I have heard it said on very high authority that vain repetition even applies to prayer.
Whatever it is, we better not do it.
I am no theologian, so I shall not venture to comment on prayer, but a longish life has taught me about another kind of vain repetition: one observable even in so simple an animal soul as our Dog Nessie. Nessie suffers from the repetition of the Observably Wrong Headed Idea.
Nessie, the Wonder Dog, coming to us through Pandemic and peril is not as bright as she could be. She is so eager to make a friend that she once killed a tree frog, wholly by accident, by trying to submit to it. She put her nose too close to the froggy she was a-courting and he did die. Sometimes her vanity works, as this year when thieves came her eager desire, straining at the leash, to lick them and make them welcome served the accidental purpose of chasing them off. Thieves misunderstood pure love.
Nessie is a good girl, even if a bit simple. If she could just have her ball and a comfortable couch with her family pack, and thunder storms would end, then her life would be complete.
Sadly her quest for jollification is complicated by Houston weather. We have storms aplenty. She has a strategy, if I am home, to sit directly on top of me. This will not protect her, but she does it and she is no natural lap dog. The other option is to hide under the couch, she hardly fits, and then she waits out the difficulties. This does not, naturally, do anything to end the storm, though perhaps some comfort is gained. The fearful thing, the lightening and thunder, does not go away, no real danger is averted, she trembles terrifically. She is soothed, but what she fears has not gone away by any act of her own.
Perhaps, if one is a dog, then this is the best one can do. One finds comfort as one can and the trouble, the actual danger of a lightening strike stays, but one vainly repeats the comforting acts in the vain hope that the lap or the couch is a good protection: vanity of vanities repeated. Maybe that is the best gentle Nessie can do? My purpose is not to blame her blameless doggy soul, but to point out that we folks can do better.
Humans are not after all dogs. We are afraid, but we do not have to seek ineffectual solutions that are merely comforting. We can invent lightening rods, study proper strategies for safety, and so find real comfort. We are thinking beings so we should never confuse the two things: a feeling of safety and safety. We radically can reduce our danger from the storms, but only if we act and do not merely repeat what merely makes us feel good.
Nessie vainly repeats, but good men effectually act. We must beware. Grifters will sell us useless nostrums to protect us from the storms and the vain will repeat these Observably Wrong Headed Ideas, because foolish, consumed by vanity. We can observe what has been, what is probably, and the truth of metaphysical and physical reality. We are not moved by mere comfort and the vanity of crowds, even academic ones.
Or we should not be.
Naturally, we are not just eternal souls, but also animals, so sometimes vanity will infect us and we will do what is comforting, if ineffectual. Ideology will do this for us. We will adopt an ideology that insists that this time the strategy that failed spectacularly will work for us, because it is comforting and after all we are doing it and not those other people. Surely this time we will get it right?
This is the vanity of trading Orthodoxy for the same central errors that have gutted endless numbers of other religious groups. If we hide, if we refuse the hard reality of truth, goodness, and beauty, then this time the storm will pass over us and oddly this strategy will appear to work. If the storm does pass today, as storms mostly do, then we will confuse our safety as being a result of what we did. Nessie will set on a lap or hide under a couch, but her safety is a matter of fortune not reason. She is in peril if her betters have not provided for her ultimate safety.
Nessie does not know why she is safe, air conditioned, and comfortable. She does not even have the capacity to take for granted the human civilization that makes her safe. We should know and we can be thankful.
We understand this in the physical world, but then can become vain in our metaphysical experiments. We are kept in safety for all time by the good God and prayers the Mother of God, but we forget in our vanity what actually saves us. We think our vain comforting reactions have saved us: comfort does not correlate with effective causation. Our credentials are useless in the storm. Reality never has swerved when facing a certificate. Instead, we need the rock of genuine goodness, truth, and beauty.
And this is the lesson of Orthodoxy: our betters have provided for our safety. They have faced decadence and chosen discipline. They have doubted and selected the dialectic. They have by God’s good grace found the Scriptures, built the lightening rods of the creeds, and have created the culture that could produce the scientific revolution and human rights: liberty with law. They became like God, gods in our midst, and have gone before us.
Against this witness we could choose, sometimes for our academic comfort, some Observably Wrong Headed Idea. We endlessly could dither about what others have already shown us will end in death. What if we write another paper? What if we have another conference? We are not struck by lightening this time, so surely our plans will work? Right?
We are not dogs, but we return to our own vomit.
The greatest vanity in the Christian academy is to repeat the same errors hope for different outcomes.
Nessie is afraid every thunderstorm. I am not, because I accept the physics and metaphysics of Orthodox science and religion.
We can be women and men of truth, goodness, and beauty. We can explore new solutions to ancient wounds, not proclaim sickness health! We can have genuine community and study what it is to be Orthodox in the twenty-first century.
Accept nothing less than an Orthodoxy that is never dated: eternal and effectual. We protect Nessie, who cannot know better. The great company of saints, gods on the Earth, pray for us. The Good God, ineffable and eternal, is before us. We can do better, because whatever we repeat is effectual, not vain.