Belief in God is a concept that defies logical explanation or measurement. People are not born believers, they begin to believe at certain points in their lives. If you hope for the help of the Lord and want to achieve true faith, but have not yet come to it on your own, then the article will be useful for you.
What is true faith? The truth is different for everyone, everyone comes to it themselves as they progress spiritually or through life events. A person is born in a country with a certain culture, in a family with certain foundations and principles. That is, religion is often instilled in childhood, but this does not mean that it will develop into faith.
Some accept the beliefs professed by their parents or immediate circle, others begin to search for something closer to their soul. And this is not forbidden.
There are many religions, but God is one, albeit in different manifestations.
Faith in God is a feeling that is not amenable to material changes and logical evaluation. This is a person’s relationship with the Lord, his subtle, spiritual, invisible, but constantly felt connection with the Almighty, understandable only to himself.
People who visit temples, read prayers, and conduct religious rituals often call themselves believers and religious. But faith is not outside and not for show, but inside, hidden from prying eyes and intimate. It is not in the head, but in the heart. And whatever God is (Allah, Jesus Christ, Buddha), faith in him means confidence in the existence of higher powers that guide and help mortals.
Good to know! It is impossible to force yourself or someone else to believe in God. Faith is not knowledge, not a subject that can be conveyed. It descends from another, spiritual reality, often at odds with human judgments. And a believer, who has allowed God into his heart, will be able to become a conductor of divine energy, passing it on to other people.
Levels of Faith
Coming into the world, a person has needs. As they grow older, some develop into desires that force them to seek pleasure. Some people put the search for pleasure as the meaning of life, others give up many worldly goods and acquire a need for Truth. They are the ones who truly sincerely turn to God and let him into their souls. Others either do not believe at all, or remember the Lord in difficult moments when there is nowhere to wait for help, and only higher powers can help.
The development of faith has several levels:
- Confidence. Truths are accepted at the level of thinking; there is a belief in the existence of God, obtained from relevant literature, from ancestors or preachers. Truth is placed on the same level as matter, but nothing changes inside.
- Confidence. At this level, the existence of God is not just accepted by the mind, but also realized in the heart. Having faith in his soul, a person prays to the Lord, lives following the commandments and does not break them, and also sincerely hopes for God's help in moments of doubt and trouble.
- Loyalty. The Lord is recognized by the mind and present in the soul. Man is ready to follow his will to God. This is pure love based on absolute fidelity, implying sacrifice. Such faith is saving, but to achieve it, you need to renounce worldly passions and constantly work on yourself.
Religion and religiosity
Religion is human attempts to understand the spiritual world through matter. People invented rituals of worshiping the gods and compiled sacred scriptures. Most treatises belonging to different religious denominations describe how to believe in God. Through religion, people acquire a special worldview and begin to follow the spiritual path. But this phenomenon has an earthly, human essence.
It is impossible to gain faith after reading the scriptures, just as it is impossible to become a doctor only after studying medical literature.
There must be a desire to know and let the absolute Truth into the soul, as well as a special mental attitude. Without this approach, religiosity can become fanaticism.
Faith or fanaticism
If higher spiritual forces are not felt, then a person seeks to replace them with externally manifested and often ostentatious worship. And this is neither good nor bad, but sometimes such a desire has a bias toward strict adherence to the canons to the detriment of internal sensations.
A person who strictly follows the scriptures considers himself better than others, since he worships the Lord, being, in his own opinion, the chosen one. This fosters pride, disdain for non-believers or those who do not demonstrate religiosity, and arrogance.
There have always been fanatics in all religions. And they are confident that the most correct and only true are the rituals they conduct, adherence to the canons and scriptures, and the strictest religious organization. They follow the true path, and the rest are fallen and unfaithful. If you communicate with such a fanatic, he is capable of killing the first shoots of faith in the bud, as he will instill the wrong concept of religiosity.
Theoretically, any person who has recently embarked on the path of faith can become a fanatic. He will prove to himself that the choice he has made is correct and impose it on others. Almost everyone goes through this first stage of spiritual existence, but some linger and get stuck in it, cultivating pride and becoming a fanatic.
Five Steps on the Path to Faith in God
Finding faith in God is a difficult, slow and gradual path. And its main steps are discussed in detail below.
Separate the material from the spiritual
God is known not through phenomena that can be measured materially, but through the invisible spiritual presence of the Lord in all deeds. God is a spirit felt on an intuitive level, like love, expectations. Do not try to look for material evidence of the existence of the Lord and confirm his presence with science or logic. Just accept faith as an absolute and do not look for one hundred percent confirmation.
Advice! If your faith has not yet strengthened, remember difficult situations that seemed hopeless, but were resolved miraculously: the recovery of a loved one, avoiding death in an accident.
Don't control everything
Any religion claims that God is the creator of all life on Earth. And this means that only the Creator can control everything: people have no control over anything. Stop controlling all areas of your life, accept that you are absolutely powerless in some ways and follow God’s will. Let the Almighty guide you. But don’t let everything take its course: listen to your heart, make decisions with your soul and with prayers if doubts arise.
Learn more about God
Until you know who God is, you cannot believe in him completely and selflessly. Visit temples, read the Bible and other scriptures, ask clergy with questions and requests, communicate with religious people, attend church services.
Advice! Learn and read prayers. But do not pronounce them automatically, but delving into the meaning and putting your soul into every word.
Lead an active social life
Don't withdraw into yourself and become a hermit: get more involved in social life. Observe other people: successful and having everything, and also deprived of many benefits, but actively prospering.
Do good and bring it to the masses: help the psychologically or financially disadvantaged, the homeless, the sick, people with disabilities. If there are no financial opportunities, look for other ways to help: communication, spending time together, participation, physical assistance (cleaning, repairs, shopping).
Advice! To ensure that your help is targeted and provided to different people in need, become a volunteer or a member of a public organization in your city.
Sincerity in everything
Faith is a real, sincere feeling. And in order to fully experience it, you need to achieve sincerity in everything: in recognizing yourself with all the positive and negative sides, in your actions, in communicating with loved ones, in interacting with others, in self-development, work, study and all areas of life. Don’t lie to yourself and others, don’t try to appear to be someone you are not, and acquire traits that are not inherent to you. The Lord accepts everyone.
How do doubts arise?
Nascent faith is incredibly vulnerable and fragile. She is often doubted. And one of the archpriests identified several types of such doubts:
- Doubts at the level of thinking. They arise due to superficial knowledge. And when such knowledge becomes deeper, doubts of this type disappear.
- Doubts in the heart. A person understands everything with his mind and accepts knowledge, but does not feel the presence of God in his soul, the spiritual world is not realized by him. And even acquiring large amounts of knowledge with such doubt will not help, since information data satisfies the mind, but sincere feelings are needed to fill the heart. In this case, selfless, frequent prayers can help: the Lord answers the call of the heart of believers.
- Doubts due to conflict of heart and mind. In his heart a person feels the existence of the Lord, but with his mind he cannot realize that God is present in his life and in everything that surrounds him. He asks questions about how divine powers allow the death of good people and the suffering of innocents. Such doubts can be eradicated by reading sacred scriptures, visiting temples, communicating with believers, and praying.
- Life doubts. The existence of God is accepted by the heart and realized by the mind, but does not lead to the observance of all divine commandments modern look life with all its temptations, vices, material desires, difficulties. The clergy recommend taking the first decisive step and forcing yourself to unquestioningly observe the laws of the Lord.
How to truly believe in God?
How to learn to believe in God sincerely and truly? Any dissatisfaction is caused by a lack of happiness and love. And if a person considers his faith weak and insufficient, his soul strives for all-encompassing Divine love. At first, the believer receives satisfaction from external paraphernalia: religious ceremonies, visits to temples, visits to holy places. But when these actions become automatic, mechanical and devoid of spiritual aspiration, faith enters a stage of crisis.
The path to the Lord is a thorny, difficult and even suffering road to love. But all thorns arise through the fault of the person himself due to the low level of his consciousness. And sometimes love is replaced and crowded out by other feelings: aggression, envy, anger, hatred, indifference, vanity, greed.
If you need not formal and external, but real and internal faith, then you must be honest with yourself. Free yourself from masks and psychological barriers to see your true face, albeit imperfect (we are all sinners). Recognizing and accepting your bad qualities reduces pride, backbiting and arrogance. And this is an important step on the path to true faith.
According to the scriptures, earthly people have no control over anything, not even their own bodies. But desires are manageable and accessible, and the Lord helps to fulfill sincere spiritual aspirations. If the desire to comprehend divine powers and believe sincerely and strongly, the Almighty will satisfy it. And prayers emanating from the soul help to overcome worldly suffering and follow the path of love.
Finally, instructions and advice to those who have not yet acquired true and strong faith, but want to achieve this:
- Don't expect faith to come at a certain moment. It is found and strengthened gradually.
- Don't question your faith if the Lord doesn't seem to help you. He did not leave or abandon, but gave tests that would strengthen character and will.
- Don't stop believing under any circumstances. This is what faith is all about: it is always there and unshakable.
- Do not talk about faith, do not impose it on others. This is an intimate and personal feeling that does not require publicity and is acquired by every person at the right moment.
To learn to believe in God, you need to realize faith, let it into your heart and strengthen it. This is achieved gradually, so believe, pray, turn to the Lord and love!
I live abroad for a while, there were all sorts of good and bad things. Questions arise all the time: why live, what is the meaning of my life. I really want to believe in God, I feel that this is what will help me answer all my questions. But how to come to church, how to believe honestly, without hesitation, and whether I can even believe without hesitation. How to separate the rational and some ideas about God? How can you believe if you can’t imagine? I can’t form my thoughts about the image of God, and reading books on religious topics doesn’t work. Sorry for the confusion, please help me with advice, although I understand that such questions cannot be answered quickly. ( 0 votes: 0 out of 5)
Irina, age: 37 / 05/06/2013
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How to believe in God?
