What should we do in difficult times?
Today marks the celebration of a man with a plan we should emulate. He was a Georgian, but not the kind who plants peanut, the kind who plants one of the earliest just and Christian states on Earth. He was the equivalent of a duke (Tornike) and he gave up the world to pray and then the world asked him to return when he was needed.
He is a model for the Constantine Strategy.
Of course, we are not yet in very difficult times in the United States. All over the world Christians would view the worst day a Christian faces (for being a Christian) in the United States as their best day . . . ever. This does not mean the slights, the put downs, the snobbery that faces us is not wrong. It is wrong, but it is tolerable. In fact, it is the sort of situation that leads to revival. Mild persecution is the balm of the church. We are not annihilated from the land, but neither are we tempted by the fat of the land. Eventually, God willing, if we prepare correctly a Constantine generation will arise and save what can be saved.
The decadence we face, the defying of Nature and of Nature’s God, in our abuse of the environment, our materialism, our injustice to the poor, and our sexual immorality will catch up with us. Too much evil and the center will fail and the nation fall, unless we become like John Tornike of Georgia.
John lived in a chaotic world where the West had fallen into ruin only to revive and be ruined again. The East, where he lived, had embraced the Constantine Strategy and saved education, art, and culture. No sooner had the Empire checked the Persians and restored harmony to the East than they faced the fierce Islamic invaders who seized much of the Empire. Fortunately, the Eastern Romans had established a commonwealth of allied cultures that could come to the aid of the flagging Empire. Georgia was one of the greatest of those states and the Saint one of the greatest of the Georgians.
John served his nation and his King well as a military commander until he felt called to prayer. The foolish Edmund Gibbon would portray the monastics as parasitical on culture in his Decline and Fall , but this is similar to thinking a natal nurse useless to maternity. The monastics of Mount Athos created the quiet spaces where reflection and culture could be created. They provided a retreat from the immediate so that long term thinking about the cosmos could be done. They also prayed and prayer is the greatest doing a man can do.
The imperial city, great Constantinople, would fall, but Mount Athos endures as a fragment of Christendom to this day thanks to the culture preserving work of men like Saint John. I plan on joining forces with anyone who will build a city to defend Christendom and a place of prayer to practice Christianity.
I want to be like John.
John was a great man who achieved great sanctity in his cell, but the world around Athos was falling apart. The Empire faced a civil war that might have left her unable to hold off her many external enemies and she needed Georgia’s help. Saint John was called to go to the King of Georgia and ask for aid. The King gave the cavalry, but only if the Monk-Duke would lead the army. He did and the result was a splendid victory. The Emperor was thankful and enriched John’s monastery.
John returned to prayer and to the creation of a hub for the development of Georgian art and culture. He died honored at a great age not just for his victories, but for his piety.
He set us a model: fight, pray, fight, pray, create centers for culture.
We can do this thing. We can decide that the enemy is not the atheist down the street or the libertine next door. The foes are the world, the flesh, and the devil and these foes exist in our hearts. We fight them. If our nation calls us, we will fight them in the human beings such as ISIS that have chosen to serve devils. We fight, however, in order to pray, because prayer changes us and makes us fit for our real jobs: incarnating the kingdom of God.
We may not win the next election, though we should vote and be good citizens. We can build institutions where art is honored, music is made, and beauty is created. We can educate the young. We can save the old books and great ideas ignored by a consumer culture. And if we are called to lead our nation form the quiet of these centers of culture, then we will be ready.
We shan’t ever be tyrants. We will never impose our rule. We will pray, make art, create beauty, and wait. We know what will happen. When the lies fail, the decadence palls, and the bill comes due, we will have raised up a few John Tornike souls and all will be well.
Fight, pray, fight.
Today.
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In