Where does evil come from in people's lives? Trinity in the main cathedral of Khabarovsk. Answered by priest Afanasy Gumerov, resident of Sretensky Monastery

I don’t remember exactly from the text, but this is what has been of interest for a long time: if before God there was nothing and there was only God, then where did evil come from??

Priest Afanasy Gumerov, resident of the Sretensky Monastery, answers:

God did not create evil. The world that came out of the hands of the Creator was perfect. “And God saw everything that He had made, and, behold, it was very good” (Gen. 1:31). Evil by its nature is nothing more than a violation of Divine order and harmony. It arose from the abuse of freedom that the Creator gave to His creations - angels and man. At first, some of the angels fell away from the will of God out of pride. They turned into demons. Their damaged nature became a constant source of evil. Then man could not resist goodness. By openly violating the commandment given to him, he opposed the will of the Creator. Having lost the blessed connection with the bearer of Life, man has lost his pristine perfection. His nature was damaged. Sin arose and entered the world. Its bitter fruits were illness, suffering and death. Man is no longer completely free (Rom. 7:15-21), but a slave of sin. To save people, the Incarnation took place. “For this purpose the Son of God appeared, to destroy the works of the devil” (1 John 3:8). By His death on the cross and Resurrection, Jesus Christ spiritually and morally defeated evil, which no longer has complete power over man. But in reality, evil remains as long as the current world continues. Everyone is required to fight sin (primarily within themselves). With the help of God's grace, this struggle can bring victory to everyone. Evil will be finally defeated at the end of time by Jesus Christ. " He must reign until He has put all enemies under His feet. The last enemy that will be destroyed is death” (1 Cor. 15:25-26).

How to reconcile the presence of evil in the world with the existence of the Almighty and Good God?

This problem has existed at all times, but it is especially acute in our days, when we have already experienced Nazism with its death camps, atomic weapons, Stalin and post-Stalin gulags, disasters in third world countries. The problem, or better said, the temptation of evil is one of the sources of modern atheism.

At the turn of the 4th century. Christian writer Lactantius formulated this problem in words that have not lost their power and relevance to this day: “Either the Lord wants to eradicate evil, but cannot [do it]. Or He can [do it], but He doesn’t want to. Or He cannot and does not want to do this. If He wants, but cannot, then He is powerless, and this is contrary to His nature. If He can, but does not want to, then He is angry, which is also contrary to His nature. If He is both unwilling and unable, He is both evil and weak and, thus, cannot be God. But if He wants and can, which is the only thing consistent with what He is, then where does evil come from and why doesn’t He eradicate it?” .

Philosophers who wanted to explain how God controls the world have emphasized two arguments. First, God is not the creator of evil. He is not endowed with evil for the simple reason that evil does not exist as an independent reality. Evil does not stand among other created things. It is a negation, an absence, a loss of what reality must have in order to be completely such. Second, God allows evil as an inevitable condition for the existence of a greater good in the created universe. On the one hand, God allows physical evil (suffering, various disasters, catastrophes and destruction), because it is inevitable in such a created universe, which is imperfect and consists of many beings, whose personal good cannot always coincide with the good of others, but itself the existence of this universe and its universal harmony prevail over the evil that the universe includes. On the other hand, God allows moral evil for the sake of preserving the freedom that He has endowed on rational creatures.

Such reasoning seems fair and the only possible one if we look at it exclusively from a rational point of view, without taking into account what God has revealed to us about His plan for man and the universe. But from a point of view closer to philosophy, Divine revelation provides us with a dynamic, historical vision that reveals incomparably wider horizons to us.

A purely natural universe, which God does not change by introducing His uncreated energies into it, inevitably contains suffering and death. This is the only thing that the human mind can comprehend, relying only on its own strength.

Meanwhile, God has revealed to us through His Word that He did not create the world to merely remain contained within the framework of nature. She exists only in order to be transformed through the communion with the uncreated energies of the Divine given to her and to shine with Divine glory. The goal of God's creative act is a transformed world, in which there will no longer be disasters, suffering, or death, but where God will be All in all. This will be the final state of the universe, the completion of God’s plan, described in the 21st chapter of the Apocalypse: And I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I<…>I saw the holy city Jerusalem, new, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from heaven, saying: Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and He will dwell with them; they will be His people, and God Himself with them will be their God. And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and there will be no more death; There will be no more crying, no crying, no pain, for the former things have passed away. And He who sat on the throne said, Behold, I am making all things new.(Rev 21:1-5).

But why didn't God initially create the universe in such a final, deified state, in which all forms of evil are absent?

The answer is that the deification of creatures endowed with reason - angels and people, through whom the Divine glory will shine on creatures without reason - is a union of love, the interpenetration of the uncreated Divine will and created wills in personal mutual love.

This presupposes a free response on the part of creatures - angels and people, the coordination of their freedom with the grace of God. In order for the deification of creatures to be accomplished, so that it truly becomes a universal unity in mutual love, it is necessary that this creation be able to freely surrender itself to love or refuse it.

The current state of the world is temporary; according to Divine design, it represents a space in which human freedom can manifest itself in the form of a choice between God and selfishness, self-sufficiency and human creatureliness.

This present state of creation can be specifically characterized in two ways. On the one hand, the material and animal world is subject to what the Fathers call corruption, that is, suffering and death. This world has not yet been transformed by Divine energies, since man has not been transformed, and is in an intermediate state, which will end with the Second Coming. This state is not only a consequence of the sin of rational creatures: before the creation of Adam and before his sin, the material world was not transformed. But it is obvious that the sin of the angels, and then of our first parents and all their descendants, strengthened this corruptible state of the material and animal world. On the other hand, creations endowed with freedom (specifically, some of the angels who followed Lucifer, and all people - at the instigation of the devil and following their forefather Adam) used their freedom to their detriment and sinned, thus removing themselves from God - source of life.

The fallen angels, by virtue of their nature, irrevocably established themselves in hatred of God and His plan of love - and became demons.

Man, the image of God, whom the Creator did not intend for death and suffering and who could have avoided them if he had preserved the unity of his will and God's, separated from God and, thus, became on an equal basis with animals, becoming, like them, corruptible subject to suffering and death. Chapter 3 of Genesis tells us about this: To the woman [God] said: By multiplying I will multiply your sorrow in your pregnancy; in illness you will give birth to children; and your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you. And he said to Adam: Because you listened to the voice of your wife and ate from the tree, about which I commanded you, saying: You shall not eat from it; cursed is the ground because of you; you will eat from it in sorrow all the days of your life; She will bring forth thorns and thistles for you; and you will eat the grass of the field; By the sweat of your face you will eat bread until you return to the ground from which you were taken; for dust you are, and to dust you will return. And Adam called his wife’s name Eve, for she became the mother of all living. And the Lord God made garments of skins for Adam and his wife and clothed them. And the Lord God said: Behold, Adam has become like one of Us, knowing good and evil; and now, lest he stretch out his hand, and also take from the tree of life, and eat, and live forever. And the Lord God sent him out of the garden of Eden to till the ground from which he had been taken. And he drove out Adam, and placed in the east by the garden of Eden Cherubim and a flaming sword that turned to guard the way to the tree of life.(Genesis 3:16–24)

And in chapter 2 of the Book of Wisdom of Solomon we read: God created man for incorruptibility and made him the image of His eternal existence; but through the envy of the devil death entered the world(Wis 2:23–24).

And the Apostle Paul also says in the 5th chapter of Romans: Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, so death spread to all men, because all sinned.(Rom 5:12).

So, the state of suffering and death to which a person is subject is a consequence of sin. This does not mean that every illness that befalls a person is caused by his personal sins - it is a consequence of the participation of the entire human race in fallen nature. And every individual mistake, instead of affecting only the person who committed it, causes, in some way, a universal resonance. The French writer Leon Bloy expressed this with all the genius of a poet and prophet: “Our freedom is interdependent with the balance of the world... Every person who commits a voluntary act projects his personality into infinity. If he gives a beggar a penny from an unclean heart, then this penny burns through the beggar’s hand, falls, pierces the earth, passes through the planets, crosses the vault of heaven and creates a threat in the universe. If a person commits an unclean act, then perhaps he darkens thousands of hearts that he does not know and which in a mysterious way relate to him and need the purity of this person, just as, according to the word of the Gospel, a traveler dying of thirst needs a cup of water. An act of mercy, a spiritual movement of true compassion, sings Divine praise to him from the time of Adam until the end of time; he heals the sick, comforts the despairing, calms storms, rescues captives, converts the faithful and protects the human race.