As you know, atheists are people who position themselves as non-believers in God and in the religious worldview system in general. From the point of view of a believer, atheists are divided into two groups - calm atheists and militant atheists. The first include those who call themselves non-believers simply because they have never had a meeting with the spiritual world in their lives and the religious sphere simply does not interest them; their attitude towards the Church can range from indifferent to positive. The second group are those atheists who have a sharply negative attitude towards the Church, consider religion to be evil and try to fight it.
Among the first group there are those who say: “I would like to become a believer, but I don’t know how to gain faith in God.” Such people can be advised to pay attention to the words of St. Silouan of Athos:
“Pride prevents the soul from entering the path of faith. To the unbeliever I give this advice: let him say: “Lord, if You exist, then enlighten me, and I will serve You with all my heart and soul.” And for such a humble thought and willingness to serve God, the Lord will certainly enlighten... And then your soul will feel the Lord; will feel that the Lord has forgiven her and loves her, and you will know this from experience, and the grace of the Holy Spirit will testify to salvation in your soul, and then you will want to shout to the whole world: “How much the Lord loves us!”
Once I attended by invitation at a social event. And there a man came up to me and said: “I want to believe in God, but I can’t meet a person who will prove my faith.” He immediately told me that he was an atheist, but only later I found out that he has a philosophical education, has a high opinion of himself, and that this is his kind of entertainment: pestering believers from his team with questions so that they can prove it to him with the help of intellectual arguments existence of God. And he immediately began to refute them philosophically. Although I didn’t know this during the conversation, I immediately somehow felt that it was not worth going in that direction - giving him philosophical proof of the existence of God.
I brought him the advice of the Monk Silouan, and I remember that in the words: “I will serve You with my whole life,” he, the poor man, was directly disturbed. He again began to push me towards philosophical arguments, then I noticed: “Christ promises: knock and it will be opened to you. But you don’t knock and wonder why they don’t open. How to knock? Yes, with the same prayer. Say it every day. It takes two seconds. What's so difficult about this? But something in you prevents you from saying this prayer. What exactly do you think?” After that, he suddenly became silent, then promised to think about it and walked away.
Atheists, when talking with believers, often say: “If there is a God, show me Him!” or “Let God appear to me so that I may believe in Him!” I wonder what they themselves would say to a person who declared that he did not believe in the existence of V.V. Putin, and suggested: “If Putin exists, let him meet with me personally”? In fact, Putin, as a free person, may not want to meet with you. Although who Putin is is just a mortal man. And we are talking about the Creator of the Universe. Isn’t it stupid to believe that He should appear at the first click to people who position themselves as His opponents?
Only those who are ready to change and begin to live according to the will of God, if He exists, are worthy of meeting God.
Rev. Ambrose of Optina: if an atheist could be convinced to live without sins for at least a month, then he would imperceptibly become a believer during this time
There is one more important circumstance. God Himself said to whom He reveals Himself, who is worthy to see Him: “The pure in heart will see God” (Matthew 5:8). Accordingly, if someone sincerely wants to gain faith or be convinced of whether God really exists, he should refuse to commit what God calls sin. As Saint Nicholas of Serbia wrote: “God and sin are at two different poles. No one can turn his face to God without first turning his back to sin... When a man turns his face to God, all his paths lead to God. When a person turns away from God, all paths lead him to destruction.” In turn, the Monk Ambrose of Optina said that if an atheist could be convinced to live without sins for at least a month, then he would, unnoticed by himself, become a believer during this time. Unfortunately, in none of the cases that I know of when atheists were offered this, did they agree. Although, it would seem, what do you have to lose? After all, the commandments do not call for anything bad, on the contrary. So, we have already moved on to how and what to talk about with militant atheists. They love to talk, or rather, argue with believers. At the same time, when talking about God, they often break into emotions that are excessive for someone who talks about something that they do not believe in the existence. It feels like there is something personal here. Some of the militant atheists have a grudge against God deep in their souls for something (for example, a relative died, or they once asked God for help and did not get what they wanted), while others have a rift in their souls because that lives in sin, but does not want to give it up and tries to overcome the very concept of sin and God. Maybe someone else has some personal reasons. But the very nerve that pushes an atheist to become “militant” is not explained by the content of his views. There is too much antipathy for what you call non-existent. However, we will not delve into the internal motives of militant atheists, but let’s talk about their ideas.
The very nerve that pushes an atheist to become “militant” is not explained by the content of his views
They are characterized by pathos: “We are scientific atheists! Atheism is strictly scientific, and religion is all sorts of unscientific tales.”
This is worth talking about in more detail.
Unscientific atheism
Science is the study of the material and knowable world. But God, by definition, is an immaterial being who obviously exceeds human cognitive abilities. Therefore, if we say that science knows nothing about an immaterial and unknowable being, of course, it cannot know, since this is not the sphere of its study. Because God is not part of the material, knowable world. Therefore, although there are many believing scientists, they do not make any reference to God in their professional activities or in scientific publications. And not because “science has proven that there is no God,” but because the very question of the existence of God lies outside the competence of science.
Nevertheless, science is very useful to us in some ways when talking specifically with atheists. And then I will give two reasons. The first will deprive atheism of its claims to be scientific, and the second will show how science opposes atheists, figuratively speaking, treacherously sticks a knife into their back.
Why is atheism, in principle, unscientific and cannot be scientific?
So, first thing. Why atheism is, in principle, unscientific and cannot be scientific.
In the philosophy of science there is such a thing as the principle of falsification. This is a way of recognizing scientific knowledge, according to which the criterion for the scientific nature of a theory is its falsifiability or falsifiability. That is, it is meant that in principle it is possible to conduct an experiment that will refute the theory being put forward. For example, if we talk about gravity, then objects flying into the sky on their own would indicate its infidelity. But if any doctrine is constructed in such a way that it is able to interpret any facts, that is, the doctrine is irrefutable in principle, then it cannot claim the status of scientific.
The experience of studying the views of modern atheists clearly indicates that this is precisely the teaching that we have before us. And when another atheist says: “Prove to me that God exists!”, the question arises: what exactly will be recognized as one hundred percent evidence refuting your atheism? Is there such a thing at all?
And mathematicians with calculations of statistical probabilities throw up arguments against atheism
And then mathematicians with their calculations of statistical probabilities throw up arguments. For example, Marcel Golet calculated that the probability of spontaneous emergence of the simplest replication system necessary for any living organism is 1 in 10,450. And Carl Sagan calculated that the chance of life arising on a planet like Earth by chance is 1 x 10 2000000000. And there are many similar calculations.
For example, all this convinces me. But an atheist can say - and does! - that he is not convinced. That he can believe in the random origin of the world. And it’s okay, they say, that the probability of this is practically zero. And this is what an atheist can say about any argument, right? For example, there is also an ontological argument that was developed by the philosophers Descartes and Leibniz, the mathematician Gödel, there is a moral argument that Kant supported - this convinced them of the existence of God, and they were all very intelligent people, their intellect far superior to the average atheist . But he can say about all this - and he does! - “I’m not convinced!”
So, if not theoretical arguments, then perhaps a miracle is such an argument? Unfortunately no. I remember I had a chance to read a book by Gennady Troshev, his memoirs about the Chechen war. This is a wonderful military general, who I personally like very much as a person. Gennady Nikolaevich positions himself in the book as an atheist. Moreover, he emphasizes that he is not militant, he was just raised that way. It's interesting that he describes miracles. Let me quote: “During the Chechen war, I heard stories that could not be explained by anything other than supernatural influence. I was struck by the case of senior lieutenant Oleg Palusov. In battle, he lost consciousness, when he woke up, he saw that the enemy bullet had hit the body icon of the Mother of God, pierced it, got stuck, but did not enter the chest. His mother put the holiday badge on him. The material from which that icon was made, of course, did not have any bulletproof properties. They say there were many such examples.”
That is, the general himself testifies that this small piece of metal could not stop the bullet, but it happened. And what does our respected general write next? He says: “It’s a pity that there weren’t enough such guardian angels in Chechnya for all our soldiers. One thing is not clear: did the mothers of the fallen pray less or worry about their sons than the mothers of the survivors?” .
For an atheist, a miracle also cannot be a 100% refutation of his ideology.
Here, of course, the argument itself is unique: firstly, not all mothers prayed, because there are also atheists among women; secondly, God never promised that He would save all His believers from death in war. But the point is not even this, but the fact that an atheist encountered a miracle, admitted that he could not explain it otherwise, but still found an intellectual way to dismiss this miracle in order to remain an atheist. This means that for an atheist a miracle also cannot be a 100% refutation of his ideology.
Perhaps a sufficient argument would be the special mystical feelings or religious experiences that a person experiences? Of course not, atheists reject this first of all, declaring that under the influence of psychotropic drugs one can experience the same feelings and experiences. True, it is unknown how they established this, without having the experience of religious experiences, because in order to compare, you need to know both this and that. Well, okay, the main thing is that we understand: this is not an argument at all for atheists.
Then what remains? Perhaps a direct vision of God? As some say: let God appear to me so that I can see with his eyes. I remember here how many years ago I read the stories of the American writer Harry Harrison, who was also a convinced atheist. And in the preface to the story “At the Waterfall,” he writes that he wrote this story under the impression of a vision that he once experienced in reality. But Harrison immediately stipulates that, of course, this vision was simply the result of a combination of various physical factors that led to such an effect on his consciousness. Hence the question: can’t an atheist say this about any vision he sees? That it was, they say, hallucinations, that’s all. Of course it can. And I also know such examples.
