Obstacles to the Gospel

Archpriest Sergius Chetverikov, who became Hieroschemamonk Sergius, was tonsured into the great schema in the summer of 1942, in the monastery of St. Job in Vladimirova in the Carpathians. Father Sergius was a great monastic lover and, while still in Russia, was spiritually edified by the last Optina elders. Already before the revolution, some of his works were published. Father Sergius reposed at the age of 78 in Bratislava, where he lived with his son. It is difficult for a modern person to approach the Gospel simply and directly, to accept it as it is - without any philosophizing, with a trusting heart, as is characteristic of children and ordinary people and as is certainly necessary according to the word of our Lord Jesus Christ: “Unless you are converted and become like children, you will not enter the Kingdom of Heaven” (Matthew 18:3). “Do not be converted,” means - you will not return back, you will not become a child again - of course, not in the sense of poverty of knowledge and inexperience in life - but in the sense of the heart being uncluttered with one’s own personality and various prejudices and passions that develop and take root in a person with age, with inattention to oneself, with forgetting the words of the Savior: “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God” (Matt. 5:8). In order to accept the Gospel teaching, modern man has to endure a lot, humble himself, deny himself, and only then will the height of the content of the Gospel be revealed to him with all clarity. The purpose of these notes is to consider some of those internal obstacles that prevent modern man from approaching the Gospel. 1. The first obstacle on the path to the Gospel must be recognized as the habit of an exclusively mental, theoretical approach to the subject. The purpose of the Gospel is not to satisfy the mental needs of an educated person, but to help him take the path of spiritual rebirth and renewal. “Whoever is not born again cannot see the kingdom of God” (John 3:3). “Whoever [abides] in Christ is a new creation” (2 Cor. 5:17). As we see from the story of the Evangelist Matthew, the rich young man was concerned about spiritual issues, he liked the teachings of Christ and attracted him - but not so much as to sacrifice his well-being for his sake. It was precisely his attachment to earthly things that prevented him from becoming a disciple of Christ. When Jesus Christ told him: “If you want to be perfect, go, sell what you have and give to the poor; and you will have treasure in heaven; and come and follow Me,” then he went away in sorrow. If we look back at the past of Russian pre-revolutionary society and Russian students, we will see that they have always had a passionate interest in eternal questions about God, about truth, about the meaning and purpose of life. But this interest was primarily mental, theoretical, and had no impact on life. The Gospel, which calls, first of all, for internal renewal, had little attraction for the Russian intelligentsia, because they were interested mainly in abstract topics: philosophy, scientific discoveries, political and social teachings, but not in the question of saving their own soul. And this is precisely what the Gospel calls for, saying: “What will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, but loses his own soul?” (Matt. 16:26). If we compare the attitude of the Russian intelligentsia towards the Gospel with the attitude of Christian ascetics and ordinary believers, we will see a significant difference. For the latter, the Gospel is least of all a subject of theoretical study. They seek and find in the Gospel, as in the word of God, an indication of the path of life. This is the only thing they are looking for in him. Turning to the Gospel is for them the beginning of a new life, often a decisive break with the past. “Behold, we left everything and followed You,” says the apostle. Peter to Jesus Christ (Luke 18:28). The Gospel completely captures the soul of Christian ascetics, leaving no room in it for other interests, other life goals. They devote more than just one corner to Christ in their hearts, but surrender themselves entirely to Him with “irrevocable thoughts,” as the church hymn says. Let us recall some examples from our Russian history, which is especially close and dear to us. Rev. Theodosius of Pechersk, while still a boy, refuses elegant clothes and prefers to wear rags, wanting to imitate the “poverty of Christ.” He asks the blacksmith to shackle him with an iron chain over his naked body to subdue his sinful desires, and the blacksmith fulfills his request. Many times he runs away from his mother, works for others, and settles in the damp and cramped cave of St. Antonia. Another Russian saint, the young boyar Theodore Kolychev, rich and handsome, leaves the court of Ivan the Terrible, disguises himself as a simple peasant, works in peasant households, and takes on a harsh feat in the Solovetsky Monastery. During the famine year, the wealthy landowner Juliania Lazarevskaya distributes all her property to the hungry. The Monk Seraphim, at the age of 17, leaves his home to wander and spends the rest of his life in harsh deeds for the sake of Christ. Paisiy Velichkovsky leaves the Theological Academy, his passionately loving mother, the secured and honorable position in society ahead of him, becomes a wanderer in monasteries, lives in poverty and squalor. The colonel's widow, Alexandra Melgunov, abandons the secular, rich life, becomes a servant to a poor rural priest, and performs the most menial jobs. From these examples we can clearly see the difference between the churchly, ascetic attitude towards the Gospel and the secular one inherent in the intelligentsia. And this difference lies not at all in the severity of the feats they undertake, but, mainly, in that complete turn of the soul to the Gospel, which we see in them. Not everyone needs to put themselves in chains following the example of Rev. Theodosius or spend a thousand nights in prayer on a stone like St. Seraphim, but the one who gives one of these little ones a cup of cold water to drink in the name of Christ stands on the true Gospel path. All of the above can be briefly expressed in the following words: the first obstacle on the path to the Gospel is the habit of theoretical and abstract interest in it, instead of a deep appeal to Christ with all your soul, as the source of life and immortality. 2. The second obstacle to the Gospel is excessive preoccupation with oneself, one's own personality. There is nothing more spiritually killing than making yourself, consciously or unconsciously, the focus of life. When a person makes himself the center of life, his idol, he will never achieve what he is looking for, that is, true happiness. He is always gnawing at dissatisfaction and melancholy. Shower him with millions, give him the opportunity of unlimited entertainment and pleasure, world fame and glory, and after a brief delight he will feel emptiness and loneliness. And he will feel like this until he is able to renounce himself. Without this, no matter what high goals he sets for himself, he will be doomed only to fleeting and illusory moments of joy, which will invariably be replaced by long-term disappointment and boredom. To become truly happy, you must place the purpose of your life not in yourself. The more significant, the more important the object in which we place the purpose of our life, the more fully we surrender to it, the more we forget about ourselves for its sake, the more joyful and happy we become. Happy is the person who selflessly devotes himself to his favorite work: physical or mental. Happy is the scientist who is completely absorbed in his scientific research, like some Archimedes, immersed in his drawings, or Xenophanes, who devoted his life to the study of the stars, or Spinoza, absorbed in his religious and philosophical reflections. Happy is the mother who lives entirely for her children, happy are the brothers and sisters with their mutual love, happy are the friends with their pure and sincere friendship. The greatest happiness, the fullness of happiness, according to Christian teaching, lies in unselfish, complete love for God and people - not for abstract humanity, but for our neighbor who is around us - with all his shortcomings and weaknesses. The entire earthly life of Jesus Christ and His teaching, especially His Sermon on the Mount and farewell conversation with His disciples, His suffering and death, are an example of the implementation of the law of love. And the whole salvation of our soul consists in “denying ourselves,” and, taking up our cross, that is, the burden of our life, following Christ. Only then will the heavy stone of internal dissatisfaction fall away from our soul, and our soul will become warm and light. A loving person will never get tired of living lovingly. And no matter how long his love lasts, it will always seem to him that it is just beginning. There is no danger for a Christian that his ideal will ever be fully realized and exhausted, because the Christian ideal does not lie in external achievements, but in internal growth that has no end. The famous phrase of Maxim Gorky: “Man sounds proud,” has some meaning only insofar as we see the image of God in man; if we apply it to a person estranged from God and deprived of immortality, then it sounds pathetic and absurd, because everyone is well aware of the insignificance and powerlessness of a person who exists today, and tomorrow is blown away from the face of the earth, like a pitiful grain of sand, like a soap bubble. Only in unity with God and in immortality lies the strength and glory of man, but not in himself, in his isolation. Therefore, everything said in this part can be briefly expressed as follows: for a correct approach to the Gospel, one must free oneself from the habit of considering oneself as the focus and goal of life, one must humble oneself and bow before God, Who is the Highest and Only focus and goal of life for everything that exists. 