Why did God allow World War II. "Why does God allow wars"

Our guest was Archpriest Maxim Kozlov, First Deputy Chairman of the Educational Committee of the Moscow Patriarchate, Rector of the Church of St. Seraphim of Sarov on Krasnopresnenskaya Embankment.

On the eve of the tragic date of the 75th anniversary of the start of the Great Patriotic War, we talked about what could be the spiritual reasons for the start of the war and why God, in general, allows wars.

V.Emelyanov

On the radio "Vera" the program "Bright Evening" and its presenters Vladimir Yemelyanov.

A. Pichugin

Alexey Pichugin, hello.

V.Emelyanov

Our today's interlocutor - Archpriest Maxim Kozlov - First Deputy Chairman of the Educational Committee of the Moscow Patriarchate, Rector of the Church of St. Seraphim of Sarov on Krasnopresnenskaya Embankment, hello!

Good evening.

V.Emelyanov

June 22, 1941 - 75 years ago, the most terrible, bloodiest war, perhaps, in the entire history of our country began. But today we will not talk about history and battles, but rather about meanings and the first question that, of course, believers and non-believers alike ask: “Why?”

Let's reformulate it a little differently.

V.Emelyanov

Let's.

A. Pichugin

She does not tolerate subjunctive moods.

Well, we are reconstructing now, but what could happen to our country?

A. Pichugin

Well, on the one hand, we can imagine industrialization, development, five-year plans in three years.

Yes, do you remember which five-year plan was announced?

A. Pichugin

Including one of them - godless.

Godless five years. That small number of churches that still remained on the territory of the Soviet Union, very small, with the exception of the newly annexed territories - Western Ukraine and Western Belarus, would certainly have been closed. Less than ten bishops who remained at large as ruling bishops would hardly have retained their status as free citizens of a free Soviet country. It is possible that legal religiosity, like what was done later in Albania, or for some period in the People's Republic of China, would have been banned. The persecution of 1937-1938 might still seem like little flowers compared to the berries that might have grown.

A. Pichugin

Does that mean God just stopped everything?

I ask myself and all of us together this question - was there any other way of the work of God's providence, while preserving human freedom, because God's providence operates in history with the preservation of human freedom, in order to prevent this final fall.

A. Pichugin

But what about other countries that were affected by the Second World War and in which everything was relatively in order with religion - Poland, for example. Or the poor Jews, who were very religious people, but nevertheless we can all imagine how it ended. Or the First World War, when in general everything was in order with religion.

Let's not scatter on all topics at once. With regard to the Second World War and its key participants, let us recall that in Germany, too, everything was not quite all right with religion.

V.Emelyanov

Well, by then, yes.

By that time, it was definitely not quite right. Because that new pseudo-Christian, although in form, all-German Protestant religion called Christianity, which was supposed to be established in Germany, it certainly left very little of Christianity. As a matter of fact, there was a pseudo-Darian paganism slightly colored by some elements of Christianity. That is, neo-paganism with some of these ritual bows towards those who could not immediately abandon the Christian ritual. In Poland, too, I think, one can ask one's own questions about Poland, if only because of the way Polish Christians behaved towards Polish Jews.

A. Pichugin

Fair.

And how deep this turned out to be, this Christian attitude towards those persecuted and persecuted during the Second World War, and not only towards Polish Jews, but also towards Belarusian Christians and Ukrainian Christians, was revealed. Here, too, you can ask a lot of questions. I think that we simply understand better the problem that is associated with our country, but this or that problem associated with human development, world development at this point in history, it can be identified in relation to almost every country. But suppose, again, if we go beyond just political evidence and motives. It may be no coincidence that Spain stayed out of the Second World War.

A. Pichugin

But there shortly before the start of World War II...

There was a difficult civil war, in which, nevertheless, unlike many other countries, the forces, let's say, anti-clerical atheist, were united there at the same time by communists, anarchists, and just European leftists, everyone knows about Hemingway very well and Orwell of those years .

A. Pichugin

But Orwell, by the way, returned from there as an ardent anti-communist, not accepting the model of Soviet communism.

He returned, but left then to defend the republic against Franco. Let's not forget, yes, he returned, but he left like that. But there the victory was won as a result of forces that, in my opinion, were much more morally healthy, from the point of view of the subsequent development of society and the people.

V.Emelyanov

Returning to the history of our country, we can briefly summarize and say that it was God's punishment for the destroyed churches, for the plundered monasteries, for the millions killed, for the blood of the new martyrs.

I would use the word "punishment" in the sense of the Slavic understanding of it. Punishment also means learning. That is, this is a kind of act of God's providence. Yes, it can naturally be very tragic from the point of view of the realities of the lives of specific people, millions of specific people, but which, at the same time, led our people, our country, out of that situation of falling into final godlessness and the triumph of the communist idea, that, it seems, it could triumph in a separate taken country, that we are really building a society without God and without Christian ethics, without that thousand-year-old tradition, something turns out - industrialization, tractors, and so on and so forth. Army after all. But everything has changed. And we see how everything changed during the war, because it happened, Lewis, in my opinion, quite accurately writes about this in his “Letters of the Balamut”. The war is certainly terrible, and he wrote this just during the war years, it is customary for us to believe that England did not suffer much, but now we really know what the bombing of London and other English cities was like and what it cost the British. In those years, he writes that despite all the horror that war brings, it is at the same time what awakens the best in people. This is the ability to lay down one's life for one's friends, the ability to sacrifice oneself, to exist with the priority of higher values ​​than my personal well-being, or my personal survival. We also saw this in millions of our compatriots and other participants in the Second World War.

V.Emelyanov

Father Maxim, look, church historians say that the Russian people have renounced God, we have already said about looted churches, destroyed monasteries. But is this really so, because there was a famous census in 1937, which showed that half of the population believes in God, those who conducted this census and organized it were repressed, and didn’t it show that almost half of our country has not bowed the knee to the shaft and boldly testifies to this. Doesn't the fact that they weren't afraid to declare their faith in 1937 say a lot?

First, I will first defend the church historians whom we so casually kicked. Because no church historians of this kind express publicistic theses, the way it was formulated - such a primitive situation with renunciation and so on. If this is history, and not some kind of journalism in the mass space, in the mass consciousness, then of course none of the historians would put forward such a thesis. Actually, I don’t know who would say that, if not to talk about some messages of the Church Abroad, obviously of such a church-journalistic nature of those years. But if we evaluate the situation of the 1930s, then with many amendments, with very many amendments, which is called mutatis mutandis, it is similar in some sense to the situation with the social climate in Western countries, in America, for example, where the majority seems to be Christian, but the public climate, politics, legislative area is absolutely not determined by this majority, but in fact it is quietly silent. At best, the Soviet Union was tougher. But this majority still needs to understand the census....has already specifically historically the late 1930s situation. At that time, the decisive majority of our country still lived in rural areas.

V.Emelyanov

With her traditional style.

This census was also attended by those who had nothing to lose and were not afraid. If this census were to be broken down, as Soviet sociologists and historians later did, by the way, into the educated class, or, well, the strata of society, into the youth, into those who received a school education. Then we would see that those who determined the vector of development, there the numbers would be completely different in this case, even at the end of the 1930s. Of course, in large cities, schoolchildren, universities, Soviet employees, military personnel, especially those who were in law enforcement agencies there, it was generally impossible to find a believer, an open believer, and to search for those hidden even during the day with fire.

A. Pichugin

But look, you gave the example of the United States, here is the Bolshevik Soviet Union. And pre-revolutionary Russia, was it really that different? Yes, there was such an outwardly beautiful church veil, which, probably, is still exaggeratedly presented in our country, but for the most part, the laws were all adopted, and the empire itself, it was also strongly de-Christianized in the upper strata of society in the first place.

