Why does God allow suffering, the death of children and terrorist attacks? Why do the innocent suffer? Why God doesn't stop wars.
Good afternoon From your answer about “What is God”, I understood that this is the Creator of our visible world and everything in it, and also once on Earth the face of God appeared in Jesus Christ. If this is true, then I have a question, what is happening now to the world in which we live? I'm talking about wars, terrorism and the idea of the golden billion. That is, if God created our world, then why did he allow the mass destruction of about 20-25 million people from 41 to 45? Did these 20 million sinners in past lives and in these years atone for their sins at the cost of their own lives? I think that either the God we are talking about is not omnipotent or this is not God at all, to whom we should strive because he does not help. Can someone who created entire worlds allow the destruction of his creations? Thank you. Sincerely yours, Ilya
Priest Philip Parfenov answers:
Hello again, Ilya!
Questions in your spirit were asked by the righteous Job about 3000 years ago, and there is a book of Job in the Bible, where the righteous man makes harsh claims to God, similar to yours, being in a state of struggle, challenge... In the end, God appears to him without directly answering the question. all rigidly posed questions, after which all raised questions are removed - Job refuses them. This is a kind of long and detailed parable. Its essence is that some kind of living and personal contact with God is important, and then many things will appear in a different light. Ask God, turn to Him! Maybe not right away, but over time something will be given to you... But questions will still remain - God is, first of all, a mystery. Consider for just a second that your ideas about God may be very far from what God really is like! It's a little, but it might help. How omnipotent is God in general and why does He allow so much evil? I don’t know... God is potentially much more powerful than all of us, but how omnipotent He really is, I don’t know either. At the Divine Liturgy, the most important service of the Orthodox Church, we pray: “You are God, ineffable, unknown, invisible, incomprehensible...” This is the most accurate thing we can say about Him, and all Scripture is about this! If God were understandable to us, He certainly would not be God by definition. I can also say this with complete confidence. And about the rest - only in vague guesses and assumptions... But if you look more carefully at the Scripture itself, first of all the New Testament, then there is the fate of Christ, God incarnate in human form. He raised the dead, healed incurable diseases and... allowed Himself to be violated and ultimately become subjected to the most humiliating and painful execution of that time - crucifixion (this was done to the last slaves of the Roman Empire, and according to Jewish law such a person was considered damned). So, if God allowed this to happen to His unique and only begotten Son, is it any wonder that He allows something similar to happen to others? Scripture, by the way, did not initially promise an easy life for anyone. Jesus Himself warned about the sad fate of his disciples. Today, as I write to you, the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross is also a reminder of this... “Take up your cross and follow Me,” as Jesus said. But after the cross, mind you, comes the Resurrection! And life does not end with physical death. If it were limited only to this biological form, then, in fact, we are the most miserable of all people if we hope in Christ only in this life, without believing in His resurrection and in the final resurrection of the dead, as the Apostle Paul wrote to the Corinthians (1 Cor. 15:12-19). And God also revealed one important truth to the Apostle Paul: “ My strength is made perfect in weakness"(2 Cor. 12:9). Yes, God is often more weak than strong in this visible world. His ways, His tactics are mysterious... He does not subjugate or force anyone by force - this is done by the people themselves. He gives us all the freedom to express ourselves both in the good, which he constantly calls for, and in the bad too. An alternative to this? Perhaps a world where everything would be worked out, debugged, predictable, like in a mechanism, but then there would be no freedom in this world... And there would be no life itself!
I will quote one more word of the apostle - “We walk by faith, not by sight” (2 Cor. 5:7). And not knowledge, I’ll add to this. If everything was visible to us, obvious and clear, it would be complete knowledge, and then there would be no need for faith at all. But again, all Scripture calls us to faith. TO faith How trust God, and at the same time fidelity Him, as well as confidence in those invisible things that we cannot yet clearly show and explain.
Sincerely, priest Philip Parfenov.
