Belief and disbelief in God. Unbelief or lack of faith! What to do? Righteous John of Kronstadt
- What is faith? Can a person live without faith?
It would probably be appropriate to recall that the term “faith” itself is used in Old Testament in the sense of “sustainability,” that is, it still conveys a certain quality of a person. Accordingly, disbelief can be defined as the opposite attitude of the human personality, which is determined by denial, skepticism, doubt. And these two opposite attitudes towards faith or disbelief are formed, oddly enough, by two identical mechanisms: rational - what is usually attributed to the sphere of reason, facts, personal experience; and irrational - that is, originating not in own experience, own feelings, but based on emotional subordination to something external.
To answer the question about the possibility of life without faith, let's try to simulate such a situation, especially since it is not difficult, because it is all around us: everything more people feel confused. Confused in everything - in work, in politics, in morality. People don't believe anything. Such passive and irrational disbelief turns people into automatons; into disconnected, confused, powerless human robots. Moreover, this confusion is already perceived as normal condition, although, of course, it is not. By the way, an extreme form of irrational doubt can be considered obsessive neurotic doubt, when a person cannot decide what suit to wear, whether to go somewhere or not, etc. This is no longer just a personal condition, but a painful condition that needs treatment.
In contrast to irrational disbelief, rational doubt questions what a person has not personally experienced, this is disbelief in views and, again, attitudes imposed from the outside. What is the role of such disbelief? Such disbelief develops personality; such disbelief is one of the main driving forces healthy thinking and ultimately leads to the formation of faith. Here are the two sides: enslavement and development, growth. What about faith? Here's a look at an extreme example of irrational belief - the situation of hypnosis. A person submits himself to the power of the authority of another person, he is ready to think and feel what the hypnotist tells him. What about the semi-hypnotic reaction of people to the leader’s personality? After all, the unconditional recognition of his ideas is due not to reflection, not to critical assessment, but to emotional submission to the speaker, his authority, his ability to persuade, that is, again, suggestion. Hitler, for example. You can find examples today.
This faith in a leader is perhaps the most striking phenomenon of irrational faith. I will never forget how at one meeting with the victims political repression an elderly woman talked about her fate, about how she, an eighteen-year-old girl, was sent to Kolyma only because her father was an enemy of the people. The judge ironically showed this place on the map - that’s where it goes. And she only answered: “For my beloved Motherland, working anywhere is not a burden.” This is such a fanatical attitude, rooted in submission to the inspired authority of the Party, the Leader.
And finally, rational faith. It is rooted not in the pressure of authority or the majority, but in one’s own, reasonable, conviction based on experience and observation. Such faith is fruitful, it creates, it has the gift of positive activity. Not passive waiting, but activity. Such faith borders, if you like, on knowledge. Thus, here too the coin has two sides: enslavement and development.
What does it represent religious faith? She can also be irrational, blind, thoughtless; faith is like a crutch in unbelief; and it can be a rational, meaningful faith, passed through the heart, and not rented. A person’s life cannot become harmonious without faith. But the decisive question is: will it be an irrational faith in leaders, machines, success - or a rational faith, based on the experience of our own life.
- What deserves faith? Is there some kind of criterion: what you can believe in and what you shouldn’t?
I don’t want to influence anyone with my authority. Everyone must come to this conclusion for themselves, for themselves, and only in their own way. But I am firmly convinced that if a person frees himself from irrational unbelief, if he arms himself with rational doubt, if he does not stoop to irrational faith, then he will inevitably come to rational faith in God. Oddly enough, it is she who is closest to knowledge. I am generally confused by the context of the use of this expression: to believe in God. Most often it is placed somewhere between belief in UFOs and belief in a bright future. But a truly religious person does not just believe that God exists. He knows that God exists. It is his personal experience, experience of knowledge of God. And this experiment, if you like, became a turning point in the lives of many people. You need to try not to blindly take sides, but take a neutral position and fulfill the following three conditions.
Firstly: actively seek the truth, strive for it, seek the meaning of life.
Secondly: morally improve yourself.
And thirdly: to join the life of the church.
Here is such a simple, accessible to everyone, experience of the knowledge of God. But if we carry out an experiment, will its result be simply faith or still knowledge? And when does the knowledge of God develop into that which is the essence of all religion—Communion with God? Religion is much deeper than the idea of it that is firmly embedded in the public consciousness. As for the criteria, as one of the greats said: “Time, time is the best judge of work!” Time and death end point our earthly existence.