Everything would be fine, there would be no revolution of 1917 - this is at least understandable. If the Christian state in Russia had been internally strong by the beginning of the 20th century, then no world behind the scenes, external enemies, tragic collisions of the First World War, etc., would have led to its collapse - this is understandable. The colossus largely stood on very weak legs, if not completely clay, then very weak. However, I think there is one difference. Before the threshold and after the threshold, before the crash and after the crash - as long as the tragedy has not happened, it can always still be avoided, but it’s like the Christian understanding of history teaches us that you can stop by raising your foot in front of the abyss, but you can not stop. We will not now give the question why what happened finally in Russia on this ... in 1917, the tragic anniversary of which we are now approaching. But it is clear that, nevertheless, Russia in 1914 and the Soviet Union in 1924 are already to a large extent two different cosmos.

V.Emelyanov

Archpriest Maxim Kozlov, First Deputy Chairman of the Educational Committee of the Moscow Patriarchate, Rector of the Church of St. Seraphim of Sarov on Krasnopresnenskaya Embankment, is visiting the Bright Evening program today. Really there were no other ways, means for the Providence of God to enlighten our people? Let's say, send him some other ruler, for example, who would gradually lead the whole country and its people out of this bloody terror. We know from history examples of other countries where all this happened more gently, more evolutionarily, somehow humanly or something, but not so bloody.

Probably, we can argue in any way, how good it would be if everything was softer, but it was the way it was.

A. Pichugin

But did the Great Patriotic War return faith in God to our people on a large scale?

To a large extent, the social, moral and social climate in the country, starting from the mid-1940s, noticeably differs from what it was until the end of the 1930s.

A. Pichugin

Hand on heart, there was no thaw in relation to the church. Stalin tried to use it there for his personal purposes, yes, bishops were released from the camps, yes, some priests returned, churches were opened. But this famous cathedral passed, if maybe they remember it now in connection with the fact that a cathedral is being held in Constantinople, not a cathedral, as we call it differently, excuse me, in Crete, the Cretan Forum, and in the late 1940s such the forum was held in Moscow. From Stalin's point of view, he did not bring much success, and immediately this cooling was reversed. Then Stalin died, Nikita Sergeevich came, the last priest on TV ... although there was a thaw in the country.

Still, in relation to the life of the people and the church, everything cannot be reduced only to those, say, foreign policy motives, which, of course, were also one of the underlying reasons for the change in church-state relations. Still, let's objectively admit that there are over 100 temples, and again almost 20,000 temples - this is a huge difference. Yes, many were opened in the occupied territories under the Germans, but most of them were not closed until the Khrushchev persecution. And the seminaries, the opportunity to again receive a spiritual education and reproduce the cadres of the clergy. And the opportunity, albeit limited, but the church press. And the names of Russian saints who are no longer perceived only as class enemies, at least some of them. And so on and so forth. You know, here I can recall one more story in this sense about the change in the situation in the 1930s and 1940s, at one time it struck me to the core. In the department of external church relations, at one time relations, and now relations there was a staff member of many decades - Alexei Sergeevich Buevsky, who worked there almost from the formation of the DECR until the 1990s. So when in the beginning, in the very beginning of the 1990s, maybe even in the late 1980s, changes were just beginning for us, a friend of mine, a well-known Russian journalist, organized a meeting between Buevsky and a Ney-York Times correspondent in Moscow. And he, against the backdrop of "Gorbachev's perestroika", changes in relations between church and state, tried to bring Buevsky to reasoning about the years of persecution. And then there was still such a border - under Stalin it was bad, but before and after it was still nothing. And Aleksey Sergeevich, as a systemic person, he said so: “Yes, under Stalin there was something like that, in the 1930s, but after the war there was nothing. And that’s how we lived, that’s how it was.” He and on the one hand, Yakunin, Sakharov, some other examples, and Aleksey Sergeevich calmly leads to that. And so they talked for about an hour, maybe. and in the end already tired, Buevsky was a man of very advanced years. He leans over to our journalist, who brought him: “Andrei, please tell him that after the war we were at least not shot.” And everything became clear. This is ... now we can only reproduce this, but for those who lived in the 1930s and 1940s, this is a huge difference, you see.

V.Emelyanov

Well, they didn’t shoot them, yes, I agree, of course, but at the same time, the attitude towards the clergy is like camps, they didn’t shoot them.

Yes, especially the clergy were not imprisoned, en masse ...

V.Emelyanov

Psychiatric hospitals, deregistration...

Well, what psychiatric hospitals are two Soviet dissidents, but in fact, of course, there was an economic restriction on the life of the church, ideologically ... I also found Soviet taxes for church workers, I remember what a financial inspector is - a word not familiar to most Soviet citizens.

V.Emelyanov

And the all-powerful organization of the KGB?

The KGB, which ... with the KGB is somewhat more complicated, in fact, all this was - this is a separate story.

V.Emelyanov

We will now dwell on this in more detail.

But of course, ideologically, the church was pushed to the periphery of Soviet life. But ideological displacement with the possibility of existence, the open performance of the sacraments, some maneuvering in this situation. As the system weakened, more and more conditional control over what happens in the church is not at all what it was before the end of the 1930s, yet we must clearly understand this border with you. Even Khrushchev's persecution was predominantly an ideological and economic persecution. Of course, there were those who ended up in camps and prisons, maybe dozens of priests and some bishops, but this, of course, cannot be compared with the 1930s in terms of scale.

V.Emelyanov

In terms of scale, of course, not, but these dozens, and in fact, probably hundreds, these are also living people, these are fates.

Yes, of course, but if we now think on the scale of the church and the country, from the point of view of the possibility of functioning of further development, reproduction. Yes, the number of churches and monasteries has again decreased, yes, the number of theological schools has been reduced, but not completely abolished. By the way, if we talk about the actions of the providence of God, then there is also a certain ... I can’t say the irony of the story, but it’s impossible not to remember. That the removal of Nikita Sergeevich took place on the feast of the Intercession of the Most Holy Theotokos on October 14, 1964, when a solemn ceremony took place at the Moscow Theological Academy on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of her move to the Trinity-Sergius Lavra. And I also found those of our teachers who were talking about how they sat at this solemn act, there was a patriarch, a Georgian patriarch on a visit, other guests, and this joyful news for all church people dispersed in a whisper-whisper in the audience.

V.Emelyanov

- "Nikita was removed."

Also the action of God's providence, by the way. Fishing in general is not a linear thing.

A. Pichugin

Yes, not a linear thing - the providence of God. But look, there is a popular belief that the people are worthy of the rulers they choose. It turns out that we chose the Bolsheviks - got it, the Germans chose the Nazis - got it, and they say it's our own fault. So why, I would like to ask you, does God's providence not interfere in such cases?

Because in the final conclusions, as well as in our personal lives, God's providence ... let's move from the personal to the general, from individual examples to the general. When we really want to sin, in fact, everyone will remember that we are talking about serious things, giving clues not to do this. If you want to sin - you get sick, if you want to go to some wrong business - you will be late for the plane, or else ... all the time the opportunity does not arise. But there is no compulsion not to do so. They are given from pangs of conscience, from a random phone call, here a lot of interesting things can be written down, how it turns out, but not coercion. Also in the fate of further, larger communities. And what, was it not given the opportunity for Russia not to choose the path of the Bolshevik coup one way or another? The upper classes, which as a result turned away from the last pious emperor, who did not live according to the law by which it was already customary to live by those who were at the head of the political elites. To a large extent to the clergy, who at the February revolution applauded in a very large part of the new democratic Russia and clung to the bows of the February revolution. The peasantry and the soldiers, who were promised an end to the war, and the other the taking of other people's property, and this bait, promised by the Bolsheviks, not used of course, but promised, to a large extent determined the behavior of the masses during the Civil War. Let us also remember the destroyers and the enemies, and remember the responsibility of those who allowed the destruction and triumph of the enemies with all that. And there is, of course, one moment that I remembered while talking about fishing. You know, there is such a book, now the name of the writer has fallen out, called "The Bridge of Saint Louis King", which describes ... Thornton Wilder. About how some groups of people, quite seemingly randomly, the action takes place in the XVIII or early XIX century in Latin America, ended up in Peru on the bridge, King Louis Saint, which collapsed under them. Their destinies apparently were not connected in any way. But they ended up on this bridge when it collapsed, because it was not by chance that everything in relation to everyone. Here we are in relation to a huge number of people - it’s not clear from here what this is not an accident, but if we look at history in a Christian way and believe that nothing happens in it at all, then we accept it ... we can’t get away from this acceptance, in my opinion.