Even documented examples of mass observations of any miraculous phenomenon do not become an argument for atheists. For example, take the Miracle of Fatima. In July 1917, three children in Portugal, referring to a certain “lady” who appeared to them, said that on October 13, a miracle would appear in a field near the village of Fatima. Thanks to the newspaper men, this became known very widely, and at the appointed time, about 50 thousand people gathered at the indicated place, including reporters from central newspapers. And they saw extraordinary celestial phenomena. The sun became dim, changed its color and began to move quickly across the sky. There were also atheists in the crowd. Let us cite the words of one of them, Avelino Almeida, a journalist for the newspaper O Seculo, which adhered to openly anti-church positions: “Before the astonished gaze of the crowd... the sun trembled and made sharp incredible movements that went beyond all cosmic laws... the sun “danced” , according to the people." This all lasted about ten minutes in front of thousands of witnesses. Many of their stories have been preserved about this.
Catholics consider this a miracle from God, and I, for example, believe that this is a miracle from evil forces, but, one can say, we are united with them in that this is a miracle, a manifestation of the supernatural spiritual world. For an atheist, this is in any case a blow to their worldview. It is clear here that neither three children, nor all the churchmen combined could have arranged such a thing. But no - even a documented phenomenon that has had thousands of witnesses is not a 100% refuting argument from the point of view of atheists. And they also manage to explain it based on their ideology. For example, some atheists say that it was a mass hallucination caused by the religious fervor of the crowd - however, it is not clear why atheist witnesses who came specifically to “expose the miracle” succumbed to it. And some explain this as a UFO phenomenon, thereby demonstrating a willingness to believe in anything, even “little green men,” just so as not to recognize it as supernatural.
So, atheism is an unscientific ideology, because it does not meet the criterion of falsification, since for its adherents it is irrefutable in principle
And Dr. Franco Bonaguidi from Penn State University, as a result of three years of observation, found that during liver transplantation, religious patients endure the operation and postoperative period more easily and survive 26% more often than atheists.
Russian doctors say the same thing. Candidate of Medical Sciences Igor Popov reported on the results of many years of research in medical practice: “120 patients with spinal osteochondrosis received complex conservative treatment. Positive results for atheists were achieved on days 9-11, while for believers the pain practically disappeared after 4-7 days... We were especially surprised by the differences in the results of treatment of atheists and believers with arthrosis of large joints. For atheists, good treatment results were achieved on average only on the 18-22nd day from the start of treatment, while believers had a good result already on the 9-12th day. [It has been established that] in atheists, joint diseases last longer, pleurisy and intercostal neuralgia after rib fractures are more common, and operations have a greater number of complications, and even among those who recover, a greater number of failures and unsatisfactory outcomes occur. Of the 300 atheists, complications were observed in 51 people (17%). Out of 300 believers, 12 patients (4%) had complications.”
It turned out that it is faith that helps even very seriously ill people recover and survive. The results of a survey conducted among several hundred people who experienced serious illnesses showed that, other things being equal, believers, on average, tolerated various diseases better. And even the life expectancy of sincerely religious people with illnesses turned out to be slightly longer than the life expectancy of atheists.
Why does atheism have such a negative impact on the human body during the process of illness and recovery? The results of another interesting study presented at the 120th Annual Meeting of the American Psychological Association come to mind. When comparing two groups of people, some of whom lied and others who refrained from lying completely, it was found that people in the second group were four times less likely to report poor health in terms of their psychological state and three times less in terms of their physical state. health. That is, it was found that lying negatively affects human health. Isn't it an interesting parallel? Is it because atheism has an adverse effect on the recovery of patients because it is disgusting to human nature, which even on a subconscious level feels that it is a lie?
But that's not all. One of the sociological studies that was conducted in the UK, at the University of Cambridge, showed that believers tend to have more children than atheists. That is, from this point of view, it is more useful for society for a believer to be an atheist. Because society, at least here in Russia, is experiencing a demographic crisis.
We are now deliberately not going into any metaphysical areas and are talking about those areas that science can test. She tested and compared believers and non-believers. And, as we see, the conclusions are not in favor of atheism.
I remember several years ago I had the opportunity to correspond with one militant atheist, an activist of the atheist movement in Moscow. And I asked him: “Your organization has atheist meetings that you hold. And what do you do on them when you get ready?” He replies: “We are discussing how to deal with religion.” I say: “Perhaps you are doing something else?” - “No, nothing, just this.”
Let us also recall the social service of believers
What do religious believers do? They visit the sick in hospitals, care for the elderly, both believers and atheists, raise orphans, help disadvantaged people - just look, for example, at the list of projects on the Miloserdie.Ru website. And from the point of view of the interests of society, what is more useful: believers who help everyone, not just their own, or atheists, whose entire activity boils down to ensuring that there are fewer believers who help society? After all, they do not have their own atheist hospitals, which would be maintained exclusively by activists of atheist organizations. They do not have a service of atheistic nurses who would sit with the dying. I wonder how they could comfort and guide the dying? Not a single atheistic society runs an orphanage or a nursing home, whereas we have both in our monasteries.
Of course, there are also atheists among health care, education, and social service workers. But they simply work there in government agencies, just like Christians, Muslims, etc. However, we do not know of a single example of atheists, precisely as atheistic activists, doing something similar to what believers do precisely as believers, to whom religion gives motivation and strength to do all of the above, creating something of their own, different from state structures. No atheist society took the initiative: "Our atheism prompted us to open a soup kitchen for the homeless - or: - an orphanage."
Hence the simple conclusion: for society, atheists, in comparison with believers, are at best useless, and at worst harmful. Because believers lead their own social activities, but atheists not only do not lead, but also want the number of leading to be reduced.
“Peaceful” atheism?
The popular argument about the aggressiveness of believers migrated to our atheists from the West
Here it is worth saying a few words about one popular argument that migrated to our atheists from Western atheists. They say: “No, religion is harmful to society, as it gives rise to religious wars and terrorism, and atheists are such peaceful, kind people, there has never been any harm or violence from us.” Let me give you a typical example. In the book of the famous modern preacher of atheism, Dawkins, a rosy world of atheists is drawn, a world without religion: “Imagine: there were no suicide terrorists, the September 11 bombings in New York, the July 7 bombings in London, the Crusades, the witch hunts, the Gunpowder Plot, the partition India, Israeli-Palestinian wars,” etc.
A beautiful picture, but the facts do not spare it. If we look at the report of the US National Counterterrorism Center, which monitors the situation around the world, we will see, for example, that, according to statistics, of all terrorist attacks, 57% are religiously motivated (of which 98% were committed by Muslims), and 43% of terrorist attacks were committed by non-religious motives So irreligious terrorism is not much less, and atheist terrorists are well known in history.
For example, in Russian Empire Only in the period from 1905 to 1907, as a result of terrorist attacks carried out by atheists (Bolsheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries), over 9,000 people were killed and injured. But these are small things compared to what happened when the atheists seized power. For example, the database “New martyrs, confessors, who suffered for Christ during the years of persecution of the Russian Orthodox Church in the 20th century” includes 35,000 biographical certificates of those people who were killed or thrown into prison by atheists of the Soviet Union only because had other beliefs. And these are just those for which we were able to find documentary information. And only believers of the Russian Orthodox Church, while followers of other religions were also persecuted and exterminated in the USSR.
And in Republican France, captured by atheists, in 1794, the atheist General Turrot carried out a terrible massacre during the suppression of the uprising in the Vendee, when more than 10,000 people of both sexes were killed without trial, including relatives and family members of the participants in the uprising, clergy, monks and nuns .
And in Mexico, after the atheists came to power, more than 160 priests were killed in 1915 alone. Subsequent atheist persecution of religion in 1926 sparked a protracted civil war that claimed the lives of 90,000 people.
And in Cambodia, the atheistic leader Pol Pot was able to exterminate almost a third of his own people in just a few years of rule, including 25,168 Buddhist monks, as well as tens of thousands of Muslims and Christians.
Wherever the ideology of atheism is proclaimed as a state ideology, the result is the same: rivers of blood and repression against dissidents
We can go on for a very long time, remembering China, Albania, and other countries that have experienced first-hand the “joy” of the atheistic paradise of “life without religion.” Wherever the ideology of atheism is proclaimed as a state ideology - be it in Europe, America or Asia - the result is the same: rivers of blood and repression against dissidents.
Dawkins further writes: “I don’t think there are any atheists in the world who are ready to bulldoze Mecca, Chartres Cathedral, York Minster, Notre Dame Cathedral, Shwedagon Pagoda, the temples of Kyoto or, say, the Buddhas of Bamiyan.”
It is surprising that such things can be repeated by atheists living in our country, in which by 1939 there were only 100 operating Orthodox churches left out of 60,000 operating in 1917. Atheists in our country destroyed tens of thousands of churches and hundreds of monasteries, many of which were priceless architectural monuments. Mosques and Buddhist pagodas also suffered.
So, in fairness, it is worth imagining a “world without atheism”, in which there would not be those outrageous atrocities and senseless bloodshed that were committed under the pretext of instilling an atheistic worldview. And if atheists like to hold believers responsible for every crime ever committed by believers, basic honesty demands that they take responsibility for every crime committed under the banner of atheism.
So historical science is not a friend of atheists.
The debate is not between faith and scientific knowledge, but between two faiths: the belief that God exists, and the belief that there is no God
Atheists are very offended when their views are called faith. Of course, I don’t want to hurt their feelings, but what else can you call conviction in an idea that does not meet the criteria of scientific knowledge and cannot have scientific confirmation in principle? So in the case of religion and atheism, the dispute is not between faith and scientific knowledge, but between two faiths: faith that God exists and faith that God does not exist, despite the fact that the first may have experimental evidence, and the second - No.
