This article is a reflection of a person who tries to understand the universe and find answers to some questions of religion. I think that there are quite a few people tormented by the same complex questions.
The “fate” of this article was not easy: several religious magazines in Russia and the United States refused to print it. The most ridiculous explanation of the refuse was a call from the editor of a leading religious magazine who said, “This is a confession of one person, and we print articles of the professional journalists about God.” Another magazine, on the main page of which flaunts "an invitation to discussions and sharp exchange of views," was silent for a long time, then briefly replied: "The editors decided not to publish your article." At my request to explain why the editor of this "open" edition took such a decision, the editor did not even bother to answer.
Such a reaction of a “church bureaucrats” to the opinion of “one person” is the evidence of their fear of open conversation, their inability to “carry the word of God to the people” and to keep up with the changing world.
In our time, the church needs to speak to anybody who wants to know more about God, needs to speak in a simple, modern language without pulling necessary quotes from sacred texts during every occasion.
* * *
“Pray, and you will never be in trouble!”
This phrase I heard for the first time when I was about five years old. I heard it from my grandmother Ksenia, whom we called in a Cossack way – “babaka”. She brought us up strictly, but with love. Guilty a little – she had corrected us, explaining why it was wrong; if we did something bad again - she would spank our butts.
Our mother was not from the Cossacks - she was “muzhlanka” (a Russian peasant). Her heritage was actually "mixed"- Russian, Ukrainian, and other different bloods were running in her veins, but this was not the cause of grandmother's grumpiness towards her daughter-in-law, not her "nationality," but the fact that she was not a Cossack.
Mom was “literate,” a teacher by profession, and, of course, saw the “method” of mother-in-law education, but she did not try to interfere: her children were fed, clothed, and looked after. Furthermore, neither she nor my father had time for our education as they were working, literally, from morning till night.
The basics of the "babaka’s method" were simple: Believe in God, listen to your parents, do not be hooligans. These rules were supported by stories, fables, parables which the old woman knew so many that I now wonder how an illiterate peasant could remember all that. I regret one thing: I didn’t write down her “folklore.” I didn’t think then that all these stories, lullaby songs, could be of some value. And when I realized what a value they represent, it was too late ...
Many phrases from Grandmother became firmly established in my language, surprising, and sometimes disturbing some of my acquaintances and critics who rightly stand up for the purity of the Russian language. So, this phrase, with which I began my story, once caused the priest in the village church where my brother and I stopped on one of my trips around Russia, to raise his eyes in surprise, “Lord, I have not heard this phrase from laymen in a long time!” - the Holy father was amazed. - After all, this is the cornerstone of faith in Jesus Christ: Pray - to not be in trouble!”
I told him about my Grandmother Ksenia, about her faith and the story that was forever imprinted in my memory.
I was five, and my twin brothers were seven years old. Every morning, after washing our faces from the washstand, we stood in a row in front of a cabinet with icons and prayed: "Lord, Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me!" Then we came up to our Grandmother and said: “Good morning, babaka”! This is a phrase that apparently sounded in the houses of the Cossacks since ancient times. Grandmother crossed us, kissed our heads, and we sat down to have breakfast. In the evening before bed, there was the same procedure, only with the wishing of a “good night” and with the crossing of the ears, mouth, nose (so that Satan would not penetrate the body.) This went on till the twins went to school for the first time. When they returned from school babaka, having questioned them about everything, uttered this phrase as a wish in their studies: “Pray, you will never be in trouble!” The twins were not shy, they immediately corrected the old woman, “Why do we have to pray, there is no God?”
Babaka froze with her mouth open and a kitchen rag in her hand. Recovering from such unheard-of audacity, she asked ominously:
“Who told you that?”
“Efim Vasilyevich, our teacher” - the brothers answered bravely. I involuntarily shrank, waiting for a swift reprisal, but to my surprise, babaka suddenly turned around and went to her icons. I felt sorry for her and approached babaka.
“Please, Lord, forgive my grandchildren for their words, thrown into their souls like the seeds of Satan by Satan himself!”
I heard that portion of her prayer to God. Babaka noticed me, standing behind her, and said, “Remember, sweetheart, God exists! Pray to Him and everything will be fine in your life. But pray and believe in secret, for you live in a bad time. Another time will come, a better time, when we can openly pray to our Father in Heaven; I will not see that time, but you may see…”
The words of the wise old woman came true - this time has come. At first, after the USSR collapsed, a lot of people rushed into the churches, synagogues, mosques, to bow to the Almighty. Even the former devoted atheists were seen there.