A. Pichugin

That is, we, speaking in secular language, are moving progressively towards any human catastrophe on a planetary scale?

Yes, you can say that, I agree, we are really moving forward.

A. Pichugin

There is still such a topic, maybe it is secondary to what we are talking about now, but nevertheless often, especially in conversations between believers and non-believers, this topic pops up - why did God allow the existence of such people, personally, why was Hitler Why didn't he die in infancy? I understand that it is a little secondary, even, probably, we are now simplifying the topic that we talked about the whole program before, but nevertheless, this question often arises.

The mutilation of babies on the principle of possible transformation into villains, that is, this kind of providential eugenics, is of course an idea that Adolf himself would certainly have liked, but which turns history into some kind of incubator of positive people. Consider that the development of history... Ultimately, it deprives people of the very freedom that is given to us as a gift from God as a result. Adolf might not have become the Hitler he became.

V.Emelyanov

There was a normal boy, he drew, Alexey and I agree with him, some of his works even evoke artistic sympathy.

It did not necessarily have to develop into the one into whom it developed. And the seminarian Iosif Dzhugashvili might not have developed into a marshal generalissimo and the one we know about, but he could have become an archimandrite, or a deacon, somewhere in the vicinity.

A. Pichugin

And Ilyich is from quite a decent provincial family.

Ilyich, in the end, would have pulled on a lawyer.

V.Emelyanov

It always seemed to me that God, from his state outside of time, looks at our earthly life-existence, which is on some such ruler, He still knows in advance how it is ... since He is both there, and here, and at the beginning of time, and at the end, from our point of view, He sees it all the same as from Hitler - this rosy-cheeked baby doll from a decent family ... for him at the same moment Hitler is the person who shoots himself in a bunker in April 1945. And He knows perfectly well that this man will grow out of this rosy-cheeked baby.

Here we, I don’t know, will pass, or we will not pass, but this is already a separate, in my opinion, complex theological topic, already purely theological - the correlation in principle of God's providence and human freedom. For today I would limit myself to recalling the words of St. John of Damascus, that God foresees everything, but does not predetermine everything. But the complex one, forgive me for this word, but it must be used - the dialectic of the relationship of the providence of God, which desires each person to be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth, and we theologically affirm that God desires salvation for each person. And how this predestination to salvation correlates with the possibility of a person's free response - this is probably a rather complicated theological topic, which, it seems to me, should be discussed separately. I would now say a little about something else. One more thing in relation to history, if we remain in history, we should not forget one circumstance that what seems to us to be suffering, injustice in the context of human "today" is not necessarily such from the point of view of eternity. One small illustration. Bunin has a story, the main character of which is a young officer, a brilliant graduate of one of the St. Petersburg schools. His bride is a pure nice girl, they marry in St. Petersburg and have to go on a honeymoon trip. Seeing off at the Finnish railway station, they stand on the platform, the champagne opens, they have to get on the train and an unexpected incident - it's winter - someone pushes the porter and he suddenly involuntarily pushes them under the wheels of an approaching steam locomotive - they both die. A cry of bewilderment, a cry to him - why this happened - from those present. But Bunin then at the end puts the date when this happened - August 1914. He usually never included the date in the text of the work, and having in mind what those who then raised this cry to heaven experienced later. These two people, united together on the day of the wedding in the sacrament of love, still in no way clouded and uncorrupted by anything, including ourselves, did the Lord not save them through this death from what could be special chosen ones, from what what all those who then considered it unfair experienced. Not everything is so simple, not everything is so simple.

V.Emelyanov

Yes, the story, of course, is heartbreaking, but we are seeing no less terrible stories today, for example, when a plane crash occurs and we see it in news releases and so on. And this is terrible, because people are dying, and if you are a normal living person, you can just imagine what these people are going through in the last minutes of their lives, being in this iron box. But what does the little children who are in this... what is the Lord protecting them from? Why are these innocent children dying?

A. Pichugin

This, it seems to me, is a very big topic, we have a short break, literally one minute and then we will return to this studio. Where today we are talking with Archpriest Maxim Kozlov, First Deputy Chairman of the Educational Committee of the Moscow Patriarchate, Rector of the Church of St. Seraphim of Sarov on Krasnopresnenskaya Embankment. Alexey Pichugin is also here.

V.Emelyanov

And Vladimir Emelyanov, we'll be back in a minute.

A. Pichugin

We continue our "Bright Evening". Together with us, it is led by Archpriest Maxim Kozlov, First Deputy Chairman of the Educational Committee of the Moscow Patriarchate, Rector of the Church of St. Seraphim of Sarov on Krasnopresnenskaya Embankment. And I propose to return all the same to this issue, where does the death of innocent children have to do with it?

First, before answering this question directly, let's designate one thing for ourselves - what's new we just said? The only difference is that the flow of information has changed and that, unlike the inhabitants of a Russian village in the 18th century, or a Spanish town in the 17th century, or a Peruvian Indian in the 19th century, we learn not only about what happened in the vicinity, but thanks to uncontrolled, often inadequate information flow, which focuses in particular on such disasters, in terms of informational and commercial attractiveness.

A. Pichugin

This is clear.

It is important to stipulate, however, the volume of these horrors, it thickens somewhat in the minds of each of us.

V.Emelyanov

200 people are flying, 200 people died, 82 of them are children, I understand what you are talking about about the commercial ...

A. Pichugin

How can you not talk about it? An airbus exploded over Sinai, a terrorist attack, it itself fell - it doesn’t matter, but how can we not talk about it if our people crashed?

I'm not saying that it's not necessary to talk about it, I'm saying that the concentration of this kind of information, which before people got much more dosed and more gradually, today we learn all this news rapidly, due to the information process.

A. Pichugin

This is true.

Relatively speaking, the amount of bad news that reaches a person every day, at the beginning of the 21st century - at the end of the 20th, is not comparable to any other era.

V.Emelyanov

It is impossible not to agree.

This is important to testify, because it gives rise to a certain kind of psychology of perception of reality.

V.Emelyanov

We did it, we testified.

Now, as for these children. And what, I say, before parents with children did not sail on ships that sank? Were not attacked by robbers who killed the whole family? Didn't the Tatar-Mongols come and burn the entire village? A plague or other disease did not fall on Europe, Russia, Byzantium, the Arab states, where, as a result, up to three-quarters of the population died?

V.Emelyanov

All this is so.

These are the realities of the world, which lies in sin, which is distorted by the consequences of the fall of Adam in this sense, death and dying are part of the existence of the present world. And nowhere in the Holy Scriptures, even to believers, is it said that if you believe and be pious, you will be long-lived, happy, prosperous, your children will be healthy, and you will be successful in your profession. No, nowhere. It is said that you will not lose eternity, the Kingdom of Heaven. There are two perspectives of perception of life. If we proceed from an atheistic perspective, that everything is over with this, then in my opinion, the answer is only according to Dostoevsky, according to Shatov - horror, there is no point, and either a bullet in the forehead, or take everything from life that you can, because really horror. It doesn't make any sense. And the Christian perception of life that this horror cannot be canceled, but we believe that Christ is with every dying baby and that there is no tear that would not be wiped away when he steps into eternity, and that God has passed this horror of unjust dying, terrible, including physically terrible ...