“There is so much madness in the world that the only excuse for God is that he does not exist,” Stendhal once said. The entire history of mankind is a history of suffering. From time immemorial, people have been haunted by endless wars, violence, oppression and bullying, terrible crimes, cruel executions, and the triumph of injustice crying to Heaven. Even in peacetime, earthlings are tormented and exterminated by disease, hunger and all kinds of natural disasters. And, it would seem, really - why has the Lord never brought order to the Earth, allows so much evil and allows His creatures to suffer so much?
Temptation of Adam and Eve
If there is no God, then all earthly madness can be explained solely by human stupidity, natural selection, the eternal struggle for a place in the sun and absurd accidents. But in this case, the very existence of people and their suffering, in essence, becomes meaningless and hopeless. From the point of view of Orthodox Christians, everything in the world has a deep meaning and can be explained.
The first people on earth lived happily in God's beautiful and harmonious paradise. One day, Adam and Eve frivolously listened to the tempting serpent and violated the only commandment given to them by God. When they ate a certain forbidden fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, the world was attacked by evil, and the nature of all living beings was damaged and distorted. The first parents lost contact with God, became sinners and were expelled from paradise. The earthly world was created by the Creator for people and is interconnected with them. When the masters of nature lost their greatness and immortality, their entire habitat changed. Because of Adam's fall and the sins of his descendants, man turned from a ruler into a slave of nature, his body and passions, the earth lost the ability to bear fruit abundantly, and all living beings, one way or another, are doomed to suffering.
Many are perplexed: if the Lord did not want people to know good and evil, then why did He even hang the forbidden fruit on the tree?! It’s the same as hanging a bare wire in a room with small children and demanding that they not touch it, and when they do receive an electric shock, you also cruelly punish them for their curiosity! Why did God allow the devil to reach people and not prevent the impending catastrophe? Let's try to figure it out.
According to the teachings of the Church, primordial man possessed complete knowledge and the deepest knowledge of the created world. He knew God personally, so intimately and obviously, as no other saint could subsequently know. For this reason alone, comparing Adam with a small child cannot be objective.
In only one aspect was the knowledge of the ancestors incomplete. They did not know in practice what evil was, had no real experience of contact with it, and had little idea of what existence without God was, and what kind of nonentity man turns into when he falls away from the Creator. God’s warning “you will surely die” was only theoretical knowledge for them. The theory, not supported by practice, could not prevent people from breaking the fatal taboo. But we can hardly blame Adam and Eve for this stupidity. If any of us were in their place, we would probably do the same.
Mark Twain's joke: “If the serpent had been forbidden, Adam would have eaten it too” is very close to the truth. After all, the very first commandment was established by God so that a person could easily realize his love for Him, or just as freely refuse this love. In the Hebrew language, the phrase “tree of the knowledge of good and evil” is a stable idiom, meaning the absolute completeness of knowledge, making a person equal to God and independent of Him. Therefore, the forbidden fruit cannot be taken primitively and literally. The ancestors were destroyed not by its use itself, but by the motivation of their actions and the state of their souls at the moment when they doubted the goodness and truth of God, believed Satan and decided to become “like God,” self-sufficient and great. By breaking the commandment, a person, in essence, betrayed the Lord, trampled on his love for Him and infected his own soul with death.
Further sad consequences were not punishment, but a natural consequence of the falling away from the Source of all being. To figuratively understand the essence of this catastrophe, imagine a branch broken off from a tree, which, although it will remain green for some time in a vase, is inevitably doomed to dry out, having lost contact with the roots that gave it vitality. Or imagine a smart computer that was connected to a powerful server via LAN, and then suddenly decided that it was completely self-sufficient and broke the connection with it, becoming defenseless against network viruses, hackers and software errors. It is so arranged that the fullness of human existence is realized only in his union with God. A break with Him inevitably entails degradation, destruction and other grave consequences.
Having twisted their souls and their own nature, Adam and Eve could no longer remain in paradise. They were burdened by communication with God and a sense of their own unrepentant guilt. Further stay in the Garden of Eden became painful. This burden of the presence of God and the desire to hide from Him will haunt fallen man until the very end of earthly history.