But afterwards, the hearts of the ‘parishioners’ cooled down and the outflow of those who were carried by the crowd or came to the Lord out of curiosity began. There were also the people who had lost faith in God, or who expected and did not get immediate help from Heaven.
The 90’s for Russia were years of terrible sufferings. There is no need to describe in detail that time when men were drinking, women became prostitutes, or getting married to any “overseas princes” who turned up, leaving behind the country that betrayed them. Old, gray-haired veterans, had to sell their military awards, and old women their icons and crosses ... Without exaggeration, a people's moan was heard over Russia! Mass amounts of prayers were rushing to Heaven. And when it was silent, after the prayers, curses and the immediate denial of God rumbled.
I will never forget my conversation with a young relative who lost her husband, a kind man, a non-smoker, and a non-drinker, who died in the prime of life because of the criminal negligence of Kazakhstani doctors. The beautiful woman cried her soul out, she was left alone with only her sincere and pure love, and with her baby-son in her arms.
When I, sincerely wanting to help her somehow, said something about God, and about the power of praying to Him in such cases, she, in a fit of temper, threw all the accumulated resentment towards the Almighty onto me:
“Where was your God when I prayed to Him as my husband was dying painfully from cancer, why did He not help him, why did He take my beloved from me, and a father from his little son?”
I did not have the right words to answer the soul’s cry of a tormented human ...
I have been thinking about her words for a long time. I thought of them not because they had shaken my faith in the Creator, no! But because I did not know the answer, why sometimes the Lord is silent when the pleas of pure hearts are addressed to him. By that time, I had read a huge number of books about religion, about faith, about God, about His existence and His absence.
The theories had overfilled my brain, but reality did not give rest. I wanted to share with someone my thoughts, doubts, and find answers to numerous questions. In Russia, which I often visited then, there were no such people. Young priests, hastily "baked" in the seminaries, were not ready for a keen conversation. After service, they hurried somewhere out to their worldly affairs, throwing off their cassocks into expensive cars. They were not in the mood for conversations with “parishioners” - the devil-may-care attitude towards their brothers and sisters in Christ firmly settled in their Soviet genes. How can you not believe in the wisdom of Moses, who led his people for forty years in the desert before bringing them to the Promised Land.
My first job in America was unusual. I worked in a private book publishing house that printed Bibles and other religious literature for Russia. At that time - the time of the harsh 90s – the whole world rushed to ‘save Russia!’ Believers of all kinds: Orthodox, Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses, Evangelicals, Baptists, Lutherans, Jews, Catholics, Buddhists, Hare Krishnas, and representatives of Islam flooded the cities and villages of the trustful Russia - accustomed to admiring everything alien, new to them.
Our company had also firmly “dug in” there, printing and distributing bibles in all the republics of the former Soviet Union. I didn’t get out of business trips, spending nights in terrible hotels, at airports, in apartments of friends. My “boss” Rick — a na;ve adventurer and a religious fanatic often went on such trips. His believe in God he inherited from his parents - immigrants from Europe, who had to move to new lands in search of freedom of religion. The Bible was the only book he read every night before going to bed. He read it aloud to his children, and to his na;ve, plump wife, just as his parents probably read this book to him. Everything read was forever cemented in his simple, little head, without causing the slightest doubt. Looking at him, I was jealous of the fact that everything in his soul was clear and explicit, much like in the Soviet State Planning Committee.
Being from a wealthy family, he squandered his money without thinking to what he thought was "useful to God." It was enough to get money from him even if someone told a sentimental story, as he immediately believed the complainant and rushed to “save”, any “brother-in-Christ”, no matter what it cost him.
Several times he opened a Bible delivery company to Africa, Asia, and each time he was either deceived or his money was spent by the scoundrels. He did not conceal that he was a bad businessman, and even frankly talked with anybody about his miscalculations. Once he told me that his stupidity caused his business partner to commit suicide.
My presence in the company had not only improved things, but also saved, according to Rick, his life. But this is another story… Here I am mentioning this man only because he helped me in the initial stage of my “God-seeking.” He knew the Bible almost by heart, and his faith in God was cloudlessly clear and strong. “Blessed is he who believes,” says the Bible and one cannot argue against that. Initially, Rick was my “pilot” in the ocean of religious literature, then an advisor, a kind of spiritual “guru.” But soon I began to ask him difficult questions for which he was not ready, on things which he had never thought of, and I left him alone.
