Editor's Note: This article was generated by machine translation, so our staff cautions the reader about possible inaccuracies that may have resulted from this. However, it was deemed worthwhile to still publish such a piece because of the intrinsic value of the message - which remains evident even in its translated form.
Unfortunately, today many people, influenced by Tolstoy's philosophy of "non-resistance to evil," view this great ancient religion as an old wives' tale about a good-hearted god, who, sitting on a cloud in the sky and waving his legs, teaches everyone one and the same "kindness" and "forgiveness.
Let us begin at least by saying that Christian kindness is a very, very complicated category. Generally speaking, only those deeds are considered good which were accomplished in the name of the Faith, while the rest are not good in principle, regardless of the good or evil aspirations of the doer. The same understanding of goodness is clearly expressed in the words of St. Seraphim of Sarov and Ignatius Bryanchaninov.
To a modern person such severity and exactingness seems something terrible, however, it is a fact - Orthodoxy does not know abstract morality, for it is good as a movement toward truly Being, i.e., God, and evil as a movement toward not Being, behind which is hidden the devil (certainly, the good deeds of atheists are preferable to evil deeds, but not so much as seems to a casual observer).
The attitude toward anger, a quality of human nature, is also quite ambiguous. Although recognized as one of the pernicious passions, it nevertheless can be used for good, even by monks, if it is directed against demons or their own vices.
Moreover, Orthodox ascesis admits the practice, unexpected at first sight, of using one vice for the cure of another. In the ascetic writings of the holy Fathers we can often find examples of how immorality was healed by pride, and vice versa.
True willed Christianity willingly allows the use of force with respect to antagonists and godfighters. At times, even members of the clergy, including the higher clergy, were not afraid of using it. Thus, St. Nicholas the Wonderworker, so revered by Russian Christians, did not find it shameful to kill the heretic Arius, who blasphemed against the Son of God.
Another pillar of Orthodoxy, St. John Chrysostom, directly commands beating blasphemers. If you," he said to a true Christian, "see someone on the street or on the square blaspheming against God, go up to him and tell him what to do. If you have to strike him, don't stop... If they drag you to the court, go and boldly say that he blasphemed against the King of Angels, and if those who blaspheme the king of the earth should be punished, that is even more reason to insult God. Let the debauchees and debauchees know that they must fear the servants of God" (On the Statues, I, 12).
Not every use of force is violence; only that which is based on personal will. If power is used for the defense of God's cause, then this use of power is justified and sanctified by the Church. At times, humble servants of the Lord took up arms and beat enemies of the Faith and their homeland without hesitation. Thus did, for example, the defenders of the Trinity Sergius Lavra during the Polish intervention. They came up with a cunning and, to put it mildly, inhumane device - a bundle of ties aimed in different directions.
These rods were thrown under the feet of Polish cavalry, and became the cause of the death of many enemies of the Orthodoxy and Rus'. In the course of the colonization of the northern and eastern lands, Russian monasteries frequently became strongholds and strong points for colonizers, bringing to barbarians the light of Christ's Faith and the greatness of the Russian Empire.
Likewise during the 1905-1907 Troubles the monks of the Pochaev Lavra created a special armed detachment of the Union of the Russian People, which dispersed revolutionary fiends throughout the surrounding countryside.
Of course, the canonical rules forbid the use of arms by clergy, but there are special cases in which the use of force is necessary.
Basically, all true Christianity (as the Holy Fathers conveyed it to us) is permeated by the military spirit. Here God-realization itself (union with God) is represented as a battle - with its vices and tricks of God. Ascesis is extremely similar to military labor. Both the warrior and the ascetic equally leave the world for an environment of isolated brotherhood; both are set apart from the others by a particular austere form, and both suffer deprivation.
Even the terminology is similar. "A monk is like a warrior going into battle," St. Ephrem the Syrian wrote. Ephrem the Syrian, - who guards his body with full armor from everywhere, remains sober until victory, and is anxious that no enemy will attack him, and that he will not fall into captivity, if he does not take precautions.
Likewise a monk, if he becomes weak, is led astray, and is ensnared by the enemy, for the enemy insinuates impure thoughts in him, which he joyfully receives. He also advised the monks: "When a deceitful thought comes to you, draw your sword, that is, put the fear of God in your heart, and you will destroy all the power of the enemy.