I remember a story about one elderly man who came to the priest and shared the following doubts: here, father, I have lived my whole life honestly. He didn’t kill anyone, didn’t steal anything, didn’t cheat, wasn’t jealous, always tried to help his neighbors. What if I die - and there’s nothing there? So, did I do good in vain? What deserves faith? Something that is not devalued by death.
- Faith and knowledge. Don't they still contradict each other?
– I have already partially answered this question. Surrogates for faith can indeed be irrational. But true faith in no way contradicts knowledge, does not contradict science. Here is what M.V. Lomonosov wrote about this: “Science and religion are sisters, children of the Almighty Parent. They can never come into conflict with each other. Unless someone, out of some vanity and evidence of his philosophies, incites enmity against them. Science and faith complement and reinforce each other.” And his own words: “A mathematician does not reason sensibly if he wants to measure the Divine will with a compass. The same is true of a theology teacher if he thinks that one can learn astronomy or chemistry from the Psalter.” One can cite the words of Galileo that “The Bible teaches us not how the heavens move, but how we can ascend to heaven.” One can quote Oersted's words that “every thorough knowledge of nature leads to the recognition of God.” But these opinions of authorities can only give rise to irrational faith.
Therefore, let everyone himself thoroughly understand nature, seek the truth, be morally transformed, join the life of the Church, and thus come to the knowledge of God.
Good luck to you on this journey!
Conversation with priest Dimitry Baibakov
Our faith is subject to certain changes over time. Like any river that has its source, our faith also begins somewhere. It happens that a person lives and does not believe in anything (although a person still necessarily believes in something), his life flows at a completely measured pace and sometimes it seems that nothing happens in life. But some sudden bright event in life can produce a real revolution, and a person’s life changes literally 180 degrees, as was the case, for example, in the life of Emperor Constantine, who was persecuting the early Christians, when the sign of the cross appeared to him in the sky.
Faith in God can awaken in a person gradually, as a result of a series of realizations and observations. Our faith, replacing unbelief, arises and strengthens when it finds confirmation in real life. In this case, a person, leading a life according to his faith, can come to real rebirth, and then his faith will become an integral part of his life. It will become true faith.
What and how should people believe? How to avoid “blind faith”? How can you avoid falling into the trap of a belief that turns out to be false? How not to be disappointed if you eventually have to come to the inevitable realization of the fact that what you believed in (or who you believed in...), to which you devoted your whole life, was nothing more than a worthless “dummy”? Serious questions...
A simple example: why from time immemorial have gold and diamonds always been valued among jewelry? For their unchanging properties, timeless. Truth cannot be replaced by counterfeit. That is why at the very basis and the very essence of faith there must lie something absolute, eternal, unchangeable and unique. The basis of faith in God must be rooted in eternity, it must be based on something unshakable, not subject to any change. Like the stone that the builders rejected became the head of the corner... A person’s faith cannot be determined by fashion or mood. Faith should not be “blind”, but should be based on the immutable and fundamental laws of the universe - the laws of matter and spirit. The law of faith itself is also subject to the “Universal Principle of the Universe.” Discovering this universal law for yourself and making it an integral part of your life is the destiny of every believer.
Despite the mistake of the first people, throughout long history salvation of sinful humanity, God never lost His faith in the people He created. God the Subject said: “I have destined it, and I will bring it to pass. If I say this, it means that one day I will have an object of love.” This kind of faith in God is absolute. Faith contains elements of “dictatorship” and issues that are not discussed. The ideal of love, to which the path of faith leads, is an inevitable reality. Otherwise, there would be nothing absolute in our world, and the very concepts of faith and disbelief in God would be forever relative.
Just as darkness can never embrace light, light will always find a way through the very pitch darkness, faith is always stronger than disbelief. Disbelief in God, the belief that “” turns out to be untenable. Lack of faith or unbelief, lack of faith are transitory things. The life of , who two thousand years ago maintained faith in the face of death and changed the world forever, is clear evidence of this.
The world is undoubtedly divided into parts completely opposite to each other. And here, now, in modern Russia- especially. And its main division, as before, remains the division between liberals and traditionalists, and not at all between believers and non-believers. Because liberals are also believers, they just believe in a different, excuse me, god. To make my point more clear, here are two examples.