3. The third obstacle on the path to the Gospel should be recognized as the enslavement of modern man to a materialistic, mechanical understanding of the world, the lack of awareness that the world is dominated and guided by the spiritual principle. People do not understand that the world is a great Divine mystery, the depth of which cannot be explored or comprehended. We mistake our partial and superficial knowledge for knowledge of its mysteries. The successes achieved in science lead to the belief in the mechanical nature of the universe, to the assumption that the last secret of nature is about to be revealed, and everything will become clear. In fact, the result is a too short-sighted and pale concept of the universe, without taking into account the greatness and wisdom of the One who created all this, without trying to obey His law and will. However, the latest scientific research is increasingly refuting the crudely materialistic understanding of the world that was imposed by militant atheism. Firstly, it is becoming increasingly obvious that everything we see, hear or touch is, to a greater extent, a product of the activity of our cognitive spirit, rather than an objective property of the objects around us. Color, smell, taste, sound - everything that creates the appearance, beauty and charm of the things and phenomena of the visible world around us: the blue color of the sky, the shine of the stars, the sound of the sea, the greenery of fields and forests, the sounds of the human voice, etc. - all this is a derivative of our spirit, the result of the reflection of the world around us on our psyche. True, the things around us exist in themselves, but our ideas about them are created by the work of our spirit, which leaves its mark on them. Our spirit is, in a sense, the creator of the world around us. Our very concept of matter and its properties is the result of the activity of our spirit. With the enrichment of our spirit with new knowledge, new observations, our concept of matter changes. The human mind, back in ancient times, came to the conclusion that the world around us is a continuous movement of tiny particles that are inaccessible to our direct observation of atoms. What is an atom? What is its nature, its structure? Is this a minimal particle of inert matter, at the same time divisible and indivisible, or is it something active, living? Recent scientific research claims that this basic element of matter is supposedly of a completely immaterial nature, that is, it has neither extension nor inertia and is the center of some kind of living moving energy. According to this theory, matter, as a dead and inert substance, is abolished and transformed into something immaterial, into a kind of force. Thus, a new concept of the world arises. Inert matter gives way to living energy, and this is already a certain transition to the spiritual principle. The spirit turns out to be triumphant over matter in the very structure of the world. Let's look at the relationship between matter and spirit from another side, personal. What do we consider the most essential and valuable in ourselves? If spirit is a simple appendage of matter and does not exist in itself, then, of course, we must consider our body to be the most valid and valuable thing in ourselves. To him we must give all our attention and care. However, the most consistent and convinced materialist will not say that the true content and main interest of his life lies in the work of his stomach or in the healthy state of the body, and not in the experiences that he experiences: feelings of joy and sadness, friendship and enmity, love and hatred, etc. Love of beauty, interest in knowledge, enjoyment of objects of art, thirst for spiritual improvement and development, moral and religious experiences, spiritual communication with other people, social activity - this is the true circle the highest and most precious interests of humanity. Throw out everything spiritual from human life, and what remains? Emptiness! What has always inspired and attracted people to heroism and selflessness? Only the ideals of the spirit. Our bodies die and are destroyed, the substance that composes them is drawn into the circulation of matter, but the ideals of the spirit remain imperishable and continue to inspire and unite humanity. It is here - in the world of spiritual values ​​- that the highest interest and true life of humanity is concentrated... The spirit is the true, real, driving force of life... The victorious power of the spirit is revealed with particular clarity in religious movements and, especially, in the history of Christianity. With its appearance, the Gospel shocked and upended ancient concepts and relationships between people. If not in real life, then in consciousness, in the ideal, it introduced new thoughts, new tasks into the minds of people and inspired humanity with them. A sublime concept of God and His relationship to people appeared. The demands of the spirit came forward with particular force. There was a huge rise in the spiritual strength and abilities of man, inspired by the commandment of Christ: “Be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matthew 5:48). New inexhaustible content was given to human creativity in the field of thought, painting, architecture, music, poetry. In Christianity we see an amazing phenomenon when victory in the struggle of life was not on the side of brute physical force, contrary to our usual confidence, not on the side of hatred, malice and merciless cruelty, but on the side of conscious defenselessness and meekness, armed only with faith, prayer and love. By the mere power of his animation, the power of fiery faith and ardent love for