Yannaras contrasted this form of asceticism with 'holistic systems of individualistic utilitarianism and their totalitarian mechanisms,' which are never truly threatened by supposed revolutions that operate within the same system. This includes, for Yannaras, the 'capitalist-marxist polarization,' as Orthodoxy rejects any system that restricts the good of humanity to commodities and consumer goods.
Yannaras centered the 'existential action' of the Christian in 'achieving the personal truth of man,' that is, the hypostasis in relationship rather than any impoverished concepts of individuality, education, or society.
The Christian, then, is to 'renounce the service of goods.' These might be 'private goods, family goods, domestic goods, other goods that solicit us, the goods of our trade or our profession, the goods of the city, etc..'
In abandoning utilitarianism, the Christian abandons also utility as the good altogether; the ethics of Orthodoxy is the ethics of the martyrs, who 'embody the truth of the Church, the truth of the true life which is communion and relationship with God' by realizing 'a mode of existence which is the complete antithesis of individual survival, and has its historical prototype in the cross of Christ.
Lacanian Psychoanalysis and Eastern Orthodox Christian Anthropology Carl Waitz and Theresa Clement Tisdale