During my work in his company I had to meet different people in the Christian world. One of these was Josh MacDowell, the author of the famous books: "More Than a Carpenter", "Christ", and "Indisputable Evidence." One day, I even helped him in organizing humanitarian aid to Kazakhstan and he met me in Moscow to thank for it. But it didn’t go further than a passing meeting. He was in a hurry, he was somehow pompous, many young breath-takers and followers were circled around him. I wanted to talk to him, to ask this extraordinary person the questions that tormented me, but he was above the "crowd", and he was out of reach.
Fortunately, there were few such celebrities in my way. There were other wise, experienced Christian scholars I met during that interesting time in my life. I cannot list everyone with whom I spoke, argued, corresponded at that time, trying to find out for myself the truth about creation, about God, about the Universe and a man’s place in it, and about our life’s purpose ...
I wanted to find out a lot. Gradually, my range of questions narrowed, I found answers to some of them in books, others were clarified by priests, and some “riddles” I puzzled out myself. But the main questions remained, the answers to which I either did not find, or they did not satisfy me.
Here are some of those questions: Is God one, or are there many gods? God created everything: earth, water, a man, a woman, animals... But who created God? The answer – “He always was” - did not suit me. How is it ALWAYS ??? Why did the Almighty create us all flawed, with vices, and with sins? The answer that "our forefather Adam yielded to the persuasion of his wife Eve," whom Satan so easily tempted, when he plucked off the forbidden apple, seemed like a fairy tale for children. Here the question immediately arises: where was the Lord when Satan was whispering to Eve, “why did He allow it?”
Well, let’s accept that something had malfunctioned in the Heavenly Chancellery, and God punished Adam and Eve. But the Creator’s punishment had punished and also PUNISHING all of humanity - billions of people! Why?
And, perhaps, the main question that for many years gave me no peace: the Lord is our heavenly Father, He loves us above everything in the world. He sincerely wants us to follow his instructions. He even left us Ten of his commandments! But as practice has shown, a person cannot always follow them. I am not talking about the conscious violation of these rules. If the Almighty wants his children to be like what He created, then why should He not make us like that?
All of my conversational companions usually shrugged their shoulders and said: “Well, Pavel, it’s so easy: the Lord did not want to make us robots, he gave us the freedom to choose ...” Hmmm! Like, live - however you want, and I, in Heaven, will watch you, if you are naughty - blame yourself?
I will never forget my conversation with one pure woman, Pauline. Pure - in her true faith in Jesus Christ, and in His teachings. She taught math at our college. Once, we stayed in the classroom after our lectures, and talked about religion and atheism. Pauline was a very well-read and intelligent woman. What attracted me to her - she was not a blind fanatic of faith; she believed in God consciously. I asked her my question:
“Why hasn't the Almighty made us all perfect?”
“He did not want to create us to be like robots,” I heard a routine and usual answer.
“Does he love us?” I began from afar.
“Of course, he loves us.”
“Pauline, let's pretend that you have two naughty babies. You sit somewhere on the lawn. The terrain is familiar. On the left - the path leading to the beach is safe, smooth. And to the right is another path leading to a cliff, which is almost invisible behind the thickets of honeysuckle. You told the children more than once, warning them about this path and about the danger of the ravine. But children are children and once, to your horror, they run to the side with the abyss. So, my dear colleague, what will your reaction be? There are two options: you silently observe how they disobey you, and run there and break their necks, or the second option: you jump up and, despite having told them many times about this cliff, you run up and at the last minute save them”
Pauline thought for a while. Then she smiled softly and said, “This is a wrong comparison to make. Children and adults are in different categories.”
This time I thought about her words. “Well, well,” I tried to come at the matter from a different view. “What does the Lord want from us?”
“The same as you want from your children.”
“I, personally, want them to become good people, and live happily ever after.”
Pauline’s big eyes became warmer, “And God wants us to do the same!”
“Hmm! But I, as a father, will not sit and gloat that my children have it in their heads to disobey and I will do everything so that they do not repeat my mistakes.”
Pauline thought again. Yet I did not give her time to answer, because I know for sure what she will say and, wanting to save time, I give her the last “crushing blow”:
“Why wouldn’t our Almighty open heaven right now and show His presence to all of us, His children, and warn us - “Here I am?” I bet, we would be scared, and all problems would instantly be solved!”
Pauline smiled, shook her head in disagreement with my argument and looked at the clock. We went out together to the parking lot and parted as friends, taking our thoughts with us ...
My other conversations with theologians, clergy, and ordinary believers who expressed their desire to talk with me about faith in God were the same. Almost all these “debates” ended with the same advice: “Read the Bible!”
