One of Russia's finest sons, I.S. Aksakov, titled one of his articles discussing church life: "Some Outrages of Russian Life and, in Particular, the Causes of the Spread of Stundism." In this article, he writes, among other things: "We classify the appearance of the Stundists in the Kherson province as an instructive outrage... This society was founded by those workers who lived with the colonists (i.e., the Germans)." Having become accustomed to observing neither the holidays nor the fasts sanctified by the Orthodox Church, they maintained this custom upon returning to their native villages... An investigation into this matter began several years ago..." Aksakov believed that an investigation was necessary, but not a police one, nor one targeting the Stundists... "Why not find out," he wrote at the time, "from what parishes these workers, infected with the teachings of the colonists, came... Did any of these unfortunate workers even know the Lord's Prayer before joining the colonists , and not only in the Novorossiysk region... but also here in central Russia, we propose making just one test: how many parishioners know the Lord's Prayer accurately, without distorting it ?! " In Aksakov's opinion, the result then would have been extremely shameful. Such are the opinions of I.S. Aksakov, an expert on Russia and Russian needs. In our opinion, the result now would not have been better either.
Indeed, looking at contemporary church life, we must first of all agree with the Aksakovs and say that even today our lower working class doesn't really know the "Our Father," while the upper class, officially belonging to the Church and officially professing church dogmas, knows so little of the meaning of these dogmas, their significance for them personally, that even at the most insignificant, childishly naive question, they resolutely refuse to answer the questioner about their hope. Lest I make unfounded claims, I will ask my listeners to be impartial and ask themselves a series of questions: Why is Jesus Christ called the Savior? Whom did he save? People? Yes, but how is his cross my salvation? Or again: what is grace? What grace is bestowed in the sacrament of baptism and confirmation? I myself, as a Christian, do I bear grace in my heart, and how have I received it? And one more thing: who among us knows the teachings of the Church, the writings of the Holy Fathers, who can even name a few of them? Sadly, we must say that very, very few can give any answers to these questions. I insist on this assertion: not only correct, even slightly conscious, but absolutely no answers to these questions can be expected today, not only from an intellectual, but even from a simple, uneducated person. All these questions, according to the established opinion, are the domain of the "clergy," who are supposed to know them, and as for mere mortals—why would they need all this? Thus, modern Orthodox Christians, of their own free will, renounce their own reason and the solution of those questions which this reason persistently presents to them. Of course, this is strange, and perhaps such an attitude toward the dogmas of the Church would be understandable among the Church's renegades; But no, this opinion about their attitude toward these dogmas is held mostly by those who have no desire to leave the Church's fold. On the contrary, they cling tenaciously, like drowning men clinging to a straw, to their at least superficial affiliation with the Church, imagining that through this they truly belong. How do these people find comfort? How can they perform such a terrible operation on themselves—the severing of their own reason and spiritual needs? This, of course, is greatly aided by ingrained opinions, a kind of new dogmas of modern Christians. The first of these is about blind faith, i.e., faith without foundation—the dogma of the necessity of "blind" faith "to avoid confusion."
