“You Must Be Human First”

The story goes that a man went to Mount Athos to be a monk. Now, on Mount Athos they assign you an elder, who helps you progress in the spiritual life. You obey your elder, he helps you, you progress. So this particular man goes to his elder and asks him what he needs to do. The elder hands the man a copy of Les Misérables, and nothing else. Confused, the man asks the elder what advice he has for him. The elder tells him "First you must be human, and then we can talk about you becoming a god".

In our totalitarian-minded age, this is vital to remember: true people live from their chest, not their heads. What's in your head advises what's in your chest, but it cannot, should not attempt to, control it.

What do I mean by this?

To be truly human is to be driven toward something. Something within you  burns, and you feel it in your chest.  This is not obsession, it is passion directed. It is to be the servant of the Muse who speaks in your ear. Some may reduce that to mere metaphor, but I don't necessarily mean it that way. The idea that humans are microcosmic receptors of the immaterial universe is a deeply human one. And if it human, it is Orthodox. What most people think of as simply mental is actually relational. That relationship can help you to realize that you were always meant to realize that you were always meant to understand and express something profound about the human condition—something that stirs compassion, mercy, and fierce love in the face of suffering.

Think of Jean Valjean in Les Misérables. Before his transformation, he lives entirely in his head: bitter calculations of injustice, cold survival, resentment hardened into ideology. But when Bishop Myriel meets him with radical kindness, not with judgment or control—handing over the silver and lying to save him—something ignites in Valjean's chest. A burning. Not obsession, but directed passion. He goes to another city, and helps those who he can. After failing Fantine by accident, he becomes driven to protect Cosette, to redeem Fantine’s memory, to build a life of quiet, relentless goodness. 

Jean Valjean's head still advises—strategy, caution, planning—but it no longer tyrannizes the heart. The heart leads, and the man becomes truly human. He is bound to those around him by love, and he allows that to become his telos. It is irrational. He knows it. But rationality is for man, not the other way 'round.

This is what the elder from Mount Athos knew. You cannot leap straight to theosis/divinization, to “becoming a god” through ascetic feats or intellectual mastery, if you have not first allowed yourself to feel the full weight and wonder of being human. The totalitarian mind—whether in politics, ideology, and especially guided "spirituality"—demands control from the top down: the head suppressing the chest, reason smothering passion, systems crushing the individual soul. But true freedom, true divinity, begins lower down, in that fire in the chest that refuses to be extinguished.

In our decrepit age, we are taught to fear that fire. We are told it is dangerous, irrational, uncontrolled. We are offered systems—political, therapeutic, and especially spiritual—that promise to manage it, channel it, or put it out altogether. Putting it out is the end goal, just for the record. But the elder on Mount Athos knew better. He did not hand the young man a rulebook or an academic theological work that would leave him cold but giddy, like being atop a lonely mountain. The elder handed the novice a novel full of broken people, impossible mercy, and love that costs everything. Because only when we have wept with Valjean, raged with Javert, and felt the unbearable weight of grace can we begin to know what it means to be human.

Only then can we stand before God not as clever ideologues or disciplined ascetics, but as wounded, burning hearts that have learned to love in spite of everything. Especially our deluded ideas about reality. Those must go. 

So do not rush to silence the fire in your chest. Do not let the totalitarian spirit—inside or outside you—convince you that safety lies in control. Guard that fire. Feed it with beauty, with stories, with acts of mercy that make no sense on paper. Let it lead you, and let the mind follow as servant, not master.

First become fully human.

Only then will the path to becoming a god begin to open.