And I read it, again and again. And not only the Bible, but also the Koran, the Torah, and other holy books. I read and did not find the answers to my questions. At that time, I wrote a poem- a quatrain, which reflected my state of mind:
I bathe in doubts,
I ’m not ashamed of my ignorance.
The more I doubt,
The more fervently I pray!
And with all my doubts I really didn’t stop praying. Not because of fanaticism, no! I have never been a fanatic. I prayed not “just in case,” as the vast majority of the parishioners of the collapsed Soviet Union are doing now. I prayed from the bottom of my heart! Because people pray now without a deep faith in God, blood is shed all over the world: in the Middle East, in Palestine, in the Caucasus, in Africa, in Ukraine ... And the children of Adam and Eve, in whose genes Satan sits and whispers: "My God is better than your Allah... I pray correctly - you are not, you have to bow down while sitting, not standing up..." are killing each other mercilessly! And some mothers send their children to die, believing that their child, having cut off the head of an “infidel,” will go straight to heaven, where a company of virgins will be waiting for him. On the other hand, other mothers, having made the sign of the cross over their children, bless them to kill the first. In no case do I question the Koran, the Bible, or other Great Holy Books. I mean, if there is a Lord, then He is one for all! There cannot be many gods calling their children in different directions. This is what we, people, have come up with many gods, many religions, we always pull the blanket over ourselves ...
Once, on business, I happened to visit the city of Adana, which was spread across Turkey and Kurdistan and on the border with Syria. A couple of days of free time came and I decided to see the town and its sights. A local unemployed man named Mehmet, who I met in the street near the hotel, proposed to be my guide. He was poorly dressed, unshaven, and often looked around, as if he was afraid of someone. Despite his appearance, he turned out to be a real intellectual. He knew the history of his region at the level of a professional. In addition, his English was at a fairly decent level. I paid him in advance for the whole day, a small amount for me, which he proposed, and bought him a good lunch at a local restaurant. Then he showed me the sightseeing of Adana.
The next day, I was going to walk around the city myself, but Mehmet was already waiting for me at the hotel. I had to take him with me again. Again, we walked, and he told me the history of the region.
I was surprised how much Mehmet knew. I invited him to the hotel for dinner. He was really happy! When we finished the meal, he modestly hesitated, then asked permission to ask a question. I frantically patted him on the shoulder and said that he could talk to me on any topic freely. His question surprised me.
“Do you believe in God, Mr. Pavel?”
I replied that I believed, and, in turn, asked the same question to him. He did not hesitate to say that he believes in Allah.
“And Allah, is not God?” - I smiled.
“No, Allah is Allah, and God is among Christians.”
“And who is Allah, is he a prophet?”
“No, he is God!” - somehow my companion answered unsteadily. “Muhammad is a prophet, like your Isa, or you call him Jesus”.
“So then Allah is God?” - I laughed. “Well, let’s agree on the names: in English He is God, in German - Got, in Hebrew - Yahweh, in Russian - Bog, and in your language, He is Allah, right?
- Well ... well, in this sense, you are right. But I talked about different... – He stopped short.
The waiter came, and I paid the bill. Mehmet asked for permission to ask another question, as I later understood, had long tormented him.
“Well, my friend, as I told you before, you may ask whatever you want!”
“It will be a difficult question for you; it may even offend you,” Mehmet said gently, in an oriental way.
“Don’t worry, Mehmet, I promise not to be offended.”
“Tell me, Mr. Pavel, do you think a virgin can give birth to a child?”
I immediately understood what was going on. I didn’t want to go into this topic, which is already described in detail in Christian and in Islamic literature, so I decided to simplify my answer.
“My friend, is this about the immaculate conception of the Virgin Mary, the mother of Jesus?”
Mehmet looked around fearfully and, somehow uncertainly, nodded his head.
“I will tell you about it, but first you answer this simple question: Do you think God is omnipotent?”
“Allah - yes!” Mehmet quickly blurted out, but then also quickly corrected himself, “Yes, the Almighty is all-powerful!”
“Then can the Almighty do miracles that we, ordinary mortals are not able to do?
“Of course, He can! Much has been said about this in the Quran.”
“Well, then we can assume that the birth from the immaculate virgin is one of his divine miracles!”
“You are not an easy man!” smiled my interlocutor.