All Christian philosophy is based on the indescribable importance of free will and on the concept of comprehensive and indestructible solidarity.”

Of course, everyone is responsible for themselves personally. But every personal action entails an increase in good or evil in the world.

As the Hieromartyr Irenaeus of Lyons explained, illness and death are not lawless punishments imposed by God on a guilty person, but a logical consequence that organically follows from sin: “Union with God is life, light and the enjoyment of the benefits that come from Him. On the contrary, to all those who voluntarily separate themselves from Him, He imposes [as punishment] the separation they themselves chose. So, falling away from God is death, separation from light is darkness, falling away from God is the loss of all the good things that come from Him. Those who, because of their falling away, have lost what we have just said, being deprived of all blessings, are subject to all sorts of punishments: it is not that God is ahead of time to punish them, but the punishment that pursues them is already that they are deprived of all benefits.”

As for creatures without reason, their corruptible state - such as it is at the present moment - is indisputably connected with the sin of angels and men. Angels, of course, have a connection with the material world. J. G. Newman, who knew the theology of the Church Fathers well and at the same time had a keen sense of the reality of the invisible world, saw in angels “not only messengers used by the Creator to communicate with people,” but also ministers who maintain order in the visible world. “I believed,” says Newman, “that angels have real causes of motion, of emission of light, of life, in those fundamental principles of the material universe, which, when their presence is quite obvious to us, force us to think about the concept of cause and effect, and also about the what are called the laws of nature.” In a conversation on the feast of the Archangel Michael, Newman speaks of the angels: “Every movement of air, every ray of light and heat, every manifestation of beauty is, so to speak, the fringe of their clothes, the folds of the dress of those who contemplate God face to face...”

If this is the role of angels in relation to the created world and its very laws, then it becomes clear to us that the fall of the prince of this world with his angels could bring great upheaval to the world. Sometimes I wonder if there is a connection between this falling away and the wicked, devilish properties of some insects, viruses and other creatures, which, however, are not inherently bad and do not sin in themselves.

Be that as it may, it is obvious that Satan has transformed harmless creatures into instruments of temptation for man, and he, using them to satisfy his selfishness and thirst for pleasure, has mastered them, further aggravating the corruption that characterizes his current state. This contradicts the hidden dynamism that animates every creation, for, according to the words of the Apostle Paul, creation awaits with hope the revelation of the sons of God, because creation submitted to vanity not voluntarily, but by the will of the one who conquered it, in the hope that creation itself will be freed from the slavery of corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groans and suffers together until now(Rom 8:19–22).

Thus, the evil from which we suffer here on earth is a consequence of sin. And God is not its creator. He could not eradicate evil without taking away our freedom of choice, and this is our most valuable good and the condition of our deification.

Can we say that this evil is beyond the control of God and His providence? Definitely not. He puts limits on those types of evil that God does not want and turns them into the service of the real good of people, proportioning His gracious help to the severity of the test. Thus, the Apostle Paul wrote to the Corinthians: No temptation has befallen you other than that of man; and God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but when you are tempted, He will also give you the way of escape, so that you may be able to bear it.(1 Cor 10:13). And in at least one version of the text of the Epistle to the Romans it reads: Moreover, we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.(Rom 8:28).

Therefore, only in this sense can the sufferings and trials that befall us be regarded as coming from God, sent down by Him, and should be accepted with confidential ease. Sufferings allowed by God, granted by Him in the same measure as the strength to overcome them, and sent down for our own good, according to the expression of St. John Chrysostom, are not real evil, they are nothing more than painful procedures prescribed by a doctor.

Real evil is only the sin we commit. "Evil? This word is ambiguous, and I want to explain to you its two meanings for fear that you, having confused the nature of things due to the ambiguity of this expression, may reach the point of blasphemy.

