WARNING: MATURE CONTENT — SERIOUSLY

I heard Fr. Stephen Freeman reference the book “Enlargement of the Heart,” by Elder Zacharias of Essex in a talk posted on YouTube. He spoke highly of the elder and, apparently, the book is something of an Orthodox classic on the spiritual thought of Saints Silouan and Sophrony. So I did what one does; I searched for it on Amazon. Now, here is where things get interesting and telling. As soon as I had typed in “enla,” — I didn’t even get to finish the word — Amazon had a whole laundry list of suggestions for me, all of them involving enhanced male sexual performance pills, gels, creams, oils and who knows what else; I was embarrassed to look further. Now, I want to assure you that these suggestions were not based upon my personal past Amazon searches, but upon the search histories and purchases of nameless hoardes, on advertising dollars, and on some proprietary Amazonian algorithm. I want to enlarge my heart; Amazon apparently wants me to want to enlarge something else entirely. They want to enlarge their profit.

Now, this could be passed off as humorous, I guess, but I think it is not. When I have spoken of the actors in this farcical search — me, other consumers, the advertisers, Amazon software engineers — I have left out one who lurks in the shadows: the satan. This ancient adversary wants me to enlarge not my heart but my passions: pride, envy, anger, sloth, avarice, gluttony, and lust. It is not clear to me that anger and avarice are involved in this search, though clearly the other deadly thoughts are. And he uses culture and technology as his agents of temptation. Our culture is sexually obsessed and confused to an unparalleled degree. The notion of voluntary celibacy and chastity/faithfulness are incomprehensible. To be a man is to be sexually virile. And, ironically, to be a man is also to be androgynous or effeminate. To be a woman is to be sexually desirable. And, ironically, to be a woman is to be indistinguishable from a man. To be either is to choose, not to be given a sexual identity from birth but to construct it whole cloth. We think that is freedom. It is slavery. And while there are, I suppose, redemptive uses for social media, its de facto purpose, spiritually speaking, is to stoke the passions. If the satan is the father of lies, one of his offspring is social media. It is not only lies, but child sacrifice that is on offer. Is there anyone who doubts any longer that social media is wounding and killing our children? But, apparently we stand helpless to say no. That is the nature of the passions; they render us passive.

I downloaded a sample of the book for my kindle. I wonder if Elder Zacharias has ever searched for his book on Amazon, and if his results were similar to mine.