Boris Perchatkin: A Word on Religion and Being
So what was man created for, and what does religion have to do with it? Even a casual reading of the Bible shows that the idea of harmony lies at the foundation of human existence. Yes, that is so—but man, by his own will, chose a different path of development. He rejected God’s law, God’s design for the world and for man; he committed sin, that is, he transgressed God’s law. And having lost the memory of the past, people forgot that they are God’s creation, forgot that they need to have fellowship with God, to walk before the face of God, to delight in the harmony of being. (This is where the root of religion lies—the age-old, unconscious, subconscious longing for what has been lost, and the innate sense of guilt.) As a result, false goals and false values appeared, which people began to serve with abandon.
Having been punished for the fall, they began to earn their bread by the sweat of their brow, as the Word of God says: Gen. 3:19.
Here it is worth pausing to reflect. An inconspicuous phrase at first glance! Not a particularly theological topic! But think carefully about this definition; ponder God’s sentence!
“In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread”—that is, one of the definitions for us: to spend a certain part of our lives earning this very bread. And what happens with the bulk of the human population? Here is what happens!!! The main goal of life has become this very earning, and perhaps not only of bread—today not so much bread—but earning, acquiring, amassing. And all of man’s energy is aimed at this goal.
This astonishing human ability to turn everything around him into an idol, to invent ever new deities, to set up yet another idol—the goal of achieving comfort, wealth, fame—is followed, as many believe, by prestige, a select or not-so-select circle, one’s own circle and the outsider’s circle, envy, and once again a frenzied service to the deity named acquisition, in a senseless chase after the phantoms of well-being and prosperity.
But years go by, and the baggage, or iconostasis of idols, grows and multiplies; alongside them, our spiritual image and likeness lose their value for us. Our spiritual image becomes impoverished and utterly destitute. Yet we live, essentially and according to God’s definition, for this image and likeness. And what do we have? We lived, and satisfied what, by definition, was decreed: “For dust you are, and to dust you shall return.” So what is the result? An entire life spent chasing the phantom of the “bird of happiness”! And that is not all! The idols will certainly repay—not only in the age to come, but also in this present one. Served them well—receive illnesses, premature old age, an early death.
Why do we not live as long as the Old Testament righteous, who lived for hundreds of years? The human organism is potentially capable of such life-activity and such lifespans. You and I shorten our lives through disorderly contacts with the external world.
There is such a concept— “stress.” Stress is the organism’s reaction to an improper relationship with God, with people, with the surrounding environment. So, if stresses were removed, the human organism would be capable of functioning for a long time. Now the question: why do we do everything incorrectly? Because everything we do, everything we strive for, is a false goal and a false value. And what about human stresses? Probably 99.9% of these stresses are connected with attaining values that in God’s eyes are not values at all. We, as it were, immerse ourselves into an atmosphere of a kind of hell. When we—I am saying this first of all to myself—spend considerable time building right relationships with the surrounding world, when there are no excesses in life, when relationships are built rightly with our neighbours, without creating conflicts, divisions, without sowing hostility and ill-will around us…
I ask myself: is this image far from the image of a Christian righteous man? But in essence, it is one and the same image. Consider the saints, who often lived at the bosom of nature, frequently in solitude because of persecutions and because the society around them did not understand the meaning of their life. They abstained from excessive food and drink, never sowed hostility, conflicts, or ill-will around them.
Are they not a shining example of this very correct life? From a pragmatic point of view? The kind of life that leads a person to longevity? Moreover, many of them were remarkable writers, scholars—they lived an intensive spiritual and intellectual life; they created. Creativity never destroys; creativity creates. What destroys are passions and the gratification of passions. Those we do not understand, we persecute; what we are incapable of ourselves, we ridicule and caricature. Lacking positive merits before the Lord and before society, we compensate for this by slander and harassment of our neighbour, so that by our own cunning we might become higher, more authoritative, more popular. That is what happens when we constantly lack something, when we ourselves raise the bar of our consumption to infinity, when we strive to remake the world to suit ourselves, to have more, and more, and more. Power, power and money, fame, authority, and again money and power—and as a result, before whom? Before people just like oneself! Those who will vanish into non-existence tomorrow, those who vanish today, some much later—their priorities will change, but there is one determination for us all regarding our body: “For dust you are, and to dust you shall return.” And the spirit? The spirit shall return to God! When we stand before God and see then our authorities, what and whom we have served! We will stand in just one line—there you can no longer fool anyone with tales of what a great servant of God you were (only of whose God?) There will be no free ears left to listen. For the Supreme Authority, whom we should have served and to whom we should have devoted our life on earth—not to those who now stand with us in that same line—will determine our fate. And it will be plain to see: one line: The deceived and the deceivers.
Now let us reflect on the spiritual transfiguration of the Christian’s personality. The Lord has called us to the fullness of being, to life in harmonious relations with Him, with the surrounding world, with one another. He has determined goals and values for us.
The true aim of our Christian life, however, is the acquisition of the Holy Spirit. Acquisition is just like gaining; we all understand what it means to acquire money. All thoughts, abilities, and time are devoted to serving this idol. By the same formula, the acquisition of the Holy Spirit works. The acquisition of the Holy Spirit is also a capital, but a grace-filled and eternal one, and it is obtained by the same paths, very similar to each other. But more on that next time.
Presbyter of the USA, pastor of a church in Seattle, Boris Perchatkin
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