Passions 6

St. Seraphim’s Fellowship
P.O. Box 351656
Jacksonville, Fl. 32235-1656

~ Introduction to the Passions ~

Part 7: The Passion that makes you show off


Dear Inmate:

We come now to the second main passion that’s in all of us. It’s the passion of vanity, or vain glory, which means empty glory. It gives you an irresistible urge to show off and look glorious. Maybe you think showing off couldn’t really hurt anyone and isn’t much of a sin. But do you remember hearing about when the devil tempted Jesus in the wilderness? He tempted Jesus three times, with three different temptations. Considering that he was dealing, not with some weakling, but with the mighty Son of God, he chose the three strongest passions in human nature to tempt him with. And one of these was the urge to show off. Leading Jesus up to the “pinnacle of the temple” The devil said..

Matt 4:6 And saith unto him, If thou be the Son of God, cast thyself down: for it is written, He shall give his angels charge concerning thee: and in their hands they shall bear thee up, lest at any time thou dash thy foot against a stone.
And Jesus replied…

Matt 4:7 Jesus said unto him, It is written again, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God.

You see? He refused to show off.

Vanity tries to push you into doing something spectacular like that, something stupid with no point to it, and especially with no love in it! It urges you to do things that put you in a wonderful light and make people admire you. But it leaves you empty, because in the end human admiration doesn’t do anything for you psychologically or spiritually. Getting human praise is like going into a jewelry store and putting on outrageously expensive gold and diamonds that you really can’t afford let alone pay for and will have to take off before you leave the shop. For a few minutes you can admire yourself, with all the “bling”, feel like a millionaire, but you leave without being able to buy and keep a single thing. It’s like imagining that you are the leading person in a popular action movie. For a couple of hours you live in the exciting action and feel that you are a real part of it. But when the movie ends, you haven’t actually done anything, and nothing important has happened to you. Vanity is pretending or imagining things that aren’t true about yourself and won’t do you any permanent good, but only makes you look or feel wonderful for a little while. It’s like living your life in a dream.

Isaiah 29:8 It shall even be as when an hungry man dreameth, and, behold, he eateth; but he awaketh, and his soul is empty: or as when a thirsty man dreameth, and, behold, he drinketh; but he awaketh, and, behold, he is faint, and his soul hath appetite:

You remember when the serpent slithered up to Eve and told her that if she would eat the forbidden fruit, it would make her like a god and she surely wouldn’t die from it as Adam had said? Well, when Eve fell for that, it was because she wasn’t thinking straight, it was because of pride. Pride made her ignorantly suppose that she could be god in Eden and make the rules herself. It made her forget the real God and his rule. The fathers say that pride affects the “thinking part” of us; it is what keeps us ignorant and unable to think straight. It makes us think there’s nothing wrong about deciding things for ourselves, without God. Then vanity comes along and affects the “desiring part” of us; it makes us want to carry out the dumb ideas that pride keeps coming up with. Vanity is what gives the go-ahead signal to all our wrong thoughts. So when Eve believed what the devil said, that eating the fruit would make her like a god, and that she would not die from it after all, then vanity got her all pepped up to go ahead and do as the devil and her own proud thoughts suggested. The idea of having all kinds of wisdom and glory, like God, sounded lots more exciting to her than just sitting around being a helpmate to a plain old human being like Adam.

Do you see how pride and vanity work together? Pride makes us unable to know that there is a God around, and gets us to think we can be God ourselves and make all our decisions by ourselves. Then when vanity moves in, he begins to like that idea. Vanity makes you want to keep God out of the picture, so you can feel glorious and important by imagining you really have taken his place. It makes you want to keep your brain blindfolded, so you can dream and not be disturbed by the reality of God’s light. The Bible is talking about vanity when it says;

John 3:19 And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world,
and men loved darkness rather than light,

You see? They actually desired the darkness. Pride only makes us think we ought to be important and be able to accomplish great things. But vanity fills us with a desire to look important, whether we are or not, and to look as though we are accomplishing great things. People with a lot of vanity are frequently very hard workers. But they aren’t working out of love or mere necessity. They’re working to get known and respected, to be applauded like actors. They don’t usually like the work, but they’re so addicted to human admiration that they’ll work themselves right into an early grave just to be praised during the short time they have to live. It’s an awful waste of effort, because they’ve done nothing to make themselves truly happy or to please God and be blessed by him.

