Limitation
We live in a culture of control, writes Elizabeth Theokritoff:
What is meant by a “culture of control”? Looking around us, we repeatedly see a desire to control nature, often manifested in seemingly trivial ways. Many people regard it as quite normal, for instance, to have strawberries to eat in mid-winter, relax in a cool house in mid-summer in a subtropical climate, or sit on a well-watered lawn beside a swimming pool in a semi-desert. … They reflect an expectation that nature should not be allowed to restrict us. That if I happen to feel like doing something, then neither season, nor climate, nor distance should be allowed to stand in my way.
[…]
In many developed soecieties, it is increasingly acceptable for lives to be artificially shorted by euthenasia, or artificially prolonged by costly medical procedures even when they are manifestly drawing to their natural close. New lives are artificially cut off in utero, or artificially initiated through elaborate fertility treatments. The common denominator is the feeling that I should be in control: I should not have to accept and adapt to a course of events that is not of my own choosing.
(Living in God’s Creation - Orthodox Perspectives on Ecology, p. 23)
Or even, this morning, as I start on Exodus 90, I think it normal to have a 15-minute hot shower in the midst of freezing temperatures, and bemoan this sacrifice.
Spoiled children we are.
This does of course hearken back to the very beginning when Adam and Eve ate of the fruit - transgressed their one limitation. This refusal of course permeates all of society today. Why should I not be in control? How can I eliminate the factors that cause my life to change and shift?
We forget that even the control we exercise over ourselves is a self-yoking. Self-control means self-slavery.
This is perhaps why God deals so lightly with us - the alternative would be an extinguishing of the human spirit. He calls us to walk a royal path with Him. To accept limitation on one side, but embrace the call to be a co-creator.