All talk about God punishing and punishing someone is nothing more than a figure of speech, which is easier for primitive people to understand than talk about God-Love. In fact, there was no punishment from the Heavenly Father. The main essence of evil lies in the departure from God and the break with Him. Adam and Eve punished themselves by entering the path of evil and falling into the power of the law of death and suffering. All the tempting promises of the devil turned out to be disastrous lies.
Zmiy and his team
Dr. S. was excellently educated, respected, and showed great promise. But one day he wanted to become the most important doctor in the world. However, all his intrigues and attempts to achieve a leadership position ended in failure. S. went crazy, was fired and became a dangerous charlatan, creating his own “center” where patients are only fooled and maimed, and fleeced like crazy. For now, they still tolerate him, warning people about the dangers of treatment from this madman. But sooner or later the unfortunate doctor will have to answer for everything he has done over the years...
Something similar to this figurative story happened in the celestial spheres. The first in the universe, even before the creation of the material world, fell were the angels created by God. One of God’s main assistants, Dennitsa, aka Lucifer, once lost his mind due to immense pride. God's creature wanted to become God and take His place, and about a third of the heavenly spirits supported him. Such an inadequate assessment by Lucifer of his power and perfection resulted in a war, as a result of which the rebels were defeated and overthrown.
The fall of the proud angels created not evil itself, but its disembodied carriers, whose existence turned into a dull, hopeless hell. When the Lord created man, gifted with freedom and having flesh, the opportunity opened up for evil spirits to seduce people and through them bring disharmony, anger and suffering into the earthly world.
Envying God, but not having the slightest opportunity to harm Him, the demons extended all their hatred of the Creator to His creations. Their anger is so great and boundless that they even hate each other. The very fact of their own existence is very painful for them, worse than that of any mad dog. The meaning of existence for them was the desire to destroy and destroy everything that they could put their “dirty paws” to.
God's love is limitless, and in case of repentance, demons could return to the rank of angels. But their monstrous, ineradicable pride and malice forever closed the path to salvation for them. They are only capable of steadily developing in evil and envy.
Why does God tolerate evil?
But why didn't God destroy the demons and allow them to harm and tempt people to evil? We are unlikely to get a definite answer to this question in earthly life, but we can understand something in general terms.
It is very likely that if there were no devil, man would have fallen without his help. People have the bad habit of wallowing in sins, unbelief and empty vanity that does not benefit the soul, forgetting about God. Many give themselves over to the power of Satan. But the meaning of life does not lie in earthly pleasures and benefits. The true purpose of our entire earthly life is preparation for Eternity. Each of us needs to know good and evil, learn to distinguish between them and make a voluntary choice. Our fate after death directly depends on how pure we are and how ready we are to unite with the Lord. For an unprepared dirty soul in the afterlife, it will be, to put it mildly, very uncomfortable and difficult. The one who has not lived his life in vain will find eternal joy and happiness, and will never step on Adam’s rake again.
If you find yourself in a room filled with natural gas, where we cook our food, we can be fatally poisoned or explode. In its pure form, the gas is odorless. In order to notice and eliminate its leaks in time, a foul chemical odorant is added to it, the smell of which is familiar to everyone.
Human suffering and pain are also a kind of “odorant”, signaling that our bodies and souls are in danger and that they have been taken over by harmful destructive processes. For example, those who like to self-poison with alcohol are forced to put up with severe hangovers and depression. And a person who causes insults and harm to his neighbors, or corrupts the soul with immoral thoughts and actions, is tormented by remorse.
It is clear that you can suppress a hangover with medications and new doses of poison, and the conscience of the villains petrifies and atrophies over time, ceasing to cause anxiety and discomfort. But the results of such a life quite soon lead to irreversible consequences. Imagine a person who has lost sensitivity. He drinks boiling water, puts his hands in the fire, and does not feel pain from burns and wounds. Of course, he soon inevitably dies.