And instead of a trumpet of war, use the Scriptures of God. As the trumpet sounds to call upon the soldiers, so also the Scripture of God, calling upon us, calls upon our good thoughts, and, having led them into formation through the fear of God, makes of them a regiment to confront the enemy: for our thoughts, like those of soldiers, fight the enemies of the King.
The similarity between warrior's labor and ascesis is not accidental - it has an essential, metaphysical character. The military occupation and the ascetic ascetic life are both directed toward the mystical transformation of human personality, which presupposes the destruction of the old, worn-out "I." This "I" is frail, imperfect, corrupt, and it keeps man in the darkness of this world, in the mire of the "concentrated universe.
For this reason it is necessary to kill the old man within us, it is necessary to die so as to rise in a new, transformed quality, to become "God by grace and adoption" (as expressed by the Holy Fathers). Everyone faces such a task, but the ascetic and the warrior solve it most successfully.
The ascetic leaves the world as if he dies to it, disconnecting from himself all the passions that feed the corrupted old "I," saturating him with the rotten juices of a sick world. The warrior also leaves the world, expressing his readiness to die for the highest values (religion, nation, state). He boldly throws his decrepit self on the altar of victory, subjecting it to mortal risk.
Orthodoxy has nothing in common with moralizing, humanism, pacifism, lukewarmness, tolerance, and other Masonic "virtues".
This is as if he is saying: "If you wish and if you can, then take it; I desire something higher and more eternal. And it was not by chance that in Middle Ages it was believed that the fallen on the battlefield immediately enters Paradise, for the old "I" perished at the hands of the enemy. (Of course, not every death gives you a "pass" to Paradise - you must be a martyr, perished for the Faith and the Idea, for that which is above your "old self"; you must not die overflowing with hatred for enemies, but overflowing with love for God.)
That is why it is a pity to observe how selfish priests are corrupting Christianity, etching out of it all of its martial, heroic spirit. They are echoed by various "scholars" of Orthodoxy, who like to talk of the passivity and over-indifference of the Eastern Church, contrasting to this the "vitality," "activity," "social orientation" of Catholicism.
And in doing so, the willing or unwilling advocates of Latinism ask no question about how the "passive" Eastern Orthodoxy was able to create the two greatest Christological Empires in the world - the Byzantine and Russian Empires? They do not pay attention to the fact that "active" Catholicism managed to lose the Reformation, and could not stem the tide of the godless bourgeois revolutions. Orthodox "contemplative" Russia plunged into the whirlpool of "progressive" madness only in the 20th century, just as the Christian West had practically lost everything it could lose.
Often, as proof of the "weakness" of Orthodoxy, we are given the "fact" that in the Christian East there are no religious orders of chivalry defending the faith of Christ with the sword. Unfortunately, this "argument" almost always works, and the reason for this is modern Orthodox thinkers, who are mainly concerned about the interpretation of simple moral axioms like "stealing is wrong, and why. They will not stir a single muscle to reveal to Orthodox people the heroic and volitional substance of our faith, and without their being aware of it, they will lose to this world. The matter is not in the form, but in the content, not in the presence of orders (which can easily degenerate into their opposite, such as, for example, the Templar and Jesuit orders), but in the readiness and ability to fight and die for our faith.
By the way, some of today's "Orthodox pundits" encourage us not to grieve over the triumph of the forces of evil, for after our earthly defeat, the Kingdom of Heaven will very soon come. That is right, but the question is, will this kingdom be entered by those who will not actively oppose the coming of the Antichrist?
The question is, until when will the ignoring of the orderly, willful change of Christianity continue? Yes, Christianity is not limited to willed effort alone, but is it really Christianity without will? Until when will it be perceived as something effeminate, old-fashioned, sugary, and whiny? Isn't it time to reject the abstractly humanistic, cosmopolitan perception of the valuable and stern doctrine of Christ?
Orthodox Christianity cannot be considered a form of Masonic humanism, on the contrary, it is hostile to it in every way.
We have yet to fully comprehend the heroic character of Christian doctrine. We must take Christianity away from the sycophants and Pharisees. This is our religion of the Orthodox soldiers of Christ.
Source: 3rm.info (Russian)
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