Based on this astonishing opinion, two social trends have emerged in our attitudes toward the Church: an overt and a secret, yet equally unconscious, rejection of the Church, based on ignorance of Church teaching, and an unconscious (blind) adherence to it. Only a few examples can be cited of conscious, fearless confession of truth and faith over almost the entire past century. True, this state of affairs was created by historical reasons of enormous importance and extremely numerous, but we are not discussing them, but rather the fact of a truly incredible contemporary Russian outrage: very few of our Orthodox Christians know why and what they should believe, what the Church demands of them , and what irrefutable rational foundations the Holy Church has for all its demands... Such are the consequences of this new dogma of blind faith, espoused by our conservatives. But how did they, and our entire Orthodox community, overlook the fact that blind faith is essentially naive unbelief, as opposed to practical unbelief or one that has even the shadow of theoretical justification. Naturally, such blind faith, or, as we would say, such naive unbelief, won't get you very far in moral life. Any Stundist, Pashkovite, Tolstoyan, or even any of our Old Believers, upon encountering such an "Orthodox" blind man in the faith, will easily mislead him, and only because the latter knows a thing or two about the faith, while the former knows absolutely nothing. The former, though with errors, can seek the truth, while the latter, having closed his eyes to the truth, strives to find thereby safety from errors in the faith, completely resembling the ostrich, which considers itself out of danger when it hides its head. With such a societal attitude toward faith, one can expect an even greater rise in various sects, since a person cannot live outside of any kind of community, and if he has strayed from the Church and ecclesiastical society, he will try to find another society—one outside the Church. What, then, is our conclusion? This is it: our contemporaries have forgotten the ecclesiastical idea that the Church belongs not to those who have joined it through a misunderstanding or consider themselves to be so by their parents, not to those who blindly believe in the Church, but to those who feel with their whole being the Church's love for themselves and their own love for the Holy Church. But in order to cultivate a feeling of love for the Holy Church, what is needed is not blind faith, not blindness, not indifference, but full awareness, a full life of heart and mind, the full, all-round development of the human soul. And this development cannot occur without learning, and one cannot learn without studying. And this study of faith is not only not forbidden, but is directly commanded by the Holy Church. Christ said: beware lest anyone deceive you ( Matthew 24:4 ); the Apostle John the Theologian says: do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits ( 1 John 4:1 ); the Apostle Paul says: test all things, hold fast to what is good ( 1 Thessalonians 5:21 ).
So, the first forgotten thought: the Church does not require ignorance of faith and knowledge, but a complete knowledge of the truth; the Apostle Paul commanded: "Examine yourselves to see whether you are in the faith? Test yourselves" ( 2 Cor. 13:5 ). Is modern times, then, justified in considering religion and the Church as the principle that hinders knowledge? It is precisely this opinion, albeit hidden at times, that is the main reason for another trend in attitudes toward the Church, when people consider themselves already separated from church society merely on the basis of possessing one or two personal thoughts of their own, not learned from an outdated, dusty book or from an old nanny. This attitude toward the Holy Church is observed primarily among our youth, who do not tolerate hypocrisy and lies not only in actions and life, but also in thought. Ardent natures, who have not yet had time to become soiled in the lifely filth of hypocrisy and traditional vulgarity! And these sincere souls imagine that, based solely on their doubts and hesitations, they are already stepping outside the bounds of Church-public life; so deeply has the absurd idea of the immobility and seemingly petrification of Church life, and with it, the Church, taken root in the consciousness of modern society. This enormous and disastrous error in public consciousness required corresponding previous human errors, but in any case, it is a sad fact that we must deal with.
However, where could this terrible opinion about the lifelessness of church life have come from, and how has it caused many to forget the truth of church teaching that glory, honor, and peace are prepared for everyone who does good, first for the Jew, then for the Greek ( Rom. 2:10 ), i.e. the teaching that everyone who does good, whoever he may be , is pleasing to God. The Holy Church promises satisfaction to those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, but this hungering and thirsting for righteousness is not yet the possession of righteousness, which means that in the very thirst for righteousness there are hidden errors, doubts, and ignorance, and yet did not the Lord say that those who hunger and thirst for righteousness will be filled? Does not the Church further teach that blessed are those who seek God with all their hearts ( Ps. 119:2 ); and to seek does not mean to possess; If only the search for God and His truth were sincere, sincere, and sincere, and wherever such sincere service to God is, it is pleasing to Him. The Apostle Peter expressed this teaching of the Church in his speech, which had a dogmatic character, when he said: "In every nation he that feareth Him (God) and doeth righteousness is acceptable to Him" ( Acts 10:35 ). Thus, the Holy Church values sincerity in faith, the burning of the heart when hearing the teaching of truth ( Luke 24:32 ), the joy of coming into contact with the truth—it is precisely this thought that has been forgotten by our society, which thinks that the Church needs only an ascription to the Church community, and that this means actively belonging to it; By their hypocritical habit of belonging to it, merely to be considered, but not to be living members of the Church, these people only dry up and dull the life of their hearts, kill feeling, and, of course, only distance themselves from Church life, as a full, pure, and holy life. On the contrary, any sincerity, wherever and in whom it may be, but if it is only a selfless thirst for truth, it will certainly lead to the truth. Of course, everyone knows the conversion of Saul, the most sincere and ardent champion of the heavenly truth, which he thought to find in Judaism; he himself says of himself: "I cruelly persecuted the church of God, and devastated it, and advanced in Judaism above many of my peers in my nation, being more than moderately zealous for the traditions of my fathers" ( Gal. 1:13, 14 ). But when he, this chosen one of God, recognized Christ, he did not then consult with flesh and blood ( Gal. 1:16 ), but immediately became a servant of the New Testament and the Holy Church. Such is the power of a great soul, to whom nothing is more precious than truth, such was the great Apostle Paul, to whom only truth is dear in life, and so much so that, as he wrote: "If we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel to you than what we have preached to you (that is, the proven, perfect truth), let him be anathema."( Gal. 1:8 ). Thus the apostle anathematizes even himself if he dared to speak anything other than the preaching of love and truth of which he spoke. For this complete love of truth, the Lord revealed to the Apostle Paul the holy truth contained in the life and teachings of the Orthodox Church. This means that faith is not given by God to the human soul as if by force, but only to the extent of a person's own striving for faith. A person may err in his search for truth, but he must also err honestly, without deceiving himself, selflessly and sincerely seeking the truth, and then God himself will reveal this truth to him. Faith, therefore, is the personal experience of each person striving for a holy life; to believe means to do the will of God, and not hypocritically cry out: "Lord, Lord!"
These are the two greatest blunders in the presentation of the Church's teaching on faith, based on the fact that two fundamental ideas of the Holy Church have been forgotten: 1. To live in the Holy Church means to live a full life, to be blessed, and not to mortify one's natural abilities; 2. Faith is a moral life; to believe means to grow in faith, that is, in a virtuous, holy life. And often the best souls, for the sake of the purest motives, but as a result of an erroneously adopted, false understanding of Church teaching, depart from it, unaware that they are abandoning precisely what they seek. In fact, all these fine words, such as freedom, culture (i.e., the cultivation of human nature), and progress, have their due great significance precisely in the Church and can have meaning and content there; otherwise, they will remain only words, and since they are divorced from moral teaching, they remain just words. and this is at best, and at worst freedom degenerates into licentiousness, the most sacred freedom of speech turns out to be freedom of foul language, culture turns into a culture of the stomach and all sorts of stomach interests due to the absence of moral interests, progress is reduced only to more refined pleasures.
In a word, life in the Church is not a life locked in some kind of moral chains, but a life of holy freedom; thus, anyone who does not scold holiness, who does not mock moral purity, who is incapable of following sin and unrighteousness, is an undoubted, albeit unconscious, disciple of the Lord and the Church.
But here's the problem again: modern teachings demand anything from our cultured people, except holiness. This quality of the soul is so terribly incomprehensible to modern Christians that it's strange to even begin to discuss it. Holiness! But what's the point? For all these charity committees and chess clubs, for these idle chatter commissions and hunting and fine arts societies, for all this "progress"—what significance does holiness have? Where should it be placed?...
Thus, we have forgotten the main commandment of the Savior regarding the organization of social life, ensured in well-being, the commandment: “Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you ” ( Matthew 6:33 ), i.e. all well-being will be sent down to people from heaven and will be a natural consequence of their search for the kingdom of God, i.e. holiness, on earth.
This is the formula of the Holy Church for the public and private life of Christians. To clarify this formula, it can be paraphrased as follows: in seeking the Kingdom of God, i.e., pleasing God, you will learn to benefit others, and through them, yourself. But this formula has been completely forgotten and replaced by another: serve others, and you will fulfill your earthly purpose. Thus, the Christian teaching on arranging people's earthly well-being is truncated both at the beginning and at the end. Christianity says: 1. Care for the Kingdom of God, i.e., cleanse yourself of self-love, strive to love your neighbor, learn to serve your neighbor, then 2. you will truly be a skilled servant of your neighbor; and 3. your afterlife will be such that you will be blessed after death.
