the meaning of all of history. It is not until we know the end that we will understand the beginning. Thus the correct theological orientation is not towards the past but towards life in the world to come. We read Genesis to come to know Christ as our Creator rather than to learn what it is to be human.” (Fr. Ted Bobosh)
“ ‘When the intemperate man is punished, the simple man becomes more astute, and a wise man of understanding shall receive knowledge ’ (Proverbs 21:10 LXX). The intemperate man is one example of a man who moves his free will in the wrong direction, the lack of self-control. The punishment he receives is his own fault. The simple man is one who is beginning to move his will toward Wisdom and His virtues.” (Orthodox Study Bible, Proverbs 21:10)
“Interestingly enough, Jesus never once suggested to His disciples that they be right. What He did demand is that they be righteous. In listening to His words, we find that we spend almost all our energy in the wrong direction, since we generally pursue being right with every ounce of our being, but leave being good to the weak and the naive.” (Archimandrite Meletios Webber)
“Boredom comes from an excessive self-focus…This week I was asked if boredom is a sin. Good question. After contemplating the matter, I think the answer is that sin and boredom go together, but I would rather say that boredom is a disease of the soul. It is a warning sign from God that there is a “dis-ease” in your heart that must be faced. Boredom is a sign that your life is moving in the wrong direction…One of the best cures for boredom is to get involved helping others. One doctor said that whenever a patient comes to him complaining of vague symptoms with no medical cause, he tells them to “crawl out of yourself.” It means to crawl out of the cave of self-pity and get involved in the world of hurting people…It is very difficult to be bored when you are giving yourself to help those around you. Boredom comes when we focus on our own needs. Crawl outside yourself and your problems will seem smaller and your boredom will soon disappear.” (Ray Pritchard)
“I’ve been saying for decades at this point that ‘self’ is the worst four letter word in our English language. We spend way too much time and energy self-focused. Perhaps the biggest problem is a subtle one when it comes to true knowledge and knowing. We tend to go in the wrong direction, meaning we try to force fit knowledge into some sort of definitive knowing we can wrap our minds around, something we can control. We are not comfortable with not knowing, paradox, uncertainty, ambiguity – in other words all of the things necessary to ‘die to self” that actually lead us in the right direction toward knowing Christ and a union with Him in which gain our true selves.” (Sacramental Living Ministries)
“If God directs the course of events at all then He directs the movement of every atom at every moment; ‘not one sparrow falls to the ground’ without that direction.” (C.S. Lewis)
“In facing tasks that seem well within our powers, we also often forget to ask for the Lord’s help. Wisdom in the believer’s life demands persistence in depending on the Lord’s strength and direction in little problems as well as the big ones.” (Foundation Study Bible, Joshua 8:12-17)
“We modern believers may know that God is real, but He is real for us only at defined moments. Of such people…‘In none of them is God steadily the dominant factor in life; in none of them does one live in a permanent awareness of God; in none of them is one permanently turned in the direction of God; in none of them is God at the center of life.’ ” (Dynamis 8/12/15, Dr. Lewis Patsavos)
“Neither does Satan lead us towards evil by force, nor does the Spirit of God draw us to good by compulsion. Rather, they are both spectators, each urging us on in the direction our own will inclines.” (Philoxenus)
“...if we let our ego be our spiritual guide, we will be following the direction of a fool.” (Abbot Tryphon)
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