Evil, real evil, is fornication, adultery, stinginess and all other countless sins that deserve condemnation and the most severe punishment. Secondly, evil - in the improper sense of the word - is hunger, plague, death, illness and all other disasters in the same spirit. But in fact, this is not real evil; all these phenomena are only given such a name. So why isn't it evil? If they were evil, they would not be the cause of so many benefits for us - but they reduce pride, free [us] from indifference, invest [in us] strength, revive attention and zeal. When He killed them, says the prophet David, they sought Him and were converted, and from early morning they resorted to God (Ps 77:34). So, here we are talking about evil that corrects, making us at the same time more pure and zealous, about evil that teaches us Divine philosophy, and not at all about what deserves blasphemy and condemnation. The latter, of course, was not created by God, but stems from our own will, which the former seeks to cut off. If Scripture understands by the name of evil our sorrow, which is caused by suffering, this does not mean that sorrow is inevitably evil: it is such only in the opinion of people. In reality, evil is not only theft and adultery, it is also the misfortune called evil in our language, and it is with this usage that the sacred author conforms. This is what the Prophet means when he says: Is there a disaster in a city that the Lord would not allow? (Amos 3:6). The prophet Isaiah, speaking on behalf of the Lord, said the same thing: I, [Lord]<…>I make peace and cause disasters (Isaiah 45:7); disasters mean misfortunes. This is the same kind of evil that Christ refers to in the Gospel, expressing His sorrow and suffering as follows: Enough for every day of your care(Matthew 6:34). It is obvious that by this Christ means those hardships and sufferings to which He subjects us, and which, I repeat, most reveal His providence and kindness.

The doctor deserves praise, not only when he takes his patient out into the garden or into the meadow, when he allows him to enjoy the bath, but also - and especially - when he obliges the patient to fast, when he torments him with hunger and thirst, when he puts him to bed into bed and makes his location a prison, when he deprives him of light and surrounds him with thick curtains, when he invades his body with iron and fire, when he gives him bitter drinks - for he is still a doctor. So, if so much torment to which he subjects us does not prevent him from continuing to bear the name of a doctor, is not [our] mind indignant at the sight of how they blaspheme against God, how they no longer recognize the benefits of His universal Providence - while Does he prescribe similar misfortunes for us: hunger, for example, and even death? Meanwhile, God is the only true Doctor of souls and bodies. Often, when He notices that our nature takes pleasure in prosperity and boasts of it, and allows vicious pride to prevail over itself, He uses want, hunger, death, and all other sufferings as means known to Him to free our nature from disease, devouring her."

So, Saint John Chrysostom affirms a universal principle. But, nevertheless, he does not pretend that a person in every case can recognize the grounds and motives of the test. The Word of God convinces us that everything allowed by God serves for the good of man and is, as it were, a sacrament of His boundless love. “Everything that God allows is as worthy of honor as what He grants,” says Leon Blois. But this does not reveal the secret of God’s ways and His economy. And it is not for us to find out why God allowed this or that.

In his treatise “On Divine Providence,” St. John Chrysostom asks the question: “Why are the actions of evil people, demons and devils allowed in this world?” - and he himself answers: “If you wonder why these things happen, if you do not rely on the deep and inexplicable reasons for His plans, but only do what you ask indiscreet questions, moving further and further in this, you will begin to ask yourself about many other things, such as: why is there still ground for the emergence of heresies, why the devil, demons, evil people who have fallen into numerous heresies, and - most importantly - the Antichrist must take place, being endowed with such power to mislead that their actions, according to the word of Christ, will they be able to confuse, if only it were possible, even the elect themselves? So, one should not seek [an explanation] for all this, but one must be content with the inexplicability of Divine wisdom.”

Chrysostom already said a little higher in the same work:

“When you see the Seraphim hovering around the exalted and majestic throne, protecting their eyes with the cover of their wings, covering their legs, back and face and emitting cries full of amazement... Will you not run to hide yourself, will you not hide underground - you who want with such audacity to penetrate into the mystery of the providence of God, whose power is unspeakable, inexpressible, incomprehensible even by the powers of heaven?.. After all, everything that concerns this is known for certain to the Son and the Holy Spirit, but to no one else.”

But God was not content to subject the trials and sufferings that befall us to His Divine guidance. He did not limit himself to controlling them by His Providence and thus placing them at the service of our salvation.

In addition to all this, the Father sent the Son to take upon Himself our nature with all the consequences of sin, with suffering and death. And the Lord Jesus Christ, being God and man, managed, by taking them upon Himself, to radically change their meaning. Suffering and death were the consequence and sign of man’s falling away from God as a result of his sin. And so, accepted by Christ to fulfill the will of the Father and out of love for people - not excluding his own executioners - they became a sign and expression of His filial love for the Father and His Divine love for mankind. And thus He conquered suffering and death. And by sending His Spirit into our hearts, He also provided us with the opportunity to make our suffering and death the most favorable condition for our renunciation of all selfishness, for our love for God and for all people, for our forgiveness of all enemies and opponents.