Here is an example, so to speak, positive. Personnel scout, who “supervised” for a long time Balkan region, ex-director Russian Institute Strategic Studies Leonid Petrovich Reshetnikov says: “It was under Tsar Nicholas II that the Trans-Siberian Railway was built in our country quickly and without the use of hard labor (they say, under Stalin there was “hard labor” - L.D.S-N) , and around it stations, cities, industrial enterprises. Thus, we then (under Nicholas II - L.D.S-N) developed a strip of land from the Urals to Vladivostok. Unfortunately, we have remained in this lane all these years. Soviet power... But we cannot remain on what we did in 2012 - after all, 100 years have passed!..”
This, as far as concerns Tsar Nicholas II. But about modern warfare in Syria. Many people say: “Why did we go into this Syria? What did we forget there? - etc. But what, and most importantly “how,” says Leonid Reshetnikov: “Waging a battle there, we, believers, must understand that something sacred is happening now, something for us Orthodox, mysterious, and very significant - for the first time the Russian army is fighting on Holy Land! After all, the land of Syria, right up to Damascus, even beyond Damascus, is the Holy Land on which our Lord Jesus Christ walked! ... For the first time in history, the Russian army is fighting the enemies of faith, the enemies of humanity, the devilish forces that represent this Daesh, this ISIS. It beats in the northern part of the Holy Land, where are the Shrines, where are the Aramaic villages, where is the head of John the Baptist in Damascus!
We solve a higher problem than protection national security Russia, we fight for the cause of our Lord Jesus Christ. There, together with our allies - Syrian Christian brothers..."
Yes, something completely new sounds in this statement of the famous intelligence officer, because Leonid Reshetnikov looks at our entire history from the point of view of the “Gospel”...
The most interesting thing is that before, even in the revolutionary movement itself there were two, ultimately, “antagonistic” movements. Religious-folk movement – i.e. Russian, and the religious-materialist movement – i.e. ... non-Russian. Let's, for example, turn to Sergei Kunyaev's book about the poet Nikolai Klyuev. This is the attitude of the “materialists”, i.e. "Bolsheviks". It is most concentratedly expressed in Lenin’s top secret letter about the forcible confiscation of church valuables. Here are the original lines of the main fighter for justice: “We must at all costs carry out the confiscation of church valuables with the most decisive and most quickly How can we provide ourselves with a fund of several hundred million gold rubles (we must remember the gigantic wealth of some monasteries and laurel houses). ... We must take control of a fund of several hundred million gold rubles (and perhaps several billion) at all costs... No moment other than desperate hunger will give us such an opportunity. It is now and only now, when people are being eaten in starved areas and hundreds, if not thousands of corpses are lying on the roads, that we can (and therefore must) carry out the confiscation of church valuables with the most furious and merciless energy, without stopping at the suppression of any resistance.”
Here I want to draw the attention of our revolution romantics, who want everything bloody events look at this from an “aesthetic-artistic” point of view: at the devouring of people by each other and at the “thousands of corpses lying on the roads”... Look at them, that is, at these corpses of Russian people, so to speak, “romantically-aesthetically” " If you can, of course...
And our “romantic” Vladimir Ilyich continues: “... The confiscation of valuables, especially the richest laurels, monasteries and churches, must be carried out with merciless determination, of course, stopping at nothing, and in the most the shortest possible time"... And then there is the “materialistic” goal of every company: “What larger number If we manage to shoot the representatives of the reactionary clergy and the reactionary bourgeoisie on this occasion, so much the better. It is necessary now (when thousands of corpses are lying on the roads and people are eating each other - L.D.S-N) to teach this public a lesson so that for several decades they will not dare to think about any resistance ... "
That's what Ilyich said. However, he is not alone. Trotsky said approximately the same thing, but in an even more “artistic and aesthetic” form: they say, we will arrange such a dictatorship for all these Russians that all the ancient Eastern tyrannies, in comparison with ours, will seem like paradise to them... However, so that we are not accused of We’re making it all up ourselves, here’s a quote from Lev Davidovich himself:
“We must turn Russia into a desert inhabited by white blacks, to whom we will give such tyranny that the most terrible despots of the East have never dreamed of. If we win the revolution, crush Russia, then on its funeral ruins we will strengthen the power of Zionism and become a force before which the whole world will kneel.” This is Trotsky.