But the new formula for social life says not a word about this accustoming oneself to the feeling of love, but speaks only of good deeds and charity without the feeling of love . But it is obvious that the evil one will not do good, but only evil, because he does not understand goodness or love! Do grapes of thorns contain food, or figs from thistles? A good tree cannot bear evil fruit, nor can an evil tree bear good fruit ( Matthew 7:16-18 ). Indeed, he has no reason to love, because the entire purpose of his life is limited to the earth, his earthly destiny—so what should he care about if he finds pleasure even in evil? Earthly society, separating itself from the Church, with such deviations from ecclesiastical truth creates for itself completely insurmountable difficulties, desiring to unite around a teaching that cannot serve as a morally binding rule of life for anyone, containing within itself obvious incompleteness. Indeed, how can I be a blameless servant of my neighbor if I do not accustom myself to serving him? And I can accustom myself to this only by accustoming myself to love him. But it is the Church's teaching, and no one else's, that speaks of complete love. Society says, " Do good," and does not teach how to do it or how to accustom myself to it. The Church, however, says, "Love ," and then you will not be able not to do it. And furthermore, it adds, "Love, because love never fails" ( 1 Cor. 13:8 ), i.e., the Church provides the foundation for a virtuous life. Recently, an article was published in many secular and spiritual journals in which the author, defending the sentiments of the intelligentsia as a force thirsting for God and yearning with all its soul for a good "deed," at the same time says that "you will not win the intelligentsia by preaching only an ideal beyond the grave." And that is a great pity! It is a great pity that the afterlife ideal has been so forgotten by modern Christians that there is not even hope for its influence. After all, the afterlife is the sole foundation of man's earthly "work." By what rational goals can a person live if he does not live by the afterlife ideal, i.e., by faith in his own eternal goodness, in an eternal soul. Earthly goals? Perhaps, but it is hardly reasonable to repeat the erroneous illusions of past centuries, which thought to arrange human happiness; no, earthly life, if it changes, does so independently of people, and undoubtedly for the worse with respect to the majority. In any case, anyone who carefully studies people's earthly lives will be forced to draw a bleak conclusion for human existence: "What has been is what will be; and what has been done is what will be done; and there is nothing new under the sun. There are things of which they say, 'See, this is new'; but these things have already happened in the ages that were before us" ( Eccl. 1:9-10 ).
Moreover, a completely simple logical conclusion can indicate that earthly ideals, as inferior to human nature, naturally cannot elevate it, but only degrade it, so to speak, lower tastes and spiritual demands; but ideals of a higher quality, higher than earthly ones, ideals of heavenly life, i.e., higher moral principles, can elevate and ennoble spiritual life.
However, what can motivate a person to activity if they lack lofty principles of goodness? They can only carry out their activities, that is, as they say, kill time—people can have such a goal in their activities; at least, we can encounter it at every step. And the reason that inspires a person in this short-sighted pleasure is very often the spectacular appearance of the external environment, even in the absence of depth of content in general and moral ideas in particular. The prototype of such human dreams, such intense concern to create happiness on earth without God, without religion , and without moral principles, was the construction of the Tower of Babel. There, people wanted to live in their own comfort and serve, to help each other—in short, they wanted to create their own happiness and glory, but without God. But this proved beyond human strength: to serve one's neighbor, one must forget oneself, one must have great patience and love. Otherwise, one can organize one's charity in such a way that, humiliated and destroyed by this charity, one will simply reject the self-loving benefactor's concern for oneself, rather than endure even the most subtle insults from him. Constant service to one's neighbor can be sustainable, but only if it is founded on immutable principles, and not on random, albeit well-intentioned, fantasies. Therefore, Babylon, which sought to unite, not in the name of God, but in the name of self-imagined unifying principles, perished in its imprisonment: people ceased to understand one another, and this is how their attempts to organize life without God ended. In these attempts, they created such a life for themselves that they hastened to disperse, so as not to torment themselves any longer with irreligious charity. The echoes of this Babylonian effort to establish earthly well-being reach us: in our time, too, the tragic consequences of this Babylonian construction are forgotten, and in our time, people want to do good to their neighbors without loving them or forcing themselves to be loved. And this results not in charity in the true sense of the word, but in amusement at the misfortune of others. Even in such a case, the benefactor continues to occupy himself only with himself, but begins to devote his free, unnecessary, and burdensome time not only to the theater, dinners, and other "ennobling" amusements, but also, incidentally, to his neighbor. However, if this neighbor decides to disturb his benefactor at an unscheduled time, if he risks disturbing the benefactor's peace when the latter is otherwise occupied, then the neighbor may pay dearly. This is how every attempt by people to unite not on the eternal basis of God’s law, but around their dreams, which rarely, very rarely, survive a century, ends.