Let's imagine that a ship is sailing, many of whose passengers have not seen the captain. And then a man appears who believes that there is no captain at all, and puts forward various arguments in favor of this. And he perceives those who tell him that there is a captain as people who simply invented some “idea of the existence of a captain” because it is more convenient for them. Now try to look at this situation through the eyes of a person who personally met and communicated with the captain, and you will be able to understand the believers. The basis of faith in God is the experience of a personal meeting with Him.
For atheists, this meeting simply did not happen, and, as a rule, because they themselves do not really strive for it.
The conversation took place in a narrow home circle. Recorded by listeners and participants. Although the text has been somewhat edited and shortened, it has retained the spontaneity of the live speech of the interlocutors. 1979-80 (?)
L. – Our conversation is conventionally, I repeat, conventionally called “Why is it difficult for us to believe in God?” The questions we ask A.M. Of course, they are different for everyone and at the same time common for many. Some of them are in notes; we didn’t sign them, but we’ll probably be able to talk freely later. Well, that’s all, I give the floor to A.M.
A.M. “I don’t know almost any of you, but the notes show that some have traveled a certain path, while others are just at the beginning.” First question.
The two main obstacles to faith in my case are WORDS and PEOPLE. It is obvious to me that everything I read and hear about God is human feelings, words and thoughts. Human, all too human. And the Bible and the New Testament too. The too human origin of the Ten Commandments is too obvious. Just “love your enemy,” maybe – from there. But even this could have been said by a morally brilliant person, why not?
I cannot repeat prayers because people invented them. I cannot believe other people's speculations and speeches about God. It seems to me that it would be easier for me to believe if there were no Church, if there were no believers, if no one knew anything about God, and most importantly, did not speak. Faith must be an inner discovery, a revelation. And I want to believe, I really want to - it’s too hard, too boring without God. How can I make sure that religion doesn’t stop me from believing?
A.M. – Oddly enough, the division is correct. Indeed, the word “religion” - not in the usual, colloquial, but in the strict sense of the word - should be understood as those psychological, cultural, social forms faiths into which it is cast, and one might even say that “religion” in this definition is a largely earthly, human phenomenon. Meanwhile, faith is a meeting of two worlds, two dimensions; it is the center, core, concentration of a person’s spiritual life, which comes into contact with the Supreme.
“Religion” is closely related to ritual, and the word “rite” comes from the word “to rite”, “to dress”. Religion and ritual clothe inner life in certain forms, create a social and cultural-traditional channel for faith.
There is another correct remark here: faith must be an internal discovery. Yes, faith can never be something accepted only from the outside. It can never simply be borrowed; it cannot be put on ourselves, as we put on someone else's clothes. A person should always find it inside. It reveals that spiritual vision that contemplates the world differently and sees another world. However, the religious forms that arose on this basis have their own value. They help establish connections between people. Words that seem to get in the way turn out to be bridges, although they sometimes fail to accurately and adequately convey spiritual experience. They are always a symbol, an icon, a myth - in the big sense of the word. And under certain conditions, these signs speak volumes.
People who are sensitive and very close to each other easily understand each other without words, but in most cases we need verbal information. A person cannot completely throw it away. It's all about what stands behind the word and form. When I read my favorite poet, I guess the inexpressible behind the lines. But if there is nothing in common between me and the poet, his poems will turn out to be a dead set of words for me. Probably many of you have noticed how differently we perceive the same book at different ages, under equal circumstances and moods. I will cite an episode from the biography of the Russian theologian Sergius Bulgakov. In his youth, when he was still an atheist, he traveled to Germany for a conference in Dresden and visited the gallery during breaks. There he stood for a long time in front of the Sistine Madonna, shocked by the spiritual power emanating from her; this became one of the moments of his spiritual revolution, when he discovered the Christian in himself who had always lived within him. Then, many years later, as a priest and theologian, he again found himself in Dresden. The picture, to his surprise, no longer told him anything. He went further than the first step towards faith that he took in his youth.
So, a lot depends on what a person’s structure is at the moment. But this does not eliminate the role of images, symbols and words. There is nothing disgraceful in the fact that the message of spiritual mystery is often brought to us through human means. There is no need to despise the word “human”. Man himself is a miracle and a mystery; he carries within himself a reflection of God. Chesterton once said that if a swallow, sitting in its nest, tried to build philosophical systems or write poetry, we would be extremely amazed. But why are we not amazed that some vertebrate, constrained by the laws of biology, thinks about what it cannot touch with its hands, see with its eyes, and is tormented by problems that do not exist in nature? Man himself, with his entire existence, points to the reality of some other plane of existence. This fact is given to us directly. It does not need to be “calculated” or “inferred”. Each of us carries within us an amazing mystery of the spirit, something that is not found in any organism, not a single stone, not a single star, not a single atom, but only in a person. The entire complex of the universe, all of nature, is refracted in our body, but what is reflected in our spirit? Isn't it the highest spiritual Reality? It is because we have spirit that we can be vehicles of this Divine Reality.
Of course, there are individuals through whom God appears with particular clarity and power. These are saints, prophets. Sages. Their testimonies of mystical experience are precious to us, just as the creations of great geniuses who comprehended the laws of beauty, harmony, and complex structures of nature are precious. But we Christians know that the highest revelation of God is revealed to us through the person of Christ. In this regard, I would like to refer to the following note:
In the gospel narrative, I see a genuine historical fact, refracted by the consciousness of contemporaries, turned into myth, and then into dogma - a story that happened to a living person, but only to a person. I came to this myself, before I read Renan and Strauss. It is obvious from everything; that Jesus Christ was a genius, incomparably ahead of the level moral development their contemporaries and fellow tribesmen. Perhaps it was even a mutant, a phenomenon, a person of a different, deviant breed - some kind of genius of psychic penetration, as geniuses of memory or musicality are sometimes found, with a qualitatively different brain than everyone else. But it is obvious that he was a man of his time, with a consciousness inherent in his era. It is not surprising that, vividly feeling his difference from those around him, he believed that he was the son of God, and his disciples believed him - there is nothing surprising in this, such a faith was fully consistent with the entire context of the then worldview, and this centuries-old expectation of the Messiah... (now new " sons of God" are quickly put away in mental hospitals). Like all (and current) fanatics of pure faith, he was a great hypnotist, and combined with high intelligence and psychological talent, this could produce a stunning impression, exaggerated a hundredfold in the mythological version.
A.M. – First of all, I must note that the moral teaching of Christ was not as ahead of its time as it seems at first glance. Most of the moral maxims of the Gospel can be found in Buddha, Confucius, Socrates, Seneca, and in Jewish writing, including the Talmud. Some researchers even specifically studied this and proved that Christ had little new in the field of ethics. Further. The “centuries-long wait for the Messiah” mentioned in the note was associated with folklore motives that were very different from the Gospel. The Messiah was to appear at the head of hordes of men and angels; he was to immediately trample the pagans, expel them from Jerusalem, establish a world power and rule the world with a “rod of iron.” There were other ideas, but these popular ones dominated. Jesus' disciples also shared them. If you carefully read the Gospel, then you remember how they were always waiting for a reward, sharing a future place at the throne of the Messiah, in a word, their concepts were at first crude and primitive. Strauss, mentioned here, in his book allegedly recreated the traditional image of the Messiah from texts and then tried to prove that all the features of the Savior were transferred to Jesus. But further research showed what a gulf separates Christ from traditional messianism. Why did people believe in Jesus? Was it because he was a brilliant prophet, seer, mutant, hypnotist? But why then did he live and act without caring about success? After all, Christ came, was not respected and loved by everyone, a glorified sage like Socrates or Buddha, who recruited devoted students from the upper classes and enlightened brahmins. He did not rely on earthly power, like Confucius, Zarathustra, Mohammed and Luther, He did not turn to the power of theoretical arguments, and did not make miracles tools of propaganda. He healed with compassion and asked people not to disclose His deeds. Genius? But as I have already said, He did not have a new ethical doctrine, but He had many enemies who were considered honorable and respected people. If He were an all-conquering hypnotist, what did it cost Him to win the favor of these Pharisees and Sadducees? Why didn’t He commit spiritual violence against the disciples, why did He choose people who later renounced, betrayed, fled, who understood Him so poorly?
No, a brilliant hypnotist would never attract these weak, dark, illiterate fishermen to himself. And in general He would have acted completely differently. He would certainly have penetrated the highest theological schools, and by the power of his influence he would have forced the wise men of Israel to believe in Him. And they, in turn, would recruit crowds of followers for Him. He would have been glad when the people decided to proclaim Him king. Christ, having learned about this intention, disappeared. How little does this resemble the action of a magician-demagogue who wants to create glory for himself through sensation and gain power over the people.
Renan said that there is a family of “sons of God”, which included, in addition to Jesus, Buddha, Confucius, Zarathustra, Mohammed, Socrates and the prophets. But what is surprising is that not one of them had a self-awareness similar to the self-awareness of Christ. Buddha made his way to the truth along a long thorny path, Mohammed wrote in that in comparison with God he is like the trembling wing of a mosquito. The prophet Isaiah believed that he had to die after the Lord appeared to him. Confucius claimed that the mystery of Heaven surpassed his understanding. All of them, towering many heads above humanity, still ruling millions of people - they all looked at the Divine from bottom to top: realizing His immensity. In addition, they all, in one way or another, honored ancient authorities. Only Christ spoke and thought differently. We may not believe Him, we may turn our backs on His testimony, but this is precisely where His main mystery lies. He created Christianity not as some kind of abstract doctrine, but sowed the seeds of the Kingdom of God on earth. He discovered the unprecedented possibility of communication with God, without ecstasies, mechanical techniques, without “escape from the world.” This communication with God is carried out through Him Himself. He left neither the Koran, nor the Torah, nor any other tablets to the world. He did not abandon the law, but abandoned Himself. “I am with you always, even to the end of the age,” He said. The whole essence of Christianity lies in these words: I am with you. The path to Him is open to everyone who believes in Him. He is really present in our lives, and not His teaching. Teaching is dear to us precisely because it comes from Him. He is alive not as a genius whose work lives on, but quite realistically. This is the only reason Christianity exists. Life with Christ and in Christ is the only and unique thing that the events in Palestine 2000 years ago gave us. alive not only by people, but above all by the power of the Spirit of Christ.