I recalled this long-standing conversation only because through this example it showed the degree of naivety in the minds of most believers Muslims, and Christians, and people of other faiths. This naivety is sometimes created consciously by those who are called to unite the human race, and not to divide it, not to incite the people against each other. If everyone living on the Earth understands this simple message - God is one, the paths to him are different - there would be no wars.
This question was easier to understand. But who created God? - I did not find the answer to this question. I think we are not meant to understand this, like many other things in the complex world around us. You can make assumptions, but there are some things that with our human mind, we can never comprehend…
Why didn't God make us perfect? To this question, any believer more or less will easily answer in this way, “He created us perfect, but Adam and Eve...” and then continue along with the Bible.
The story of Adam, Eve and the plucked apple can be interpreted differently. You can treat it as a fairy tale, or you interpret it seriously. If you treat it with irony, it means putting the Bible aside, rejecting God, and living without thinking. I could not do that for two reasons: First - I believe in God, I believe sincerely, without a doubt. And about my faith - just below. The second reason is because of the very existence of the Bible. Do I believe that the Bible is entirely from God, that there is nothing there from man? No, I think that there is a lot of human influence there. What kind of book is this? The fiction of people, their dreams, fantasies, code of conduct? No! Definitely not! I will not speak about the honesty, consistency, and proof of the events set forth in it. There are a ton of books written about this. I just want to ask those who doubt the uniqueness of this Scripture: Could the scripture - “Love your enemy as yourself,” “Forgive and be forgiven”- appear in those hard, wild times when a man-to-a-man was not “a friend, comrade, brother ,” when there was a fierce struggle for survival and mortality was simple: the strong man always thrives; either I’ll wipe out him, or he will kill me. Of course, not! Then, it means that this Book has appeared either from another time, another civilization - earth or space, or, indeed, it is from the Almighty, even if not all of the words in it are from God!
This Book is not simple, not simple at all. The plot with Adam and Eve is not so na;ve. The Lord created them, gave them everything, gave them Paradise.” And, as a loving Father, He gave them intellect and the right to choose. Could the Lord "block" this right? Of course, he could! But then people, all of us, really were robots! Would I like, as a father, as a grandfather, for my children, my sweet grandchildren, to be robots? No, absolutely not! I want them to live a full-fledged life on this Earth and live each their own way - the path of trial and error.
Now about the original sin, which our great-great-great ... grandma Eve “awarded” us. For a long time, I did not understand and did not accept these statements about the “eternal, inherited sin”. Well, what sin is burdened on a baby who was killed in an accident, or on a virgin who was raped and dissected by a maniac in our state, or on a man with unusual, dream-filled eyes, from whom I started the article?
But the answer was found to this question, too. In Colorado Springs there is the beautiful Orthodox Church of St. Constantine and Helena, where the service is in English. There is an amazingly beautiful choir there. Many Russian speaking immigrants attend this church. Sometimes I go there and pray. I usually stand behind the column, closing my eyes and praying. Cozy, good, beautiful.
So it was on that warm day. I stood, forgetting everything, feeling my “dusty” soul being cleansed from sinful thoughts, from scum of envy, involuntary bragging, wrong decisions ... I was alone with God, my Creator, with the greatest Conscience of everything and of all. The divine melody of the purest, young voices of the choir flowed in gentle waves, filling the entire prayer hall, rising to the ceiling and sunken on the worshipers. All my earthly nature died into some kind of unearthly pure joy. I felt that my soul was cleansed of worldly vanities. It seemed that nothing at that moment would break this harmony of my aura. But suddenly, on the left, someone quietly walked forward, lightly touching my shoulder. I involuntarily opened my eyes. A beautiful young woman, in jeans, with her head uncovered, approached an older woman, apparently her mother (they looked alike), and joined the prayer. My “free, having the right to choose” mind immediately felt a whole range of feelings, which “materialized” into different thoughts and judgments: “She’s beautiful, who is this? How graceful she is! Shoot! How can I think about this in church? How could she come to a holy place in jeans, with her head uncovered? ... "
All these and other thoughts of admiration and condemnation flashed through my mind instantly, like a ray of sunshine inadvertently caught in the side mirror of a car. They swept into my brain without my knowledge. I could not stop them or muffle them. THEY WERE NOT MY OWN! They came from somewhere in the host of the bio-atom-genes infested in me that I inherited from my ancestors, from ... Adam and Eve!
I, who came to the House of the Lord to cleanse myself from worldly filth, from human vices that polluted my soul, I dared to condemn a stranger in this place of prayer only because she entered the temple, violating some rules set by people!
I crossed myself and quietly went out into the street ...