A. Pichugin

I passed myself.

Until the end with us. There is no other answer, except that He is not outside of this, and does not look from there from heaven with interest in how this happens, and He Himself is fully involved in this. This is the only Christian answer.

V.Emelyanov

That is why we ask, and moreover, absolutely without any claim to God, relatively unfair, as it seems to us here, to us laymen, the death of these very unfortunate children. It is pointless, of course, to make any claims to God, we are just trying to figure it out and hear the answers.

Clearly, this is indeed a difficult moral conflict, a difficult moral questioning that each of us faces. I speak from the heart, I have no other answer than that Christ in this suffering is next to everyone. Oh no. Any other, it leads us to the fact that then some kind of construction is needed, then the world appears as a kind of construction, where God plays chess, placing pawns in the order of combinatorics so that they do not intersect with each other.

A. Pichugin

And now, rather, the pastoral question is how to feel that he is next to every suffering?

How to feel?

A. Pichugin

Surely there are people who ask this question quite often.

I think that the answer to this question is absolutely individual for each individual. There is no such ... you cannot write an instruction that you can give to a priest, a doctor, or even just any person that you say such words, or think about something. All sorts of instructions become a pitiful kind of pale shadow. Because even if it is so easy to prescribe - think about the sufferings of Christ, correlate and you will see that he does not suffer so much ... it becomes some kind of moralism that kills all this. It seems to me that you just need to be open-hearted with those who come to you with this, do not turn away from this person and say: “I am with you. Maybe I don’t see either, I also don’t see the point from here why this is happening, I can’t see why this is happening, but I don’t turn away from you, I will be hand in hand with you.

A. Pichugin

The famous Mother Teresa, whom a huge number of Catholic Christians revere as a saint and her diaries were published not so long ago, where she clearly writes for many, many years, not about her unbelief, but about the God-forsakenness that she constantly feels.

But at the same time, she did not leave what she was doing. You know, the Monk Silouan of Athos, having lived for years on Mount Athos, wrote about those retreats from the closeness of grace that he had to endure and about how difficult it was for him. A different experience and a completely different path, but nevertheless, it also happens. But he did not leave Athos and did not stop being a monk, Mother Teresa did not stop carrying out that merciful service, to thousands, maybe tens of thousands of people, which she carried out. Internal crises are one thing, but how much you succumb to them in external behavior is another.

A. Pichugin

And how are such people, say, more likely to Silouan the Athos, to whom they could come with such questions, here a person is experiencing an internal crisis of God-forsakenness, or lack of a sense of grace, and a person comes to him with the same question, and what should he say if he himself experiencing this condition now?

I think that in this case you can pray together, or say that you are not alone in what you are experiencing and that the one who seemed to you some kind of icon, statue, a righteous man ready for canonization, is actually not a stranger to those the same states that you also have. And that can actually be very supportive and inspiring. You know, I'll share a little personal experience. At one time it was very difficult for me to share in the experience of John of Kronstadt. I still don't like the way his book, My Life in Christ, was published. The style, the somewhat sweetened spiritual literature of the late 19th-early 20th century, the exaggerated pathos, stood as a kind of obstacle between my unworthy sinful perception and the holy righteous father John of Kronstadt. And then, when I read his real diaries, which he kept, which are now fortunately published, over the course of many years of his life, and where it was written that he was again angry with his wife, I could not restrain myself. Here again at the liturgy, a colleague came not sober, I could not maintain peace towards him and prayed for a long time to stand at the throne and continue to serve. Even the way he overcame weakness there, let's make an allowance for the 19th century, smoking, which was by no means immediately, a habit from which he abandoned. And he, as he writes, understood how the fall and how he had to overcome. Made it surprisingly close. I now re-read these diaries in a difficult moment of my life in order to understand that the great saint is not at all alien in his experience to what we sometimes experience.

A. Pichugin

Leskov described this very well in The Samaritans.

Yes, that’s why this finding of something that unites us and passing through, I don’t want to say that we should unite in sin, God forbid, in any saint you can see weakness and say: “Well, I will also sin, because he sinned." I don’t want to say that, but about the fact that a certain path of struggle, which is completely incomprehensible to you, but which the saint went through before he reached heights that are very far from you, it can turn out to be inspiring and helping. Including in overcoming sorrows, sorrows and misfortunes. After all, we know the saints who faced this, we know the saints who faced the death of children, illnesses, and the taking away of the kingdom. Including close to us in time in relation to which are not ancient Russian, or Byzantine hagiographic images, but, as it were, reality, now stretch out your hand, it’s worth it. And our new martyrs, in relation to whom we can learn a lot of things of this kind that can support us now. I think there is something to rely on here.

V.Emelyanov

Archpriest Maxim Kozlov, First Deputy Chairman of the Educational Committee of the Moscow Patriarchate, Rector of the Church of St. Seraphim of Sarov on Krasnopresnenskaya Embankment, today is a guest in the Bright Evening program. I would like to approach such a question, you can endlessly ask: why, for what. But, we will always get completely different answers from everyone. Because some people are kept, say, from evil, by an early death, say, by a serious illness, perhaps by insanity, while others, for some reason, on the contrary, receive carte blanche and do what they want with impunity, sometimes they even die quietly, calmly, peacefully in their bed in the house, in the family circle. And it turns out here in this world, we actually then, it turns out, cannot understand the meaning of all this that is happening, but then maybe we shouldn’t try to ask questions and not try to explain it all? Just say: the ways of the Lord are inscrutable and that’s all, and not come up with some implausible words of consolation - “it will be better for him there,” relatively speaking, if we are talking about an innocent person who, in our opinion, died, or is it the other way around, it happened so that he sinned no more. Just saying in such cases: “we don’t know” and that’s how it will be honest. We don't know, we don't know, and that's all, why this happens.

It is human nature to seek justice and it is impossible for us to give up this inner desire, this desire is saturated with all literature and the desire of the people's soul, so that virtue is rewarded, and sin and vice are punished. In order for righteousness to shine throughout the world, and for the villain to be properly hit on the fifth point, it is also desirable that he correct himself and realize ...

V.Emelyanov

No, the main thing is to give.

Or, at the very least, they did. This desire for justice is self-explanatory. But the fact is that, in the words of the prophet Isaiah, "God says: My ways are not your ways." Or Isaac the Syrian: "Do not call God just." Because if God were only just, you would have been in hell a long time ago. This is a desire for justice, it often works in us in relation to others, in relation to ourselves we desire mercy - of course I did this and that, but here it is necessary to act with me not in truth, but on the basis of what that I need to be forgiven, just forgive.

V.Emelyanov

Lord, please be kind.

Forgive me, please. But if we want the law of mercy towards ourselves, then at least we need to limit our desire for justice and such retribution as we see it as right - here and now. In addition, there are the words of the ancient Scriptures, even the Old Testament wisdom - "God loves whom He punishes." Punishes in the sense of teaching through punishment. Because as long as there is some action in your life, it means that you are not hopeless. So the Lord still calls you through the fact that maybe you crashed your car - you won’t drive, obviously a simple example. It hurts you - you won’t look around, you won’t steal, or you will start paying taxes through such an action of God’s providence. Worst of all, when it doesn’t concern you anymore - this is already some kind of wake-up call about hopelessness, what don’t do with this person, nothing will change in any way.

V.Emelyanov

Father Maxim, thank you very much for such a meaningful conversation, it seems that you and I started from one thing, yes, from the 75th anniversary of the start of the Great Patriotic War, ended up completely different. But we talked about very many and very important things. I hope that our listeners also benefited from our conversation, as did Lesha and me.