“I don’t do harm to anyone, I don’t have bad habits, and I still suffer - why should I do this?!” - other people are indignant. But if you look carefully, any of us will have shortcomings and sins that prevent us from achieving the perfection necessary for salvation in Eternity. Without shocks and suffering, people remain in a world of illusions and self-delusion. Which of us is completely free even from thoughts of condemnation and anger, from pretense and lies in any of its manifestations, from passions and forbidden desires? Outwardly, we may seem kind and righteous, but if we delve well and honestly into our soul, we can find in it such ulcers and black spots that we don’t even want to think about, and which we are sometimes afraid to admit to ourselves. But I really don’t want to delve into myself and admit the bitter truth! It’s easier to come up with an excuse that some of God’s commandments are “outdated” and no longer relevant. As the German philosopher and mathematician Gottfried Leibniz said: “If geometry were as contrary to our passions and interests as morality, then we would also argue against it and violate it in spite of all evidence.”
In the soul of a person all his life there is a struggle between good and evil. By allowing us sorrow, the Lord heals our internal “sores.” Often, only after serious falls do people come to their senses and begin to fight their evil “second self”, which, by the way, attracts troubles and suffering to us and our loved ones. A consolation for us can be the fact that God, in contrast to the inexorable automatic “karma” that representatives of Eastern teachings believe in, often shelters a person from the consequences of his sins, averting from him those well-deserved “punishments” that he could and can't stand it. Allowing us to suffer only to the extent that it contributes to our healing. That is why a hooligan and an ugly person who does not know what he is doing can seem for a long time to be an invulnerable darling of fate. And in the five minutes without a righteous man, failures and sorrows sometimes pour in like from a cornucopia, even for the most seemingly trifling thoughts, making him even stronger and more tempered.
The “Dying Diary” of John of Kronstadt is very instructive. Dying from cancer, he suffered severe pain. There is a recording in which he repents and laments that during the next unbearable attack, he lost his temper and blasphemed God and the Mother of God for the fact that he was suffering so much. Even such a great saint, who healed thousands of sick people with his prayers, is capable of discovering dark spots in his bright soul through pain! But he perfectly understood the essence of his painful reaction to suffering, and thanked God for giving him the opportunity to see what the true state of the soul was, and what other “sores” needed to be healed and cleansed by repentance.
No matter how much demons dream of ruining everything, they are by no means free in their actions, and can only do what God allows them to do. The bite of a poisonous snake is fatal, but a skilled doctor knows how to prepare medicine from its poison. Likewise, the Lord, who turns any evil plans to good, uses the carriers of evil as a means to heal human souls. Satan, demons, as well as people who do evil, in fact turn out to be a kind of “scalpel” in the hand of a merciful God, who is trying to bring every human soul to intelligence and perfection, to heal and save, even at the cost of very painful “operations.”
Alas, it is impossible to live on this earth without suffering. But we can treat them not as a necessary evil, but as a school of self-knowledge and personal education, teaching us brotherly love, humility and wisdom, and detachment from everything petty and vain. A sincerely believing Christian, even in the most terrible and inhuman conditions of life, can become righteous and perfect, and gain the experience of heavenly existence already on Earth.
Sacred freedom
I have heard puzzling questions: “Why did the omniscient Lord, who foresaw what temptations of good and evil would lead to, not create people in such a way that sin and evil could not arise in their souls at all?” The whole point is that creatures artificially programmed for obedience, deprived of freedom of choice, would no longer be human. These would be biorobots, zombies, or, if you like, slaves. And God is interested in and loves those who are free personalities who have the opportunity to sincerely love and choose goodness without coercion, according to personal free choice.
There is an old philosophical riddle on this topic: “If God is omnipotent, can He create such a heavy stone that He himself cannot lift it?” It would seem that if he cannot create, then he is not omnipotent, and if he creates but does not lift him up, then he is still not omnipotent. In fact, the Lord has already created such a “stone.” This stone is a person created for happiness and bliss. In the vast world subordinate to its Creator, there is a territory over which He has no power. This is the heart of a person, endowed with the sacred freedom to love or not love his Creator and choose the path of his life. It is on this territory, beyond the control of God, that evil is so often born as a result of freedom misused by man.