"Vainglory is a change of nature, a perversion of character. It is a dissipation of labors, a waste of sweat". (icon of St.John Climacus)

With pride, we are merely ignorant of what our real self is like. But with vanity, we deliberately build a fake image of what we are like. We set up this image of ourselves so we can gaze fondly at it, like Narcissus, from Greek Mythology, the handsome young man who gazed at his reflection in the water for such a long time that the gods finally changed him into a flower growing alongside quiet little pools, so he could everlastingly look at his own image. It was the death of him as a man, of course. And when we set up an image for ourselves and others to admire, it’s the death of us too. Our real self becomes buried in a little sepulcher way down in our heart; as long as vanity is in control, no one ever hears much from it again. Vanity hates your real self and wants to keep it buried, because your real self is weak and awkward and would humiliate it. Your real self would never get all the praises and compliments that vanity can get by setting up its fake image of you. Vanity can make you look sweet, sincere, faithful, noble, and even humble, whereas your real self wouldn’t begin to look that good if it were showing. Vanity always hates God too, because God is waiting for the least opportunity to go down into your heart and revive your real self and give it strength to live.

Vanity wants to make you look attractive, fascinating, bright, gifted, faithful, in control of everything, in possession of all the characteristics your society most applauds, so you will have a kind of glory of your own. Well, perhaps I shouldn’t say it wants to make you look attractive, because the fathers tell us that’s not true in every case. Saint John Cassian mentions that…

“Where the devil cannot create vainglory in a man by means of his well-fitting and neat dress, he introduces it by means of a dirty, cheap, and uncared-for style.” (Icon of John Cassian)

Either way, vanity makes you crave the attention and admiration of people around you. That’s why the fathers say that vanity is man-pleasing instead of
God-pleasing. Vain people don’t care about anything except winning the admiration of others. They insidiously hide whatever is weak in themselves, whatever they think other people would not praise. They cover up their sins and weaknesses and pretend not to have any.

For instance, something that always comes in the package with vanity is a terrific amount of anger, but vain people cover it up. They very often cover it up with illness and physical disabilities. They can cover it up by being quiet or by walking out on you. Or they can let it out and then cover it up afterwards, by making it look like righteous anger for some just cause. In any event, they never let it look like a weakness or sin. They keep it out of sight, or they make it look like a brave protest so you’ll admire it. So vain people are actually habitual liars, always trying to give you impressions that aren’t true. Because they are fighting to look so good, they are hypersensitive to the least criticism, always afraid their shortcomings will be found out. The more dishonest they are the more sensitive they are. Sometimes they’ll take the most objective remarks very personally. Half of what you say may offend them, because they’ll interpret it as a personal criticism. Anyone who is too easily hurt or too quickly offended shows that he has a dangerously high amount of vanity in himself and wants a very abnormal amount of praise from other people.

“It is impossible for one who is captivated by love of applause to think of or do anything great or noble. He has to be base, mean, dishonest, little, petty-minded.”
(Icon of St. John Crysostom)

When you fall into the disease of man-pleasing (which we all do to one degree or another), you become a slave. You do whatever people say, and you lose the power to stand up for yourself. If someone says dress a certain way, you dress that way. If he says have certain likes and dislikes, you make it your business to have them. If he says go with certain people, you go with those people, that’s what you do. If he says don’t embarrass me by being too religious, you’ll even pull yourself away from God for him. And if he says you should be ashamed of yourself, you are immediately ashamed of yourself. Very often, also, vanity allows “pests” into your life, people who can walk in anytime and disrupt whatever you’re doing. Vanity tells you that you won’t look polite and warm-hearted if you are firm about pursuing the things that matter to you and refuse to let people throw you off course. So it makes you put up with individuals who waste your time, whom you really don’t benefit from, and whose main function is to interfere with the enjoyable and worthwhile things you could be doing. Vanity is what produces the person who can’t say no to people but can easily say no to God. If the disease goes to far, your one and only aim in life is to please all other people so they will approve of you and flatter you. At this point, unless a miracle turns you back to God, you die as a real person the way Narcissus did.

Vanity often starts out with something quite natural, like making ourselves attractive to the opposite sex. Once I was visiting a young woman who had an apartment of her own in New York City. There was a knock at the door, and a handsome neighbor came in to bring her a bouquet of flowers. When he left, the young woman shrugged her shoulders in disgust, “I wish that young man would stop bothering me,” she said. “He’s always doing stupid things like that, bringing me flowers or something!”

“Well,” I replied, “if you could sit where I’m sitting and see how passionately you flirt with him every minute he’s in the room, maybe you wouldn’t blame him so much. With the beautiful mating calls you’re sending out, I don’t see how he could help responding.” She was genuinely surprised. “I had no idea I was doing that!” she exclaimed. She thought she was just being herself, and so she was, but with a little vanity thrown in, which urged her to show off and get attention. You see what she was doing, don’t you? She was advertising something that wasn’t for sale. That can be a big mistake, it’s like advertising your furniture in the newspaper when you just want to show it off but don’t really want to sell it. Can you imagine the trouble you would have when people came to see it and found out that it wasn’t actually for sale? A rich king in the Old Testament was a show off like that. Once some mysterious travelers came along, and he insisted they come in to admire his great mansion and all the exquisite gold and jeweled ornaments he had around. They came in and admired everything all right. But pretty soon they came back a second time and took it all, and then killed him besides. That’s what can happen when you advertise things that aren’t for sale.

The worst thing about a woman’s advertising herself physically is that it allows vanity to get a firm toe-hold in her system, and from then on, that vanity works to distort her female nature. It keeps her from being a natural woman. In the beginning, vanity only urges you to beautify your own sexual characteristics, that’s just to make you trust it and think it’s just innocent fun. But after that it twists your nature, making it more and more fake and finally altogether unnatural. So it gradually makes a woman mannish and takes away her naturally womanly traits. In the extreme, with both men and women, vanity makes people unable to be healthily attracted to the opposite sex, because they are so infatuated with their own images that they are attracted strongly only to their own sex. It is the cause of homosexuality.

“Vanity counterfeits nature itself. When a man has vanity, nothing about him is natural.” (Icon of Maximus the Confessor)

Many people use things other than sex appeal to show off with. They may
use money, or personal prestige, or important social connections. But whatever they use, showing off removes them from everything natural and real, which of course includes God. Scripture tells about individuals who lost God forever because they wanted to show off and have personal glory more than they wanted to be honest with God. One such person was Ananias. Do you remember him? He wanted to impress the Apostles and other Christians gathered around. So he came up with a pile of money and offered it to the church, saying that it was everything he had gotten from selling his land. Actually, he had kept quire a bit back for himself, but he wanted them to think he was so holy and devoted that he’d donated his very last cent to God. And for coming into a spiritual place and lying, and trying to make a cheap impression and get glory for himself, he dropped dead immediately. (Acts 5:1, 5)

"Ananias would have been justified, to begin with, in not promising his money to God. But when, looking to human applause, he consecrated the money by promising it to God, just so he might be admired by men for his generosity, and then held back part of the price, he aroused such anger of the Lord that he was given no time even for repentance". (Icon of Basil the Great)

Some of the Jews also lost Jesus because of their vanity. Quite a few of them
believed in Jesus enough to want to came and listen to him and hear more of what
he had to say. But most of their society did not approve of taking Jesus seriously. And their vanity would not let them even go and listen to him, for fear of losing their high positions in society and the flattering respect of their people.

"Vanity makes some people who know the truth pretend they are ignorant of it or are opposed to it. It was not through real ignorance that they denied the Son of God, but in order that they might obtain honor from the multitude. “They believed,” says scripture, but were afraid, lest they be put out of the synagogue. And so they gave up their salvation. One who is a slave to the glory of this world cannot obtain the glory which is from God". (Icon of St. John Crysostom)

When Jesus himself was speaking with these people, he said; “How can you believe when you want glory from one another, and not the glory that comes from God alone?” And he told them that anyone who would be ashamed to be with him and follow him openly in this life would not be able to enter into his glory in the next life. The great people in our history have never been ashamed of their God. They have not even bothered to please kings and rulers, to say nothing of mass populations or little social groups, if it meant denying their God. The Church calls them lions among men, because their courage is so amazing. They are afraid of no one on earth. They are heroes because they have lived only to please God, never to please and be admired by men.

"The aim of all those who live in God is to please our Lord Jesus Christ and become reconciled with God the Father through receiving the Holy Spirit, thus securing their salvation. If this aim is lacking, all other labor is useless and all other striving is in vain". (Icon of Symeon the New Theologian)

The younger you are the easier it is to overcome the passion of man-pleasing. But even if you are older you can begin praying now to be delivered from it. Bear in mind that it’s possible that you may be in the habit of being governed by it, and it is very dangerous to let it go on. People who have pride can come to God and be healed at any age, although they’ll have suffered a lot of unnecessary pain if they have delayed for many years. But vanity is a disease that very few people recover from when they are older if it has become strongly established in them, for a reason that you will see in my next letter to you. If you are older, you must be doggedly determined for God’s healing. You must be very committed to prayer. As you pray to be delivered from vanity, and as God takes it out of you, you will feel a deeper honesty in yourself then you have ever felt before. You will feel your real self coming more and more to life. It’s kind of like the feeling of getting thawed out after you’ve spent a winter’s day outside and gotten your hands and feet uncomfortably numb. You’ll feel more relaxed about being yourself, even if you don’t look so great all the time. Your sense of humor will increase. The tendency to please others will die down. You’ll begin to do more to benefit and develop yourself. And the desire to benefit yourself will put you squarely on the road to loving and pleasing God, which is the very opposite of vanity and man-pleasing and will lead you into a very different kind of glory.

Teach me to do the thing that pleases you, O Lord; for you are my God. Let your loving Spirit lead me forth into the land of righteousness. (Psalms 143:10)

In Christ’s Mercy,

Brother Seraphim