A. Pichugin

We touched on some very important reference points retrospectively, but you promised that we would talk about these theological issues that we touched on, but which we would like to understand more deeply, in relation to God, who is outside of time and looks at a temporary person and sees his life , as on some straight line, going to infinity in segments.

V.Emelyanov

And I would also like that one day, when you come next time, we would return to the conversation about the State Security Committee of the Soviet Union and the church. Our guest today was Archpriest Maxim Kozlov, First Deputy Chairman of the Educational Committee of the Moscow Patriarchate, Rector of the Church of St. Seraphim of Sarov on Krasnopresnenskaya Embankment. Thank you very much for such a meaningful conversation!

All the best, I promise to come and talk on the aforementioned topics!

V.Emelyanov

Goodbye.

A. Pichugin

All the best, thanks!

Why does God allow the innocent to suffer? Does it make sense? How can faith in an all-powerful, loving God be reconciled with such blatant injustice?

Bishop Panteleimon of Orekhovo-Zuevsky reflects.

Suffering overwhelms the earth

When you meet people who have experienced a terrible tragedy, it is difficult to talk about suffering. If I now looked into the eyes of a mother whose child died, a husband whose wife died, a son whose mother died, I don’t know what I would say ... Although I myself experienced this and I understand how hard it is. My wife died, three of my grandchildren died in infancy. The world becomes black and white instead of color. Food loses its taste when you have the experience of dying next to a loved one. I would like there to be no suffering, so that everyone lives happily, cheerfully, joyfully, so that no one gets cancer, multiple sclerosis, so that people never get into car accidents, so that planes do not crash. Nevertheless, suffering and sorrow cannot be avoided by anyone. They are in life. How to treat them?

Recently a man came to me - very good, very believing. He said that he could no longer pray, could not enter the temple. A terrible story happened to him. He had a friend of twenty years, whom he had known since childhood. This poor girl had long periods of depression, she was seriously mentally ill. She and her mother were unbaptized, unbelievers. One day this girl disappeared. They couldn't find her for a long time. But by phone they were able to determine that she went into the forest, to where there were towers from which in the summer you can jump down on a rubber rope - such an attraction. When my friend was looking for her, he prayed very fervently. It seemed to him that God heard him and that she would definitely remain alive. But he found it himself. She was dead. The girl committed suicide by jumping off the tower. It was scary. And he could not accept that God allowed the death of this girl. It is clear that the world is not perfect. But as the all-powerful God who created this world, how could He allow this? And how can you believe in God when this happens on earth?

Deserved suffering is easier to accept

Probably, it is easier to die for a lofty idea, maybe it is joyful to die in the name of love, you can calmly go to death if you have committed a serious crime and you understand that you are worthy of punishment. Sometimes criminals want to be punished. In the lives of the saints there is a story about a robber who killed many people, including children. In those days, criminals sometimes hid from justice in monasteries. The monks lived separately, wore special clothes behind which they could hide. This robber also went to the monastery and was received by the monks. At first he deceived them, but then he repented and received forgiveness from God - every sinner receives forgiveness from God if he sincerely repents of his sins (among the saints there is one who killed 400 people). But having already received forgiveness, he still decided to surrender to the authorities, and was executed. Although no one expelled him from the monastery, no one demanded that he surrender - the priest to whom he repented could not have betrayed him, otherwise he would have violated the secrecy of confession. But this robber himself, approaching the Chalice, saw one of the babies he had killed and was greatly tormented. The awakened conscience did not allow him to live in peace, he wanted to be punished.

If a person knows that he suffers for his sins, then he accepts this suffering. The prudent thief, who was crucified with Christ, said: we receive what is worthy according to our sins. I recently read a story about a woman who took on her son's sin. The husband severely mocked her, and the adult son, unable to stand it, killed him, and this woman took the guilt of her son upon herself and went to prison instead of him. She told her cellmates: “I know what I am sitting for, and every day I am glad that I am serving time for my son, and he lives in the wild.” This happens if a person understands why he suffers. But what if he doesn't understand?

Mankind is a single organism

We must remember, dear friends, that when this world was created, there was no suffering in it. God did not create suffering. How then did they appear? Some say, “God knew that Adam would sin. Why didn't He create Adam in such a way that he would not commit sin? The answer is simple: God created us free. We are not programmed, like machines, for good. We decide where to go, what to do, how to act, how to live. We can even decide whether to believe in God or not - this is the greatest freedom we have been given. There is a God, and some people are absolutely convinced that He does not exist.

The beginning of suffering, the beginning of sin lies precisely in the fact that a person in his freedom can choose the path of evil. Animals, birds - they have relative freedom, but do not choose between good and evil. A wolf can, of course, be shot for killing sheep, a man-eating bear can be killed, but still you can’t put him in jail and give him a term for what he did. He doesn't understand what he's doing. But the person understands.

But why do we suffer because Adam misused his God-given freedom? We haven't eaten from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, have we? Although some of them probably already ate... Well, the babies definitely didn't eat. Why, then, are children born with heart pathologies, with deformities incompatible with life? Are babies to blame?

We are created by God as a single organism. The sin or holiness of one is reflected in all the others. It just seems that we are separated from each other by space, we have different intelligence, different appearance, different skin color, different addictions. In fact, humanity is a single organism created by God in His image - the image of the Most Holy Trinity, united in Love. That is, we are all individuals of a single human nature and are very closely connected. We are all relatives, we are brothers and sisters. And those who lived, and those who will live, and those who now live throughout the earth - we are all one. And so what is broken in one affects others. Since Adam is our common forefather, his act, like a kind of genetic disease, is transmitted from generation to generation, from generation to generation.

Why doesn't God fix things?

But then you can say, “Why doesn’t God finally clean things up? After all, he knows who sins more and who sins less. Among us, perhaps, there are future criminals who will commit serious crimes. So maybe it’s better to eliminate them right away so that they don’t interfere with others? We don't know, but God knows. Why does He allow these people to live?

The fact is that you and I live in time, which is the path to Eternity. The life we ​​now live is not the real life for which we were created by God. In this world where you and I are, we were expelled from paradise after committing sin. And our stay here is temporary. This is not a place where we can settle down well, buy beautiful furniture, a summer house, a car, find a wonderful wife or husband, settle down forever and enjoy all these benefits.

Life is a road where we cannot collect many things, it is a road that one day will end. God is waiting for the end of history to draw a line. After all, if right now we start to figure out who is right and who is wrong, I'm afraid we all will not be good. We all have sins, and I'm far from a saint. If a person is a priest or goes to church, this does not mean that he is a saint, as some people think. To make a judgment, you need to end this world altogether, stop time and deal with everyone who lived and who still lives. And this will definitely happen, but God is waiting for people who have not yet come to the consciousness of sin to repent.

Some even think that God, as it were, started some kind of clock, and now we are ticking here on our own, and He is watching from above and does not interfere. But how does He endure so much evil? Why doesn't he interfere? Some kind of cruel God turns out, you say. Where is He looking? Where is he? And here we come to the most important thing.

God on the cross

One wise priest, when asked where God is, very simply said: God is on the Cross. God comes to earth, becomes a man and lives human life with all its difficulties, taking upon himself even the consequences of original sin, although He is purer and more sinless than a newborn baby. It is very difficult for a sinless person to live among us sinners. Have you read The Idiot by Dostoyevsky? It was an attempt to show the image of a holy man in our sinful world. And how did it end? The hero just went crazy.

When the Lord was on earth, He was so tired that He slept in the stern of the boat, which literally sank in the waves. Before taking upon Himself the sins of the whole world, before suffering on the Cross, the Lord prayed so fervently in the Garden of Gethsemane that His sweat was like drops of blood.