I turn to the next question.
Don’t you think that the reason for the world-historical defeat that Christianity suffers as a moral and educational force (suffers, however, with truly Christian patience) is the expulsion from it of the creative, in the highest sense of the revolutionary spirit, of that dynamism of transformative energy, that the spirit of freedom, which was so inherent in Christ and so NOT inherent in the Apostle Paul?
If possible, a little about the point of view according to which Christianity is not really Christianity, but Paulineism?
A.M. – I think this question is based on a misunderstanding. Paul was the first who was able to convey to us in human words the secret of the vision of Christ. He wrote before the Gospels. This is the man who said: “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.” Paul learned the secret of Christ and managed to tell people about it. Millions of people then became familiar with this secret. He did not speak about the work of Christ, nor about the institution that He left, but spoke about a meeting - a personal meeting of a person with his Savior. As for his revolutionary spirit and freedom, we can say that of all the apostles Paul rises as an unsurpassed figure: he was able to see a sharp line between traditions, human inventions, traditions, rituals, laws, even those once given by God, and the freely developing truth of Christ .
“You, brothers, are called to freedom,” he said. “Do not become slaves. You were bought at a price."
The Apostle Paul is called the Apostle of the Gentiles because he was one of the first to preach to the Hellenistic peoples. But with the same right, with greater right, because the pagans also had quite a few other apostles, he can be called the apostle of freedom. I am sure that we have not yet reached the level of the Apostle Paul, that most of us Christians are still legalists with one foot still in paganism. The Apostle Paul is the Christian teacher of the future. Therefore, we cannot say that some kind of “Paulianism” arose, but we can say that Paul was the most adequate and complete exponent of the theanthropic truth of Christianity.
As for defeat, Christ did not predict triumphs for us. On the contrary, He spoke of the great difficulties that would be encountered along the historical path. But as a morally educating force, Christianity is present in the world. However, we must not identify empirical Christianity, the mass of Christians, with genuine Christianity. The ancient biblical prophets created such a term, a very capacious and multifaceted term - “shear”, the remnant. What remains is the core. Those who remain will be the successors and bearers of the spirit of God. The same thing happens in the Church. Not a triumphal procession, but indestructibility. “The light shines in the darkness,” says the Gospel of John. Notice that it is not the light that disperses the darkness that strikes it, but the light that shines in the darkness that surrounds it. The indestructibility of truth, its known weakness. This is a great temptation for Christians. Many would like to see Christianity triumphantly conquering. Many people sigh about the times when there were crusades and cathedrals were filled with people. But this was most often false Christianity, it was a retreat.
Here's another note:
I don’t see any other meaning in religion other than moral education, i.e. in addition to the humanization of the animal and the spiritualization of the human in man. But there is too much evidence of the absence of a sufficiently strong and effective connection between real morality and religiosity. To put it vulgarly, there are any number of believing bastards in the world (whether one considers them true believers is another matter), but on the other hand, among convinced atheists it is not so rare to find people with completely Christian morality. We have to admit that religion as a means of practical education does not justify itself either individually or historically. Moreover, there is reason to suspect it of historical inhibition of moral progress. Having usurped this sphere, for centuries it did not allow the creative mind to enter it, which directed its efforts into morally neutral or polyvalent areas - science, art, economy, etc. There are already textbook examples of religious justification for crimes against morality and humanity, and even their direct provocation and committed in the name of religion. You can answer: religion is not to blame, man is to blame. But why such a religion that is not able to change a person?
A.M. – Christianity is a divine-human religion. This means that human activity here must be complete. If we think that at the behest of a pike, in some hypnotic way, a universal change is taking place - as you remember, Wells had it in the days of the comet, then the comet passed, some kind of gas affected people and everyone became kind and good. What is this good worth? No, we are expected to make constant and active efforts. And if a person does not enter this world of Christ, if he does not draw strength from grace, he can be listed a thousand times as a Christian, Orthodox, Catholic, Baptist - and remain one only formally. We are full of such nominal Christians. I so want some hand to reach out and turn everything around and change it.
If any of you have read the Strugatskys, “Ugly Swans,” then you remember that, depicting the insanity of society, they did not come up with anything other than some kind of invasion of some “wetties” who magically sweep away all this muck with a broom and create something something new.
The Gospel gives us a different model. Namely: model complicity person in the creative process. Genuine human responsibility, genuine human activity.
Creators, accomplices, co-defendants. If we fully understand this importance of Christian responsibility, we will see that some of us were looking for something completely different in the Church. I remember the words of the French writer Rod, who at the end of the last century wrote: “I entered the church (he was a positivist), and I was lulled by the sounds of the organ, I suddenly felt - this is what I need, this is a ship that stands motionless, the world passes, and all this remains, the heavenly sounds of the organ... And it seemed to me that all my problems were trifles, and that the problems of this world were trifles, and that in general I should surrender to the flow of these sounds...” This is not Christianity, but this is opium. I really appreciate Marx's words about opium, they are always a reminder to Christians who want to turn their faith into a warm bed, into a refuge, into a quiet haven. The temptation is understandable and widespread, but nevertheless it is only a temptation. The Gospel does not contain anything resembling a couch or a quiet haven. By accepting Christianity, we accept risks! The risk of crises, abandonment of God, struggle. We do not at all receive guaranteed spiritual states, “blessed is he who believes, he is warm in the world,” as is often repeated. No, faith is not a stove at all. The coldest places may be on our way. Therefore, true Christianity is, if you like, an expedition. The expedition is extremely difficult and dangerous. This is why substitution occurs so often, and many people remain at the foot of the mountain that needs to be climbed, sit in warm huts, read guidebooks and imagine that they are already at the top of this mountain. Some guidebooks very colorfully describe both the ascent and the peak itself. This sometimes happens with us too, when we read the writings of the mystics or something similar from the Greek ascetics, and, repeating their words, imagine that everything, in general, has already been achieved.
There was nothing alluring in the words of Christ and in His calls. He said: “It is difficult to enter the Kingdom of God, but rather a camel will enter the eye of a needle.” To the rich. And everyone was rich; each of us was dragging some kind of bags around. And he can’t fit through this hole. The gate is narrow, He says, the way is narrow - that is, it turns out to be difficult.
Where does this path lead? What did Christ promise? Moral re-education of society? No and no again. This is just one aspect. Moral education occupied the time of the Stoics. They created wonderful books about morality. But they could not create anything like Christianity. Christ did not tell his disciples: you will be wonderful moral people, you will be vegetarians or something like that. He said: you will tread on snakes and scorpions, you will drink poison, and it will not harm you, you will rule the world. That is, He wanted man to begin the path of ascension to a new stage of his existence. Why did Christ heal? He really was already in another dimension. And this was not a symptom or sign of his superhuman nature.
He told the disciples: what I do, you will do, and more. He said this more than once. Those who think by His miracles to prove or disprove His superhuman mystery are mistaken here. When he sent his disciples and told them to go and heal! If we do not heal, it is only because we are weak, unworthy and incapable. In fact, Christianity is a religion of the distant future. I always feel that we are modern Christians, and Christians of the past, as our forerunners, as sub-Christians: this is an absolute religion, and we are still walking somewhere in the pre-dawn twilight.
Christ's sermons were sharply modern, they were the word of the living to the living. The Church today leaves the impression that the next almost 2000 years did not exist. Is this a false impression?
A.M. – If we talk about the environment in which we live, then this impression is false. Undoubtedly, the majority of people who should now bear spiritual truth do not respond to their calling. This is how it happened historically. And the only way to remove interference is to penetrate and get to this essence yourself. When Christians, members of the Church, ask this, then I always answer them: the Church is not someone coming from outside, not some institution that offers you something, sometimes even imposes it on you, but it is you yourself. It does not relieve anyone of responsibility - on the contrary, each of us should feel like a part of the Church, a bearer, and not wait for someone to present these truths to us. Moreover, over the centuries there have been enough bright minds, outstanding people who knew how to speak in a completely relevant way.
Let's say, for example, in Poland, the Church does not look at all like what is written in this note. Why? What is there - the best episcopate, priests? No, these bishops and priests are not like this by chance, this is the bulk of the Church. This process developed in the depths of the entire church society as a whole. It was precisely this that allowed such a sharp change to take place in social conditions generally similar to ours. People did not expect that anyone would give them from above; they themselves went deeper and, thanks to this, brought out worthy priests, bishops, and theologians on their crest. Undoubtedly, now a situation has arisen that a lot of people, young and less young, are looking for faith and not just subjective faith, which would concern only the internal, hidden, but faith that is realized externally, which spills out into our activities, and everyday, everyday ones. activities - and do not find an answer from external authorities. They come to the temple, and, except for some aesthetes, many there are confused, many do not feel that this is the language and the form that correspond to them. But there is only one reason.
Over the past decades, the bulk of the people who formed the general church consciousness were conservatives, older people, people who did not at all strive for what the author of this note is looking for. They didn’t strive for what they are looking for now.
Many of them are of a new language. The Church Fathers have always been “modernists.” The Apostle Paul was a radical modernist—a reformer. Almost every great saint of Christianity was a spiritual revolutionary who carried out some kind of revolution. Now it is difficult for us to understand, just as it is difficult to understand how revolutionary, say, Pushkin’s poem “Ruslan and Lyudmila” was. As you remember, this piece caused a scandal when it was read in the salons of St. Petersburg. The same thing happened in the spiritual realm. It was always new, always fresh, always relevant. Now we just have special abnormal conditions, and some blame it on atheists, but I would not like to do that, because atheists themselves are to a large extent a product of the unworthiness and imperfection of believers.
“I cannot believe other people’s speculations and speeches about God,” the note says. Yes, of course, you can’t believe it, and no one ever believes it, because faith is your special inner discovery, which you then confirm and share with others. In our country, the word “faith” is often completely misunderstood, as blind trust in the words of others. I was told, suppose there is a beautiful house somewhere. I didn't check it, but I believed it. This has nothing to do with faith.
Faith is the washing of our being. Everyone believes subconsciously. Subconsciously, each of us feels that there is the deepest meaning of existence. Our existence and the existence of the world has a direct connection with this meaning. A rationally believing person is one who brings this feeling to the level of consciousness. And we know from our own lives and from fiction that when this feeling of connection with meaning faded away in people’s subconscious, they simply turned to suicide. Because life was losing all basis for them. Therefore, there must be some kind of leap, an internal leap. The Holy Scriptures of the Old Testament call this leap “emunah.” "Emunah" is translated as "faith." But the meaning of this word is somewhat different than in the usual lexicon. It means complete trust in the voice of God. When you meet a person face to face and suddenly feel some kind of trust in him, this can partially convey the direction of will, thought, spirit that is contained in the word “emuna”.
The Book of Genesis says that Abraham is the father of all who believe. He believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness. I emphasize that he did not believe “in God,” but “believed in God.” He understood that there is a higher being. But he felt that he could be trusted, truly trusted. How good. It must be said that there are other options, a person can consider existence a hostile habitat, he can consider that he is thrown into this world, a black and empty world. And faith turns our vision upside down, and suddenly we see that we can trust existence, just as we trust the flow of a wave. Can this be proven? Hardly. Hardly, because this is a very deeply hidden process. Only great poets, only great masters of words managed to depict this leap to some very remote extent. Nevertheless, even they did it poorly. If we take the greatest poets of the world, we will see that when they wrote about the sacred indirectly, as if by hints, the presence of mystery was felt. When they tried to write directly, calling, as we say, a spade a spade, their talent deserted them, and even Pushkin did it poorly.
This alone shows how inexpressible, ineffable and immeasurable is what we are approaching in our boat when we seek faith. Faith, that is, a state of unconditional openness to the Highest. Openness, readiness, will to follow in the required direction. Everything else becomes secondary. There is a question about rituals - this is all secondary. They should not be discarded, but nevertheless we must definitely distinguish between the main and the secondary. In this regard, the following question arises: what if this feeling is not there?
Its main problem is spiritual search I can define it as the absence or disappearance of what can be called religious “hypnotizability.”
I don't part with the Bible. I know the Gospels almost by heart. I read a lot of apocryphal, theological, spiritual and educational literature. I am baptized, I go to church, I observe not all, but some rituals. I constantly communicate with many believers and some clergy. But with mental pain I must admit that all this does not bring me closer to faith, rather the opposite. The initial religious impulse that pushed me into church gradually fades away, replaced by a cold, analyzing consciousness. The further you go, the more “there is a hangover at someone else’s feast.” Along with the impoverishment (or hiding somewhere deeper?) of religious feeling, the “anatomy” of religion, so to speak, becomes more and more clear to me - its historical, psychological, social roots...
Now the Gospel for me is the most beautiful music, the greatest poetry of the spirit. But to be a believer, this is not enough - you must accept poetry as reality, metaphor as being, music as nature. You have to believe it LITERALLY. But to believe literally, you have to suppress all logic, all sensitivity to contradictions; you have to forbid yourself to ask questions, thereby giving up the greatest of human freedoms - freedom of thought. Freedom is given to man, as religion teaches, by God himself. “I believe because it is absurd”? But don’t people already believe too many absurdities? Every day we see and hear where this leads.
A.M. - This is a serious question. It must be said that “I believe because it is absurd” is always attributed to one of the teachers of the Church. He didn't say these words. I must say that we imagine everything completely differently.
It will soon be Christmas, and the Christmas troparion includes the following words: “The light of reason has shone upon the world.” The coming of Christ is compared to the sun of reason, and not at all to the abyss of irrationalism. Irrationalism, mysticism and faith are often mixed. In fact, the most active irrationalists were militant atheists. Suffice it to recall Nietzsche, Heidegger, Sartre, Camus...
In their atheistic books one can hear the menacing, gloomy pessimistic howls and curses against reason that were heard throughout the twentieth century. Meanwhile, respect for reason was very firmly established in the depths of the Church. It is enough to point to the Thomist philosophy of Thomas Aquinas, and in general to the entire tradition of patristics, that is, the Holy Fathers. Do you need to force yourself to suppress all questions? Not only is it not necessary, but on the contrary, a person must examine his faith. What happens to the author of this note is completely different, but it is unlikely that he is entirely to blame for this. Why did you get a “hangover at someone else’s feast”? Again, due to the fact that those people with whom she met, those forms of Christian life in which she found herself, do not meet the needs of modern man, and in particular this man. Therefore, she simply became involved in some external mechanism, thinking that it itself would continue to generate something. But he didn't give anything. Tolstoy describes ballet, if any of you remember. He looks ridiculous. You can describe any thing externally, and it turns out absurd. When the main thing disappears, then everything disappears. So, this main thing must deepen, develop and grow. External churchliness is capable of supporting mainly people with a sluggish, inactive psyche, prone to some kind of repetitive things; ritual for them is what they cling to, without which they feel uncomfortable in the world... They gave birth, by the way, to all sorts of literalisms, formalisms, etc.
Now, if we talk about symbols of faith, about beautiful music that must be believed literally, then the question here is posed too generally. Those people who tried to make just such a model, to believe literally, they always came to dead ends. They again confused the external with the internal. If in the Bible the world is depicted in the form of a flat or round ball and the firmament of heaven in the form of a cap above it, then the formalist person said: this means this is the truth, he transferred this to his astronomy. Difficult collisions arose. Revelation, genuine, deep, was mixed with transitory things.
The Holy Scripture itself is a work of God-man, i.e. a great meeting of human creativity and supreme divine inspiration. Moreover, human creativity was not suppressed here at all. It is enough to point out that each author of each book in the Bible has his own personality. They look completely different, each one retains this individuality.
And yet the Bible is one book, and one spirit permeates it. Since she is Divine-Human, to understand her it is necessary to see her in human form. In the middle of our century, the encyclical of Pope Pius XII “Divino afflante spiritu” (1943) was published, which clearly stated that the Bible can be traced to a number of literary genres, each of which has its own patterns: the poem has its own, the hymn has its own, the parable has its own. It is important for us to know what the sacred writer wanted to say, what thought he wanted to express. To do this, you need to know the texture, you need to know the language, you need to know the method by which the biblical author conveys to us the inner insight that illuminated him. With this approach, we don't have to figure out whether Jonah got down the throat of a whale or a big fish. That's not important at all. Perhaps there was such a legend, and the author used it - after all, he is telling us about something completely different! One of the greatest books of the Bible becomes the subject of humor. The consciousness of Jonah lives in us now. I saw a lot of such Ions, who rejoiced at the end of the world, I wish it all would fail, I wish I could! They walk around, looking at the houses with such vengeful pleasure: soon we will all be covered. This is the new Jonah!
And what did God answer him? You took pity on a plant that grew overnight, but shouldn’t I have pity on a great city? A pagan city, wicked. And the fact that God takes pity on this city, to which He drove this prophet so that he could preach there, is a great parable; is it really possible to talk about who swallowed whom?
Let us remember the parables of Christ.
Do we really care whether there really was a Good Samaritan? Was there a prodigal son—his name was this and that—and one day he left his father? - it does not matter. The essence of what is conveyed to us is important to us. Of course, there are some things in the Holy Scriptures that really correspond to reality, not only deeply spiritual, but also directly historical. This concerns, first of all, the person of Christ.
Forgive, for God's sake, for inappropriate compliments, but it seems to us that in our time you are, perhaps, the only person who sees world history through and through and more deeply, truly stereoscopically. You know the ways of development of the Spirit. So, the question is almost like an oracle: are the end of the world and the Last Judgment really close? Nuclear war, World War III - is this what was meant in the Apocalypse?
Will God allow it?
A.M. – Of course, I strongly reject the role of the oracle, I just don’t know what will happen next. But I am deeply convinced that the Church, as a spiritual unity of people uniting themselves with Christ, has only just begun its existence. The seed that Christ sowed is just beginning to grow, and it is difficult for me to imagine that all this will suddenly end now. Of course, no one can know God's plans, but I have a feeling that there is still at least as great a story ahead as it stretches behind.
For some newly converted Christians, the Church is a phenomenon of a dear and beautiful past. Some even want this past - Byzantine, ancient Russian, early Christian - any, to return. Meanwhile, Christianity is an arrow aimed at the future, and in the past there were only its first steps.
One day I was looking through a World History book. A book about the Middle Ages “The Age of Faith.” Further volumes followed: the era of reason, the era of revolution, etc. It turns out that Christianity is some kind of medieval phenomenon that once existed, but is now disappearing and doomed.
No, and a thousand times no.
What does Christianity have in common with what we see in the Middle Ages? Narrowness, intolerance, persecution of dissenters, a static perception of the world, completely pagan: that is, the world exists as a hierarchy, at the top is the Creator, then the angels, below the pope or king, then the feudal lords, then the peasants, etc., then the animal world , plant like in a Gothic cathedral. And all this stands, and then God appears, and that’s the end. There will be a Last Judgment to dismantle this entire building.
This static view is contrary to the Bible.
Biblical revelation initially offers us, so to speak, a non-stationary model of world history. World history- dynamics, movement, and the whole cosmos is movement, and everything is movement. The Kingdom of God, according to the concepts of the Old and New Testaments, is the coming triumph of the light and plans of God among the darkness and imperfections of the world. This is what the Kingdom of God is. It can hardly be realized in such a short period of time.