his Lord Savior and the gracious inspiration of St. Spirit, Christians endured and overcame persistent and merciless three centuries of persecution by the powerful Roman authorities, who sought to uproot and destroy the hated new teaching of love and brotherhood, meekness and humility. To physical torment, the enemies of the Gospel, armed with all the enlightenment of their age, added gross mockery and mockery of the Christian faith, caricatured Christian teaching both on stage and in literature, but nothing could shake or weaken the victorious power of Christianity. There are known cases when actors who appeared on stage to mock the Gospel unexpectedly confessed their faith in the Crucified One and became martyrs. With joyful faces and with prayer for their executioners, Christians went to the most terrible torment and courageously met death, in which they saw the door to a new, eternal, joyful life with Christ. From what has been said it is clear that Christianity is a powerful manifestation of the spirit, the triumph of spirit over matter, freedom over necessity, life over death. It's time for us to abandon an exclusively materialistic and mechanical view of the world. Both matter and mechanics have their place in the world, but the supreme, royal, dominant position belongs to the Spirit, which is a real, concrete, living, free, spontaneous, substantial force, more real and more understandable to us than so-called matter. The Apostle Paul says: “The Lord is the Spirit; and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom” (2 Cor. 3:17). Freedom is the basic, essential, inalienable property of the spirit. But what is freedom? We usually think of freedom as independence from any restrictions, internal or external. This understanding of freedom, first of all, has only a negative character. And then - limitation, external or internal, is a necessary condition for the development of true freedom. The Gospel teaches that anyone who has not yet conquered sin within himself is a slave of sin and does not have true freedom. Essentially, in its positive meaning, freedom is the ability of creative initiative. Matter is inert, inert. It begins to move not of its own accord, but under influence from the outside and maintains this movement until it encounters obstacles, again from the outside. Only one spirit is characterized by the creative initiative of action; it is above necessity and is not bound by it. “And God said: Let there be light. And there was light” (Gen. 1:3). This is the purest, most powerful manifestation of the creative freedom of the Spirit! This property of the spirit is the explanation of miracles. A miracle is not, as they say, a violation of the laws of nature, especially if we take into account that the so-called laws of nature are usually nothing more than a sequence of phenomena familiar to us, the internal necessary connection of which is not entirely clear to us. A miracle is nothing more than the triumph of the creative power of the spirit over the inertia of matter. The free power of the human spirit constantly performs miracles over the inertia of the matter around us. The highest, omnipotent freedom of the Divine Spirit, which gave existence to the world, can perform miracles that are beyond the power and amazing for people and, nevertheless, are completely consistent with the nature of the Divine Spirit. If it is true that life is a great mystery, only a small corner of which is revealed to people, then there is no doubt that people have no logical reason to doubt not only the possibility of miracles, but also the real, concrete existence of angels and demons, the afterlife bliss of the righteous and the torment of sinners, which the Gospel tells us with complete certainty. Briefly formulating the content of all that has been said above, we can assert that for a correct approach to the Gospel we must free ourselves from the prejudice of a mechanical worldview and see the power of the free Spirit dominating the world. We must remember that life is a great mystery, only partially revealed to us. 4. Another important obstacle to the acceptance of the Gospel is the confusion and obscurity of our concepts of faith and knowledge and, in connection with this, the tendency to attribute superiority to knowledge over faith. We consider knowledge as something undoubted, firmly grounded, completely objective, logically irrefutable and obligatory for everyone; We consider faith to be something arbitrary, subjective and unproven. However, this opposition of knowledge to faith actually turns out to be erroneous. First of all, the very definition of knowledge as something undoubted and firmly founded does not correspond to the actual state of affairs. This may be the ideal of knowledge, but not its present state. One has only to compare, at least, the ancient doctrine of the four elements with the modern doctrine of the elements and electrons, or the ancient astronomical theories about the structure of the universe with modern astronomical discoveries, or the medical concepts of Hippocrates and Galen with the knowledge of modern anatomists and physiologists, etc., to see how fluid, changeable and even contradictory the so-called scientific truths are. What was proclaimed by some generations