The Lord loves us and wants us all to be happy and saved. And we bring on all the troubles and misfortunes ourselves. The main evil is the darkness that lives in the hearts of people who do not want to let the light of God's Love into themselves. If God forcibly expelled this darkness, then there could be no talk of any true love, for “robots” cannot love! A person is allowed everything, and only he can decide for himself - in which direction to move, towards Light or darkness.
Many would like God to stop all the villains in time and neutralize any Hitlers and Chikatilos even before they become dangerous to society. But in this case, He will again have to roughly trample on human freedom.
We are outraged by the cruelty of the villains who appeared before the court, not even suspecting how many of them have not yet been caught, and how many people around us who seem quite normal, but have darkness of evil thoughts in their souls. Too many of us would have to be "handcuffed" from infancy onwards. No, and there was not a person on earth who did not at least once cause pain and harm to other people. God looks at everything that happens from the point of view of Eternity, providing everyone with the most favorable conditions for healing his soul, depending on his condition. He is in no hurry to stop a person on his confused everyday roads and is long-suffering, waiting for misfortunes and suffering to bring people to their senses and turn their hearts to truth and goodness. And it destroys evil only when it is really necessary. Any evil has its limit. And any villain is responsible for his deeds not only before God’s Court. Even if he is not punished by earthly court or human revenge, the life of one mired in evil already on this earth turns into a real hell.
Who causes diseases and disasters?
But what about natural disasters that wipe out entire cities and continents? Here, a metaphysical relationship between a society mired in sins and responses from nature may well be at work. God delays the fatal outcome to the last and waits for human repentance and correction, but sooner or later the cup of patience is overflowing, and cataclysms happen.
Man-made troubles and disasters bother us much more. Let us remember how much evil civilized man has done over the last century alone, how he irreparably polluted the earth and air with chemical waste and radiation, violated nature and its harmony with gross, short-sighted interference.
An equally painful question is where do pathogenic viruses and microbes come from, and why doesn’t God destroy them? Some people believe that this dirty trick is sent to people by the devil, causing pathogenic mutations. But another version is more likely. Initially, man was invulnerable to any microbes and viruses created by God. But after the Fall, the world stopped perceiving man as its ruler. Our nature has changed, and some microorganisms have become harmful and dangerous to us. Our immune system protects us, but it can’t always cope with them. In favor of this version, we can cite the example of allergies to the most harmless substances, when a person can even die after smelling ordinary wildflowers or, say, eating a fruit that is an allergen for him.
Some diseases, such as cancer, occur when cells in the human body are damaged and mutated. But often people themselves generate these mutations with their own thoughts and words.
A doctor I know told me about patient O., who had breast cancer. For the time being, she was absolutely healthy and strong, but one day she became very angry with one person and wished him to die of cancer. Soon her wish boomeranged at her. Before O.'s illness, few people loved her; she was known as an evil and frivolous godless person. But a rapidly progressing fatal illness led her to faith and gracefully changed her soul. When a friend quoted to her her own statements from the recent cloudless past, O. was sincerely perplexed and did not believe that these were her own thoughts and words. The disease, capable of destroying only the body, led her to complete moral recovery and helped her find blissful Eternity.
On the other hand, people's prayers sometimes pull their loved ones out of their deathbeds. During the early “dashing 90s,” when the provinces lacked basic medicine, my friend Alexandra’s wife literally begged for her son, who was dying of severe pneumonia. At some point, she felt that her prayer had been answered. And literally immediately the baby coughed up a whole lump of green mucus. The temperature, which had not gone away for many days, began to drop before our eyes, and after a couple of days the child was healthy.
Another amazing case was told in one of the Internet forums by Vera Danilova. Her friends’ 1.5-year-old daughter was dying in the best Moscow hospital. One by one, the chemical elements necessary for life disappeared from her blood. Doctors said there was no chance of recovery. And then, on the advice of a friend, the desperate father, who had not previously been noted for religiosity, went to the Trinity-Sergius Lavra and spent several hours kneeling at the relics of St. Sergius of Radonezh, begging to save his daughter’s life. And a miracle happened - his daughter began to recover, and a month later the doctors declared her fully recovered. After this, the whole family - father, mother and their two children were baptized and became sincere believers.