And here is “The Red Tsar” Yakov Sverdlov: “January 21, 1919. Organizing Bureau of the Central Committee of the RCP (b)". Like Lenin, “Secret Directive: Circular. Secret. Necessary based on experience civil war with the Cossacks, to recognize the only correct thing to be the most merciless struggle with all the top of the Cossacks. By exterminating them completely.
1. Carry out mass terror against the rich Cossacks, exterminating them without exception. Carry out mass terror against all Cossacks who took any direct or indirect part in the fight against the Soviet (read “Zion” - L.D.S-N) power...
Carry out disarmament, shoot everyone who is found with a weapon after the surrender date.
All commissioners appointed to certain settlements are asked to show maximum firmness and steadily implement this instruction.”
So here, before us are three sources and three pillars, the affirmation of Marxist justice on the once Russian Orthodox land. Comparing these three texts, you come to the conclusion that the most “aesthetic” text is, after all, from the main leader of the world proletariat: for neither Trotsky with his “Eastern Tyrants”, nor Sverdlov with his dry language of the “circular”, clearly do not live up to such “poeticism” as “while hundreds, if not thousands of corpses are lying on the roads” and the seizure must be carried out “with the most furious and merciless energy...”
It is interesting, even surprising, that Yesenin in “Pugachev” in Khlopushi’s monologue, seeing through his special poetic flair, placed the same Leninist vocabulary:
Crazy, rabid, bloody scum!
What are you - Death? Or healing the crippled?
Lead me, lead me to him.
I want to see this man!
……………………………….
There's some scoundrel, a swindler and a thief
He decided to rear up Russia with a horde of robbers,
AND noble heads the ax cuts -
Like birch domes in a forest monastery. . .
Here the noble heads can be replaced with “Cossack” ones, with “priestly ones”, or, ultimately, with the head of Tsar Nicholas II Alexandrovich and all His Holy Royal Family. Or for a hundred million Russian heads, which such fighters for people's happiness and Lenin, Trotsky, Sverdlov, Uritsky, Zinoviev, Voikov, Goloshchekin, Yurovsky - their name, as you know, is Legion. But it is not for nothing that our Lord Jesus Christ said: “Vengeance is mine and I will repay!” According to them, this is what happened. Lenin went crazy, he could no longer speak, he just mumbled, he stopped brushing his teeth, he was still afraid that his comrades would poison him through the brush and paste. Trotsky was hacked to death with an ice pick. Sverdlov - with a repair locomotive hammer, Uritsky was shot, Zinoviev was shot, Voikov was shot, Goloshchekin was shot, and only Yurovsky was dying in a hospital bed, from the terrible pain of a perforated stomach ulcer. And no one helped him... So every single executioner of the Russian Kingdom left. And Tsar Nicholas II and his Family are now glorified by the Russian Orthodox Church. And in millions Orthodox souls the song-prayer sounds without ceasing:
- Nikolai, Alexandra,
Alexey, Maria,
Olga, Tatiana,
Anastasia!
Holy Royal Martyr, pray to God for us Russians!
The last ones I listed here poetic words- from the song by Zhanna Bichevskaya to the words of Gennady Ponomarev " Royal Martyrs"This is how believing monarchists look at the world and history. But this is not how our “humanistic” cultural figures look at this world at all:
Yesterday, March 29, Wednesday, I watched on video, on the Internet, the performance of director Alexander Sokurov, at the ceremony of awarding him with an award - I almost wrote, “TEFFY” - at the ceremony of awarding him with the cinematic award “NIKA”. So he stood on the stage with the figure of some winged creature in his hands - very vaguely reminiscent of the image of the ancient Greek, pagan goddess of victory Nike. More precisely, “Nika” herself was not visible - there was some kind of stalk or rod, and on it there were wings. This, excuse me, “rod” was more reminiscent of a Masonic caduceus, i.e. a symbol, again, of the pagan god of thieves and merchants Hermes... And this association is more correct, because the awarding itself, all of it, so to speak, is ritual-initiatory part, and all the incredible seriousness of the hall, and the laureate himself of this new “Lenin”, i.e., excuse me, “Nikonov” prize, all this had the pronounced character of a closed mystery action, to which they are all the chosen ones of some invisibly present here God, or rather the spirit, was treated with extreme seriousness... I looked and saw that this was really their common cause, their “liturgy”, with the prefix “anti-”, their “Eleusinian mystery” taking place on the stage of “LENKOM” - t .e. Leninsky Komso Theater - pier. . .