Christ did not come to abolish the suffering and evil present on earth, but by His death and Resurrection he gave us the opportunity to conquer death by death in anticipation of the day of His Second Coming in glory, when death will be finally swallowed up in victory.

As a modern interpreter of the book of Job wrote, “in order to accept the riddle of suffering, a certain state of mind is necessary, without which the most beautiful reasoning would have no effect on us, or at least would not calm us down completely. Such a spiritual disposition is similar to the humility of a child who admits that he does not fully know any thing and, in particular, his own existence, as a result resigning himself to the fact that he was created, and henceforth not surprised that he is involved in events whose participants only the Author of his existence knows. The only one who can endure suffering in the world is the one who stops trying to understand life in its most intimate depths and resorts, in spite of everything, to the thought that this life, sometimes so cruelly broken [by misfortunes], is nevertheless the work of an omnipotent and infinitely good God. So, returning once again [to the riddle of suffering], [let’s say] that all other answers, except those consistent with the last one, have no value.”

For a Christian, submission to the ways of God, to His way of guiding our lives, takes on a very specific form - acceptance of the Cross as an instrument of salvation, acceptance of the Cross of Christ and our cross, united with the Lord. Reading the Gospel, we see how difficult it was for Christ to convince the apostles of the necessity of suffering on the Cross. The same problem is with us. It is not enough to believe purely theoretically that Christ accomplished salvation through the Cross. We also need, turning our gaze to our heart, enlightened by the Holy Spirit, to understand quite concretely and realistically that for each of us the Cross and the suffering we endure are the only road to the Resurrection, that the Cross itself contains the power of the Resurrection.

In a conversation with the Monk Gregory of Sinaite, transmitted in the Philokalia, the Monk Maxim Kavsokalivit says that when the Holy Spirit fills the spirit of a person, he begins to see the things around him completely differently than people usually see them. So is not the Christian, par excellence, a person who, enlightened by the Holy Spirit, sees in suffering, death, in everything that places the cross on us, something completely different from the simple man - namely, the glory of the Resurrection?

Translation from French by Y. Kazachkova

(With) Where did evil come from then? The 13th archangel became proud and was thrown into hell and so on... But God is omnipotent and he could not help but foresee this! It turns out that either the Almighty did this on purpose, or this whole story is nothing more than fiction! How then can you check this? Why are animals not evil? A predator, eating its prey, will never deliberately mock it! But the dog can be a “biter,” as the song says. Everything is very simple. The fact is that a dog is a humanized creature. Namely, it is in the human world that evil exists. Why? Yes, because people devote their entire lives to intentions. To be clothed and well-fed, desired and respected, the only one and loved. And what happens when an obstacle gets in the way? It gives rise to resentment, irritation, rage, hatred in a person... That is, the roots of evil. Everyone has failures, but nature is so wisely designed that when a wolf runs after a hare, but it eludes him, the wolf looks for new prey. He doesn't tear his claws out of anger. He doesn’t think that he had to catch the hare, he just acts. Why do animals do this? Yes, because none of them considers this world their property. The same cannot be said about a person. People constantly live as if someone owes them. If they set a goal for themselves, then take it out and put it down! Any obstacle immediately causes irritation. And if the tidbit went to someone else - the hackneyed phrase: “How unfair the world is!” The problem is not that we don't get what we want, the problem is how we feel about it. So what should we do? - you ask. - Learn life from animals?

Not at all. It is important to understand the main wisdom of nature: It is impossible to avoid all failures, it is impossible to subjugate the world to yourself, it is impossible to force everyone to dance to your tune! Just get from life what it gives and don't ask for more. Many religions and spiritual practices teach us this wisdom. We are not the masters of this world, we are its guests and components. We cannot change the Universe around us, but we can change ourselves.

Registration number 0046817 issued for the work:

And the Lord said: “Let there be light!” And there was light. And God realized that this was good. (WITH) Where did evil come from then? The 13th archangel became proud and was thrown into hell and all that... But God is omnipotent and he could not help but foresee this! It turns out that either the Almighty did this on purpose, or this whole story is nothing more than fiction! How then can you check this? Why are animals not evil? A predator, eating its prey, will never deliberately mock it! But the dog can be a “biter,” as the song says. Everything is very simple. The fact is that a dog is a humanized creature. Namely, it is in the human world that evil exists. Why? Yes, because people devote their entire lives to intentions. To be clothed and well-fed, desired and respected, the only one and loved. And what happens when an obstacle gets in the way? It gives rise to resentment, irritation, rage, hatred in a person... That is, the roots of evil. Everyone has failures, but nature is so wisely designed that when a wolf runs after a hare, but it eludes him, the wolf looks for new prey. He doesn't tear his claws out of anger. He doesn’t think that he had to catch the hare, he just acts. Why do animals do this? Yes, because none of them considers this world their property. The same cannot be said about a person. People constantly live as if someone owes them. If they set a goal for themselves, then take it out and put it down! Any obstacle immediately causes irritation. And if the tidbit went to someone else - the hackneyed phrase: “How unfair the world is!” The problem is not that we don't get what we want, the problem is how we feel about it. So what should we do? - you ask. - Learn life from animals?

Not at all. It is important to understand the main wisdom of nature: It is impossible to avoid all failures, it is impossible to subjugate the world to yourself, it is impossible to force everyone to dance to your tune! Just get from life what you can take and don't ask for more. Many religions and spiritual practices teach us this wisdom. We are not the masters of this world, we are its guests. We cannot change the Universe around us, but we can change ourselves.

And the more we are in harmony with our inner and surrounding world, the less we will create evil in ourselves and around us.

And the Lord said: “Let there be light!” And there was light. And God realized that this was good. (c) Where did evil come from then? The 13th archangel became proud and was thrown into hell and so on... But God is omnipotent and he could not help but foresee this! It turns out that either the Almighty did this on purpose, or this whole story is nothing more than fiction! How then can you check this? Why are animals not evil? A predator, eating its prey, will never deliberately mock it! But the dog can be a “biter,” as the song says. Everything is very simple. The fact is that a dog is a humanized creature. Namely, it is in the human world that evil exists. Why? Yes, because people devote their entire lives to intentions. To be clothed and well-fed, desired and respected, the only one and loved. And what happens when an obstacle gets in the way? It gives rise to resentment, irritation, rage, hatred in a person... That is, the roots of evil. Everyone has failures, but nature is so wisely designed that when a wolf runs after a hare, but it eludes him, the wolf looks for new prey. He doesn't tear his claws out of anger. He doesn’t think that he had to catch the hare, he just acts. Why do animals do this? Yes, because none of them considers this world their property. The same cannot be said about a person. People constantly live as if someone owes them. If they set a goal for themselves, then take it out and put it down! Any obstacle immediately causes irritation. And if someone else got the tidbit - the hackneyed phrase: “How unfair the world is!” The problem is not that we don't get what we want, the problem is how we feel about it. So what should we do? - you ask. - Learn life from animals?
- Not at all. It is important to understand the main wisdom of nature: It is impossible to avoid all failures, it is impossible to subjugate the world to yourself, it is impossible to force everyone to dance to your tune! Just get from life what it gives and don't ask for more. Many religions and spiritual practices teach us this wisdom. We are not the masters of this world, we are its guests and components. We cannot change the Universe around us, but we can change ourselves.
And the more we are in harmony with our inner and surrounding world, the less we will create evil in ourselves and around us.

Reviews

You don’t know nature well. A wolf, breaking into a sheepfold, slaughters ALL the sheep, simply out of courage. Many animals devour their young if they do not have time to escape. Many predators kill and devour their relatives.
But the most bloodthirsty, evil and vile man is undoubtedly. Well, God made him that way. In his own image and likeness.

If God were evil, he would not have sent his son to save us! People have left God, and this is what causes all the troubles! The wolf kills sheep purely instinctively; the feeling of courage is not familiar to the animals. They also eat their young according to nature’s plan: so that there is no overpopulation. Wild animals destroy their relatives solely at the call of instinct, apparently for the same reason. Nature is harmonious. And evil is generated exclusively by ignorance and selfishness! Only an unreadable gaze sees evil at the root of the world!