Since then, I rarely go to church. When the need arises to clear my sinful soul, then I linger a few minutes for the evening liturgy, settle in a corner, close my eyes, and pray. The soul gradually opens, forgetting about the corporeal shell, but this bad body shell constantly reminds me of its sinfulness even in a place like church. This physical form is our original sin. The body reminds you that it is warm or cold, or it wants something not at the right time and place, so you have to have this consciousness, the spirit, to suppress these instincts. All our earthly life consists of the struggle between the spirit and the body, the struggle between Good and Evil. At the end of life if Evil wins - the soul dies in the shell. Good Wins - the liberated spirit-soul flies into another world - to God ...
I wrote and thought, is it so? And how it will be in a "better world"? Is it all over again? Sylvia Brown Vaughn, an American “clairvoyant”, traveled around the world and, raising her beautiful Jewish eyes, told trustful people that she saw their parents, relatives, standing with their dogs, kittens in the next world, happy and healthy, in their old clothes ... Sometimes she even guessed their names, though it was like this: “Who is this little girl with your dad, her name on M or H?” Immediately, the happy listeners helped her, sometimes correcting her, they would say, “not with H, but with D.”
It only remained to believe her and the other “visionaries” who promised a bunch of virgins in “the next world” pushing other children to the slaughterhouse ...
About the ability of the Lord to rule us. Once I read in a magazine such statistics: that for all of Homo sapiens existence on Earth, 88 billion of them died. The journalist asked, criticizing believers, “how many angels do we need there, in Heaven, to look after us, what kind of staff do they need in order to clean up all our earthly deeds and to judge all of us individually?
In the beginning this number struck me too, I was shocked: my Faith in the Lord, in His “All-Seeing Eye”, was crumbling.
But no wonder it is says, the key to the complex matter is in simplicity.
There was a drought in our state. The fires began here and there. The sky was mercilessly empty. In order to avoid inadvertent sparks like those from a car or a cigarette being thrown away, I decided to water the grass next to my house. It was yellow and dry, throw a match and it would flare up like gunpowder. I stood and watered it, glad that I quenched at least a little bit of the earth’s thirst. It took about an hour from when I sated the soil to when I disconnected the hose. My gaze involuntarily lingered on a huge yellow steppe that was dry from the heat. “How many people like me need to water the parched earth? No, it’s impossible to pour the whole state even from the planes.” - I thought.
The next day, suddenly it started to rain heavily, I stood and watched with pleasure, how in minutes the rain covered the whole space up to the horizon, that which I and thousands of people would not have been able to water with hoses.
That's when I realized that God has a different scale. Another function that we, mortals, cannot understand and embrace, just as an ant does not see the boot brought above it by a person who does not see it, either.
And it’s so ridiculous: now no one is surprised by computers that transmit sound and images thousands of kilometers away or calls from a mobile phone made from a concrete basement in America to snow-covered Russia, located on another hemisphere of the Earth! How did this signal pierce the concrete, how in seconds did it reach its fellow person in an apartment with the windows closed tightly? We believe physicists talking about neutrons, which easily pass through a solid, physical body, but do not believe in God, whose actions we are not trying to understand! Doesn’t this seem strange?
And the last question that tormented me the most. This is the one that I confused all my opponents with. The question is simple: why shouldn't the Almighty open the Heaven and reveal His face to all of us sinners, having His finger shaking at us? I bet everyone would see that there is God and stop sinning.
Again, the answer stems from our inferiority, from the sinful nature of people. Imagine the greatest authority in your life. For one of my friends, it was a famous movie star. He simply idolized her, from childhood he collected articles about her, photographs, postcards (there was no internet then). She was to him a Goddess, the highest ideal. To meet her then in reality, not just in dreams, would have made him overcome with happiness.
Years passed, and my friend (a successful businessman) settled in one of the Moscow skyscrapers, right under his “Goddess.” At first, his happiness knew no bounds. He met her, got an autograph, took a photo with her, sent flowers, some expensive gifts; in a word - he was in the Seventh Heaven. But then, my friend got used to that movie star! She became for him an ordinary person, a neighbor, an aging actress, with a failed personal destiny. The “divine” halo of the actress disappeared irrevocably in his eyes when she flooded his apartment and didn’t even apologize ...
Well, it was not by chance that all the great dictators rarely appeared in public. They knew that their greatness should be fanned by a fog of exclusiveness, mystery, and inaccessibility…
Well, let’s imagine for a moment such a situation: the sky opened up, God appeared, preached a sermon, and settled in a hut nearby. No, pardon, He would not be able to live nearby, He simply would not be able to live there!