He accepted a terrible painful death. He survived many humiliations. The people whom He healed - and not a single person left Him without help - shouted: "Crucify, crucify Him!" Although these people could have freed Him, they did free the thief.

Death on the cross is a terrible death, death is torture. When a person is nailed to a cross, he is forced to lean on the wounds on his hands or on his nailed feet. A crucified person dies of suffocation. This is a terrible torture, a terrible torment. They even carried out such an experiment: people stood for a long time just with their hands up - they began to suffocate from the fact that the chest was raised up. And a crowd of people stood at the cross, they laughed and shouted: "Save yourself, if you are God." As is known from modern studies of the shroud, Christ was flogged with terrible scourges with lead tips that flayed the skin. It can be seen on the shroud that His entire back was slashed with them.

He was so beaten that he himself could not carry the cross, he was helped by Simon of Cyrene. When He carried the upper crossbar, which was tied to His hands, and when, exhausted, stumbled on the way to Golgotha, He fell on his face into the dust, particles of this dust were found on the shroud. A crown of thorns with sharp thorns was put on His head, they dug into the skin, and streams of blood flowed down His face.

Physical suffering was also aggravated by moral, spiritual suffering, which is incomprehensible to us - He uttered a phrase on the cross that always brings me personally into a state of inner shudder, on the cross God the Son addresses God the Father: “My God, my God, why You left me?"

Something similar is experienced by my friend, who thinks that God has left this girl. This is an unbearably severe suffering, and it was experienced by God himself. This suffering is what God did to overcome evil, to destroy suffering itself. This is the way to get rid of suffering. Suffering is healed by suffering. Death is killed by death. Dying on the cross, enduring suffering, He destroys his power. Now everyone who suffers can turn to Christ, and be with Him, and receive help from Him. This help is coming. Because now suffering does not have the power it had before Christ. Now suffering makes sense. And every sufferer now sacrifices himself and suffers with Christ.

You can't deal with evil

When we are faced with injustice, with old age, with death, we can turn to Christ with a prayer, remember His suffering for us, and help will come, although, perhaps, not immediately.

This does not mean that suffering will end instantly. It is allowed by God to cleanse us from sin. Our soul, defiled by sin, cannot otherwise be cleansed. Just as it is impossible to clean out the stubborn dirt without a brush, so suffering cleanses the filth of sin that has ingrained in the soul, it has a cleansing meaning for us, it makes a person perfect. After all, when a person suffers, he shows his love, and this is another meaning of suffering.

I will end with a story about a book that reveals the secret of suffering. This is the book of Job: it tells about how one righteous man lived on earth, he was rich and had many children - his name was Job. And the devil said to God: "Job loves you, because he has everything, take away his wealth, let's see how he will love you." And now everything is collapsing in Job, children are dying. His wife says to him: "Fuck God!" And Job answers her: "God gave, God took." Then he fell ill with a serious illness. His wife says to him: "blame God and die." And he says: "We must accept everything from God, good and bad." His friends came to Job and said: "This is all for your sins, you repent, and everything will pass." But Job knew no sin. He accepted his fate, his suffering, and in the end God revealed Himself to him and revealed some secret. The mystery of reconciliation with God is revealed to man in an incomprehensible way.

You can’t put up with evil, you must definitely try to make the world less suffering, you can’t step aside, you need to help people. We have young people - volunteers go to help in the regional children's hospital. There are children from orphanages there, and no one visits them. Volunteers visit them every day, play, pick them up, take care of them.

If a person does not agree that there is suffering in the world, then he should try to make the world less suffering and more love. It is necessary not just to think, but to start working on it yourself, pray and with compassion, help others to multiply love in the world. In this work and in prayer to Christ, crucified and risen, the mystery of suffering is revealed.

Disputes between Brahmin theists and atheist Buddhists flared up in earnest even half a millennium before Christ. After all, faith in loving Vishnu, the ruler of the world, or in Brahma, the creator of the universe, existed even then. The main argument of the Buddhists against the Brahmins in this topic was just this one. A good creator could not create a world full of suffering. According to Buddhism, life itself is suffering. Any talk about what they say is sinful people abusing the freedom of choice given to them does not stand up to criticism, and there are at least two reasons: firstly, God had to provide for the boundaries of a person’s permissible freedom, and he himself created him like that, with his inclinations cruel, otherwise he is not omnipotent. Why then blame a person if he himself created him this way? Secondly, this applies not only to humans. Because any animal is a much more cruel creature than man. Comrades whining about unity with nature somehow forget that animals are generally devoid of pity and often kill each other ...

“There is so much madness in the world that only the fact that he does not exist can excuse God,” Stendhal once said. The entire history of mankind is a history of suffering. From time immemorial, people have been haunted by endless wars, violence, oppression and bullying, terrible crimes, cruel executions, the triumph of injustice crying out to Heaven. Even in peacetime, earthlings are tormented and exterminated by diseases, hunger and all kinds of natural disasters. And, it would seem, really - well, why did the Lord never put things in order on Earth, allows so much evil and allows his creatures to suffer so much?

Temptation of Adam and Eve

If there is no God, then all earthly madness can be explained solely by human stupidity, natural selection, the eternal struggle for a place under the sun and ridiculous accidents. But in this case, the very existence of people and their suffering, in fact, become meaningless and hopeless. From the point of view of Orthodox Christians, everything in the world has a deep meaning and can be explained….

Suffering is pain, uncertainty, loneliness, rejection, sickness, infirmities, fears. And we all have suffering in some area of ​​life: spiritual, mental, physical, material, personal. Why do we suffer?

The world created by God was not intended for suffering, but as a result of the fall of the first people, the devil brought suffering to the earth.
The devil confused the first people. He sowed doubts about God in their hearts. And to this day, using different situations, the devil does everything so that we stop believing in God.

CHRIST DID NOT AVOID SUFFERING

It is interesting that Christ, having come to earth, did not abolish suffering, but Himself experienced everything that we endure on this earth. Moreover, He voluntarily took our pain upon Himself. This is written in the 53rd chapter of the book of the prophet Isaiah: “He was despised and humbled before people, a man of sorrows and acquainted with sickness, and we turned our faces away from Him; He was despised, and we regarded Him as nothing. But He took upon Himself our infirmities and...

David Pawson is the most famous English theologian of our time. David Pawson is the author of dozens of theological books, his teachings are recorded on audio and video cassettes, which allow millions of people to understand the great mysteries of Scripture and help many answer life's pressing problems.

A lot of people ask me a question about suffering. I know this feeling - I experienced a personal tragedy in the family circle. But I ask myself: why didn't I suffer more? Many Christians feel the same way, their question is not why they suffer, but why they do not suffer more, considering all that we have done to God. It amazes me that we are still alive. As a minister, I have seen a lot of suffering. I think ministers are second only to doctors and nurses in this regard, they have just as many people going through suffering and pain before their eyes. I turned to God to get peace of mind, because my mind asked me the same question: “Why, ...

Answers of the Archbishop of Yekaterinburg and Verkhoturye to questions from viewers of the Orthodox television company Soyuz.

- “The program “News” showed an orphanage. It treated children very cruelly: the older children beat the younger ones (the children were schoolchildren of 7-8 years old). How does the Lord God allow little children to suffer like this? They are already punished."

We transfer our sins to God. The Lord has nothing to do with children being beaten or insulted. The Lord has given every person free will. Man, as a rational being, must act according to the truth of God, according to the rules of life on earth, which the Lord has established for man. But since people have departed from God, from the truth of God, from moral life, they break the law, and for this they receive punishment from God.

We need to make more efforts and diligence in order to educate people in morality, spirituality, in the fear of God, so that they are not evil and their malice is not ...