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Sermon delivered by Archpriest Vasily Ermakov on October 12, 2003

Temple of St. Seraphim of Sarov. Seraphimovskoe cemetery. Saint Petersburg

Memorial Day of St. Cyriacus the Hermit

WHERE DOES EVIL COME FROM?

In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit!

Think, sharpen, realize with your inner feeling, the feeling of a person - where does evil come from on earth? It seems to work out in life, they teach us kindness, teach us decency, teach us compassion. There are many books, many films, sometimes you see a lot of kind, good people, but at the same time, what lumps of evil emerge against the background of our human life and how much blood is shed, how many tears are shed, how many tragedies we see in this life. And the question: “Why is everything happening? Who is to blame for this tragedy of our earthly existence? And we ourselves are to blame for this. If a person tried to think (and today almost no one thinks) how to live on earth, so that the people standing around me would feel warm, joyful and calm, so that from the person standing next to me life would radiate the grace of joy, consolation, support and help.

Due to his pride, a person does not want to listen, to peer into the human world, which lives on the one hand according to the laws of the power of the fist and the evil of hatred, but on the other hand - love, compassion and forgiveness, this is you and me, who knows the Gospel, who is obliged to know the Word God's. If you carefully read the Sacred Pages of the Word of God at least once, you will find many wonderful answers to all the questions of your earthly existence. So today the Evangelist Luke tells us (the answer to the question of where evil comes from is easily accessible) - “As you want people to do to you, do so to them.” This is what needs to be done, what needs to be fulfilled, how a person should live today.

But we see on the pages of the history of our Russian state, we did not live like that, we lived according to the law - “if the enemy does not surrender, then he is destroyed”, according to the law - “beat the first one you come across”, “whoever is not with us is against us” , this is what the 20th century taught us about the ideology of communism. The question of forgiveness, the question of compassion, the question of the concept of how painful it is for the person to whom I inflict the pain of life, the pain of a wound, the pain of destruction, the pain of insult, the pain of robbery, the pain of violence. These are the rapists of the earth - they got everything for themselves according to the full program of everyday life. The 20th century - it was bloody, it was difficult, it was almost tragic for our Motherland. Why did grief visit our Russia? And because we, heeding the word of human evil, heeding the power of the fist, that everything is allowed to me, I can do everything - we received all the evil in full. Since the revolution, we have destroyed everything holy, everything good, everything good that was taught to the children of Russia, our parents.

They were told: “don’t hold evil, don’t commit atrocities, don’t succumb - they were told then - to the deception of communism.” No, everything that was said was holy, everything that was said was good, about which was warned with an obvious, clear, powerful word by our kind, far-seeing, Russian people, literate, spiritually enlightened, warning: “see, do not do evil, show mercy, show compassion, show love for your neighbor” - no. And off we go. The revolution began, and away we go.

The destruction of officers, the destruction of smart people, when at the beginning of the civil war there was a policeman standing at the Anichkov Bridge (my father told me this, from personal observation), unbridled Russian soldiers came up: “Oh, so-and-so, to the Fontanka,” and they killed him with cobblestones. An officer is walking, a drunk man approaches, who plundered the Eliseevsky warehouses: “oh, you, officer’s skin,” stone, go there, to the Fontanka. And so it went, and so it went. And when they started shooting at everyone at the Aleksandrovskaya station (as you go to Siverskaya): a train with deserters arrived, full of 60 cars, they abandoned the front near Pskov, let the Germans near Pskov. They drove up, there were sailors on the platform, 50 machine guns, they said: “come out,” they came out in a crowd, thousands, and every second one was shot. Then they thought: “here it is - Soviet power.” And you were warned (this is a small example) - don’t do it, show mercy, obedience, it’s necessary, that means it’s necessary. No, this is how the Russians paid, at a high price, when they abandoned the front. We paid a high price in 1941-1945, it was still cleaner there. Order 227, the Germans are in front, SMERSH is behind, watch the newsreel, where we will look for our missing grandfathers, shot by our hands.

This is a little bit that I remembered about those atrocities of the 20th century that flooded Mother Russia with the blood of Russian people. After all, we have always been distinguished by mercy, we have always been distinguished by love for our neighbors, we have always been and will be distinguished by compassion for those who suffer. How did he not say to us (back to the war), how we were not taught: “there is a captured German, a fascist, kill him,” but Russian women, we fed the captured Germans, we supported them, the pity of our hearts said that he is the same worker, he is the same person, he is the same forced laborer, who was sent where he didn’t need to go to the vast borders of Russia.