Of course, one can ask, why doesn’t God speed it up, why, say, doesn’t He intervene and change negative processes?..
To this, only one thing can be said: all these improvements, coming from outside, imposed, apparently contradict the cosmic plan. They would have no moral value; they would deprive us of our human dignity. We would simply turn into programmed beings, deprived of any freedom. It is enough that we are connected by nature, heredity, our psyche, somatics, even, perhaps, astrology, when we were born, under what zodiac sign. All this is enough for us. We want the Lord God to finally program our soul so that we finally become automata. So that we could be shown at Madame Tussauds.
But in fact, Christianity is a task, a task. Delve into the Gospel parables: the leaven, gradually acting, begins to ferment the entire dough. From one seed a tree grows. Think about how many processes there are in the world; this has always surprised man, and not only the ancients!
I live near an oak grove and often look at small acorns on the ground, from them huge giants rise... how much must happen in nature before an oak tree rises to the top...
The same is true in history. Christ compares the Kingdom of God to a tree and to leaven. These are not modern analogies. Even Marxist historians spoke of the “revolutionary poison of the Gospel.” He constantly made himself known in the form of various opposition movements.
The path that the Gospel outlines for us is not easy. For some, it looks uncomfortable, like walking up rocks. But this is the path we have been offered. And on it we will have to go through doubts, searches, spiritual crises, and only the will, directed like an arrow to the target, will lead us upward. And finally, you will say, well, if the will weakens... Yes, it not only weakens, it, in general... proves its bankruptcy. There was one question: how to understand Tolstoy’s interpretation of the Gospel. Tolstoy loved the word “self-improvement.” The word is good. But pointless. No one has ever been able to improve himself. Each of us knows well that we rise and fall again. Only Baron Munchausen could pull himself out by the hair.
One of the prerequisites for starting a truly Christian path is moral inner honesty. The Apostle Paul showed this brilliantly. He said: “What I hate, I love. Woe is me, two people live in me.” And we all know it. And to this he added something else: if we cannot improve ourselves, then we can be open to the movement that comes to us from above; the power of grace can act in such a way that a person incapable of victory wins. A man from whom one would not expect a miracle suddenly performs a miracle.
“The power of God is made perfect in weakness,” is what Scripture tells us. In weakness. And sometimes, the weaker a person seems. all the more amazing things he can do with the help of a higher power. This means that here, just as in the origins, there is a divine-human principle. A man goes up and a hand is extended to him.
Faith presupposes the possibility of a miracle, that is, a violation of the natural order of things at any time and in any place. But how can one believe in the possibility of the appearance of the Mother of God on Kalininsky Prospekt (that is, in a miracle so direct and unconditional, such as, for example, the gospel miracles?)
A.M. – A miracle is not a supernatural phenomenon in the literal sense of the word. Only He who stands above nature is supernatural, i.e. over nature. And everything else is natural, just in different ways. I am sure that the resurrection of the dead corresponds to some mysterious nature unknown to us.
For example, I never needed any miracles, although I saw a lot of them in my life, all sorts of extraordinary things, but they did not really interest me. Maybe it's just personal, subjective. Various things happened to me - I call them phenomena, but this phenomenon is no less interesting than the structure of some holothurian.
Well, what about Kalininsky Prospekt? Let us imagine that some archangel appeared before the State Planning Committee. All its workers fall on their faces before this fiery miracle - what else can they do? It will be a faith that costs nothing, a faith generated by the fear of an inexorable fact that falls on a person like a stone on his head. This contradicts everything we know about the Creator's plans for man.
Freedom, and once again freedom. Moreover, even if the existence of God were proven with mathematical accuracy, this would contradict God’s plans, because man would have nowhere to go.
I always remember Sartre's story to himself; when he was little, he burned a rug and suddenly felt that God was looking at him and there was nowhere to go, because he had committed this outrage, and the boy began to scold God. From then on he no longer felt God. He simply ran away from Him, ran away in such an emotional way. This God, like a sledgehammer, who hangs above us, is a projection of our ideas.
Now another private question:
Does faith require a literal understanding of what is said in the Gospel, or must the events described in the Gospel (especially miracles) be interpreted figuratively? Is it permissible for a believer to have such an attitude towards the text of the Gospel as the late Tolstoy had (i.e., the same as towards any text)?
A.M. – In the Old Testament, many descriptions of miracles are only poetic metaphors. Because the Old Testament, as I already told you, is a complex system of genres, and when it says that mountains jump and so on, you shouldn’t take it literally. This is the language of poetry, saga, legend, legend...
But the Gospel is a completely different genre. This is a text that has come down to us directly from the circle of people who lived at the time of Christ. His words are delivered with almost literal accuracy. Why should we doubt that He healed a man born blind, when history knows many miracle workers and healers of all ranks? In the Gospel, the miracle is not so much that Christ raised the paralytic, but that Christ Himself was a miracle.
In any case, I understand all the stories about healings quite literally. Maybe we don’t quite understand certain moments, say, the miracle with the Gadarene demoniacs, when the pigs threw themselves off a cliff. But this is not at all important and not essential.
“Is it acceptable for faith to have such an attitude towards the texts of the Gospel as Tolstoy had?” Yes, the Gospel is a book, as I already told you, written by people. Theologians are now studying how they wrote it, under what circumstances, how they edited it. There is a whole science, biblical studies, that studies this, but it studies the shell, the means by which the Spirit of God and the divinely inspired author convey to us the very essence. We must strive to grasp and find this meaning.
But Tolstoy did nothing of the kind. He took the Gospel, the Koran, the Avesta and rewrote them in such a way as if all their authors were Tolstoyans. I really appreciate Tolstoy and respect his searches - but he was interested in only one thing: his worldview, his worldview. With the help of stories, novels, treatises, with the help of interpretation and alteration of all the sacred and unsacred books of the world. But this is completely different. Tolstoy spoke about himself, about his own - he was least of all interested in the Gospel. Gorky recalls that when he talked with Tolstoy on these topics, he felt that Tolstoy respected Buddha, but spoke coldly about Christ, he did not love Him. He was deeply alien to him.
Another private question:
The ritual seems to be a game (albeit a beautiful one), a fiction, something external and optional in relation to what is associated with thoughts about God, with the search for faith. Why does faith need ritual and is it possible to deeply believe outside of ritual? This question also arises because now, it seems, there are many people for whom, not by tradition, but by their own choice, the ritual side dominates over other aspects of the relationship with God (“church formalism”).
A.M. – The ritual, of course, is not a fiction. The ritual, as I have already said, is the outer expression of a person’s inner life. We cannot express it otherwise, we are soul-physical beings. Imagine that you are very funny, but you are forbidden to laugh, or you want to express your indignation, but you cannot outwardly show it in any way. You have met the person you love, but you are only allowed to talk to him through glass, you cannot even touch him. You can immediately feel the flaw, the inferiority. We always express all our feelings, both deep and superficial. And all this gives rise to established everyday rituals: kisses, handshakes, applause, whatever. Moreover, the ritual serves to poeticize and decorate our emotions.
For example, a person standing over a coffin may be seized with horror, he may fall into a state close to insanity. But then the ceremony comes, and he begins to read some kind of lament. Nowadays, however, it rarely happens, but in villages in Siberia, I have seen such things. A woman stands and laments, the way her mother and her grandmother wailed... I watched how this recitative, this singing suddenly does not extinguish her emotions, but... enlightens her, makes her completely different. If any of you have been to a church funeral service - although this is not always done beautifully here - it is completely different when a person is carried, shoved somewhere and that’s it. Suddenly something is removed, emotions rise up. This is what a ritual is.
In addition, the ritual brings people together. People came to church to pray, they knelt together... This state of mind embraces everyone together. Of course, there are people who don’t seem to need this. But I haven't met anyone like that. Many people say they don't need it. But in fact, if faith permeates their life completely, truly, then it is necessary for them.
Another thing is that the ritual is changing, that over the centuries it has been transformed several times. Let's say, now in Africa the liturgy is celebrated with the sounds of tom-toms, almost dancing, and somewhere in Protestant countries the service is extremely simplified. The reason is a different psychology.
I told, in my opinion, how one of my acquaintances wrote to me from Paris that he was inspecting the cathedrals (he had not been in France for a long time, then he returned and walked through the cathedrals), he suddenly realized that they were abandoned, as if something else lived here a tribe that practices a different religion. The giant Gothic altars are empty. And somewhere in the corner, groups of believers gathered on small tables are performing the liturgy in French. And all this medieval pomp no longer interests anyone. She's not needed. They're going there for the president's funeral or something like that. A different phase has arrived in religious consciousness. And yet the ritual has not completely disappeared from life. The Baptists simplified it the most, but if you go to their meeting, you will see that they still have elements of the ritual
Just don’t, I repeat once again, confuse the main, essential with the secondary. It is because of this confusion that church formalism arises. He brought a lot of disasters to the Church in general and to the Russian Church in particular. You know that in the 17th century the most active, most energetic mass of people, perhaps even the core of the church mass, broke away from it, only on the grounds that people were baptized incorrectly. By this, the Russian Church was shaken and drained of blood for a long time. The split in the Old Believers affected itself even in the 20th century. Because the most powerful people left the church. Why? They decided that the basis of Christianity lies in these things and they must die for them.
And finally the next question:
Religion, unlike philosophical views, most often depends on external circumstances, on where a person was born and raised. Probably, most zealous Christians in Turkey would be Muslims, an Italian who grew up in a Russian family would be Orthodox, not Catholic, and so on. Isn’t it a mistake then to consider your own faith to be the only true one, while others are false? But even the average “faith in general” seems to be something completely artificial and dead, like Esperanto. How to resolve this contradiction?