After the collapse of the USSR, all “Deputy halls” at airports were closed and all the VIP “gods” began complaining. Their travels were simply impossible because of the fans. Someone was eager to get an autograph, someone gathered around just to stare at their idols. And here God Himself would live in the neighborhood!
Well, okay, forget about settling Him there.
Let’s imagine different situation: He just appeared in the sky, shook His finger, proved that He is there. And do you think the old Uncle Vanya, my former drunk neighbor, whose wife left him because she could not stand his heavy drinking, would stop drinking? Or would the husband of one of my acquaintances quit to be jealous of his scatterbrained, beautiful wife? Would people stop stealing, lying, swearing? And would their children become well rounded pupils, would they stop skipping classes, and begin neatly writing down lists of their parents’ instructions before school?
No, life would have gone on as usual. The ones who saw the Almighty with their own eyes, they would still be afraid, and still would try to appease the instincts of their flesh. But later generations would doubt that it was God, and say that it was an optical illusion, and possibly a trick of "eyewitnesses." Just as the Romans doubted the resurrection of Christ. We are created that the physical in this sinful world prevails over the spiritual.
How can we live in this sinful shell? Continue to sin and pray? I still hear the cry of that young woman: “Where was your God when my husband was dying slowly, and painfully from cancer? Why did he take my love, a father from his child?” None of the prayers for her husband helped, just as they did not help the millions of suffering people around the world. And what kind of office is necessary for all these prayers to be checked, to weed out unnecessary, sometimes silly requests, such as, “help, Lord, for me to score a goal, or to win money in a lottery.”
No, the "Heavenly office" does not work like this: You called there and - bang, all your wishes would be fulfilled instantly, as in the fairy tale. The Lord sent us to the Earth for the sins of our progenitors, not in order to correct us at every step, to interfere every second in our life, in our earthly deeds. No, it was not his intention!
So, we should not pray at all, should not ask for a miracle? No!!! We must pray, we must!
But I would not ask for a miracle from the Lord. Prayer is a plea, a request to the Almighty to change the circumstances, and to help in certain situations. There is no immediate reaction of the Lord. In these moments, we need time to accumulate the preponderance of good over bad by praying for the prevailing of good. Through prayer, a person sets his actions, becomes wiser, kinder, and with good any doors open faster. Here, it seems to me, appropriate a comparison with the law of Hippocrates - Do no harm! Although, in real life, there are plenty of examples of the quick, instantaneous reaction of the Lord to the prayers of people.
The Great Russian Elder Seraphim* spoke very strongly about prayer in conversation with Nikolai Motovilov *: “... So, your Honor, have no doubt that the Lord would fulfill your petitions, if only they would either be for the glory of God or to benefit and to the edification of other people concerned. God loves those who love Him ... He will also satisfy the will of those who fear Him, and hear their prayer, and all requests will be fulfilled. However, never ask the Lord for something you will not have in dire need. The Lord will not deny your request, because of your Orthodox faith in Christ the Savior, however, He will make you answer for it, why you disturbed Him without special need ... "
And do not ask God for a miracle. It requires a cardinal intervention in the natural process of people's life, changing it, sometimes contrary to earthly, well-established laws. And it does not always end the way we want.
Let me give an example from my life. A few years ago, my old parents got sick with the same disease - inflammation of gallbladders. My sister put them in the hospital, they had surgery. The operation itself was not difficult, but in their old age it was dangerous to perform such a procedure in a small town, where they lived. So, they both had complications. Back in America, I "sat on the suitcases", waiting for the possible sad news from home. My father was stronger, but his old wounds which he got in WW2, had inflamed. My mother had a whole bunch of “clerical” diseases. So, my American family was ready for bad news from Uralsk. And then something happened that still makes my hardened soul shudder…
I do not like to talk about it to outsiders, they do not believe me, they look as if I’m nuts. I told it to my relatives and close friends who know that I am a normal person, and I would not lie, especially about such kind of things. But I can’t keep silent about it now because this case is an organic part of my story.