Someone very well, truly artistically filmed this whole action - both the speech itself, or rather the sermon of the awarded master, and the faces of the main acting mystagogues of the mystery, suddenly illuminated by an invisible infrared lamp, and pulled out by its beam from the general darkness. But what faces! I recognized only the human rights activist Alekseyeva, whose eyes sparkled solemnly, and her whole face, its expression, its calm immobility, expressed priestly silence, when perceiving such acquaintances, so significant, but only to them, “dedicated”, truly understandable words. Then, with the same, completely identical facial expression, the infernal underground lamp snatched the same serious face of the winner of another “TEFFY” - Nobel Prize– Alieksievich, or Alexievich, I don’t remember exactly how to spell her last name, and for this reason, again, I apologize. And then the lamp began to snatch from the pitch darkness some, excuse me, otherworldly faces. Here, an angry and incredibly serious face with tightly compressed lips, and with hair stuck to the forehead - the face of the author of "Garage" and the cult late Soviet film "The Irony of Fate", now deceased, Eldar Ryazanov, then suddenly an incredibly angry face without makeup flared up, also long gone into another world, Rolan Bykov, behind him - bursting with joy from hearing iconic, familiar and key words - the face of some typical Jew with sidelocks and a hat pushed from his forehead to the top of his head, and finally - a magic lamp showed us some kind of a very narrow, downright Bosch-Bruegelian physiognomy, in which its most powerful part was the lower jaw pushed very far forward, symbolizing an unyielding and strong will, and the desire to stand to the end in defense of those sacred values that this moment was voiced by a man standing there, behind the ramp, with “NICKY” in his hands. The eyes of this protruding-jawed Bruegel were incredibly dark and evil, and glowed with the red glow of invisible infernal fires. . .
And the man standing on stage spoke very infernally, excuse me, very professionally.
At first I didn’t listen, but peered at him. Medium height, with a very thoughtful strand gray hair above the low forehead, with big nose, widely spaced, intelligent, attentive and somehow, again, excuse me, I almost wrote “infernal” - that is, again, otherworldly eyes - he spoke as only very high-ranking adherents of various closed, “hermetic” speak. - both in the sense of “Hermes” and in the sense of “closedness” - organizations. That is, he spoke like a Master, even a Grand Master, like Messire, so to speak, and everyone sitting in the dark underworld of the hall of the Lenin Komsomol listened to him with such seriousness, not only because WHAT he was saying, but precisely because WHO they were, this is the very “ WHAT,” he said. For what he said was a certain program, a directive, a manifesto, an order, even a certain extract, the quintessence of their entire religion, even, if you like, if not a Creed, then in any case a Paragraph of the Protocols, which is not pronounced here at all for the sake of a catchphrase, not for artistic, so to speak, charm, but as an instruction for action and as an order for unconditional execution. . .
Then the lamp ran around the hall again, again went around the Second Circle, snatching out faces and faces, the frozen masks of this underground Carnival. Flashed, again, the very smart face of some kind of children’s doctor, or children's writer Leonid Roshal, behind him, again, Eisenstein and Meyerhold somehow unexpectedly jumped out, then right next to him, one after another - Osip Brik, Heinrich Yehuda, Yakov Agranov, and the entire cohort of the Latunskys, Lebedinskys, Smidovichs, Shaeviches and Shmulevichs, Beskins, The Shklovskys and Averbakhs - all these materialized in the 20s - 30s and “further, further, further...” - infernal entities that poisoned Bulgakov and Klyuev, Platonov and Yesenin. Ganin and Shiryaevets, Pimen Karpov and Akhmatova, Gumilyov and Tsvetaeva, the director of the Bolshoi Theater Golovanov and the artists Korin and Popkov, and many of them, like Gumilev, Ganin, Yesenin, Klyuev, Vasiliev - they were simply killed, or rather tortured - torn to pieces, brought to a sacrifice to their god of Enlightenment and Lenin’s Komso - Mola, i.e. The Cosmic-Infernal Moloch, to whom all these “masters of culture”, theater, cinema, education, enlightenment, music and the highest humanistic Light, to which they all invariably strive, pray to within their “Eleusinian mysteries”, starting with Goethe, whose “Faust” with such great Cannes success, not so long ago the “Great Master” of Russian and world cinema was staged, now speaking from the stage and voicing into the microphone their main common “Symbol of Faith” - film director Alexander Sokurov. . .
