События во втором столетии четвертого тысячелетия

Serukh in the 130th year of his life gave birth to Nahor, and then to other sons and daughters (Gen. 11:22–23). According to Kedrin's legend, Serukh's place of residence was the Chaldean land and a city called Ur. This word “ur” means “fire,” since the inhabitants of that city, being idolaters, considered fire to be god and kept it unquenchable; That is why their city was nicknamed fire - Ur. Some believe that Serukh was the first to invent idols and that idolatry began with him. But this is not true. For idolatry began with the king of Assyria, Ninus, as was said before. As for Serukh, he was the first of the line of the forefathers of Christ who accepted the idols invented by the pagans and himself learned to make and sell them, and this handicraft was his means through which he fed with his household. Making idols for sale, he began to honor them equally with the pagans and harmed his household with this wickedness, for he taught his son Nahor the same handicraft, and Nahor then taught his son Terah, Abraham’s father. Just as the Chaldeans considered fire their god, so the Egyptians deified water and revered it in an idol called Canopos, in whose name the city of Canopus was created in the land of Egypt, at the mouth of the Nile River flowing into the sea. When Egypt was conquered (in the days of Semiramis) by the Assyrians, who were also Chaldeans, a dispute arose between the Chaldean and Egyptian priests about their gods. The Chaldeans claimed that their god fire is the most powerful god of all gods, for fire not only devours wooden gods, but also crushes stone ones with its power, and melts copper, silver and gold ones. Therefore, the Egyptians made a great vessel like the idol of Kanopos, drilled small and frequent holes all over its body, filled them with wax and resin, and filled the idol with water. When the Chaldeans wanted to show the power of their all-consuming god of fire on the idol Kanopos, they laid fire around the latter in order to burn the idol. However, the wax and resin immediately melted, water came out of the idol as rain and extinguished the fire all around. Then the Egyptians triumphed, shouting: “Our god is stronger than yours, for he has defeated your god!” And the Chaldeans were put to shame. In those ancient times, insensitive idols were gods for insane people, but for us sinners, now our sinful passions are like gods. Those ancient people sinned in ignorance by idolatry, for the light of truth had not yet dawned on them; We, being enlightened by the light of holy faith, sin in our minds by pleasing our ordinary passions, allegedly to some gods. They often unwittingly worshiped idols, forced to this by the commands of kings and tormentors; We, not forced by anyone, out of our free will, slavishly serve sinful lusts. “Everyone who commits sin,” says Christ in the Gospel, “is a slave to sin” (John 8:34). Oh woe to our evil disposition, for which we are likened to the ancient idolaters and deserve equal torment, and even more! For to sin in knowledge and will is a greater sin than to sin in ignorance and involuntarily. That our sinful passions are in us, as it were, deified idols, this becomes clear from the words of the holy Apostle Paul, who says: “Many people walk about, of whom I told you many times, even now even while weeping I say, enemies of the cross of Christ, whose end is destruction, whose belly is God” (Phil. 3:18-19). And he also says: “Those who are such do not work for our Lord Jesus Christ, but for their own belly” (Rom. 16:18). We listen, why is our womb our god? Because we please him as God, and often more than God alone. We do not so much work for Jesus Christ by fasting, mortification and abstinence, as we work our belly with gluttony, drunkenness and lustful pleasures. In the same way, we must understand regarding other sinful passions that if we are enslaved to them, then they become our gods. Blessed Jerome explains this through the following words from God’s law: “Do not have a new god for you” (Ex. 20:3), saying this: “For whom the womb is a god, for him there is a new god; and how many passions, how many sins we have, so many new gods we have, for for everyone that is his god, what someone desires and what he works for.” Gluttony and drunkenness are for us like the idol Bacchus, anger is like Mars, uncleanliness is like a shameless Venus, love of gold is like the golden idol of Nebuchadnezzar, and we ourselves, like those who work for him, are like idolaters. Saint Chrysostom explains this evil idolatry of ours well, saying the following: “Don’t tell me that you don’t worship the golden idol, but show me that you don’t do what the gold commands you to do. For there are different methods of idolatry: one considers mammon to be his master, another considers the womb to be God, and another considers another kind of all-consuming lust. If you do not sacrifice oxen to them, as the Greeks did, then you, however, are doing much worse, tempering your soul; You do not bend your knees, you do not worship idols, but, nevertheless, with the greatest obedience you do everything that they command you, that is, the womb, and gold, and tormenting lusts. That is why the Hellenes are considered vile for this reason, because they deified our passions, calling lust Aphrodite (Venus), rage Ares (Mars), and drunkenness Dionysius (Bacchus). Even if you do not make idolatrous images, as they did, you, however, with much zeal, fall into the same passions, “making the hooks of Christ by harlots” (1 Cor. 6:15) and desecrating yourself with other iniquities.” From here you can see that every sinful passion in us and every habitual sin is an idol of our character, and the church of an idol is a sin-loving heart. Idolatry is love of sin; rejection of Christ is permission to sin in thoughts and desires; bringing a sacrifice to an idol is the actual fulfillment of a deliberate sin. This is how an idolater becomes, enslaving himself to his sinful passions. Since such moral idolatry is found and multiplied in us, it is therefore fitting to be a spiritual martyr, suffering without blood. Just as in those times when wicked people who did not believe in God worshiped idols, there were countless holy martyrs who shed their blood for Christ and died many different deaths for Him - in the same way now, when sinful idolatry is widespread in our morals, true Christians, although without shedding blood, must be martyrs for the love of Christ, mortifying their passions all the days and dying to sin, so as to be ineffective for committing sin and not enslave oneself to sinful pleasures. For just as habitual sin is the idol of our character, so resistance to sin is a feat of martyrdom. The tormentor is either a passionate nature, or an evil disposition, or an attacking temptation from the devil. Servants of torment are evil thoughts that attract to sin and seduce those who are inclined to sin. There are many different types of torment - the struggle with evil thoughts, with passions and lusts (Gal. 5:24), and through it a spiritual martyr of Christ is made, who, although he does not shed blood, is nevertheless awarded the crown of martyrdom. The previously mentioned Saint Chrysostom speaks beautifully about such spiritual martyrdom, saying the following: “Someone will say: how is it possible for us to follow the martyrs, since now is not the time for persecution? Truly it is so, and I know this, that now there is no time of persecution, but there is a time of martyrdom. Now there is no time for such struggles, but there is a time for crowns; people do not persecute, but demons persecute; The tormentor does not embitter, but the devil, the most cruel of all tormentors, embitters. You now see burning coals that have not been added, but you see the kindled flame of lust. They trampled the burning coals, but you trample the fire of nature; they fought with beasts, and you, like a furious and indomitable beast, curb your anger; they stood against unbearable diseases, and you conquer the bad thoughts that come from your heart; and thus you will be a follower of the martyrs. “Now our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the principalities and powers, and against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places” (Eph. 6:12). The lust of nature is fire, and an unquenchable and everlasting fire, like a fierce and raging dog. If you defeat him a thousand times, he rushes a thousand times and does not stop. True, the flame of fire is fierce, but the combustion of the flesh is stronger, and we never have a premium in this battle, we never receive a cessation of this struggle, as long as we find ourselves in this life, but the feat is continuous and constant for us, and the brightest crown will be.” This is what Saint Chrysostom says. It is obvious that the mortification of sinful passions in us is bloodless martyrdom. You might be interested in: