Discovering whats important by going back to someone who knew

I’d appreciate your help. What follows is some work I am doing for my upcoming book. Basil is a hero of mine. He was truly remarkable, and I’m using him to make a point about the church when we are at our best. Can you let me know how it reads for you?

Basil was brilliant. He was the smartest in his class and ran rings around most of his university professors.

He knew he was smart and tended to treat others with contempt. That was until the day his sister had enough. “You are a stuck up pig”, she yelled in exasperation.

Somehow her words got through his guard and triggered a crisis in his confidence. He sought to understand what was happening for him and found a copy of the Bible. A brilliant Greek scholar, he found the truth he was reading spoke to the core of who he was as a human being.

He began to let go of his trust in his own capacity and began the lifelong wrestle of putting his trust in Jesus. Before long he knew he needed help, but not from scholars, from people who were living faith.

Basil went on a tour, visiting some of the most radical Christians he could find. Ultimately he came home both challenged and a little bit disappointed. He met people who were very committed but there was something missing.

He wanted to give Jesus everything. He found a place to be by himself and attempted to live each day fully committed to Christ. He failed.

We have the letter he writes out of desperation to his close friend Gregory asking him to come and join him because he needs both the company and the accountability. His frustration with himself is obvious:

“I have abandoned my life in town, as one sure to lead to countless ills; but I have not yet been able to get quit of myself. I am like travellers at sea, who have never gone a voyage before, and are distressed and seasick, who quarrel with the ship because it is so big and makes such a tossing, and, when they get out of it into the pinnace or dingey, are everywhere and always seasick and distressed. Wherever they go their nausea and misery go with them. My state is something like this. I carry my own troubles with me, and so everywhere I am in the midst of similar discomforts. So in the end I have not got much good out of my solitude.”

His letter to Gregory goes on to outline a dream for a different way of living which becomes the basis for the Basilian monastic movement.

Basil the Great is one of the most important figures in church history. He and Gregory, along with his brother (also Gregory), form the nucleus of a fellowship that will help transform Europe.

Together they will fight for the truth of the Trinity and help hammer out one of the foundational documents of the Christian church, the Nicean Creed.

The fellowship we see amongst Basil and the Gregorys is replicated amongst what became the Basilian Monastic Order. Basil’s sister also founds a parallel order for women.

My friend Bruce Dutton explored some of Basil’s story and wrote about it in an Australian Christian magazine. He points out that Basils monks

“were not just to care for the welfare of their own souls. They were also to care for and encourage one another in their discipleship.”

Bruce goes on to point out,

“They were to “help carry one another’s burdens” (Galatians 6:2); to “be eager to show respect for one another” (Romans 12:10); to be “tolerant with one another” (Ephesians 4:2); to be “kind and tender hearted to one another, forgiving one another” (Ephesians 4:32); “to provoke one another to love and good works” (Hebrews 10:24); to “submit to one another” (Ephesians 5:21) and to confess their faults to one another, and to pray for one another”(James 5:16)”.

Most of Basil’s longer and shorter rules came directly from the Bible.

At the heart of a Kingdom Cell are people who have dedicated themselves firstly to Jesus, then to each other. Their fellowship is deep and strong. It never ends there though.

Basil hits one more identity crisis, as he realises his team have become too insular, too safe in the monastry. He then makes the shift out of the monastery to of engagement in the local community. His monks serve the local community at its points of need and he becomes the local bishop, using the local church as a kind of community centre for the whole region.

Pope Benedict says of Basil,

“In reality, St. Basil created a special kind of monasticism, not closed off from the local Church, but open to it. His monks were part of the local Church, they were its animating nucleus. Preceding others of the faithful in following Christ and not merely in having faith, they showed firm devotion to him — love for him — above all in works of charity. These monks, who established schools and hospitals, were at the service of the poor and showed Christian life in its fullness.”

Whenever the church has been at its best, there have always been these small groups at the core that set the culture and tone for others through their love for Jesus and commitment to a mission bigger than them.