As an alternative to the empire-backed church, the early Christians that went off to the deserts of Egypt, Palestine, and Syria emphasized lifestyle practice, psychologically astute methods of prayer, and a very simple spirituality of transformation into Christ. These desert communities grew out of informal gatherings of monks and nuns, functioning much like families. A good number also became hermits to mine the deep mystery of their inner experience.
The desert tradition preceded the emergence of systematic theology and formal doctrine. Christian faith was first a lifestyle before it was a belief system. Since the desert dwellers were often formally uneducated, they told stories, much like Jesus did, to teach about essential issues of ego, love, virtue, surrender, peace, divine union, and inner freedom.
They were a people who did not believe in letting themselves be passively guided and ruled by a decadent state, who didn’t wish to be ruled or to rule. They primarily sought their “true self, in Christ”; to do so, they had to reject “the false, formal self, fabricated under social compulsion ‘in the world.’ They sought a way to God that was uncharted and freely chosen, not inherited from others who had mapped it out beforehand. (The Wisdom of the Desert – Thomas Merton)
Today, we are, beginning to learn from them.
Philippians 3:9 “I no longer count on my own righteousness through obeying the law; rather, I become righteous through faith in Christ. For God’s way of making us right with himself depends on faith.”
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