They didn't have to fight, we helped them. This is the shadow side, clearly manifested in those terrible days of the war. This is the image of the Russian person, which today should inspire, should purify our consciousness, our heart, our thoughts. Don't kill, don't rob, don't be violent. Today we hear echoes of that tragedy, forgetting about it - who will pay? You and your children will pay for that crime. And before committing evil, you need to think - who needs it, whose will I am fulfilling, who will give it to me. This must be understood in the light of the Gospel truth, in the light of the Word of God, taken into account, peering, peering - what happened in that bloody, terrible time.

But, despite the tragedy of the Mother Motherland, until the 90s they were still in our lives, and existed, and they still remain - those virtuous, merciful, loving Russian people who are afraid to offend, who are afraid to offend, who are afraid to cause harm , wounds on a person's heart. We Russians still have it. If it weren’t for the God-given virtue of forgiveness, the virtue of compassion, the virtue of mercy in our hearts, you and I would not be standing here. But, unfortunately, half of Russians think more about evil, think about how to show the strength of the fist, the power of the blow, how powerful I am, how strong I am. That is why, when evil touches a given villain of the earth, a villain of life, a terrorist, when they dress him in iron gloves and send him to where life is very bad (in the Crosses) - why mourn, why curse you and me, and shout: “how can I?” Badly".

Did they think about what they were doing in freedom? Oh, it wasn’t enough - eat, drink, be merry. Well, they got it. You turn to me: “help, pray for him to come out of the Crosses.” Who sent him there? He went voluntarily. But you, mothers, you, wives, warned about this, and your friends said: “don’t do it, don’t sell drugs, don’t go to the disco, don’t communicate with these cool people, don’t, they’ll set you up, they’ll leave you.” And we: “okay, let it be.”

Here is my short answer to the question: “Where does evil come from?” “God created you with all wisdom.” But we ourselves don’t want to be kind, we ourselves don’t want to learn from the tragedy of our past existence, we don’t want to be kind, good, merciful, meek, we don’t want to understand that our word spoken in anger by a wife to her husband or a husband to his wife is not a knife, and brings him to the knife. Why did you lose pain, where does pride come from, where does arrogance come from, why is there no compassion? But you will get the full program. You have to pay for everything. You have to pay for everything - I’m telling you, from this Holy place - and at a high price. Where do the sores come from? From sin. Where does the loss of loved ones come from? From sin. Where are the prisons and camps from? From sin. But the Word of God gives us instruction - don’t do it, don’t do it. God does not force us to do evil, but do whatever you want. Think, reflect, realize, feel and ask the question: “Why? For what?" And it hurts me when we are humiliated, it hurts those whom we humiliate, whom we crush, insult. And the Lord said - let us be merciful, like our Heavenly Father.

Today you feel God’s reminders - floods, snow in Germany, we have a breeze, but God’s mercy is still with us, demanding from us mercy towards our loved ones. And if we are merciful, if we are compassionate, if we are sensitive to our neighbors, in the family, understand, it will be so easy, so joyful for us to live. But, unfortunately, today those who need to know this, those who need to listen, are not among us. Today people complain to me about how teachers treat schoolchildren, how they treat first-graders - there is no teacher love. But you will have to answer for everything. Christians who have the Grace of God, who have the strong power of God here on earth - it is in our strength, in our capabilities, in our desires - to be merciful. So let's be who we are - Christians, merciful, virtuous, respectable, patient, let's not repay evil for evil. Be afraid, think, realize, feel that you have to pay for everything.

We have strength, an antidote to this evil - prayer, Temple prayer, in the temple we receive great spiritual help, the help of the Grace of God. Here is the answer - where evil comes from, who gave birth to it. God did not give birth to him, we ourselves give birth to him with our crazy desires and aspirations, trying to somehow get rid of the thought that reminds us of goodness, that reminds us of the need to love those around us. And compassion begins in the family, it must be preserved and fulfilled. And don’t shout: “Oh, how difficult it is.” It is difficult to bear the law of retribution, and we have no desire to delve into the past, where things came from. So my dears, let's start with you and me, we know everything, we pray, we understand everything. God will help us to be those merciful, those real, Russian, Orthodox Christians in our evil life today.

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