as an undoubted scientific truth, as the greatest achievement of the human mind, was considered by subsequent generations as a naive, childish delusion. Thus, knowledge is not something precisely and finally established: it constantly changes and grows depending on the growth of human experience, on the multiplication of observations, on the improvement of the tools of knowledge. Therefore, expressions such as “science has recognized,” “science denies,” etc. should be used with reservations and without self-confidence. Knowledge is nothing more than the result of the experience of our five senses, verified by our reason. This experience only grows and becomes more refined, but never leaves its boundaries, determined by the five senses and reason, and, thus, gives us only superficial knowledge of the world. What is faith? The word “faith” is associated with several concepts. Faith, firstly, is a feeling of confidence in some truth. In this sense, faith can and is characteristic of people not only in the field of religion, but also in the field of knowledge. Socrates, Galileo, Columbus can be examples of such faith. Such faith can be both the result of one’s own observation and thoughtful reflection, and the result of trust in the words of persons whose veracity we do not doubt and who are an authority for us. So the child does not doubt at all the truth of the nanny’s stories about brownies and mermaids. He completely believes her, but this faith is blind. It is based on trust, not conscious experience. Such blind faith is usually contrasted with knowledge, giving preference to the latter as based on conscious experience and reflection. Secondly, by faith one can understand a special kind of knowledge, different from scientific, rational knowledge. Faith is that knowledge that can rightly be called insight, penetration into the inner, deepest essence of life, and which the Apostle Paul calls “The revelation of things unseen” (Heb. 11:1). This insightful knowledge is not equally accessible to everyone. Where one person notices nothing, another sees the deepest truth and makes a brilliant discovery. Thousands of people have seen and continue to see an apple falling from a tree, but only Newton was led by this circumstance to the brilliant discovery of the law of universal gravitation. Thousands of people have seen and continue to see water boiling in a kettle, and only James Watt came up with the brilliant idea of ​​constructing a steam engine. But let us turn to the Gospel and in it we will find an example of heartfelt faith - a banner! Jesus Christ healed a man born blind, and this man immediately saw in Him a great righteous man and prophet who came from God. His attitude towards Christ the Savior emerges with particular clarity when comparing it with the attitude of other persons. The learned scribes and Pharisees, who saw the healed man with their own eyes and carried out the most rigorous investigation into this matter with interrogations of the neighbors and parents of the healed man, did not recognize Jesus Christ as a righteous man and prophet of God. “This Man is not of God, because he does not keep the Sabbath” (John 9:16). “It’s amazing that you don’t know where He comes from,” the healed man answers, “but He opened my eyes. But we know that God does not listen to sinners; but whoever honors God and does His will listens to him. Since the beginning of time it has not been heard that anyone opened the eyes of a man born blind. If He had not been from God, He could not have done anything” (John 9:30–33). In the event of the healing of a man born blind, amazing things are revealed: in the same fact, precisely established and indisputable, different people see different meanings: the healed man, obviously, clearly sees the power of God, while the Pharisees stand before him like blind people, wandering around and around. How to explain this? Shall we say that the man born blind showed in this case blind, naive gullibility, and the scribes showed the rigor and impartiality of scientific thinking? Hardly anyone can claim this! On the contrary, rationality and depth of comprehension here, and this is obvious, are on the side of the healed. He saw the truth that others did not want to see. This is what Jesus Christ noted in his final words: “I came into this world for judgment, so that those who do not see may see, and those who see may become blind” (John 9:39). The same insight was revealed by the sinner who wet the feet of Jesus Christ with her tears, and this is noted in the church song, which says: “Lord, even the woman has fallen into many sins. I felt your Divinity” (Stichera of Great Wednesday). No one in the house of Simon the Pharisee, like Simon himself, felt with such clarity, with such strength, with such tenderness the Divinity of Jesus Christ as this “chaste harlot,” in the words of the church song. And remember also St. Great Martyr Barbara. Separated by her father from the whole world, living in complete solitude, she was able, through deep penetration into the surrounding nature, to see in its wondrous beauty the Artist and Creator, whom neither her father nor anyone else around her had seen. From what has been said, it is clear that the question of knowledge is not at all