More serious than questions about miracles or the relationship between science and the Bible is the nagging problem of why the innocent suffer, why children are born blind, why a promising life is ruined in its prime, or why social injustice exists. Why do wars break out all the time, in which thousands of innocent people die, children are burned alive, and many turn into cripples for life?

In the classical setting, this problem sounds like this: either God is omnipotent, but not good and does not want to put an end to evil, or God is good, but not omnipotent if He cannot stop evil.

There is a general tendency to blame God for evil and suffering and hold Him fully responsible for it.

There is no simple answer to this complex question. This issue cannot be taken lightly or scholastically. As the famous expression says, "those who have not had wounds have no scars." However, there are a few factors to keep in mind in this regard.

We should never...

Maximillian DeVille Supreme Intelligence (101421) 7 years ago It's all sad...
Especially if you think about what, as a rule, is not written on the graves.
About the causes of death.
Oh yes, of course, I want to believe that it was a quick painless death.
Baby falls asleep... and wakes up already in Paradise, because the Good God saw such an earthly angel and decided to make him a heavenly angel.
But that doesn't happen... This is not always the case.
It could have been some kind of terrible and unpleasant injury ...
I once heard the news about a raped 2-year-old girl ...
These could be severe congenital diseases, from which the child dies painfully over the course of several months, or even years ...

The options that God decided to transfer the best that is on Earth to Heaven are rejected ...
For why in such ways?
Kara parents?
Interesting interpretation of God. . punishing parents, sending torment to nothing ...

Why does God allow wars?

P. I. ROGOZIN

WHY DOES GOD ALLOW WARS?

Download WinZip (Word 97)

“You have acted recklessly now.
Therefore from now on you will have wars” (2 Chronicles 16:9)

Why does God allow such atrocities?”, “Why doesn’t God make sure that there is no war?” These questions were on everyone's lips and literally hung in the air during the two world wars. Now, when the ominous clouds of mutual extermination are again gathering in the world, the question is: “Why does God allow wars?” - becomes vital and relevant again.

For the historical stage we are going through, there is no more acute topic than the "inevitable clash" of two mutually exclusive camps ... Everyone asks questions: "What does the coming day have in store for us?" and “How will it all end?”.

How to avoid war is the main problem of our generation. All other problems have receded into the background.

In his centuries-old apostasy from God, man has reached such limits when he must or ...

Will there be something else like the Flood in the future? Why does a good God allow mass death and suffering of people? Is it right for a Christian to be afraid of catastrophes, and how can this fear be overcome?

Why does God send disasters to people like a flood, an earthquake, etc.?

The very similar formulation of the question - "for what?" - from a Christian point of view is incorrect. When it comes to the suffering of an entire nation during a natural disaster, it is possible to explain this catastrophe by the action of an angry God only from the position of pagan religions, but not from those ideas about God that are revealed in the Gospel. True, in the Old Testament one can also find references to God being angry with people, God the avenger of evil, God the destroyer of sinners. But the Old Testament Revelation was given to one, quite specific people, based on its level of intellectual, moral and general cultural development. And in those days, this level among the people of Israel was not much different from culture ...

Why does God allow evil?

The nature of evil is the realm of hidden knowledge

Our mind is not the mind of the Lord or even of angels, therefore a number of categories of being are simply unknowable due to the nature of our consciousness. In addition, no matter how far science would go, there is a part of knowledge that will never become the property of mankind due to its “secrecy”. The Bible talks about this, for example, in the book of Deuteronomy (29:29): “The hidden knowledge belongs to the Lord, but the revealed (that is, which can be revealed by scientific means) is to us and to our sons forever.”

Guesses about the original origin of evil can be built endlessly. No one has an exhaustive answer, tk. this question belongs to the category of "hidden knowledge". We are only dealing with the axiom of the real existence of evil, with which we are forced to fight. In order to be successful in this business, it is necessary to clearly understand ...

THIS QUESTION is the most common question people ask about God. If God loves everyone, then why do evil people prosper while the innocent perish? Why shouldn't God intervene: help them, save them, save them from their troubles.
… Millions of people died during World War II. Innocent people are dying today all over the earth. Children are born handicapped, teenagers are maimed, adults become disabled, the elderly become paralyzed. Everywhere you look - everywhere they kill, deceive, steal, rob. And who are the victims? Mostly defenseless, innocent people - children, old people.
Where is God looking, you ask? Doesn't He love people? Didn't He create man? Why doesn't He help then? Why does he allow all this? After all, everything is in His power! To understand this and find out whether it is possible to solve the problems facing humanity today, we must go back to the very beginning.

1. BATTLE OF TWO KINGDOM
As the Bible tells us, even before the creation of man, Lucifer, the chief of…

Why does God allow such suffering?

You spare everything, because everything is Yours, soul-loving Lord.
Little by little You rebuke those who err, and, reminding them of what they sin, You admonish, so that, having departed from evil, they would believe in You, Lord. Possessing power, You judge condescendingly and govern us with great mercy, for Your power is always in Your will.

(Wisdom 11, 27; 12, 2, 18).

My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord. But as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts higher than your thoughts.

(Isaiah 55:8-9).

If we judged ourselves, we would not be judged. Being judged, we are punished by the Lord, so as not to be condemned with the world.

(1 Cor. 11:31-32).

God would not want to give us sorrows, but our misfortune is that without sorrows we do not know how to be saved!

Priest Dionysius.

That is why it (the earth) is called the vale of weeping; but some people cry, while others jump, but the last ...

Human history is a real history of torment and suffering. At all times, people were pursued by wars, violence, humiliation, cruel crimes and executions. Even now, when there is no war (at least in our country), people are still exterminated by deadly diseases, hunger and various natural disasters. Why doesn't our Creator bring order to the Earth, why does he allow evil to rule the world and allow suffering to his creatures? The answers to these and many other questions can be found by reading this article in its entirety.

Why was Adam shown an apple? The first people living on Earth were happy, because they lived not just on Earth, but in paradise. But suddenly Adam and Eve acted frivolously: they listened to the tempting serpent and thereby violated God's only commandment. As soon as they tasted the forbidden apple from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, the whole world was instantly attacked by evil, and the nature of all living things was distorted: many animals became predatory, harmful insects appeared, ...

As an answer to the question - “Why does God allow suffering?”, We present an interview with Archbishop Kirill of Yekaterinburg and Verkhoturye. In his interview, Vladyka answers other equally important questions.
- “The program “News” showed an orphanage. It treated children very cruelly: the older children beat the younger ones (the children were schoolchildren of 7-8 years old). How does the Lord God allow little children to suffer like this? They are already punished."
We transfer our sins to God. The Lord has nothing to do with the fact that children are beaten or insulted. The Lord has given every person free will. Man, as a rational being, must act according to the truth of God, according to the rules of life on earth, which the Lord has established for man. But since people have departed from God, from the truth of God, from moral life, they break the law, and for this they receive punishment from God.
You don't have to blame God for this. You have to blame yourself.

We need more effort and effort to educate ...

Why does God allow the innocent to suffer? Does it make sense? How can faith in an all-powerful, loving God be reconciled with such blatant injustice? Reflects Bishop of Smolensk and Vyazemsky PANTELEIMON. Bombing again. 1941 Photo by B. Yaroslavtsev

Deserved suffering is easier to accept

Probably, it is easier to die for a lofty idea, maybe it is joyful to die in the name of love, you can calmly go to death if you have committed a serious crime and you understand that you are worthy of punishment. Sometimes criminals want to be punished. In the lives of the saints there is a story about a robber who killed many people, including children. In those days, criminals sometimes hid from justice in monasteries. The monks lived separately, wore special clothes behind which they could hide. This robber also went to the monastery and was received by the monks. At first he deceived them, but then he repented and received forgiveness from God - every sinner receives forgiveness from God if he sincerely repents of ...