A.M. – Firstly, it is not entirely accurate that a person’s faith solely depends on circumstances. Of course, we are all connected to our upbringing, environment, country, culture. But in the pagan world there were Christians. And they not only lived in a heterodox environment, but they also suffered persecution for this for a number of centuries. When Islam appeared, it also appeared in a pagan environment and spread not at all because people around them believed in one God. Muslims had to pave the way for Islam. Therefore, faith and circumstances cannot be placed in a mandatory, direct and rigid position here. Moreover, Buddhism arose in an environment where, in the end, it was not accepted and was cast out. As you know, there is virtually no Buddhism in India. Christianity was born in the depths of Judaism, which in its significant part remained in the positions of the Old Testament. The Avesta religion, the Zoroastrian religion, originated in Persia, where it no longer exists, it migrated to India. In general, there is no such rigid connection.
Second: can one consider one’s faith to be the only true one? This question is again dictated by a static understanding of faith. Knowing God is a process. A person vaguely feels the reality of God - this is already faith, some initial stage of it. If people feel the greatness of the spirit to such an extent that they consider the world around them to be maya, illusion, delirium - this is only one of the aspects of faith. If a Muslim believes in one God as the ruler of history and man, he also professes in his own way the true faith. Saint, a Russian preacher of the 19th century, compared God to the sun, and people of different faiths to the inhabitants of different zones of the Earth. If somewhere near the polar ice they do not see the Sun for six months, and it reaches them in a faint reflection, then at the equator it burns with full force. Exactly the same in historical development Religions have been increasingly closer to God.
So we can say that no religion is completely false. They all carry within themselves some element, phase or step towards truth. Of course, in various religions there are concepts and ideas that the Christian consciousness rejects. For example, the concept that earthly life has no value. A concept that developed in the depths of Indian religions. We do not accept such a concept, but we do not believe that the mystical experience of India and, in general, its entire religious tradition is false. Moreover, in the depths of Christianity itself, false aspects can arise, for example, ritual belief, scolding. Let's say, some inquisitor who believes that by burning heretics he is doing the work of God - he, too, is blinded by a fatal error, but not because Christianity is false, but because the person has lost his way.
We, being Christians, believe and know that Christianity has absorbed and contains all these aspects. Thus, it is no longer a religion, but a super-religion. In the form of an image, one can imagine that all religions are human hands stretched out to Heaven, these are hearts directed somewhere upward. This is a search for God, and conjecture, and insight. In Christianity there is an answer that people must already learn, implement and give an answer in turn. The answer will be our whole life, our whole service, our whole being.
« In our more difficult times than ever…” – this is how we could start our conversation today, but on the other hand – are there ever simple times? Is there any time in all of human history that could be called simple? And is our time really beset by some incredible difficulties?
Was it easier for those who survived on the ruins of the Empire in the 90s, who starved during the war and restored the country after, not to mention the years of post-revolutionary devastation, great terror and Civil War? Every time presents people with its own tests, arranges its own exam, the test in which is life, honor, dignity, and very rarely - relative well-being.
Times have always been difficult, and at all times man has sought help in difficulties, consolation in numerous troubles and sorrows, and strengthening in hard work. And this is exactly what faith in God gave people.
Since you are reading this text, it means that, most likely, you have already understood and felt the need for faith, but something is preventing you from taking the decisive step and believing, something is pulling you back, slowing down your development. How to take this decisive step, how to believe in God?
To faith through trust
So, you have come to understand the need for faith, you sincerely want to believe, but faith does not come. Something is holding you back. What? Most likely, this is your life experience, a burden of accumulated knowledge, which contradicts how the average person thinks Divine Providence should work.
Why do people do good but do not receive a visible reward? Why do diseases and wars exist, why do people die in disasters? Why can someone pray all their life, but still not get what they want?
I want to offer you the following: let's remember our childhood. No, not even like that, you are unlikely to be able to remember yourself when you were a year old. Do you have young children, perhaps younger brothers and sisters? Let's try to look at the world through their eyes.
Just imagine, you have just learned to walk more or less confidently, you no longer fall at every step, and you are even trying to run. You are on a walk, moving your barely obedient legs, following wherever your eyes look, because there is so much unknown and interesting ahead. But what is it, big strong hands pick you up and return you to the very beginning of your path, or even turn you in the other direction.
Why? After all, you didn’t even fall, and if you fall, you won’t cry. You try to run again, but a pair of hands block your path. You are outraged and loudly express your dissatisfaction with the injustice of this world. Hands pick you up and take you home.
Now you are older, you will probably remember this age yourself without difficulty. Do you remember the situations that upset you then, that embodied for you “wrongness” and “ injustice» peace. It’s summer, all your friends are eating ice cream, you ask your mom to buy you a portion, but you get a refusal.
Why, you behaved well. Mom explains something about the fact that you recently got sick, but you still don’t understand due to your youth and express resentment and indignation or throw a tantrum, followed by retribution - deprivation of a walk, or even a spanking.
Time flies, you are already a teenager. And here " injustice"The world is falling on you with its entire mass! You can’t go out late, you can’t dress the way you like, you can’t spend time with kids that your parents don’t like, but they’re so cool. And all this despite the fact that you are an excellent student and diligently perform all your household duties. What an injustice!
And only after you have matured and gained some serious knowledge, you understand how wise your parents were, and how ridiculous your childhood and teenage experience was, through the prism of which parental wisdom looked like injustice.
You understand how many troubles you were saved from by “unfair” punishments, prohibitions and manifestations of parental strictness in the eyes of a child or teenager, but reasonable. Only thanks to them did you grow up to your age without ruining your health, without wasting the time allotted for study on trifles, without breaking your destiny by getting involved with bad company.
Imagine for a moment what will happen to a child or teenager, relationships with whom parents will build on the principle of barter and trade, to whom parents will sell the fulfillment of any desires in exchange for fulfilling their duties. You ate porridge - you can lick the socket, cleaned your room - here's money for a kilogram of ice cream, got an A on a test - hang out until the morning, dressed like Sailor Moon.
Funny? But why do many try to build their relationship with God precisely according to this principle? Have you fulfilled the requirements of God, expressed in the Commandments and Patristic teachings, and are waiting for the immediate fulfillment of your prayers, and without waiting, you come to doubt your faith?
So a child grumbles at a parent who does not indulge his desires, being still unable to understand the parent’s wisdom. And this despite the fact that the difference between a child and a parent is at most a couple of decades.
But is there a number in the world that can describe how many times wider and more insurmountable the gulf between mortal man and the eternal God is? Are we able to understand God's wisdom, dictated by countless billions of years of experience?
The answer is obvious. What remains for those who want to believe in God? Just trust. To trust, that is, to entrust ourselves to God, just as we trusted our parents at one time, to rely on His immeasurable wisdom. And the Lord, when he deems it necessary, timely and useful for us, gives us true bright Faith.
Conversation with an atheist
Various instructions on how to convince an atheist (or vice versa, how an atheist can convince a “theist”) have always seemed stupid and useless to me; is it really possible to convince an adult of something? A waste of time, which we don’t have too much of anyway.
However, situations often arise in life when your boyfriend, fiancé or husband turns out to be an atheist (or, as they naively call themselves, “non-believer”). Unfortunately, it is precisely atheists who are increasingly demonstrating fanatical intolerance in their faith, and there is simply no other choice but to enter into an argument.
Let's say right away: it is almost impossible to force an atheist to believe in God without counter-movement from the latter. The Lord only extends his hand, and whether to take it is a person’s choice. But it is possible and necessary to defend the right to your views while maintaining relationships.
Here are some of the main arguments you will face:
- Science denies God. This is not so, the existence of God does not contradict any of the existing scientific laws. You also often hear that science does not need God. There is a legend about how the great French scientist Laplace, having expressed his view of the structure of the solar system to Napoleon, answered the emperor’s question “Where is God?” proudly replied: “I don’t need this hypothesis.” Perhaps the great Laplace did not need anything other than Newtonian physics to build a model of the Universe, but the amount of knowledge accumulated over the years made it impossible to look at the bottom of the Universe as simply a myriad of round stones forever rushing in the void. The development of science has likened Laplace to a first-grader who gets by with addition and subtraction without the need for sines and integrals. The response to new knowledge was the Theory of Relativity and the Big Bang Theory (which, by the way, Laplace also did not need), which made the beginning (creation!) of the World and Time a recognized scientific fact;
- The priests themselves sin. Yes, they sin, because the ministers of the Church are not angels, and not even the best of people. But think about this: the corruption of the police, the bias of judges and the dishonesty of the prosecutor's office are legendary, does this mean that the Law is not needed and, if it is repealed, it will become better? The question is rhetorical. Likewise, the sinfulness of the servants of the Church and the Faith does not discredit the idea of Faith as such;
- Believers – everyone is crazy. And in the hospital everyone is sick. Did the hospital make them sick, or did people, feeling unwell, themselves come to where they would receive help? The hospital heals the body, and Faith heals the soul, therefore people, feeling mental illness, go to where they will receive help - to Faith and the Church;
- You don't want to decide for yourself, and you wait for instructions from God. The illusion that you decide everything for yourself can be cherished by a person living on a desert island. And even then, until he meets a larger beast. Perhaps then, perched on a tree (if he has time), such a person will have a good laugh at his arrogance. Any person living in society is dominated by the state with its institutions of suppression, bosses with financial reins, parents, spouses and others, and many other forces influencing certain decisions. Do you decide for yourself whether to pay taxes and how much? Should I provide certificates to government agencies, and which ones? Even at what age you should send your own child to school, the relevant law tells you.
God, unlike worldly forces, does not command or prohibit. God, Faith and the Church only show the Way. Whether to set foot on this Path is a person’s choice.