Why do the innocent suffer?
I know a family who lost a small child. The tragedy led parents fixated on material wealth to faith and spiritual rebirth. They gave birth to a daughter, and consider their late son to be the guardian angel of their family. On the other hand, not everyone manages to survive such grief. Not long ago, unable to bear the mental anguish, the father of a terminally ill girl jumped out of the window of a cancer center.
But why, why do innocent children suffer in the world?
The reasons can be very different. One of them is the relationship between parents and their children. The sins of fathers and mothers often make the most innocent - their beloved children - suffer. Such cases can be allowed by God to push perishing sinful parents to correction. My friend A. told me about cases when his unbridled life directly affected the health of his beloved daughter. When he got drunk on vodka and suffered from a hangover, his little baby, in unison with him, suffered from a loss of vitality, stomach pain and nausea. And as soon as he committed a serious offense, which he could well have not done, his daughter became seriously ill and was admitted to the hospital. Having understood this relationship, for the sake of the health of his beloved child, he stopped drinking and put an end to many sins.
From the point of view of Eternal Life, not a single child’s suffering passes without a trace and is useless. This is how the world lying in evil is structured, that very often the best and purest people are forced to suffer and even die “for their friends.” The souls of such heroes, voluntarily or involuntarily sacrificing themselves, unite with God and find eternal happiness and peace. Martyrdom, according to the canons of Christianity, is the pinnacle of righteousness and the maximum possible acquisition of spiritual benefits. And the people around the martyrs get a chance to start a new life and become better, cleaner and kinder. It is only important to draw the right conclusions and never despair.
Sooner or later, earthly history will end, and humanity will move into a different form of existence. All souls from Adam to the last man on Earth who want to be saved and unite with God will acquire new, eternal bodies. In the new world there will be no more evil or suffering, but only eternal love, joy and boundless happiness. To become residents of that future world, you just need to try here and now to live according to your conscience, not offend anyone and do good for the sake of love for goodness itself. Then even this earthly world will become cleaner and better, and we ourselves will feel during our lifetime that the good, heavenly state of the soul is not a myth, but a completely tangible reality.
“Why doesn’t the Almighty Lord make sure that there are no wars in the world?” “Why does He allow murder”?
People have been asking these questions for centuries. Today, in the world, as there are always wars, there is mutual physical extermination of man by man. Therefore, these questions remain relevant and vital.
Bible about wars
According to the Bible and the Orthodox worldview, the Lord does not allow war, terrorism, or murder. The Holy Scripture says that it is not the Lord, but the fallen angel, Satan, who sets people against each other and sows all kinds of discord. It is he who, by possessing people and making them wicked, kindles the flames of enmity. This is what the Holy Scripture says about them “There is no peace for the wicked, says my God.”(Isa. 57:21). "They don't know the way of the world"(Isa.59:8).
Back in Paradise, God spoke to Satan, who succumbed to his temptation: “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; it will bruise your head, and you will bruise its heel.”(Genesis 3). Thus, after the fall of the first parents and as a consequence of it, enmity entered the world. It began with the family of Eve and Adam. Their son Cain, at the instigation of Satan, killed his brother Abel and began to quarrel with God, refusing to repent. It was enmity with God, unwillingness to repent for sins that gave rise to enmity among people. The Lord teaches that people should not envy each other, should not be angry with each other, and should not raise their hands against each other. “Peace I leave with you, My peace I give to you”(John 14:27) - said Jesus Christ.
Expulsion of Adam and Eve from Paradise
Since the advent of Satan and the fall of Adam and Eve, only two forces began to operate in the world - the power of love, goodness, friendship and the force called violence, enmity and anger. God calls for love, and Satan for enmity. But if God does not use violence, then we people are free. We are free to choose whether to side with God or serve Satan. So, people who serve Satan are the ones who start wars. It is about them that Christ said: “Your father is the devil, and you want to do the lusts of your father.”(John 8:44). Although, someday, according to the Bible, humanity will be transformed and there will be no wars. Then the peoples “They will beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation will not raise sword against nation, and they will no longer learn to fight.”(Isa. 2:4.).