Thus, we believe that social life, in its desire to distance itself from Christian teaching, forgets that it could face the sad fate of complete human disunity, as profound as that already experienced in the Old Testament. People may continue to cease to understand one another, serving only themselves and their own interests and forgetting the feeling of love as the complete self-denial commanded by Christ and the only thing capable of ensuring human well-being on earth. This is what can lead people to when they forget the Christian teaching about the life of the age to come as the single, great goal of earthly life. Thus, along with the forgotten Christian truth about the purpose of life as preparation for the afterlife, the means for arranging this life, i.e., truly Christian virtue, are also forgotten. In accordance with the newly invented earthly purpose of life as increasing pleasures, instead of Christian virtues, a new virtue has been invented, called by the non-Russian word "humaneness." Very few understand what this is. Indeed, humanism, translated into Russian, means "humaneness." So, what exactly is this strange word supposed to denote? After all, the concepts of "humanity," of being humane, are vast and malleable in the minds of each individual. After all, Nero undoubtedly considered himself a man, and he undoubtedly considered himself humane in his own way. Therefore, the word "humane" may mean nothing, because this concept can have its own, almost contradictory, meaning for each individual, because each person has their own mind, judging everything in their own way. And there will undoubtedly be someone who, upon hearing the praise of "humaneness," will not consider it praise at all, and if they have no right to be offended, they will be justified in responding to this praise with, "I know."
Indeed, Nero, by our standards, was not very humane. But let us consider in more detail what this quality signifies, by our standards. If only justice, then why not call the just just? Love ? But why call love humane? In short, this quality seems to signify only that the man in question is not a thief, not a robber, not brutally cruel, and has never strangled anyone in his lifetime. But the positive qualities of a humane, i.e., a humane, person are not at all indicated by this word.
On the other hand, this word implies more than was necessary or desirable for those who coined it, who forgot the Christian teaching on human nature and began to over-idealize it. Specifically, they forgot that man, if he is merely human, is only an animal, and that only insofar as he is guided by moral principles—that is, by his spiritual nature, not only human but also godlike—is he truly human. If we consider man solely in his earthly human nature and examine how much humanity he then possesses, we must repeat the long-standing conclusion on this matter: man is a wolf to man . This conclusion was reached by the most experienced, the most consistent of all people who strove to give man earthly happiness and a prosperous community. The laws of this people, the laws of proud Rome, the greatest of egoistic theorists, so-called Roman law, are studied by modern Christians, but in their shortsightedness they fail to notice the death sentence pronounced by this law upon themselves and their lives. This sentence is expressed in the above words: man is a wolf to man, and in other words: the strictest justice is the greatest injustice. In contrast to these final words of Roman law, the Holy Church, while fully agreeing with them in essence, says to man: 1. Yes, insofar as you are only human, you are a "wolf," no matter how much you lull yourself with thoughts of serving humanity; but you can be a true guardian angel of your neighbor when you are reborn by the grace of Christ, when through it you cleanse your heart of selfishness and evil; 2. The Holy Church affirms that one must treat people with love, that this is the only law for that life of people that can fully quench the human thirst for truth. But if people forget about the one good law, the law of love (Christian), and invent for themselves their own new law of any kind, then they will only invent for themselves a new instrument of torture, because no law can give people happiness except the Law of God, the only law that is natural to man.