I was shocked to see this Bosch-Dantean picture in a short five-minute, very professionally made “video” in which the Great Master gave a clear program for the coming “Russian” infernal revolution, which, according to their plans, should finally defeat the terrible October, from Christmas 2017. . .
So, the world, just as it was divided into two “antagonistic camps,” is so divided now. And it will always be like this. Until the end of time.
Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on us sinners! . .
Head of the Union of Orthodox Banner Bearers,
Chairman of the Union of Orthodox Brotherhoods,
Leader of the Serbian-Montenegrin
Saveza Orthodox Barjaktar
Leonid Donatovich Simonovic-Niksic
I no longer believe in either Light or Darkness. Light is simple
photon flux. Darkness is simply the absence of light.
Sergei Lukyanenko. Twilight Watch
Your belief or unbelief will not make my words a lie. The truth will always remain the truth.
Phyllis Cast. Christine Kast. Seduced
Unbelief (Unbelief) as a personality quality - a tendency to lack faith, the presence of doubts with a declared faith, lack of confidence in the implementation of something; lack of spiritual conviction in holy and eternal truths.
One day an atheist came to the elder and began to tell him that he did not believe in God. He simply could not believe in a certain “Creator” who created the Universe. A couple of days later, the sage paid a return visit to the atheist and brought with him a magnificent painting. The atheist was amazed. He had never seen a more perfect canvas! What a beautiful painting. Tell me, who wrote this? Who is author? - Like who? Nobody. There was a blank canvas, and above it a shelf with paints. They accidentally overturned, spilled - and here is the result. - Why joke like that? - the atheist laughed. - After all, this is impossible: excellent work, precise lines, strokes and combinations of shades. Behind all this splendor one can feel the depth of the plan. You can’t do this without an author! Then the sage smiled and said: “You are unable to believe that this small picture arose by chance, without the prior intention of the creator.” And you want me to believe that ours beautiful world- with forests and mountains, oceans and valleys, with the change of seasons, magical sunsets and quiet moonlit nights - arose by the will of blind chance, without the Creator's plan?
Unbelief is the absence of inner light, a prolonged crisis of faith. It happens that a person begins to doubt his faith, stops fighting, looking for a way out of the current situation and suffers defeat, that is, he plunges himself into the power of darkness. The Inner Light goes out and unbelief sets in - a time when one’s past experiences are devalued and collapsed. moral principles, spiritual immunity weakens, immersion in fears, ignorance and degradation occurs.
There are many reasons for lack of faith, for example, reluctance to change oneself in better side. To believe means to have a strong connection with God, to go to him, to be moral person. But many don't want this. It is written: “This is the judgment, that light has come into the world; but people loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil; For everyone who does evil hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his deeds be exposed, because they are evil, but he who does righteousness comes to the light, so that his deeds may be revealed, because they are done in God.” (John 3:19-21)
The reasons for unbelief are also lack of knowledge, lack of spirituality, inconsistency and hypocrisy in the behavior of some believers, and strife between different spiritual traditions.
Take, for example, lack of knowledge. Most people, due to prevailing historical circumstances, never gained access to the holy scriptures. They were taught to live in the spirit of militant atheism. Thomas Paine, in his book The Age of Reason, wrote: “I opposed the Bible and the Testament, although I had neither.” Sergei Yesenin echoes him:
So that for all my grave sins,
For disbelief in grace -
They put me in a Russian shirt
To die under icons.
A certain prominent scientist died, and his soul appeared before God. Fascinated by the quantity and depth of his knowledge, the scientist boldly declared to the Creator: “We, people of science, have come to the conclusion that we no longer need You! We have comprehended all the secrets and know everything that You know: we know how to transplant the heart and any organs of the body, we know how to clone people, create new species of animals and plants... In a word, we can do everything that was previously considered miraculous and attributed to Your wisdom and omnipotence.” The Lord patiently listened to the tirade of self-praise of the arrogant scientist, and when he fell silent, he suggested to him:
- Fine! To check whether humanity still needs me or not, let's hold a small competition in creativity. “Great,” answered the scientist, “what do you want me to do?” - We will return to the initial era and create the first man, Adam. - Wonderful! - the scientist answered and bent down to scoop up a handful of dust. - Hey, not so fast! - the Creator stopped him, - you use your own dust, but don’t touch mine! Many narrow-minded people do not notice the obvious fact that scientific books and articles begin with the “second chapter” - how phenomena develop! And the “first chapter”, which would shed light on the First Cause of where everything came from, is missing!