Holy Fathers about wars
Of course, war is an undoubted evil. But they can be both offensive and defensive. And defensive wars can be considered fair and unfair. The Monk Isidore Pelusiot wrote: “Wars flare up most of all for the sake of acquiring someone else’s property. But we should not blame everyone who wages war; those who laid the foundation for either offense or theft are rightly called destructive demons; But those who take revenge in moderation should not be reproached as acting unjustly, because they are doing a lawful deed.”
- one of the most revered Church Fathers of the 19th century
And there are also forced wars about which St. Philaret said: “War is a terrible thing for those who undertake it without need, without truth, with a thirst for self-interest or dominance, which has turned into a thirst for blood. They bear a heavy responsibility for the blood and disasters of their own and others. But war is a sacred matter for those who accept it out of necessity - in defense of truth, faith, and fatherland.”
The saint even pointed out the benefits of military action. In his words, “In war, some destroy the body, while others destroy the soul. The former lost less. And some have found their souls, and they are true winners. There were also those who went to war like wolves and returned like lambs. I know a lot of them. These are those who, thanks to some miraculous event, felt that the invisible Lord was walking next to them.”
The saint, criticizing the teaching about non-resistance to evil through violence, said: “In warriors and wars, God often showed a visible blessing in both the Old and New Testaments. And we have so many princes glorified by their relics, who, however, fought. In the Kiev Pechersk Lavra there are relics of warriors in the caves. They fight out of love for their own, so that they are not subjected to captivity and violence by the enemy. What did the French do in Russia? And how could you not fight with them?
Irinarch the Recluse blesses Minin and Pozharsky for the liberation of Moscow. Hood. Sapozhnikov. Beginning XIX century
In response to why Christians participate in wars, if Jesus Christ taught to love even our enemies, Equal-to-the-Apostles Cyril said: “Christ our God commanded us to pray for those who oppress us and to show favor to them; but He commanded us: Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.”(John 15:13). “Therefore, we endure the insults that you inflict on each of us separately, but in society we defend each other and lay down our lives for our brothers, so that you, taking them captive, do not take captive their souls along with their bodies, inclining the pious to your evil and ungodly deeds".
“Abominate the enemies of God, defeat the enemies of the Fatherland, love your enemies” - this is how Saint Philaret spoke briefly and convincingly about the Fatherland and about Christ’s commandment about love for enemies. Also, Saint Demetrius of Rostov, explaining the commandment of love for enemies, wrote: “Do not think, my listener, that I will repeat these words about those enemies who are at war with our Christian fatherland and are at enmity against our pious faith... Those not only cannot to love, but it is even necessary to go to war against them, laying down one’s soul for the Christian kingdom and the integrity of the Church.”
How a Christian Should Approach Military Service
“Killing in general is criminal, but killing your enemy in war is lawful and praiseworthy. Do not think that a Christian with a weapon in his hands cannot please God. With his valor he defends his homeland from barbarians and thereby protects the weak in the rear,” the saint wrote. Following this, as well as the teachings of other holy fathers, great Christian warriors appeared. Many of them became saints, such as the Monk Ilya of Muromets, the holy warrior John the Russian, the monks Oslyabya and Peresvet, the holy prince-warriors - Alexander Nevsky, Dmitry Donskoy, Admiral Ushakov, etc. “Greater love has no one than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.”- says the Gospel (John 15).
The Holy Fathers teach that even in war it is necessary to remain Christians. Show Christian nobility towards your enemies, never finish off the wounded, and spare those who ask for mercy. The choice of how to behave in war, however, as in every important act in life, remains with each individual person. And the Holy Fathers teach that the most important thing is when a person’s heart belonged to the Lord, and then, led by His love and receiving help from God, a person will find the right decision.