Greetings from Metropolitan Vasily of Ekaterinodar and Kuban to the participants of the XII Spiritual and Educational Readings of the Armavir Diocesetranslated

Beloved fathers, brothers and sisters in the Lord!

Dear participants of the XII Spiritual and Educational Readings of the Armavir Diocese!

I cordially greet you with the wish of God's help in your labors!

The topic of the current readings – “Christian teaching about man and the challenges of modern technologies” – does not just sound like a subject for academic discussion. This is a matter of our survival as a Christian civilization and the preservation of the image of God in each of us.

We live in an era of unprecedented information abundance. Never before has humanity had access to such a volume of knowledge, never before has the word spread with such speed. But the holy fathers warned: the enemy of the human race most often acts not through gross coercion, but through a subtle substitution of meanings. Today this substitution is taking place in the digital environment.

Information technologies offer us a surrogate of communication instead of a live meeting, the illusion of belonging instead of real love for one’s neighbor, an endless stream of news instead of the silence necessary for prayer. Gadgets quietly become idols, requiring our constant attention, fragmenting our consciousness and depriving us of our main gift - inner freedom. A person takes risks...