This lesson is entirely devoted to the problem of theodicy, that is, a doctrine that reconciles faith in God with the presence of suffering, various disasters, and evil in the world. Although this term was introduced in the 17th century, the problem itself has been known since ancient times. If God is an omnipotent and infinitely good (i.e., good) Being, then why do various natural disasters, wars, illnesses and death occur in the world? Every day news of new terrible events comes. It would seem that if God exists, wishes everyone good for everyone and is powerful enough to achieve everything that he wants, then none of the above should be! But every day we encounter evil and suffering in the world, which means that either God desires the existence of all this (i.e., He is not all-good), or He does not achieve everything He wants (i.e., He is not omnipotent), or God is not exists at all. In the religions of the world, this difficult issue is resolved in different ways. For example, ancient polytheism simply replaced the almighty God with many small ...

If we are used to isolated cases of death, then the mass death of people, especially compatriots, shocks the entire society. So it was with flight A-321 from Egypt, and with those who died during the terrorist attack in Paris. And before that, there were Beslan, Nord-Ost, twin towers... From time to time we hear about the next man-made disasters. Again the world is on the brink of war: the opposition of interests of different groups of states has become too strong.

We know and believe that God, who created the world, our Heavenly Father, is Good itself, Love itself, Truth itself. So why does He allow these deaths, these sufferings, why does He allow evil people to commit their atrocities? Why does he allow natural disasters that seem not to be connected with the sinful human will, as a result of which hundreds and thousands of people die? And how do we respond to these disasters, how not to panic?

We will talk about this in the next articles.

M. Molotnikov

"If you don't repent..."

There is a passage in the Gospel of Luke. Christ asks those who hear Him: Do you think that those eighteen people on whom the tower of Siloam fell and killed them were more guilty than all those living in Jerusalem? No, I tell you, but unless you repent, you will all ... perish (Luke 13:4-5).

Eighteen people were killed when the building collapsed. But why these eighteen? What, were they more sinful than others? No. The Lord says that such a question is generally unjustified. And what lesson do we need to learn from this death, in general from any catastrophe and mass death of people, from the death of our loved ones? The key words are "unless you repent". It must be understood that the cause of all evil that occurs on earth is human sin, the sinful will of man. What does it mean to repent? – It means to see, to feel as the greatest misfortune that our souls are mortally ill with sin; “grab hold” of the One Who can free and heal from this grave, deadly disease; try to live as He taught. If we can’t repent like that, then at least take a breath, sorting out in memory what burns our conscience, and whisper from the heart: “Lord, forgive me!” And also, at least sometimes, before you say or do something, think: “Will it be pleasing to Him?”

M. Molotnikov

Iconography of emergencies. Part 1

The common features of all emergencies are a radically or suddenly changed situation and associated especially unfavorable, threatening factors for human life; catastrophic or destructive changes in people's lives. Since the universal sign of any emergency situation at all times is an immediate threat to the health and life of people or the threat of disruption of their activities aimed at solving vital tasks, then at all times people tried not only to find a way out of such situations at the time of their onset, but also have a certain algorithm of actions in case of their occurrence. People have always looked for a way out and, with the help of God, they often found it.

Iconography of emergencies. Part 2
Author: Bishop Nikolai Pogrebnyak
And we've had a lot of floods. Even in the relatively calm basin of the Moskva River, floods occurred with catastrophic consequences. Floods in Moscow in 1496 are chronicled, when, after a severe frosty and snowy winter, a "great flood" occurred, causing great damage to the capital with human casualties. In July 1518 and August 1566, the floods occurred after "no water" - long continuous rains, and in 1655 the spring flood destroyed many houses and even damaged the southern wall of the Kremlin.
The water rose at times very high; during the floods of 1788, 1806, 1828 and 1856 marks were made on the tower of the Novodevichy Convent. But one of the biggest floods was in 1908 - the water rose 9 meters above the constant summer level; the water layer near the Kremlin wall (!) was 2.3 m; the last major flood in Moscow was in 1931 - the water rose by almost 7 meters. Annalistic evidence of emergencies in obverse manuscripts is accompanied by laconic but very expressive miniatures.

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Good afternoon! From your answer about "What is God" I understood that this is the Creator of our visible world and everything in it, and also once on Earth the face of God appeared in Jesus Christ. If this is true, then I have a question, what is happening with the world in which we live now? I'm talking about wars, terrorism and the idea of ​​a golden billion. That is, if God created our world, then why did he allow the mass destruction of about 20-25 million people from 41 to 45? Have these 20 million been sinful in past lives and in these years atoned for their sins at the cost of their own lives? I think that either the God we are talking about is not omnipotent, or it is not a God at all, to which one must aspire, because he does not help. Can the one who created entire worlds allow the destruction of his creations? Thank you. Sincerely yours, Ilya

Priest Philip Parfenov answers:

Hello again, Ilya!

Righteous Job asked questions in the spirit of yours about 3000 years ago, and there is a book of Job in the Bible, where the righteous man makes tough claims to God, similar to yours, being in a state of struggle, challenge ... In the end, God appears to him, without answering directly to all rigidly posed questions, after which all put forward questions are removed - Job refuses them. This is a kind of long and extended parable. Its essence is such that some living and personal contact with God is important, and then many things will appear in a different light. Ask God, turn to Him! Maybe not right away, but over time, something will be given to you too... But questions will still remain - God is, first of all, a mystery. Imagine for a moment that your ideas about God may be very far from what God really is! It's a little, but it can help. How omnipotent is God in general, and why does He allow so much evil? I don't know... God is potentially much more powerful than all of us, but how omnipotent He really is, I don't know either. At the Divine Liturgy, the most important service of the Orthodox Church, we pray: “You are God, indescribable, unknown, invisible, incomprehensible…” This is the most accurate thing we can say about Him, and all Scripture is about this! If God were understandable to us, He certainly would not be God by definition. This, too, I can say with all confidence. And about the rest - only in vague conjectures and assumptions ... And if you look more closely at the Scripture itself, especially the New Testament, then there is the fate of Christ, God incarnate in a human image. He resurrected the dead, healed from incurable diseases, and… allowed Himself to be abused and, ultimately, to be subjected to the most humiliating and painful punishment of that time - crucifixion (this was done with the last slaves of the Roman Empire, and according to Jewish law, such a person was considered cursed). So, if God allowed this to be done with His unique and only begotten Son, is it any wonder that He allows something like this with others? Scripture, by the way, initially did not promise anyone an easy life. Jesus Himself warned of the sorrowful fate of His disciples. Today, when I write to you, the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross is also a reminder of this... “Take up your cross and follow Me,” as Jesus said. But after the cross, mind you, comes the Resurrection! And life does not end with physical death. If it were limited only to this biological form, then, in fact, we are more unfortunate than all people if we hope for Christ only in this life, not believing in His resurrection and in the final resurrection of the dead, as the apostle Paul wrote to the Corinthians (1 Cor. 15:12-19). And God revealed to the apostle Paul one important truth: My strength is made perfect in weakness"(2 Cor. 12:9). Yes, God is often rather weak than strong in this visible world. His ways, His tactics are mysterious... He does not subjugate or force anyone by force - it is done by the people themselves. He gives freedom to all of us to express ourselves both in the good, which he constantly calls for, and in the bad too. Alternative to this? Perhaps a world where everything would be worked out, debugged, predictable, as in a mechanism, but then there would be no freedom in this world ... And there would be no life itself!

I will quote one more words of the apostle - “We walk by faith, and not by sight” (2 Cor. 5: 7). And not knowing, I will add to this. If everything were visible to us, obvious and clear, it would be complete knowledge, and then there would be no need for faith at all. But again, all of Scripture calls us to faith. To faith how trust God, and at the same time fidelity Him and also confidence in those invisible things that we cannot yet visually show and explain.

Sincerely, Priest Philip Parfenov.