This idea of Orthodox Christian teaching has also been forgotten to the greatest degree; otherwise, it is impossible to explain why people seek new forms of life beyond those indicated by the Church. Having forgotten Christian teaching, they have also forgotten human nature, and seeing around them, though evil and sinful, though unconscious, yet nonetheless Christians, or people by nature ennobled by Christian truth, they began to idealize human nature itself, and their ultimate goal became the idea of "humanity" and "the humane" instead of the establishment of the Kingdom of God in the souls of men.
What will it take for these undoubtedly good people to become true sons of the Church? They must carefully reconsider and re-evaluate all the concepts and foundations of their lives. Then they will undoubtedly notice that much of what they live by and consider their own belongs to the Church, much of which they unconsciously borrowed from the Church and then forgot, and began to contrast their own, borrowed from the Church but misunderstood, with the true teaching of the Church. If this re-evaluation of concepts takes place, if much of the forgotten Christian teaching re-enters the consciousness of many unconscious followers of Christ, then we firmly believe they will be the most convinced of the faith, the best sons of the Holy Church. Church life will be renewed, and they themselves will be resurrected in spirit, revived and renewed, and many of the outrages of Russian life, which I.S. Aksakov so lamented, will disappear of their own accord.
So, what is needed to bring back to the Church those who consider themselves outside of it, not understanding its life?
First, someone must make an effort to get these people to take life seriously; they must be interested in conscious living. Second, they must be compelled, implored, and entreated to recall what they have forgotten, to recall the truly Christian teaching of the Church, and not the scholastic textbooks, the study of which has now replaced the study of Church life. And especially for everyone, it is necessary to be sincere, sincerely striving for good and, at least, sincerely not hiding their shortcomings; then there is still hope for the improvement of social life. Otherwise, people are threatened with both earthly and heavenly woe. Let us recall the incomparably terrible denunciation that permeated the Savior's speech when He denounced the lives of the Jews, whose entire existence was corrupted by this hypocrisy and insincerity, which, like rust, had eaten away the life of the Jewish people. The Savior said to them: Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye shut up the kingdom of God against men! For you do not go in yourselves, nor do you suffer those who are entering to go in ( Matthew 23:13 ). Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint and anise and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith. You ought to have done these, and not to neglect the others. You are blind guides, straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you clean the outside of the cup and the platter, but they are full of extortion and unrighteousness. Blind Pharisee! Cleanse first the inside of the cup and the platter, that the outside also may be clean ( Matthew 23:23–26 ).
Of all these reproaches from the Lord, relating to the life of the Jewish people, can one consider superfluous in our times or so strong that they need to be weakened? It seems that even today these words of the Savior have not lost their accusatory power and are so terribly relevant. But behind this hypocrisy and falsehood, behind all these constant mutual assurances about how good everything is with us and how everything is improving, and how cultured we have become—behind all these falsehoods, we have forgotten the holy teaching of the Church, forgotten God's judgment and mercy, mutual Christian love, and faith in the sanctity of Church teaching. We have forgotten this; but can all this be replaced by anything? Every attempt by a person to convince himself and others that he has found a means to replace the irreplaceable leads him to the gravest vice of hypocrisy in matters of religion. This is the depth of human degradation, because any honest denial is better and more readily cured than hypocrisy in matters of religion; and nothing repels honest young souls from religion so much as that same hypocrisy and the pitiful striving to achieve other selfish goals. And you, listeners, observe our lives—everywhere there is unbelief and indifference, covered up by hypocrisy in various forms, and truly now more than ever we must shine a torch to find a person, that is, a whole nature, loving, compassionate, with a full spiritual life, and not crippled... You therefore, beloved, since you know this beforehand, beware lest you also be carried away by the error of the wicked and fall from your own steadfastness; but grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. ( 2 Peter 3:17-18 )
Source: https://azbyka.ru/otechnik/Andrej_Uhtomskij/iz-pravoslavno-tserkovnogo-uchenija-zabytye-mysli/