So, my parents were in the hospital, both of them with a high temperature that everyone knew was very dangerous at their age. Doctors were not sure whether the old people would make it with all their complications. All of us, in my big family (which consisted of - a sister, three brothers) - were preparing for the worst…
That night, when it happened, I slept well. Something ordinary, not so memorable, was gently flowing "on the screen" of my night dream. And suddenly, for a moment, everything stopped, and a terrible, unearthly music, no, not music, but a terrible chord in two bars: ba-bam - made me flinch! The “screen” had divided into two parts. The right one remained unchanged, and the left one slowly crawled to the side, revealing the pitch-black blackness, blacker than the Malevich's Square, and from there, as if on a conveyor, a red coffin emerges, and behind it another one, which only appeared halfway. I jumped out of bed in horror, stunned by what I saw! I could not calm down! After a while I started to think and analyze. I tried to reassure myself it was supposedly only a dream. But you can't fool yourself. It was not a dream, it was real! And as I found out later – it was a terrible prediction!
In the following days, I scrolled many times through my memory, analyzed, reflected ... Was this a phenomenon (and that it was a phenomenon, not a dream, I had no doubt) the reaction of my anxious brain to thoughts and anxieties about my parents?
No, 100% no! It could be a nightmare, something else, but such a tangible “Ba-bam!” - just two terrible chords that threw me on the bed – it could not be a dream, and it was not a nightmare, but rather it was a message sent to me, unearthly, stern, and terrible!
A few days later, when I realized that this message was about an impending disaster, I went to my icons, knelt down and asked the Lord for a miracle - to save the lives of my parents. I prayed to God frantically, implored Him, and, even in my sinful mind, involuntarily “threw” Him a challenge, like, well, Lord, prove that you exist, save my parents, because it costs you nothing!!! This was not said, it flashed through my fevered brain, and, worst of all, I was not ashamed of my monstrously sinful request, I did not reject it, and, therefore, supported it ...
My parents soon recovered, but another trouble struck: my elder brother, who was more than my brother - a mentor, the highest authority in my life, my beloved brother died in his prime of life... It was the first coffin seen, the second, as in that terrible dream, crept up slowly. My brother's son, my nephew, was wrongly diagnosed by Kazakh doctors in Alma-Ata. He was dying a long and painful death ...
Since then, I never ask the Lord for a miracle…
There were many, very many such examples of the divine miracle manifestation in my life. I will give one more. A few years ago, I worked in my office on the first floor. I was writing something very important. Suddenly I thought about my father and tender, warm feelings enveloped my soul. A thought flashed through my head, “Oh Dad, how I miss you now. I wish I could receive some kind of message from you ...” In the next moment, I heard a noise on the second floor of the house, where there were two bedrooms and a restroom. I was seriously alarmed, forgetting about all my thoughts, and quickly went upstairs and opened the door to the bedroom. I was stunned: the fan under the chandelier was spinning like crazy! This fan and chandelier did not work for five years. My attempts to “revive” them didn’t succeed, and I was going to remove the chandelier and replace it with a new one at some point. And here it was spinning and not just spinning but spinning at the highest speed!
I looked at the wall, the switch was on the “off” mark. I stood and was afraid to move. Five minutes later I turned off the fan and immediately turned it on: the fan did not work! I took apart the chandelier, the switch, nothing helped, the fan and the chandelier did not work!!! I called an electrician, told him everything, he took off the fan and said that it absolutely could not work, and explained the reason….
I think that all the people who live or have ever lived on this Earth had miraculous cases, but someone did not pay attention to such unusual events, someone took them for granted.
To live without faith in God is easy, but with faith, it is albeit difficult, but pure and right.
Pray, brothers and sisters, and you never be in trouble!
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* “Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation. For the spirit is willing, but the body is weak!”
Bible, Mathhew 26, 41
* Seraphim of Sarov (Russian: Ñåðàôèì Ñàðîâñêèé; 30 July [O.S. 19 July] 1754 (or 1759) – 14 January [O.S. 2 January] 1833), is one of the most renowned Russian saints and is venerated in the Eastern Orthodox Church and the Anglican Communion. He is generally considered the greatest of the 18th-century startsy (elders). Seraphim extended the monastic teachings of contemplation, theoria and self-denial to the layperson. He taught that the purpose of the Christian life was to receive the Holy Spirit. Perhaps his most popular quotation amongst his devotees is "acquire a peaceful spirit, and thousands around you will be saved."
* The conversation between Rev. Seraphim and Nikolai Motovilov (1809-1879) about the goal of Christian life occurred in November 1831 in a forest near the Sarov monastery and was recorded by Motovilov. The seeming simplicity of conversation is deceptive: one of the greatest saints pronounces the teachings, and the listener is the future devotee of faith, healed by the prayer of Seraphim from an incurable disease.
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Translated into English by Levi Drake.
Original text in Russian: http://proza.ru/2016/03/02/448