Why is unbelief dangerous for a person? Male unbelief breeds promiscuity in women. Being frivolous, the woman thought to get rid of the vice through a responsible man with strong principles, convictions and, most importantly, faith. Having discovered a lack of faith in him, the woman immediately lost interest in him and began to become dissolute. The family begins to deteriorate. The father's unbelief is adopted by the daughter, and the son inherits the mother's promiscuity. The Vedas say: “When a family is dominated lack of faith, the women of this family are corrupted, and the degradation of women leads to unwanted offspring.”
A person stricken with unbelief may remain for the time being a good man. But the time will come when he will be captured by some idea, which will simultaneously create an illusion in his mind. Unbelief in company with illusion gives rise to greed, cunning, and deceit. Now he will no longer be able to live differently. Now it will be a vicious person.
Lack of faith is a giveaway to fate. A person succumbs to the way fate works, robs himself of the right to choose how to react to the circumstances of life, he does not believe in anything, and this is very noticeable when communicating with him. He stops listening to and trusting everyone. Unbelief arises from criticism, so enthusiasm is lost.
One day, two embryos grew and developed in the belly of a pregnant woman. They saw each other and were happy: “It’s so good that we were conceived! How wonderful it is to be alive!” Together the twins discovered the world. When they discovered the umbilical cord, they sang: “How great is the love of our mother, how wonderful that she shares her life with us!” As the days passed, the twins began to notice that they were changing. - What would that mean? - asked the first twin. - This means that our life is in this the world is coming towards the end,” said the second. “But I don’t want to leave this world, I want to stay here forever,” said the first. “We have no choice,” said the second. - But maybe there is still life after birth! - How can there be life after birth?! When we break the umbilical cord, life will stop coming to us! Besides, no one has ever gone back into the womb and no one has told us that there is life after birth! This is the end! One of the twins fell into despair: “If conception ends in birth, then is there any meaning to life in the womb?” Life has no meaning! Maybe there is no mother at all. “But there must be a mother,” another was indignant. - If she’s not there, then how did we get here? What then does life give us? -Have you ever seen her, this mother? - said another. - Maybe it exists only in our imagination. Maybe we created this image ourselves to feel better about ourselves! Last days life in the womb was filled with experiences. Finally the moment of birth came. The twins passed into another world and their eyes were opened. They shouted for joy because what they saw exceeded all their expectations.
An example of unbelief - the onset of inner darkness was wonderfully reflected by N.V. Gogol in the story “Viy”. He painted a picture of the internal defeat of a person with a philosophical education. His main character loses in the confrontation with evil spirits. He sadly surrenders to his own fears, dying just before dawn, when victory was so close! For greater clarity, let me quote the author’s specific words:
“Khoma lost the last remnant of hops in his head. He just crossed himself and read random prayers. And at the same time I heard how devilry rushed around him, almost catching him with the ends of her wings and disgusting tails. He did not have the courage to see them... Everyone looked at him, searched and could not see him, surrounded by a mysterious circle.
- Lift my eyelids: I can’t see! - Viy said in an underground voice - and the whole host rushed to lift his eyelids. “Don’t look!” - some inner voice whispered to the philosopher. He couldn’t bear it and looked. - Here he is! - Viy shouted and pointed an iron finger at him. And everything, no matter how much it was, rushed at the philosopher. He fell to the ground lifeless, and the spirit immediately flew out of him out of fear.
When rumors about this reached Kyiv and the theologian Khalyava finally heard about this fate of the philosopher Khoma, he indulged in thought for an hour.
- Khoma was a nice man! - said the bell-ringer when the lame tavern placed the third mug in front of him. - He was a noble man! And he disappeared for no reason. - And I know why he disappeared: because he was afraid. And if he were not afraid, then the witch could not do anything with him. You just need to cross yourself and spit on her very tail, then nothing will happen. I already know all this. After all, in Kyiv, all the women who sit at the market are all witches.”
Petr Kovalev 2014