It was an intriguing photograph: a dozen Japanese children walking through a snowstorm, dressed only in shorts and sneakers. Life magazine picked up a sotry about an experimental Japanese kindergarten in suburban Tokyo, where 375 children play and learn whatever they would at any other kindergarten, only they do so wearing nothing but shorts and shoes, indoors and out. Their parents agree with the school director, who sees that affluence can spoil children and make them weak; the idea here is to toughen them up.

The idea would be a valuable import, if Americans could be persuaded to buy into it. Although that seems unlikely. Here in America, life is geared toward the pleasure principle, towards relaxation and having fun. How many times do we hear people say, “Take it easy,” or “Don’t work too hard.” Our modern technology has brought with it all kinds of labor-saving devices – “instant,”, “Automatic,” “push-button,” “Self-cleaning” – now considered to be “essential” features of the contemporary household/office. And while there’s nothing wrong with improved efficiency, the very notion that “easier” is “better” is already dangerous.

Christianity is hard. It is the way of the Cross. Endure hardness, St. Paul counsels Timothy, as a good soldier of Jesus Christ (II Tim. 2-3). How many of us can say with the Psalmist: …for the sake of the words of Thy lips have I kept the ways that are hard (Ps. 16:4)? It is hard to struggle against our fallen nature, to choose, at every fork in the road, the way that is strait and narrow. But we must make it a habit. Fasting is difficult because we are habitually self-indulgent. Standing in church is difficult because we are too soft. We have to toughen up.

Physical laxity is directly correlated to spiritual and moral laxity. In our Morning Prayers, we pray: “Grant me, O Lord…to work for Thee without idleness…” According to the Holy Fathers, laziness is one of the three giants of the devil, together with forgetfulness and ignorance. “When the soul’s eye, the intellect has been darkened by these three,’ writes St. John of Damaskos, “the soul is dominated by all the other passions.” Among the passions of the body, the same Saint lists “general softness of living…every kind of physical luxury and gratification of the whims of the flesh (especially when the body is in good health) .. and a life of bodily ease, which by coarsening the intellect makes it cloddish and brute-like and never lets it raise itself towards God and the practice of the virtues.” (Philokalia)

For all our enviable living-standard, our American way places us at a spiritual disadvantage. When Christians in Russia still risked persecution and imprisonment, Fr. Dimitry Dudko very perceptively told believers there:

“If we compare our religiosity with that of the West, the balance will fall to our side. Why? Simply because Golgotha is here, and not there. Can an abundance of material goods bring about a religious rebirth? They say that the Catholics don’t know what to do in order to keep people in church. They have everything: books, churches. But the people, if they believe at all, do so only weakly. We have nothing. But if people believe here, they are ready to die for their faith.”

The benefits of a “hard” life, voluntary of involuntary, is evident in the life of almost any saint. St. Nicholas of Japan cam from a very poor family, and as a seminarian he was obliged each term to make the 150-mile trip back and forth to the seminary on foot. But these hardships early in his life strengthened his character and contributed to his prodigious capacity for work and his stunning achievements on the mission field. St. Innocent of Alaska, had likewise a difficult childhood: he was orphaned at an early age, and he, too, committed himself to the work of God with extraordinary energy and resourcefulness. On some of his missionary journeys he was compelled so sit for hours in a cramped kayak over frigid waters, or travel for days over frozen terrain by dogsled or caribou. All for the sake of spreading the Gospel. Indeed, it is not physical stamina which is itself a virtue. Another saint, Elder Ambrose of Optina, developed such a weak constitution in the last years of his life that he had to spend much of his time in bed. But even in this condition he expended himself out of love for God and his neighbor.

Because most of us live in relative comfort and physical well-being, we must compensate by developing an ascetic consciousness, as Fr. Dimitri says. We must embrace difficulties rather than shun them. Instead of doing what “feels good,” we must choose to do what is pleasing to God. The Church helps us by appointing certain physical disciplines, such as fasting and standing in church, which strengthen our moral and spiritual fibers. The Kingdom of Heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force. This is no time to be soft on ourselves. If we hope to avoid turning into spiritual couch potatoes, we’d better toughen up. By making a practice of forcing ourselves on the path of virtue, we will come to see that the Saviour’s yoke is easy and His burden is light.