as simple as it might seem. For knowledge, it is not enough to have only five healthy external senses and follow normal logic, but you also need to have a certain spiritual sensitivity, or, as they say, the ability of intuitive insight. This ability of intuitive insight manifests itself both in the field of scientific thinking (Newton, Einstein) and in the field of religious comprehension. With this ability in mind, V.S. Solovyov wrote that believing in God is much more difficult than not believing. Faith requires spiritual uplift, sharpness of spiritual vision, spiritual sensitivity, but unbelief does not need all this. Unbelief does not require spiritual uplift: it only needs indifference and indifference to the deepest questions of life, which it frivolously discards with its logical constructions. To intuitively penetrate into the depths of life, you must have an artistic soul, and at the same time, educated by spiritual feat, strict self-examination. Thus, it is necessary to distinguish between two types of knowledge: rational, external knowledge, which comprehends the external relationships of things, and contemplative, internal knowledge, which comprehends the deep essence of things. For example, beauty is perceived intuitively, by inner feeling. Likewise, faith in God is an intuitive knowledge, arising in a sensitive soul and accompanied by deep religious experiences. The fact that faith in God can be called knowledge is clearly confirmed by the words of the Lord: “This is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom You have sent” (John 17:3). We find a similar thought in the prophet Isaiah: “The ox knows his owner, and the donkey his master’s manger; but Israel does not know Me, My people do not understand” (Isa. 1:3). But while scientific-positive knowledge requires only rational preparation of a certain degree of formal development, spiritual-intuitive knowledge is closely related to the moral state of a person: it requires purity of heart and rigor of life. If it is not accessible to every person, it is solely due to his sinfulness. If we sometimes say and think that the knowledge of God is inaccessible to us, then this happens for three reasons: from our lack of observation and inattention, from our habit, instilled in us by the modern trend of European culture, of not so much contemplating an object as trying to squeeze it into a category that is clear to us, and because our soul is cluttered, clogged with a huge number of constantly changing impressions and experiences that prevent it from thoughtfully observing life. The philosopher Anaxagoras, who made “gazing at the stars” the main task of his life, was undoubtedly closer, by the very conditions of his existence, to the knowledge of God than the modern factory worker, deafened by the noise of machines, or the “cultured man” with his cinemas, cars and all kinds of sports. Deafened by the noise and bustle of the environment around us, we do not notice the quiet movements of true life either in ourselves or around us. We would need to stop, listen to this inner life of the world, take a closer look at what is happening inside us and around us. Then we would learn to see God, who, according to St. Paul, “Not far from each of us: For in Him we live, and move, and have our being” (Acts 17:27–28). Try to carefully trace your life and you will see in it many circumstances, meetings and conversations that we usually perceive as random and insignificant, but upon deeper analysis, they reveal that some invisible but caring Hand, without forcing you, constantly directs your life onto the path of good, saves and helps you. Try to keep all these cases in your memory, write them down, sharpen your powers of observation in this direction, and you will accumulate a lot of factual material that will give you the opportunity to experience experimentally both the existence of God and His Providence. This experimental path is the best and, perhaps, the only way to know God, as the Holy One speaks about it. Basil the Great, arguing that when we see the actions of God’s Providence on ourselves and on others, then we begin to know God and love Him. We must not be convinced of the existence of God by logical arguments. Knowledge of God is acquired only through personal religious experience. The existence of God cannot be proven: it must be internally felt. If this is not the case, then there is some barrier that prevents us from feeling the Existence of God. A blind person does not see stars not because there are none, but because his eyes are damaged. So, everything said here can be briefly formulated as follows: knowledge cannot be opposed to faith, as something objectively reliable, with something subjectively arbitrary and unreliable. Faith, as a feeling of confidence, is a necessary element of all knowledge. However, from scientific-positive, materialistic, rational knowledge, one must distinguish spiritual-intuitive, contemplative knowledge, penetrating into the depths of life, which is faith. This highest degree of knowledge stems from spiritual sensitivity and is inseparable from the feat of moral improvement. It is faith, with God’s help, that brings us closer to God and to an understanding of the Gospel. You might be interested in: