If a man lives in sin, away from the Church and its sacrament of confession, his soul becomes burdened with the cumulative weight of his transgressions. Simply put, he feels bad most of the time but doesn’t know why, and continually searches for worldly solutions to relieve his internal pain, guilt, and strife. He does not know—or does not want to know—that it is the soul which demands healing from prodigal and sinful living by getting right with God. Satan ensures he does everything except seek a true alleviation of that guilt through the Church and instead pushes him into various tricks and schemes that soothe the soul only for a brief moment.

The soul is facing eternal death, but the prodigal instead seeks solutions that delay physical death. The soul knows it has transgressed before God and is “bad,” but instead seeks behaviors that make it feel “good.” Healthy living and false virtue quiet the soul just long enough to continue transgressing, but offer no meaning to life or eternal salvation.

Below is a list of behaviors that city dwellers use to temporarily but uselessly relieve a burning conscience. They all fall into the categories of health or false virtue. Note that I’m not judging individuals who commit the various behaviors but the sentiment behind them, and the only reason I understand that sentiment is how regularly I used it before becoming an Orthodox Christian.

1. Buying organic food

“In spite of living far from God, to make sure I live a long and healthy life, I pay extra for organic avocados.”

The idea of organic food is sound: it’s rationally better to eat foods that have not been laced with various pesticides or genetically modified. (I have previously preached the dangers of eating seed oils which are common in the American diet). However, one must look at the intent behind eating organic foods to see if it reveals a spiritual problem. Those far from God eat organic and pay exorbitant prices at Whole Foods because they fear death and disease. They want to prolong their life and decrease the chances they will get cancer or strokes. Orthodox Christians, on the other hand, avoid goyslop and industrial food because they’re fake, unnatural, stupid, and likely demonized. I’m ready to die in whichever way the Lord wills, whenever He wills, but I hesitate to eat canola oil because I know it’s not actually food.

2. Buying ethically sourced food

“In spite of living far from God, I make sure to spend more money on foods I love to help those who live in racially and economically disadvantaged countries.”

It’s not enough for the city dweller to perceive they will live a long life from healthy foods—they also have to “feel good” about the foods they eat and how they’re incorporated into their lifestyle. There is no other better way to do this than to put the word “ethical” on a food package next to a picture of a short African, Central American, or Asian man holding a burlap sack of the product. The city dweller does not struggle against his sins, yet paying $2 extra for a bag of coffee allows them to think, “I am a good person helping those who are less fortunate.” Needless to say but sins are not remitted from purchasing ethically sustainable foods.

3. Recycling

“In spite of living far from God, I go out of my way to put plastic bottles in a special container so that I can save planet Earth.”

It’s rational to recycle and reuse materials, but the intent behind those behaviors will tell you if the person is doing it out of practicality or trying to alleviate a filthy soul. If you’re trying to save the planet, but you’re not trying to save your soul, you’re terribly deceived.

4. Exercising multiple times a week in a gym

“In spite of living far from God, I have faith that my yoga and meditation wellness routine will allow me to live a long, happy life.”

When it comes to exercise, a blameless intent is to do just enough to serve your mission before God, but you only need to step foot inside MegaCorp gym for five seconds to see that this is rarely being done. Those who spend most of their time in the cardio area fear the looming specter of death from heart disease and want to live longer. Those in the bodybuilding area want to vainly show off their physique with tight clothing and feel a false virtue for being the most attractive version of themselves. Exercise enough so that you can stand for five hours during a festal vigil. Bodybuild enough so that your legs can handle unlimited prostrations. Other reasons, however, may be a way to feed vanity or placate a soul crying out in pain.

5. Engaging in two minutes of internet hate

“In spite of living far from God, I have the discernment to state we should go nuclear against Russia because they’re baddies, and also I’m qualified to declare that the police officer who killed a black man on duty deserves the electric chair for his racism.”

City dwellers fall into judgment because judgment feels good—it’s a way to assert your superiority over others and inflame the notion of being a somebody. Even though they are facing a severe judgment that will cause weeping and gnashing of teeth, while in the body they can pretend to be righteous and on the side of good by shaking their fists on social media with the encouragement and approval of the elites.

6. Not using plastic bags or straws

“In spite of living far from God, if I see you using a plastic bag in the supermarket, I will give you a dirty look because of the harm you are causing to the environment.”

I live in a state that has passed extra laws to “protect” abortion while banning all disposable bags from supermarkets, even paper bags. So in my state you can kill a baby but you cannot obtain a disposable bag of any sort. Satan, the enemy of mankind, has somehow figured out how to make people feel virtuous for not using disposable products while simultaneously supporting the killing of human beings.

7. Practicing “safe” sex

“In spite of living far from God, I just engaged in a ‘safe’ act of mortal sin with someone who is not my wife because I covered 0.5% of my body with a piece of latex.”

The copulatory act is all-encompassing. There is no part of your body that does not interface with the other. It is known that many diseases can occur outside of the groin area, yet just because a condom was used, participants think it was “safe” and blameless. Sadly, considering that fornication is one of the gravest sins, and puts you most at risk for condemnation, it is absolutely impossible to have “safe” sex outside of marriage. And it goes without saying that masturbation is never safe.

8. Taking care of a small pet

“In spite of living far from God, I’m a good person because I take care of my little pug by dressing him up and even cooking vegan dishes for him.”

It’s hard to become a mother when you idolize your career and use apps like Tinder to meet a lot of men. Motherhood means taking on real sacrifice by putting others above yourself, but this is impossible to do when your pleasure comes first. However, the nurturing instinct in women is so strong that they seek out domestic house pets as an easy substitute. A woman can get a dog, retain her self-love, feel like a good mother, and get all the societal benefits from being a mother after sharing TikToks or Instagram Stories of her cute dog online.

9. Attending a gay pride event

“In spite of living far from God, I like to attend gay pride events to give moral support to a group that has historically been maligned, treated unfairly, and for some reason accused of spreading AIDS.”

The phenomenon of straight women going to gay pride events is very real. In fact, I believe that gay pride is a psyop primarily targeted toward straight women, to bring their lifestyles more in line with the extreme promiscuity of homosexuals while fomenting distrust against the potential source of their salvation: a good Christian man who is not gay.

10. Getting vaxxed, wearing face masks, and sanitizing hands until they’re raw

“In spite of living far from God and facing imminent spiritual death, I made sure to get the coronavirus vaccine because I don’t want others to get sick and suffer physical death.”

I’m certain the coronavirus vaccine is from Satan—it’s a perfectly demonized construction that is perhaps his best work after the theory of evolution, because it helps the city dweller think he’s escaping death while being a good person who “saves lives.” In the end, hundreds of thousands of people will die due to this demonic elixir before they can repent. Meanwhile, the vaccinated man can browbeat you while soaking in virtue and “scientific” knowledge that he is making the right choice for his health and the health of those he cares about. Talk to people who got the vaccine long enough and very soon you find that it’s not just a vaccine to them but an ideology that makes them feel good about who they are.

Conclusion

All these tricks to alleviate secular guilt are done in vain. Their effects are so fleeting that the person has to essentially create a lifestyle of guilt alleviation that will perfectly coincide with what the world—and the dark prince of this world—wants them to do. The reason why those in the city are so quick to latch on to the latest cause (even if it happens to be a massive war that could potentially kill millions of people) is that it contains an implicit promise to soothe their conscience. “If you believe in this thing, you will feel good for a moment.” Or it will be a new health fad that has the implicit promise to live a day longer, postponing a divine judgment that cannot be avoided.

Because a person cannot stand feelings of guilt in their conscious, they repress them into the subconscious and unconscious where, as psychology says, they acquire an independence and from then on cause continuous torment. Though the person throws these guilty feelings there, the feelings do not want to stay there, they want to escape. They also deserve to be exposed. They continuously prod and poke, until one day they erupt in some way and the seriousness of the sickness is exposed. That is, others can see that this person is sick. It is not that before this the person was well, but simply that there was a basement where all of these things were hidden. —Archimandrite Symeon Kragiopoulos in Anxiety

For those who participate in these behaviors, their sins grow deeper and their soul becomes more malformed. There’s only one way to alleviate the guilt of a sinful life and that’s through participation in the sacraments that our Lord Jesus Christ has given us through His Church, the Orthodox Church. Outside of the Church, there is absolutely no way to remove your guilt, even if you do everything on the above list and please the head of the Anti-Defamation League with your displays of online virtue. The path that our Lord has laid out is clear: if you have fallen, you must repent, be received into the Church, and confess your sins. Only then will the guilt fade, and only then can your soul be saved.

Read Next: Do You Love Your Stomach?

Saint John of Kronstadt was a parish priest who was intensely familiar with interpersonal problems between relatives, neighbors, and friends. In the following passages from My Life In Christ, he describes the Christian way of responding to those who hurt us. Hopefully you are not surprised that he does not advise you to get revenge or hurt your enemies. A key marker of Christian advancement is loving your enemies, which very few (myself included) are capable of doing. Maybe his words will convict you as they did me.

Do not be confused and angry when anybody lies to your face, or expresses any unjust grievances, or speaks offensively, or boldly detects any of your weakness or passions, the wrongfulness of which, through your self-love, you did not suspect. Always first calmly reflect over your opponent’s words, as well as your own words and conduct, and if, after an entirely impartial consideration of your own words and actions, you find them just, then let your conscience be at rest and do not heed the words of your accuser, either remaining silent before him, or indicating his error quietly, gently, in all kindness of heart. However, should you find yourself guilty of that which your adversary indicated in you, then, putting aside self-love and pride, ask pardon for your fault and endeavor to correct yourself in future. We are often angry with straightforward, frank people for openly disclosing our iniquities. Instead, we should value such people and forgive them, if by their bold speaking they offend our self-love. They are, in a moral sense, the surgeons who cut off the gangrene of the heart with a sharp word, and by arousing our self-love, they awaken a consciousness of sin and a vital response in the soul deadened by sin.

[…]

Brother, do you feel deadly anger in your heart against your neighbor, are you tormented by evil thoughts from the offenses he causes you? Here is a way to save yourself from this inner torment. Call to mind the countless multitude of your own sins, and vividly imagine how the Master of your life bears with you, how He daily, endlessly forgives you your sins if you pray to Him sincerely. And you do not wish to forgive your neighbor a few fits of passion excited in him by the devil! Sigh, weep if you can at your own foolishness, condemn yourself only, not your neighbor in any way, and the Lord will forgive you. Your inner constraint will vanish like smoke your thoughts will become clear, your heart will become calm, and you will again walk in freedom of heart. Train yourself to be so meek that you simply do not hear, reproaches, calumny, affronts, as if they were heard by somebody quite different, or by your shadow.

[…]

What a beautiful, peaceful, safe thing it is for us to forgive the sins of those who sin against us or offend us! As soon as we forgive, we feel at peace. You were offended? What of it? It is good to insult your old, carnal man, who is self-loving, proud, irritable, envious, lazy, avaricious, who greatly offends God.

[…]

Do not be irritated with him who holds grudges against you and repeatedly wounds you by finding fault with you, but be compassionate to him and love him, saying: It is not he or she that is so full of malice against me, but it is the devil who rages against me through them, and they themselves, poor creatures, are only tempted by him. As soon as this temptation ceases, they will be kind again.

[…]

We must love our neighbor even more when he sins against God or against ourselves, because then he is sick, because then he is in spiritual misfortune and danger, then, especially, we must have compassion upon him, pray for him, and apply to his heart a protective bandage—a word of kindness, instruction, reproval, consolation, forgiveness, love. “Forgiving one another, just as God in Christ forgave you” (Eph 4:32). All sins and passions, quarrels and disputes, are truly spiritual diseases—that is how we must look upon them. All passions are a fire of the soul, a great, raging internal fire, a fire coming from the abyss of hell. It must be extinguished by the water of love, which is strong enough to extinguish every diabolical flame of malice and other passions.

You’re no better than your enemy, who was made in the image of God

You say that your friend has sins and great defects? So do you. You say that you do not love him because of such and such sins and defects. Then you should stop loving yourself as well, because you have the same sins and defects as he has… you must be compassionate with Christian love in every possible way to the faults of your neighbor, you must cure him of his wickedness, his spiritual infirmity (for every coldness, every passion is an infirmity) with love, kindness, meekness, humility, as you yourself would wish to receive from others when you suffer from a similar infirmity. For who is not subject to infirmity?

[…]

When I look at the faces of others, I see my own face, for we are all one, created by God from one single man, from the same blood, and we are all made in the image of God. Therefore, we must look at all purely, without suspicion or hatred, with no anger or cunning or avarice, but with pure, godly love.

You are disfigured and impure

Pay no attention to the physical beauty of your face, but instead look attentively with your inner vision at the face of your soul. Is it disfigured by the passions? If it is, destroy this disfigurement through prayer and tearful repentance. Pay no attention to beautiful clothes. They are corruption! Instead, consider the incorruptible raiment of your soul, in what state it is. Is it hideous and impure, owing to frequent transgressions, both secret and evident? If so, strive to clothe your soul in the imperishable beautify of meekness, humility, chastity, purity, mercy, and righteousness.

Stop judging your brother

You become angry with your neighbor, your brother, and you say, “He is such a miser, malicious, proud,” or he has done this and that, and so on. What is that to you? He sins against God, not against you. God is his Judge, not you. He shall have to answer for himself before God, not to you. Know yourself, how sinful you are, what a beam you have in your own eye! Know how difficult it is for you to master your own sins, how afflicted you are by them, how they have ensnared you, how you wish for condescension from others toward your own infirmities.

People can feel it when you hate them

Our inward disposition, even when unexpressed by outward signs, strongly affects the inward disposition of others. This happens all the time, but not everyone notices it. Let us suppose that I am angry, or that I have unkind thoughts about someone; he feels it, and unwittingly begins to have unkind thoughts about me. There is a certain communication between our souls, separate from our physical senses.

Struggle against your irritation and anger

Anger or any other passion that takes root in the heart has a tendency, according to the inexorable law of evil, to discharge itself visibly. This is why it is usually said of an angry or irritated person that he has “taken it out” on someone. This is the problem with evil—it does not remain in the heart, but forces its way out. From this, it should be already obvious that the lord of evil is very powerful and has a wide domain over which he reigns.

[…]

…how many of us become irritated and lose our tempers when we are deprived, not of our last coin, but only of some small part of our property, nowhere near to total deprivation! How much agitation, anger, malice, bitter reproaches, complaints, sometimes even curses! Righteous God! Can this dross we call money, or this food and drink, produce such storms in our Christians souls, in us who know the words of our sweetest Saviour?

[…]

Anger is the devil. The instant you begin to feel angry with your neighbor, the devil is already in you, penetrating you like a needle, and striving to become a mountain inside you, so quickly does he spread, and so heavy is he! Therefore, love God and your neighbor constantly. Do not admit enmity into your heart, even for a single moment, considering it demonic delusion.

Never think of yourself as a good person

When the foolish thought of counting up any of your good works enters into your head, immediately correct your fault and rather count up your sins, your continual and innumerable offenses against the All-merciful and Righteous Master, and you will find that their number is as great as the number of grains of sand in the sea, while your virtues in comparison with them are as nothing.

If the above words from My Life In Christ came from a monk, some Christians would howl: “We can’t all be monks! Our Gospel is different!” But when it comes to loving our enemies, they would be incorrect, because nothing that Saint John taught is impossible for those living in the world with children, full-time jobs, and wireless internet. It’s a sign of our weakness that we are quick to dispel with edifying though difficult advice because we want to continue loving ourselves and our modern pleasures, but there is only one Gospel that we must all follow. While monks can adhere to it more intensely than those living in the world, Saint John was a married parish priest who lived in the city. What is my excuse for retaining my anger and self-love instead of doing what he prescribes?

Don’t Miss: What Is Spiritual Warfare?

Saint John Of Kronstadt is a highly esteemed Russian saint and miracle worker who died in the early 20th century. He was a chosen vessel that healed scores of people while foretelling the intense tribulation of the Russian Revolution. His spiritual diary, My Life In Christ, is among the top three Orthodox books I’ve read. Every page is full of dense spiritual wisdom that beautifully harmonizes with what the Orthodox Church teaches. This is the first of four articles highlighting the best of Saint John’s lessons, starting with a description of spiritual warfare and why it’s so important to engage as a soldier of Christ.

Those who are trying to lead a spiritual life have to wage a most subtle and difficult warfare in their thoughts every moment of their life. This is spiritual warfare. They must be entirely awake, every moment, ready to notice every evil thought entering their souls from the evil one and to repel them. Such people must have hearts always burning with faith, humility, and love; otherwise, the cunning devil will quickly invade them, leading to lessening of faith or complete loss of faith. Then every possible evil will inhabit their hearts, evil that will not easily wash away even with tears. Do not, therefore, allow your heart to become cold, especially during prayer, and avoid stony insensibility in every way possible.

[…]

…the devil and his evil spirits, as simple beings—though far from perfect in their simplicity, and very limited—act on the soul quickly, instantaneously, as suddenly as lightning or thought. A momentary feeling of attachment to earthly things, or a momentary inclination of the heart to sin, a momentary doubt in the truth, and Satan penetrates into the heart, producing in a moment a violent passion in it. Afterward, according to the measure of our sympathy with the passion, he takes possession of us and drags us where he pleases as his prisoners, bound hand and foot. If we resist him, he strives to foil our efforts to strive for heartfelt faith and pious thoughts and feelings by darkening our mind and heart. In order to vanquish and drive him from your heart, you must produce perfect faith in the Lord Jesus Christ in your heart and remember that the enemy is active within you, that your thoughts or the inclinations of your heart and will are sinful, ungodly.

[…]

[The devil] destroys us using our own mind, which should lead us to the eternal, living God! With our own ladles he draws for us the deadly water of worldly, vain wisdom, and gives us and other men to drink of it, instead of the living water of the Word of God! And we drink and drink, never suspecting that is it the water of death.

[…]

You can see that [Satan] is in you, but often you cannot rid yourself of him, because he usually takes care to close all the exits from your heart through unbelief, hard-heartedness, and other passions of his inspiration. “Your labor is in vain, fallen angel, I am the servant of my Lord Jesus Christ. You, who exalt yourself in your arrogance, lower yourself by thus violently struggling with me, weak as I am.” Speak thus inwardly to the evil spirit, who lies like a heavy load on your heart and compels you to all kinds of evil. These words are like fiery whips to the proud spirit, and he, shamed by your firmness and spiritual wisdom, will flee from you.

[…]

However slothful and weak your flesh may be, however inclined to sleep you may be, conquer yourself. Do not spare yourself for God’s sake; renounce yourself; let your gift to God be perfect. Give God your heart.

Why is it so hard to engage in spiritual life?

Many people find it pleasing to go to the theater, but find it oppressive and dull to go to church. Why? Because in the theater everything is well suited to please the sensual man, and when we are there, we do not provoke the devil, but please him; while he, in turn, allows us our pleasure and does not bother us. Make merry, my friends, he thinks, laugh, only do not remember God. On the other hand, in the church everything is intended to arouse faith, the fear of God, pious feelings, the sense of our sinfulness and corruption. Therefore, the devil sows doubt, weariness, despondency, evil, impure, and blasphemous thoughts in our heart, so that the man is not content with himself and cannot stand for even an hour, and he gets away as quickly as possible. The theater and the church are polar opposites. The first is the temple of the world, the second the temple of God; the former is the temple of the devil, the latter the temple of the Lord.

[…]

Those who have not found Christ live in this life without heartfelt faith; they think and care more about worldly things—how to enjoy themselves, how to eat and drink pleasurably, how to dress exquisitely, how to satisfy their carnal desires, how to kill time, because they do not know what to do with it, even though time seeks them and, not finding them, quickly flies away before their eyes. Day after day speeds ahead, night after night, month after month, year after year, until finally, the last terrible hour strikes, and they hear a voice, “Stop, the course is finished; your time has been lost; your sins and iniquities have preceded you; they will fall upon you with all their power, and will crush you with their weight eternally.”

You must force yourself

People say that if you feel no inclination to pray, it is better not to pray, but this is the cunning of a carnal mind-set. If you only pray when you feel the inclination, you will completely cease praying—this is what the flesh desires. “The kingdom of heaven suffers violence” (Matt 11:12). You will not be able to work out your salvation without forcing yourself to be virtuous.

Do not pity your body

Never pity yourself in anything. Instead, crucify yourself and your old man, who hides chiefly in the flesh, and you will strike at the root of all your passions. Bear patiently all that is unpleasant to your flesh. Do not spare your flesh, antagonize it, and you will become a true follower of Christ.

Secular people are in the firm clutches of the devil

To fight, for the love of God, against our own flesh and the devil, that crafty, mighty, and evil enemy—not for a few hours, day, or months, but for many years, sometimes sixty or seventy—is not this worthy of crowns? And what, in comparison with these ascetics, are people living in the world, falling so often into sin even without begin assaulted, and defeated by their own flesh without even being attacked? What in comparison to these ascetics are worldly people, living according to their own will, in luxury, in pleasures of every kind, gorgeously appareled in soft raiment (Luke 7:25), given over to pride, ambition, envy, hatred, avarice, irritability, wrath, revenge, amusement, fornication, drunkenness—all possible vices, although not all in the same person? They are caught alive, without any resistance, in the power of the devil, and therefore he does not attack them, but leaves them long entangled in his nets, in the calm and self-forgetfulness that precede death.

Most Christians today, even many in the Orthodox Church, seem to accept the belief that their flesh must be coddled. I’m sometimes confused when I see a great difference between what the Saints of the Church taught versus what is accepted today. The typical argument I hear is that us moderners are “weak” and shouldn’t have to exert ourselves too strenuously, but to that I respond: how will we ever get strong if we don’t do things that require strength? If you want big muscles, you have to lift heavy weights, or else you will always be weak, so maybe it’s worth adding a little more weight to the bar with your spiritual father as a “spotter.”

To reach the ideal that Saint John teaches in My Life In Christ, we must push ourselves harder, because if his life is any indication, spiritual warfare should not be easy. If you’re satisfied with the bare minimum then Saint John’s teachings will not be for you, but if you’re ready to push yourself, allow him to lead the way.

Learn More: My Life In Christ on Amazon

There is no greater validation to our ego than for someone to copy our ideas or behaviors. If a man wants to get drunk at a party, he will aggressively convince others to get drunk as well so that his drunkenness is validated and his conscience silenced (i.e., “Since everyone else is doing it, my drinking can’t be that bad”). Ironically, the people who are living the most sordid lives are most forceful in persuading others to do the same, because without social conformity, the truth of their sinful behavior would be too painful to bear, but it’s this persuasion that, like crabs in a bucket, drag others down into the abyss. I was reminded of this recently when trying to get rid of an ant infestation.

My mother notified me that she had ants around her kitchen window. They didn’t seem to be doing any harm, and I wanted to let them be, but she insisted that they must be eliminated for her well-being. I bought an ant trap, placed it where the ants congregated, and waited. It didn’t take long for the first ant to come feed on the poison. Through his pheromonal faculty, he informed other ants of the “free food” and his brethren also came to feed. A grand feast ensued. Many ants took home “to-go” containers of poison to ensure that the entire hive was eliminated within only a couple of days, much to my mother’s joy.

Secular people who live in sin, and who require constant social validation to soothe their conscience, behave like the doomed ants. They feast on sex, drugs, entertainment, travel, pop music, and other worldly behaviors, and then try to convince others with a loud voice to do the same to feel assured that their lifestyle is “normal” or “correct.” They think, “How can it be wrong if all my friends are doing it?” I have done this to an untold number of men when I idolized fornication, telling them that those who didn’t enslave themselves to the flesh were “losers,” but it’s to one man I professed game advice that causes me grief to this day.

I knew this young man personally, and he was a virgin who didn’t want to be a virgin anymore. Because in my blindness I thought virginity was a cursed state instead of the angelic blessedness that it really is, I was methodical in giving him demonic advice on how to lose his virginity with a female acquaintance. My words worked, and not only did he lose his virginity, but the woman he slept with lost her virginity, too. I served as an intermediary of Satan to help them begin a fall into hell. If you want to be nice, you can argue that it “would have happened anyway,” but it’s quite possible that it would not, so I beat my chest knowing that I poisoned the young man and woman by acting as a guru in iniquity. Several years have since passed, and as of this writing, neither of them has turned to Lord Jesus Christ.

“Then He said to the disciples, ‘It is impossible that no offenses should come, but woe to him through whom they do come! It would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck, and he were thrown into the sea, than that he should offend one of these little ones.'” —Luke 17:1-2

It’s easier to give advice as a false guru than as an Orthodox Christian. In the former, you simply want others to do what you already decided to do—to get drunk at the party, obsess about your body muscularity, or meet loose women from internet apps, and if they show hesitation, you insult, mock, and shame them until they make your sin their own. As an Orthodox Christian, however, you come to an understanding of your blindness, and simply don’t know what God has in store for others and how He is arranging the course of their life. If you speak from your fallen mind and give advice that conflicts with God’s will, you can damage their soul and set them back months, years, or even eternity.

Unless someone’s situation is painfully obvious, such as they are not in the Lord’s Church or are engaging in heavy sins, I will not tell the person what to do, and instead pray that God enlightens them. Since I am not purified, there is poison still within me, and it’s far easier to share that poison to feel a temporary sense of relief or pride than to keep it contained within a soul that I thoroughly damaged through the improper use of my free will. Even for the matters that I feel certain about, like not eating seed oils, is my advice actually helping or merely making people unnecessarily neurotic and earthly?

“A truly humble person never behaves like a teacher; he will listen, and, whenever his opinion is requested, he responds humbly. In other words, he replies like a student. He who believes that he is capable of correcting others is filled with egotism.” —Saint Paisios of Mount Athos

A sign you are beginning to love God and your neighbor is this: you don’t proudly display your sins, passions, and worldly attachments in the hope that others copy you. Instead of feeling validated when a friend takes your recommendation to watch a Hollywood movie, listen to your favorite rap album, use a popular social media site, or go to the hip new bar that opened in town, you instead wonder if you hurt your friend with something that will compete with their love for God. It is better to shut your mouth when you feel the urge to preach your love for one of Satan’s toys, for something worldly that does not implicitly or explicitly lead others on a path of self-denial and love of Lord Jesus Christ within His Church, the Orthodox Church, the safe deposit of truth.

Please don’t ask me for advice. I cannot help you, because I can hardly help myself. I don’t know what is best for you. Examine all my words—including the ones in this article—with a microscope to ensure that it doesn’t conflict with what the Orthodox Church and its saints teach. I don’t know how you can find a spouse, I don’t know where you should live, and I don’t know how you should prepare for the tribulations to come. If I say a word on these issues, I’m speaking through a damaged soul, a bullhorn that emits distorted sound, and will impart to you—consciously or not—bits of poison that I have ingested in my shameful years as a man who coveted the flesh. Instead, seek first the Kingdom of Heaven through the Church, ask guidance from the Orthodox priests and elders who are trained to help you and have the special grace of tonsure or ordination, and stay away from the worldly gurus who are all too eager to give advice that, at best, leads to missteps that cost you valuable time, but which at worst will lead you to an eternity of lament.

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In the 19th-century book A Hero Of Our Time, Russian author Mikhail Lermontov describes the life of a selfish, nihilistic Casanova who can’t seem to satisfy his itch for adventure and women. The protagonist lived not like a child of God but a beast, and allowed his fallen human nature to hurt others for fun and games. This book is the diary of every modern man who aims to live his life according to his passions, and sadly I recognized a lot of the behaviors and sentiments in my own past.

The world can never satisfy your boredom

As a young man, as soon as I got my freedom I threw myself wildly into all the pleasures that money can buy, and soon got tired of them, needless to say. Then I went in for society high-life and before long I was tired of that too. I fell in love with women of fashion and was loved in return. But their love merely stirred my imagination and vanity, my heart remained empty. I took to reading and study, but grew tired of that too. I saw I had no need of learning to win fame of happiness, for the happiest people are the ignoramuses, and fame is a matter of luck and you only need to be smart to get it. I got bored after that.

[…]

If you like, I’m still in love with her. I’m grateful to her for a few moments of relative bliss. I’d give my life for her. But she bores me. I don’t know whether I’m a fool or a scoundrel, but one thing I am sure of is that I’m just as much to be pitied as she is, perhaps even more. My soul’s been corrupted by society. My imagination knows no peace, my heart no satisfaction. I’m never satisfied. I grow used to sorrow as easily as I do to pleasure, and my life gets emptier every day. The only thing left for me is to travel. As soon as I can I’ll leave. Not for Europe, though, not on your life. I’ll go to America, Arabia, India. With luck I’ll die somewhere on the way. At least I can be sure that with storms and bad roads to help this final solace will last me a while.

Seducing a woman through suffering

I met her in Chelakhov’s shop yesterday. She was haggling over the price of a Persian rug and pleading with mama not to begrudge her it, as it would look so nice in her study. I offered forty roubles more and bought it from under her nose. I was rewarded with a superb look of fury. Near dinner time I had my horse walked specially past her windows with the rug draped over him. Werner was visiting them at the time and told me that the effect of this scene was most dramatic.

[…]

‘Tell me, does it amuse you very much to torture me? I ought to hate you. Ever since I’ve known you, you’ve brought me nothing but suffering…’

Her voice trembled, she leaned towards me and lowered her head upon my breast. Perhaps that’s why you loved me, I thought. Moments of happiness one forgets, but sorrow never.

Women who don’t serve the good fall in love with evil men

I really can’t think why she is so fond of me, especially since she’s the only woman who’s ever properly understood me and all my petty weaknesses and unhealthy passions. Can evil be so attractive?

[…]

I remember one woman who loved me simply because I was in love with someone else. There’s nothing more paradoxical than the female mind, and you can never convince a woman of anything—you have to arrange matters so that they convince themselves. The chain of reasoning they employ to overcome their own prejudices is extremely original, and if you want to master their dialectic you have to turn all the textbook rules of logic upside-down. For example, a normal approach would be: ‘This man loves me, but I’m married, so I mustn’t love him’. But a woman’s approach would be: ‘I mustn’t love him, because I’m married, but he loves me, so…’I have to use dots here, for now the voice of reason is silent, and it’s mainly the tongue, eyes and heart (if there is one) which do all the talking.

The narcissistic man runs away from commitment

However much I loved a woman, the first hint that she expected me to marry her would banish my love for good. My heart would turn to stone, its warmth gone for ever. I’ll make any sacrifice except this one. I’ll hazard my life, even my honour, twenty times, but I will not sell my freedom.

Why do I value it so much? What use is it to me? What am I preparing myself for? What do I expect from the future? Absolutely nothing.

I have this innate fear, this uncanny premonition. After all, some people are unaccountably afraid of spiders, cockroaches and mice.

The inner hell of a godless existence

I’ve been going over my past, and I can’t help wondering why I’ve lived, for what purpose I was born. There must have been some purpose, I must have had some high object in life, for I feel unbounded strength within me. But I never discovered it and was carried away by the allurements of empty, unrewarding passions. I was tempered in their flames and came out cold and hard as steel, but I’d lost for ever the fire of noble endeavor, that finest flower of life. How many times since then have I been the axe in the hands of fate? Like an engine of execution, I’ve descended on the heads of the condemned, often without malice, but always without pity. My love has brought no one happiness, for I’ve never sacrificed a thing for those I’ve loved. I’ve loved for myself, for my own pleasure, I’ve only tried to satisfy a strange inner need. I’ve fed on their feelings, love, joys and sufferings, and always wanted more. I’m like a starving man who falls asleep exhausted and sees rich food and sparking wines before him. He rapturously falls on these phantom gifts of the imagination and feels better, but the moment he wakes up his dream disappear and he’s left more hungry and desperate than before.

And perhaps tomorrow I’ll die, and then there’ll be no one who could ever really understand me. Some will think me worse, others better than in fact I am. Some will say I was a good fellow, others that I was a swine. Neither will be right. So why bother to live? One just goes on living out of curiosity, waiting for something new. It’s absurd and annoying.

I’m afraid to ask if A Hero Of Our Time is autobiographical because Mikhail Lermontov was known to be a passionate man who caused scandal during his sprees. One time, he went too far needling a man who challenged him to a duel. He was shot in the heart at age 26. May we learn how not to live from his engaging novel.

Learn More: A Hero Of Our Time on Amazon

Compared to maintaining an Orthodox relationship (i.e. courtship or marriage), secular relationships are easy. They’re so easy that even I was able to maintain many for varying lengths of time even though I was a narcissistic wretch with not a drop of love in my soul. As long as you are able to pursue various amusements and sins while in a relationship, it’s not hard to have one that is “successful” by worldly standards, but the truth is those relationships are spiritually dead and will not lead to salvation. Here are three reasons why secular relationships are relatively simple for modern couples…

They can pass the time and grow old with endless amusements and Jewish media programming

Think of a secular couple you know and imagine what they do in their spare time. Do they pray together? Do they go to church services regularly? Do they go on pilgrimages to monasteries instead of the beach? The whole point of a secular relationship is that of comfort and pleasure. Outside of the bedroom, that means endless travel, concerts, movies, and good eating. Couples must always go on trips, catch up on the latest Jewish cinema offerings or internet programming, and they must eat and eat and get fatter and fatter. This is the template that almost all couples participate in, because if they didn’t, their supposed love would be revealed as a shrewd business transaction, of using each other to escape boredom, loneliness, or decreased social status, of desiring merely a sexual roommate to help forget that they were created in the image of God.

Look at what a secular couple does in their spare time, the utterly meaningless amusements they subject themselves to in the name of being “in a relationship,” and quickly you realize that a hermitic life with God where you are tempted by loneliness is much preferable, because the former has a foot in darkness while the latter a foot in paradise. It seems to be that the entire point of a secular relationship, from the standpoint of Satan, is to keep two individuals in a state of somatic indifference until he asserts rights over their souls upon death.

“There is no happiness anywhere except in Christ. So-called ‘happiness’ outside of Christ is incorrectly called happiness, since it is obtained with reprehensible means and since it ends quickly and leads man to the eternal unhappiness.” —Elder Ephraim in Counsels of the Holy Mountain

They occupy the flesh with unlawful sex alongside varying degrees of cheating and infidelity

Sex outside of a marriage is a sin, and yet this is the main way that secular couples initiate and maintain their fleshly bond. If they couldn’t have sex with each other up to marriage, pleasing each other in the flesh, usually under the influence of alcohol, would they stay together? What percentage of secular couples would even have become a couple if they couldn’t have sex with one another? Five percent, maybe, though probably less. I can’t speak for women, but I have known many men who only stayed in a relationship with a woman because of the fornication, and had not a concern for her soul, and used her as a ride in the amusement park until the line for another ride cleared. Remove sex from the equation and you’ll quickly see how much a couple “loves” each other.

Also consider that the Orthodox Church forbids oral and anal sex, for this is a gross violation of the natural law. Heterosexuals adopt the sinful behavior of homosexuals when they participate in these acts, for the mouth is meant to receive the Body and Blood of Christ, and the rear end is to eject foul waste.

Besides the sex act, secular couples engage in “pre-cheating”—inappropriate flirting and communication with the opposite sex, especially through the smartphone. I’m afraid that it has become normalized in a woman’s mind to be in a relationship with a man while simultaneously chatting with numerous other men who obviously want to sleep with her. There is also outright cheating, where someone has a main boyfriend or girlfriend but fornicates on the side to maximize their bodily pleasure. Secular people say they are “in a relationship,” but with how many people, exactly?

“The fornicator is not unclean on account of the intercourse, but on account of the manner of it, because it injures the woman, and they injure one another, making the woman common, and subverting the laws of nature. For she ought to be the wife of one man… Here then is injustice, and therefore the act is wicked.” —Saint John Chrysostom

They avoid most demonic attacks because Satan already has a grip on their souls

If you begin to pursue truths of the physical world, the demons may attack you. If you begin to pursue the truth of Lord Jesus Christ, the demons will definitely attack you. And if you begin to pursue the Church that Lord Jesus Christ created when He was God-Man, the Orthodox Church, you will be attacked to the maximum up to your breaking point that only God knows. Demons don’t need to wage spiritual warfare against secular couples because, as the quote “don’t interfere with your enemy when he’s making a mistake” goes, these couples already voluntarily commit the type of sins that will condemn them. Why would the demons interfere unless their moral faculty is ignited upon having children or being struck by the grace of repentance? Most of the problems they experience are not demonic interventions but simply a consequence of their carnal sins.

Orthodox couples, on the other hand, are attacked so strongly by the demons, as I’ve observed through my parish acquaintances, that I doubt I could maintain such a relationship. The reason is that, within an Orthodox family home, there are many souls on their way to Paradise. It would make sense for the demons to devote more resources to their destruction than, say, a single Orthodox man, and certainly much more than a secular couple who prefer to spend their Sunday mornings in bed after a night of lawlessness.

I can testify that it is not pleasant when waves of demonic attacks come, for the demons are crafty and find ways into your soul that are impossible to defend against with your own measly strength, but a sign that I’m on the path of salvation is that I’m actually being attacked, so how many more blessings will Orthodox couples receive if they maintain their faith and make it through the gauntlet? If you don’t perceive the spiritual in your life, then I’d wager you’re at great risk to weep and gnash your teeth on the Day of Judgment, and this can certainly be said of secular couples who look at each other for a means to their earthly salvation instead of Lord Jesus Christ, who must be put first in their relationship.

“For if someone, heeding the call of God, has taken on the beginning of a new life through God’s grace, providing for his own part all diligence (II Peter 1:5), then he must not expect to rest on his laurels, but rather to struggle. He has left the world, and for this the world will begin to press him. He was saved from the power of the devil and the devil will chase after him and set snares before him, to throw him off the path of good and drag him back this domain. He has denied himself and denied selfishness, along with a whole horde of passions. But this sin which lives in us will not suddenly relinquish its free and self-pleasing existence, and every minute it will attempt, under various pretexts, to establish once more the same routine of life that so richly filled and fed it earlier.” —Saint Theophan the Recluse in Thoughts for Each Day of the Year

Conclusion

If you remove the ability for secular couples to travel, receive attention from orbiting admirers, participate in unlawful sex, consume entertainment (including pornography), and eat without restraint, I posit that they would not be in a relationship, revealing the phony character of their supposed bond. In fact, secular couplings are “easy mode” when it comes to relationships, but it’s far worse than that: they’re in hell mode, because unless the nature of their relationship changes to serve Christ instead of their need for distraction and fleshly desires, they will not have a good defense before our Lord on the Day of Judgment.

Read Next: Seduction Is Narcissism

That’s one of the arguments given by revered Orthodox priest Father Josiah Trenham in his book Rock and Sand, which gives a history of Christendom through an Orthodox lens, focusing primarily on the Protestant Reformation and the “fruits” of their dizzying array of denominations. He points out that Catholics are looking more and more like the Protestants, especially after Vatican II.

Catholic-Protestant relations have morphed yet again since Vatican II (1962-1965) when the Catholic Church refashioned its ecclesiology to find a place for Protestantism, and adopted, at least in practice, many things that the Protestants of the 16th century were calling for. Today, especially in the West, the divide between Catholicism and Protestantism is thinner than ever, the traditional Tridentine Mass is virtually non-existent, and the Catholic services have been radically Protestantized, degraded, and denuded of their traditional liturgical, aesthetic, and linguistic grandeur. Centuries of traditional Gregorian chant and ecclesiastical architecture have often given way to banjos and guitars and architectural monstrosities, all of which bear witness to a radical break from tradition. The teaching on penance, so emphasized at the Council of Trent, has vanished together with long confessional lines and numerous priests. Now, in the local Catholic diocese here in the Inland Empire (Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario, CA), there are 5000 parishioners for every priest, and so few Catholics confessing their sins and living a normal sacramental life that there is often but one published confessional hour per week. Monasteries have closed throughout the West, and there has been a reduction in the number of Roman Catholic monks, nuns, and members of religious orders in our land by some 95%. Parochial schools which were education some 6 million children before Vatican II are now educating about 25% that number.

[…]

In many ways both Roman Catholicism and Protestantism are close to each other than either is to Holy Orthodox. They often give diametrically opposite answers, but they are asking the same questions. Orthodox Christianity maintains the patristic mind, and asks different questions.

Would the original Protestant reformers even accept modern Protestantism?

Would modern Protestants even recognize Luther as one of their number? Would Luther be comfortable in the Lutheran Church of the 21st century? I think the answer to both questions is no.

Luther taught the importance of making the sign of the Cross. He advocated for a yearly auricular confession in the Church sanctuary. He employed written prayers and a structured liturgy. He believed in and taught the perpetual virginity of the Most Holy Virgin Mary, the Theotokos. He completed rejected the idea of an invisible church as it is so commonly embraced by Protestants today. He considered those who reject the miraculous nature of baptism and the real presence of Christ in the eucharist to be utter fanatics. He had no tolerance for Anabaptism, and castigated those who refused to baptize infants. He argued strongly against the so-called “Constantinopolitan fall” of the church. He had no affinity for Jews, and rejected any reading of scripture that suggested that a return of Jewish people to the Holy Land was prophesied. He was deeply convinced of martyrdom as a mark of the church, and disavowed Christian triumphalism. Luther himself wished sincerely to be a martyr. He severely criticized the Protestant iconoclasts who broke up holy images, and defended Christian art as “sermons for the eyes.”

[…]

[Megachurch pastors] became fundamentally Bible-teachers detached from any essential interaction with their flocks. They have built mega-churches around their charisma, and multiplied their pastoral ministries on the business franchise model. They have connected intimately to the penchant of modern suburbanites for fast-food religion—quick, casual, often anonymous, unfettered by traditional customs, personal obligations of sacred community, denominational associations, and often even parish membership.

What exactly is an evangelical?

There is no evangelical consensus of what it means to be an evangelical, nor is there any official or authoritative definition of the word “evangelical.” Evangelicals come from all the branches of traditional Protestantism, and from many traditions that have only the faintest association with traditional Protestantism. The evangelical movement has grown out of Protestant soil, and was fashioned out of the great American revivals of the 18th and 19th centuries. As such, the movement is defined more by a form of spiritual experience than by a confessional commitment or a sacramental participation.

[…]

…the majority of evangelicals today have found the historical Protestant denominational structures wanting, and, in a vain effort, have sought to identify themselves as post-denominational. These “non-denominational” congregations, or independent “fellowships” as they are often called, are, in fact, the very worst form of denominationalism itself, being in essence denominations of one congregation. It is precisely these non-denominational evangelicals who are most active in missionary labors today. Many of these missionary labors are directed explicitly at traditionally Orthodox lands, and these evangelicals are zealously committed to “saving the Orthodox.”

[…]

In the area of dogma, evangelicals radically reject traditional Christian reliance on the modest of Holy Tradition including patristic teachings, canon law, the lives of the saints, liturgics, iconography and the sacred arts, and the Creed in order to adhere exclusively to the authority of Scripture. In the area of spiritual life, evangelicals radically reject traditional Christian emphasis on the holy mysteries, ascetical practices, and liturgical centricity in order to embrace and reproduce an individualistic and revivalist understanding of conversion (the “born-again” experience) detached with a Gnostic zeal from any sacrament. (Gnostic forms of religion have as one of their primary characteristics a disdain for the spiritual potentiality of physical things. Gnosticism is expressed in many forms of Evangelical Christianity by the latter’s rejection of the normative bestowal of grace through sacraments.)

[…]

Evangelicalism is a populist religion, and as such, being disconnected from tradition, casts itself in whatever forms are acceptable to the populace. To justify the cult of novelty as it is expressed in evangelical worship, many evangelicals simply believe that God has given no clear direction about worship form to His people and thus has left them free to innovate.

From the beginning, Protestants disagreed with each other

Incredibly, the Reformers, following the principles of sola scriptura, could not come to an agreement about the significance of the most important sacrament in the Christian faith and the traditional center of divine worship. This irreconcilable theological difference on the very nature of the Eucharist, a subject the Reformers themselves considered of utmost importance, would be the very headwaters of a river of Protestant disagreement and theological disunity that would only morph into a dizzying number of Protestant denominations and conflicting confessions of faith right up until the present day.

Protestants have distorted the Bible to suit their beliefs

[William] Tyndale used his [Bible] translation to further Protestant ideas, and upset the Catholic establishment in England by translating the Greek word presbyter as “elder” rather than “priest” or “presbyter”, and the word ecclesia as “congregation” or “community” rather than “church.” By Tyndale’s crafty translation, the New Testament existed for the first time in Church history without the words “church” or “priest.”

What is the true faith?

St. Raphael of Brooklyn: “The Holy Orthodox Church has never perceptibly changed from Apostolic times, and, therefore, no one can go astray in finding out what She teaches. Like Her Lord and Master, though at times surrounded with human malaria—which He in His mercy pardons—She is the same yesterday, and today, and forever the mother and safe deposit of the truth as it is in Jesus.

Rock and Sand is an excellent book for the Orthodox to guard their faith while living in a Protestant or Catholic milieu. It is also suited for Protestants who have lapsed from their original confession and are seeking to know why the Orthodox Church is the New Testament Church as built by Lord Jesus Christ.

Learn More: Rock & Sand on Amazon

The persecution of Christians is more subtle than in Roman times, when it was absolutely clear that you were being killed for your faith. Satan has become reluctant to send throngs of crowned martyrs into heaven, and has instead refined his strategy to where your persecution garners little attention and ends up looking like “love” or “common sense” whereas it is actually a direct attack on Lord Jesus Christ.

In Roman times, Christians were commanded to give fealty to pagan gods, often by placing incense on hot coals within a pagan temple. If they refused, they were tortured and killed. There was no doubt why they were being persecuted, and I imagine there are millions of these martyrs in heaven (one estimate I have heard is 11 million).

Satan’s job is to send souls into hell, not glorify them in heaven, so for these times he has modified his approach. He is disinclined to give anyone the opportunity for a direct confession of the faith that leads to immediate death and glorification. Instead, he persecutes you through his human henchman for any other stated reason besides Christ, but make no mistake that he is behind the persecution and aims for you to compromise your faith in a way that causes you to lose your soul and inspire others to do the same. If you are inhibited to worship Lord Jesus Christ by even one minute due to a government directive or mob action, you are being persecuted, and must see through the false façade to gain courage and make a stand for your faith. Here are the three fake reasons that can be used…

1. Health: “We’re not persecuting you for your love of Lord Jesus Christ, but you’re putting people’s health in danger.”

We saw this vividly with the COVID pandemic, and I must say this was one of Satan’s most clever tricks. His main aim with COVID was to terrorize the world population into taking dangerous black magic vaccines to weaken people’s trust in God or simply cause them to die before repentance. One method to accomplish this is to shut down churches through government mandates that also applied to secular businesses (to help give plausible deniability that the Church is not the main target). Another method is to darken spiritual leaders with fear that venerating icons or communing from a common spoon, key practices of the Orthodox faith, will “put others in danger” and lead to a terrible physical death that is seen as an outcome worse than losing your soul for eternity.

I must remind you that many Christian martyrs died during the Iconoclasm period (8th and 9th centuries), when evil rulers tried to ban icons, and yet in 2020, without a whimper, huge swaths of the Orthodox Church voluntarily removed icons from their churches without any protest. What an incredible feat by Satan! It’s obvious that Satan can “learn” like we can learn, because he tried to remove icons a millennia ago but failed, and here he was able to do it, albeit temporarily, and not a single martyr died for icons and not one Bishop was excommunicated. Within most confessions, he also got them to adopt zany health practices like mask-wearing, standing six feet away from each other, and neurotically applying alcohol to their hands until they’re dry as a bone. I was in the Armenian Church when COVID first hit and a practice called the “Kiss of Peace” was modified to become “The Awkward Bow from Six Feet Away.” The demons had a good laugh.

Bill Gates is already preparing for the next pandemic, and maybe he’s a prophet because he seems to be able to predict the future, so I would expect another health crisis where various Churches will be even more aggressive in modifying practices to the point where essential dogmas are discarded and souls lost by choosing to be a friend of the world instead of Lord Jesus Christ. Woe to those leaders who hurt the Orthodox Church and attack the Body of Christ in the name of going along with a fake pandemic to preserve “health”! Whatever the case, when you are inhibited from going to your church to worship Lord Jesus Christ because of a health scare, you are actually being persecuted for your faith.

“During the [Roman] persecutions Christians dealt with horrific tortures of the body, however there was no interference on the mind or the soul. On the contrary, during the martyrdoms of [the Christians] of the end times we will [also] have interference on the soul and the methods [of torture] will be far more satanic. And this because they [the system of the Antichrist] will introduce inside of you chemical things [mind altering drugs] to paralyze your mind, your will power, will distort your sentiments and will disorient your mind.” —Elder Athanasios Mitilinaios

2. Hate Speech: “We’re not persecuting you for your love of Lord Jesus Christ, but your religious beliefs are hateful and hurting the feelings of disenfranchised groups, especially homosexuals.”

“Hate speech,” a term invented by Jews to control and tyrannize the Western population, may be used in the future against Churches that forbid gay marriage, block boys from attending services in a state of cross-dress, or insist on transgenders to repent from their life of sin. Once the media maligns a Church—and we know that this will mainly happen to the Orthodox Church since most other confessions are going along with the world when it comes to cultural matters—the government may deny their tax-exempt status, pushing parishes into bankruptcy. Or in countries like Europe, they may shut down the Church outright just like how they send German grandmas to jail if they deny the Holocaustâ„¢ over tea and butterplätzchen. Or during a war they may put out an executive order that shuts down a Church by fiat for being a “threat to national security.”

We’re already seeing a shade of the latter with the Church I’m in, the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia (ROCOR). Writers connected to sodomy-loving globalist outfits are painting the Church as an anachronistic home to monsters who are not capable of living a progressive lifestyle in a big multicultural city with gay pride parades. Whatever the case, when your Church is being attacked because of its opinions and hatred of sin, and not necessarily its dogmas or doctrines, it is actually being persecuted for its faith.

“Under the cover of this deceptive, fair-seeming exterior, which is leading many into delusion, there is actually everywhere now taking place a most powerful hidden persecution against Christianity, appearing in the most various forms. This persecution is far more dangerous and terrible than the former open persecution, for it threatens a complete devastation of souls—spiritual death.” —Archbishop Averky

3. Fascism or extremism: “We’re not persecuting you for your love of Lord Jesus Christ, but your Church is actually an operation run by a fascist government or organization that happens to be Orthodox.”

We see this being successfully applied in Ukraine to devastating effect for the flock. All Church activities in the country are in the process of being completely shut down because the Ukrainian Orthodox Church is spiritually connected to the Moscow Patriarchate. The false accusation is that the Moscow Patriarch is an agent of Putin, a realpolitik operation. The truth is that it’s the Church that originated from Saint Vladimir, the baptizer of Russia in 988, who took the faith from the Byzantines as a safe deposit of the teachings of Lord Jesus Christ, with holy sacraments that are necessary for the salvation of our souls. Human beings who are in the Church are sinners and make mistakes, but the Orthodox Church itself is the bedrock of faith in the True God.

How easy will the United States government be able to apply this trick to Churches in the United States? First they will come after the Russians, and then it will be the Serbs since they are brothers of the Russians, and then it will be anyone else with ethnic origins and long beards who don’t support the U.S. government’s foreign policy that is looking more like a scheme of genocide perpetuated by Jews against the world’s goyim. Whatever the case, when your Church is being accused as a “foreign agent” of extremists or fascists, it is actually being persecuted because of its faith.

“…in Pitesti [Romanian communist prison] there was a fight between the spirit of good and the spirit of evil. It was not just the persecution of a regime against some people… It was really the battle between God and the devil. In relation to this, I said in my sermons that the whole history of humanity is a fight between God and the devil, and that our heart is the battleground. But it is not dead ground; it is living ground, and it can decide the victory—whether God or the devil will reign in our hearts…” —Father George Calciu

Conclusion

In modern times, when faith is weak, and people are ready to halt all worship of the Lord because of manufactured scares, Satan’s achievement of getting Churches to modify their practices or close outright is not that impressive. Nonetheless, these closures and blasphemies against the sacraments will hurt those who want to maintain the right faith and participate weekly in church life without first getting permission from secular health authorities who are obviously in bed with those who pay them the most money.

Until you see nationwide repentance and the arrival of martyrs who are willing to die for the fact that their church doors are closed, we will see more attacks by Satan. He will likely use multiple tactics simultaneously to hammer the Churches into submission, demoralize the faithful, and cause them to adopt secular medical practices to the detriment of their souls. God always looks after the zealous, so may our faith be strong enough to be included among His remnant, who will endure and persist until the end no matter the tribulation.

Read Next: The Synagogue Is Ramping Up Their Attacks On The Orthodox Church

Father George Calciu was a saintly Romanian priest who was tortured in Romania’s worst communist prison, Pitesti. He was eventually released and sought asylum in the United States where he gained an understanding of America’s declining spiritual condition. The quotes below are excerpted from the book Father George Calciu— Interviews, Homilies, and Talks.

The blasphemy of secularism

Fr. Roman also told me that one of the things guards said to torture them was that the Lord Jesus had had an affair with St. Mary Magdalene. He commented to me that, in Communist prison, this constituted torture; in America, people will pay money to read it in a book, like The Da Vinci Code, or watch it in a movie.

[…]

Perhaps yesterday, when Communism tried to wretch any faith from your heart and to form you into a mere cog in the gears of the social machinery, you, out of a spirit of youthful revolt had more of Christ in your soul than you have today.

Today you are attacked from all sides with the sound of the rhythmic drumming of all the anti-Christian organizations, which wish to create an amorphous mass out of the world’s nations, easily led to their intended destination. So it happens in the political world—a few individuals are anointed in secret and installed to govern all people from positions of international power. They determine which nations have the right to bear children and which must abort them; they substitute themselves for God and sketch the destiny of nations according to their pleasures or interests. Whoever does not submit shall perish.

How to confess the faith?

I had learned from experience that people are changed only by the fire of your faith, by the dedication in your attitude to them and to God, because this is the most powerful proof.

[…]

Tell those who until now have oppressed your divine soul: “I believe in the Resurrection,” and you will see them coil in fear, for your faith has overcome them.

Stop engaging with the devil

To the devil’s [first two] temptations, Jesus Christ merely answered with a quotation from the Old Testament, but this [third] time he rebuked the devil. He said, Get thee behind Me, Satan (Luke 4:8). This signifies that we shouldn’t argue with the devil, because he is cleverer than we are. He is entirely spirit. In an argument with the devil, using rational arguments, we would be vanquished every time by the devil. Our attitude toward the devil, when he tries to tempt us through our egotistical mind—our desire to be great in this world—is to say, “Go back, Satan, leave me alone.”

[…]

You probably have experienced the devil’s temptations during prayer. When you start to pray, hundreds of thoughts start to go around in your mind—all kinds of things, all kinds of remembrances, all kinds of imaginings—because the devil is attacking you. He doesn’t like anyone praying.

[…]

…at the time of prayer satanic assaults are innumerable—thoughts besiege you, memories abduct your mind from prayer, past anger [i.e., remembrance of wrongs] becomes very present. All of a sudden, some unimportant matters—for example, “What time is it?” or, “Is it raining outside or is the sun shining?”—become very important, and the evil spirit drives you to interrupt your prayer “just for a moment” in order to look at the clock or the weather or some other unimportant thing.

You’re easier to destroy while isolated

I was very good friends with this young man and they knew that. So, after beating me and torturing him, they forced him to torture me and me to torture him—to destroy any connection between us, to isolate us. This is the tactic of the devil—to isolate everyone. God intended man to be in a spiritual community of prayer. Therefore, they isolated everybody; they made everyone to be alone. We can be one in Jesus Christ, but this was oneness in the devil. Everyone was completely isolated; no one believed in anyone; no one trusted anyone.

Spiritual happiness in prison

It is impossible for people outside of prison to understand. We were freed and we were very happy to be free, but we had a kind of nostalgia about the prison. And we could not explain it to others. They said we were crazy. How could you miss prison? Because in prison we had the most spiritual life. We reached levels that we are not able to reach in this world. Isolated, anchored in Jesus Christ, we had joys and illuminations that this world cannot offer us. There are no words to express exactly the feeling one had there. Those who have not had our spiritual experience cannot understand that we could be happy in prison. Many times were not happy at all, but there were moment of happiness there. When I took care of Constantine Oprisan in the cell, I was very happy. I was very happy because I felt him spirituality penetrating my soul. I learned from him to be good, to forgive, not to curse your torturer, not to consider anything of this world to be a treasure for you. In fact, he was living on another level. Only his body was with us—and his love. Can you imagine: we were in a cell without windows, without air, humid, filthy—yet we had moments of happiness that we never reached in freedom. I cannot explain it.

Falsehoods require force

Ideas are preserved through their truth. An idea which is maintained through force and violence is deeply undermined by the falsehood within it.

This book offers yet another confirmation of the happiness one can find in prison thanks to the forced detachment from passions and worldly attachments. While the teachings in this book don’t go as deep as I would’ve liked, and contain a fair amount of repetition, Father George shares a simple but powerful faith that can be used in times of persecution.

Learn More: Father George Calciu on Amazon

A recent documentary titled Died Suddenly confirms what many of us already know: the coronavirus vaccine is deadly. The documentary shows that the likely mechanism by which it causes injury and death is by befouling a person’s circulatory system. I can conclude with a clear conscious that the vaccine is a blood and heart toxin.

Watch the documentary on Rumble:

And some of the Pharisees called to Him from the crowd, “Teacher, rebuke Your disciples.” But He answered and said to them, “I tell you that if these should keep silent, the stones would immediately cry out.” —Luke 19:39-40

The stones that are crying out are morticians who embalm dead bodies. After the vax was released, they began noticing thick spaghetti noodle clots in dead people’s veins and arteries that were not like normal blood clots. So many different morticians from so many different parts of the country identified this phenomenon that it’s safe to accept as a national problem.

Even with my scientific background (I have a bachelor’s degree in microbiology), it’s not immediately clear what these clots are. They don’t seem like classic cancer but are so big that I’m skeptical they were formed from a spontaneous biochemical reaction between the vax ingredients and organic materials within the body. Consider that the total volume of a vaccine injection is no more than 7.5 milliliters, a half tablespoon. Clots coming out of people are way larger than this volume—some as long as two feet! This suggests to me that there is some kind of persistent and ongoing process within the body that is producing clots and allowing them to grow independently of the initial vaccination.

The vaccine may be initiating a process in the body to create these unique clots within the bloodstream. I theorize it does this through one of three methods: (1) the vaccine is so toxic that the body desperately yet futilely tries to isolate and expel the toxin through a mechanism that somehow produces the spaghetti clots; (2) the vaccine directly causes blood cells to mutate and multiply indiscriminately like a case of late-stage cancer; or (3) the vaccine contains genetic instructions that, when embedded into a person’s genome after vaccination, methodically and purposely produces these clots to the detriment of the human host.

I’d be inclined to lean towards option one or two if this vaccine didn’t happen to contain genetic material in the form of mRNA, which our cells use as an intermediary template from DNA to make various proteins. Understand that scientists long ago perfected the ability to insert genes from one species into another. For example, do you know what it means for a vegetable to be “genetically modified”? Let me explain.

Are they genetically modifying us like food?

Pests are a bane of farmers worldwide, and can wipe out entire harvests. The problem with the pesticides that kill pests is that they’re toxic and end up damaging or killing the plant itself, but how about if we can modify the plant so that it becomes resistant to the toxin? For example, take the glyphosate (Roundup) herbicide, which kills weeds. If you spray a naturally-growing plant with glyphosate, the pest dies but so do many types of plants. So here’s what they did…

There is a bacteria that is resistant to glyphosate because it naturally produces an enzyme that neutralizes the toxin (all enzymes are classified as proteins, which are encoded within our DNA). Scientists isolated this enzyme from the bacteria, figured out its DNA sequence, and inserted it into a crop like the soybean. The soybean now is a franken-seed that has a gene from bacteria, but thanks to this gene a farmer can bathe his crops in glyphosate, kill the pests, and yet allow his crops to survive and be harvested to yield “nutrients” and “vitamins” when consumed by human beings. Unfortunately, many farmers claim that glyphosate is also killing them (with cancer), and data on the damaging effects of eating modified crops that have been treated with toxic chemicals is concealed from the public. Corporations have successfully modified numerous crops to resist pesticides and other crop killers starting way back in the 1990s.

It’s been thirty years since genetic technology was first used on food. Have they been able to harness this technology to insert genes into humans through a series of injections? I would be surprised if they hadn’t yet figured it out. Based on the mRNA genetic platform they are using for the coronavirus vax, a frighteningly reasonable explanation is that they are injecting people with the genetic blueprint to produce blood clots, whether deliberately or not, because the resulting clots are way larger in volume than the initial toxin and different in chemical composition than the clear liquid that was injected into them. This theory could also explain why some people get the clots and some don’t: genetic uptake is more of a statistical phenomenon than a guarantee. Some people, perhaps due to their individual physiology, reject the foreign mRNA and so there is no uptake in the genome of their cells. Or perhaps they received an injection that had somehow degraded due to improper storage, tainted manufacturing processes, or more nefariously, deliberate and careful manipulation of vaccine lots. There are many theories that can explain why not everyone goes on to develop the clots, but for the people who did, the outcome is either life-changing or life-ending.

Is there a worldwide conspiracy?

There is no conspiracy theory I will not at least entertain, but I need substantial evidence to come out on my platform and begin a sentence with “I believe” to put my feeble reputation on the line. After living through the coronavirus fake pandemic for over three years, and consuming an untold number of articles, videos, and podcasts on the issue in addition to scientifically related topics, I believe that there is a large conspiracy among high-level elites in public and private sectors to depopulate the world through vaccination in general, but particularly with the coronavirus vaccine. This conspiracy is aided by the mass cowardice, carnality, and atheism of many doctors who know from direct experience that this vaccine is injuring people, but choose rather to play ball to continue enabling their comfortable and lavish secular lifestyles.

“…but they who live in wickedness and in luxury are punished both in the life here and the life yonder. For even here they are harassed by the expectation of the coming penalty, as well as by the bad opinion in which they are held by all, and by the fact that by the very sin itself their soul is corrupted; and after their departure thither they endure insupportable penalties.” —Saint John Chrysostom in On Wealth and Poverty

There is no other explanation I can come up with that doesn’t chafe my conscience. The elites know these vaccines are harmful and yet they ignore the evidence and keep pushing people—including little children—to get vaccinated. The doctors must be aware that this vaccine is poisoning their patients (whom they swore to do no harm) yet they keep telling patients to get the vax and use emotional manipulation to do so, if the stories from my elderly parents are any indication. This is mass poison on a scale the world has never seen, and all those who are responsible will undoubtedly be held accountable for their evil on Day of Judgment, but until then, we have to use our reason and faith to discern which medical treatment to take for the sake of our bodily health and those of our loved ones. I’ve already made my choice: never, ever in this life will I get injected with a vaccine, and if I have someone’s ear, like I have yours since you made it this far into my article, I’ll tell them why they shouldn’t either based on my personal observations and research.

If you are not an Orthodox Christian with an active spiritual life, you probably won’t care for these proceeding comments: I strongly suspect that the coronavirus vaccine contains demonic energy (i.e. something like black magic). Consider that its development uses aborted fetal cells—parts of murdered defenseless babies—to provide “health” for living people. This is a narrative directly from Satan’s mind. For you to take this vaccine where there is overwhelming evidence that it was developed in sin, and while also knowing of its extreme danger to so many people who have shared their vaccine injury stories online, suggests a spiritual problem, at least according to Metropolitan Neophytos of Morphou. He says that those who got the vax damaged their soul and must repent from their mistake. In other words, you must beg Lord Jesus Christ for forgiveness that you put faith in Bill Gates’ inverted sacrament over the sacraments that the Lord gives us in His Church. If you took the vaccine, I suggest you find a spiritual guide in the Orthodox Church who will help you set things right.

I’ve lost complete faith in the medical industry, faith I should never have had in the first place. That faith was shattered when, before I became an Orthodox Christian, I saw what the cancer doctors did to my sister with their poisonous concoctions. From my perspective, their treatments accelerated her death. Now with the fake coronavirus pandemic, I believe that those in the medical industry who conceal the truth, whether voluntary or involuntary, are serving the will of Satan. The demonic presence is so strong that I’m questioning all their treasured dogmas, even the existence of viruses. If I have a broken leg, I will go to the doctor to x-ray me and snap it into place (unless you know how to do it), and I would also consider other emergency surgeries that require only an easy slicing and dicing, but to take their toxic medications or vaccines, I would have to receive a direct revelation from God to permit me to do so, and even if that happens, I would have to be convinced that that vision was indeed from God and not the demons, because Satan can easily masquerade as an angel of light.

“Am I in good health? I will say: ‘Glory to God.’ Is my health poor? I will still say: ‘Glory to God.’ But the moment I become anxious about my health, wishing only to get better, running around to doctors, taking different kinds of medicines, traveling frantically to foreign countries for experimental procedures, I have lost God. I have become like a top spinning out of control.” —Elder Aimilianos in The Mystical Marriage

I ask a favor from you: if ever get sick with cancer in the future, and decide to forgo toxic chemical treatment, please don’t convince me out of it. This life is temporal, a test for us to show our love for God and our neighbor so that we may enter into eternal life through Lord Jesus Christ, and I must not panic if I come down with a malady that God allows. I pray that I have the courage and strength to suffer in this body while preparing my soul for the next life instead of living in so much fear that I allow Satan to inject me with genetic material that grows little worms in my veins, because I tell you that if I try to save my life then I will lose it, and have to face the worm that never dies for all of eternity.

Read Next: Are Viruses Actually Contagious?

A book that answers many Orthodox theological questions in a plain-worded manner is Orthodox Dogmatic Theology by Michael Pomazansky. While technically an introductory textbook (for students at Holy Trinity Orthodox Seminary in Jordanville, New York), it explains dogmas in a way that laymen can understand. Below are a handful of edifying passages.

Why God created the world

…the Orthodox Confession and the Longer Catechism express it thus: The world was created by God “so that other beings, glorifying Him, might be participants of His goodness.” … Blessed Theodoret writes: “The Lord God has no need of anyone to praise Him; but by His goodness alone He granted existence to angels, archangels, and the whole creation.” And further: “God has need for nothing; but He, being an abyss of goodness, deigned to give existence to things which did not exist.” And St John Damascene says (as we have just seen): “The good and transcendentally good God was not content to contemplate Himself, but by a superabundance of goodness saw fit that there should be some things to benefit by and participate in His goodness.”

[…]

St. Gregory the Theologian: “Since for the goodness of God it was not sufficient to be occupied only with the contemplation of Himself, but it was needful that good should extend further and further, so that the number of those who have received Grace might be as many as possible (Because this is characteristic of the highest Goodness)—therefore, God devised first of all the angelic heavenly powers: and the thought became deed, which was fulfilled by the Word, and perfected by the Spirit… And inasmuch as the first creatures were pleasing to Him, He devised another world, material and visible, the orderly composition of heaven and earth, and that which is between them.”

Where is the image of God within us?

…the image of God may be seen only in the soul, not in the body. According to His Nature, God is most pure Spirit, not clothed in any kind of body and not a partaker of any kind of materiality. Therefore the image of God can refer only to the immaterial soul—many Fathers of the Church have considered it necessary to give this warning.

[…]

Man bears the image of God in the higher qualities of the soul, especially in the soul’s immortality, in its freedom of will, in its reason, and in its capability for pure love without thought of gain.

[…]

Is there a distinction between the “image” and the “likeness” of God? The majority of the Holy Fathers and teachers of the Church reply that there is. They see the image of God in the very nature of the soul, and the likeness in the moral perfecting of man in virtue and sanctity, in the acquirement of the gifts of the Holy Spirit. Consequently, we receive the image of God from God together with existence, but the likeness we must acquire ourselves, having received the possibility of doing this from God.

To become “in the likeness” depends upon our will; it is acquired in accordance with our own activity. Therefore, concerning the “counsel” of God it is said: “Let us make man in our image, after Our likeness” (Gen. 1:26), but with regard to the very act of creation it is said: “God created man in His own image” (Gen. 1:27). About this St. Gregory of Nyssa reasons: By God’s “counsel,” we were given the potential to be “in His likeness.”

What is Christian life?

The fullness of actual life in the Church on earth is manifested in three aspects: (a) confession of faith; (b) moral life; and (c) the Divine services. Therefore, each Christian is called (a) to believe; (b) to live and act according to faith; and (c) to glorify God and pray.

What is the Orthodox Church?

The Orthodox Church of Christ is the Body of Christ, a spiritual organism whose Head is Christ. It has a single spirit, a single common faith, a single and common catholic consciousness, guided by the Holy Spirit; and its reasoning are based on the concrete, definite foundations of Sacred Scripture and Sacred Apostolic Tradition. This catholic consciousness is always with the Church, but, in a more definite fashion, this consciousness is expressed in the Ecumenical Councils of the Church.

The role of the body

The body must serve as the companion, organ, and even fellow laborer of the soul. It depends on the soul itself whether to lower itself to such an extent that it becomes the slave of the body, or, being guided by an enlightened spirit, to make the body its obedient executor and fellow laborer. Depending upon the soul, the body can be a vessel of sinful impurity and foulness, or it can become a temple of God, participating with the soul in the glorification of God.

The importance of obedience

Free obedience is the path to moral advancement. Where there is voluntary obedience there is (a) the cutting off of the way to self-esteem; (b) respect and trust for that which is above us; (c) continence. Obedience acts beneficially upon the mind, humbling its pride; upon the feelings, limiting self-love; and upon the will, directing the freedom of man towards the good. The Grace of God cooperates and strengthens one on this path.

How God uses suffering to save our souls

Sufferings are given to man as a means of chastisement, enlightenment, and correction. According to St. Basil the Great, sufferings and death itself “cut off the growth of sin.”

[…]

[God] covered [man’s] nakedness with clothing, moderated his self-esteem and pride, his fleshly desires and passions, by means of healing measures—labor and diseases—giving to them an educational significance. We ourselves can see the educational effect of labor, and the cleansing effect of disease on the soul. God subjected man to physical death so as not to hand him over to final spiritual death—that is, so that the sinful principle in him might not develop to the extreme, so that he might not become like Satan.

However, this natural bridle of suffering and death does not uproot the very source of evil. It only restraints the development of evil. It was most necessary for mankind to have a supernatural power and help which might perform an inward reversal within him and give to man the possibility to turn away from a gradually deepening descent and towards victory over sin and a gradual ascent to God.

Orthodox Dogmatic Theology is dry and difficult at times, but if you want to gain a theological understanding of the Orthodox faith, and how it compares to other confessions, it’s a great starting point.

Learn More: Orthodox Dogmatic Theology on Amazon

Now that I got you to click on such an enticing headline, I must deliver the goods or else you will be upset with me. Before I share with you the best podcast in the world, I wanted to first mention six other podcasts that I regularly listen to.

From The Amvon

This podcast is by Father John Whiteford, an Orthodox priest in Texas. His specialty is Biblical knowledge (perhaps thanks to a Protestant background), and his relatively short homilies have been helpful for me to go beyond a surface understanding of the faith. I consider him one of the best Orthodox homilists in the English language.

• RSS Feed
• iTunes

The Arena

This is published by Father Josiah Trenham, perhaps the most well-known Orthodox priest in the United States thanks to his firm but congenial demeanor. Father Josiah does a great job bringing in everyday stories and family experiences to teach how we can have a practical yet devout Orthodox faith.

• Spotify
• Google Podcasts
• iTunes
• YouTube

Orthodox Wisdom

Timothy Honeycutt provides audio transcriptions for important Orthodox texts, particularly concerning the lives of the saints. Timothy selects works of zealous Orthodox Fathers that are helpful in a modern secular age to counter heresy and blasphemy.

• RSS Feed
• iTunes
• YouTube

Ek Nekron

Father John Valadez in California follows in the “Death To The World” e-zine tradition to publish multi-part lectures that serve as a deeper Orthodox catechism. My article “7 Signs You’re In A Cult Or False Movement” was inspired by his Survival Course for Orthodox Christians series, which I highly recommend.

• RSS Feed
• iTunes

Culture Wars Podcasts

Whenever a major news event happens, I think, “I need Dr. Jones’ take on this.” Dr. E Michael Jones is a Catholic intellectual who has his pulse on the zeitgeist and the powerful group we cannot name in polite company. His podcast is regularly updated with his interviews on other shows.

• RSS Feed
• iTunes

There are also two YouTube channels that are technically not podcasts but I listen to them as podcasts anyway by downloading the MP3 file using a program called ClipGrab…

Father Spyridon Bailey

Father Spyridon is an Orthodox priest in the UK who I believe has the most popular Orthodox YouTube channel in the world. You may remember that he called in to one of my live streams when I was still in the Armenian Church and gave me a loving push to become Orthodox. His videos focus on spiritual counsel and are suitable for inquirers.

• YouTube

Father Peter Heers (Orthodox Ethos)

If you want dense lectures that are soaked in the teachings of the Church Fathers and Elders, Father Peter is your priest. He makes no compromises with the world or liberal parts of the Church and gives you the guidance needed to overcome spiritual lukewarmness that is so common in our age.

• YouTube

And the best podcast in the world is…

Orthodox Talks

The above podcasts are great, but if you were to send me to a deserted island with only one podcast in my pocket, I would pick Orthodox Talks, because it would allow me to continually learn about the Orthodox faith and keep it.

Orthodox Talks is a series of long but edifying lectures from Father Kosmas, a priestmonk at the Orthodox Monastery of the Archangel Michael in Sydney, Australia. I first started listening to his talks before I was Orthodox, and was generally impressed with them, but now that I am Orthodox, I’m very impressed because his lessons perfectly encapsulate what I have learned through a multitude of books and teachers. Ultimately, Father Kosmas captures the savor of Orthodoxy, and is one of the best teachers that the Church has.

Father Kosmas shares lessons on a variety of topics: repentance, marriage, lives of the saints, teachings of the Holy Fathers, Church sacraments, mental illness, prayer, death, demonic influence, secular temptations, and other issues facing those who live in modern times. It has been essential in my formation as an Orthodox Christian, and is the only podcast where I listen to episodes repeatedly.

It can be a bit overwhelming to be faced with 83 lectures that are many hours long. I recommend you start with the below three lectures as an appetizer and then embark on a holy and God-pleasing quest to listen to every single episode:

1. Talk 12 – What to look for in a spouse
2. Talk 13 – What you need to maintain a successful marriage
3. Talk 82 – Covidism’s threat to the Church

• RSS Feed
• Google Podcasts
• Spotify
• iTunes
• Web Site

As you can see, there is no shortage of Orthodox content. They help us navigate this broken world while developing a faith that saves. Without them, especially Father Kosmas’ Orthodox Talks, I would be spiritually worse off than I am now.

Read Next: Why Do You Consume Secular Content?

The Sunflower by Saint John of Tobolsk is an excellent book that helps us understand why God does the things He does, and how we can align our actions to serve His will. In the below excerpts, Saint John explains why bad things happen to members of the flock.

Previous Article On “The Sunflower”: 6 Signs You Are Following God’s Will

Strong Christians are sent to the front lines…

Ask yourselves: why does the All-good God visit virtuous people with diseases or other calamities? It will be effective to answer this question by asking a different question whose answer is more easily accessible. Why is it that during a war the most capable and brave soldiers are sent to do the most risky and dangerous missions? The answer is not difficult. The commander chooses the most capable and brave soldiers for night raids on the enemy, to scout the best possible flanking movement around the enemy, to find the best path across a ford or a mountain pass for his division, and not a single one of the chosen soldiers complains to his commander for this assignment. He does not say, “My commander gave me this assignment because he wants to kill me.” On the contrary, each of these soldiers eagerly tries to accomplish his mission with the greatest success, despite all difficulties and dangers.

Those among us Christians who are weak in faith or lacking in patience should act like these brave soldiers, especially when God allows us to suffer and bear something grievous, heavy, or sorrowful. We should encourage ourselves and strengthen ourselves with the thought that God has acknowledged us worthy to bear such a burden, and that He would never lay on us a burden too heavy for our weak human strength.

…so that they may achieve moral perfection

…it is not so unusual that God, knowing in advance what means can give us the best chance of rising to the highest level of moral perfection, tests us, His children, with various difficulties and teaches us to rise up from the low levels of our virtue to ever higher ones. All training in virtue seems cruel and laborious for the frail body. Has God allowed misfortune to attack us? Let us bravely endure it. This is not God’s wrath, but a kind chance give to us for ascetic labor that always carries a reward with it. The more labors we endure, the braver we will become. A person can achieve complete victory over evil only through patience. As gold is purified by the fire, so a person is strengthened by hardship.

[…]

It is not [God] who is cruel. It is not His hand that is heavy in punishment. He, seeing with His gaze your entire past, present, an future, chooses to send you, by His mercy, everything that is most beneficial to you, even if it were to be your very death. Your soul is eternal, and you do not know what your future holds, you impatient fool of little faith, more fickle even than the weather!

How to respond when misfortune strikes

If, despite all your attempts and diligence, something still does not go according to your plans, do not become angry with God or with any of His creations. Instead, remember that God knows every detail of your suffering and what suffering still remains for you. He desires to come to know and increase your courage. Therefore, whatever God wants, let that be your desire.

Bear it when other people attack you

Even though human will is often evil and unrighteous, what can it do to you? In what ways does it succeed against you? You are upset that he managed to harm you, not that he wanted to harm you. But who made it possible for him to harm you? Did this not happen according to God’s will? And if it is according to the will and authority of God, then it must be for a just and holy reason, worthy of praise, not grief. Consequently, either stop your whining, or direct your complaints at God’s permission, and impress on your soul the fact that God would never allow any evil to harm you, if it did not serve for your own benefit. You are the only one who can harm yourself!

[…]

Today He allows you to be insulted by this person, but tomorrow it will be another. Sometimes He punishes you through your relatives, brothers, or your own immediate family. It is one and the same hand of God that chastises, not always in the same manner, but differently every time. Sometimes He visits you through other people. So why do you rail against these others? This cunning person has harmed me, that thief left me with nothing, and that liar stole my honor along with my property. What are you saying you fool? Why are you taking a gauntlet to court? Pay attention to the hand of God that gives you mercies as well as punishments. God sent all this to you.

Why does God allow so much evil in the world?

The reason God allows sin is hidden in the mystery of the perfection and the sinlessness of God’s direction of the world (His providence), a mystery that will remain unknown until the time of its revelation. God knows all futures in every detail, and He can easily prevent sin (so hateful to Him); however, He allows it, desiring to create good from evil, truth from lies, for the admonition and correction of people, to let them see the consequences of sin both for the sinner and for society.

Will you persist in asking the wrong questions?

Why does one die as a child, whereas another live to deep old age? Why does one who sinned only a little die without repentance, whereas another, who lived many years in debauchery, finally improves and receives an end worthy of a Christian? Why does one drown in riches and luxury, whereas another has not a piece of bread or a penny to his name?

Oh, you most restless and excessively curious mind! Why must you seek the answers to these questions? If you touch the fire of the divine judgments, you will melt from the heat. If you climb the unattainable mountain of divine foreknowledge and providence, you will fall. Like a moth or mosquito, you will fly in circles around the candle until it burns you. Thus, the human mind brazenly strives to pierces the secrets of the inconceivable divine fire. We, mortal men, cannot look directly at the works of the all-bright Sun, since our eyes are blind as a bat. The hidden mysteries of God are unattainable for us in this life.

If anyone asks me a question about what is God’s will, I send them straight to The Sunflower. It’s been exceedingly helpful on my walk with Christ.

Learn More: The Sunflower on Amazon

When I’m tired, irritated, sick, or merely experiencing a lull in the day, I can choose to console myself in one of two ways: through a worldly comfort or by lifting up my eyes to God with prayer, religious reading, or divine contemplation. Lamentably, I usually look to the world to give my flesh instant relief. Here is a list of consolations I currently use or have used to feel better in the moment, all of which competes with my love for God.

1. Eating tasty food past the point of satiety

2. Reaching for my smartphone to check for unimportant new messages or news

3. Prolonged staring at beautiful women

4. Seeking direct praise when sharing my opinions, stories, or ideas

5. Oversleeping, taking gratuitous naps, or using an alarm clock’s snooze function beyond what is reasonable

6. Consuming secular music or films to “unwind,” not worry about life, and forget about death

7. Taking unnecessarily long showers in hot water

8. Consuming a socially acceptable drug (e.g., caffeine, alcohol) to create a desirable mental or physical state

9. Craving nonstop laughter and fun during social conversation

10. Seeking novelty through travel

11. Gaining useless secular knowledge to feel more knowledgeable

12. Improving my physical appearance for the main purpose of looking better than other men

13. Complaining and grumbling (usually about other people)

14. Using modern medicine and supplements to alleviate the fear, anxiety, and physical pain of common illnesses

15. Turning on the air conditioning when it’s not that hot

16. Indulging in fantasies where I am a hero or saint

17. Responding with anger upon an insult or false accusation

At the end of each item on the list above, add “because it feels good” for the reason I do it. Sadly, my body seems not to care about the next life, and only wants to be coddled and pleased in the here and now. I prefer immediate rewards that I know yield comfort or pleasure than wait for God to console me on His timeline according to His will. His consolation requires patience and is dispensed according to whether it will benefit the soul while worldly consolation only cares about the body without taking into account salvation.

Worldly consolation is fleeting, forms addictions, and leads to worship of false idols while divine consolation is sweet, joyful, and makes us become more in the likeness of God. If you are persistently consoling yourself with entertainment, food, and all other manner of pleasure, why then does God need to console you? Why does he need to fill you with His divine grace?

I do not judge you if you participate in behaviors that I’ve determined are unhealthy for me. You can do your own self-examination to see what is competing with your love for God. I’ve noticed that some men, for example, can speak to a beautiful woman without the risk of falling into lust like myself, but nonetheless our Lord does call us to a life of self-denial, so if you’re filling your day with things that feel good, and none of those activities give you an opportunity to glorify God, you may want to ask yourself if you seek the temporal bosom of the world or the eternal bosom of God.

Read Next: 74 Things Christian Saints Have Never Said

Saint John of Tobolsk took a pre-existing Catholic work and revised it to make it compatible with the Orthodox faith. The resulting book is called The Sunflower and focuses almost exclusively on answering the question of how to serve God’s will. Below are six excerpts that Saint John shares to help you identify whether you are following God’s will or not.

1. Do you pray before tasks?

The first sign of a unique quality of a true Christian is diligence to do everything eagerly, being careful that none of his actions be contrary to the commandments and will of God. Therefore, he never begins a deed without first calling on God for help. Every true follower of Christ will not dare to begin any work without appearing to God with at least a short but heart-felt prayer. If he is faced with a useful and important work that is difficult to complete, let him ask for God’s help not once, but many times, until God gives him wisdom and instructs him how to accomplish this work.

2. Do you have the proper disposition?

The second sign of true piety and eagerness to act in agreement with God’s will is a lack of fear when faced with afflictions or difficulties. Not mere a lack of fear, but cheerfulness, even eagerness, to suffer them. This eagerness is justified in the following way: the Lord God’s grace is closer to those who are in sorrows and afflictions than to those who wallow in luxury and know no deprivation. The Lord loves not only the poor and indigent, but He blesses those who act as their benefactors.

3. Do you hold onto your own opinions?

The third sign of the accord between the human and divine will is Christian humility, that is, the effacement in the self of any self-opinion, anything that goes beyond human, mortal, organic life. This virtue is particular to Christianity; it would hardly have even been known to the ancient idol-worshippers. Whoever is not infected by exalted self-opinion ascribes all the good he does not to himself or his mind, but to God’s goodness and power.

4. Do you trust God?

The fourth sign of agreement between our will and God’s is our complete trust in the Lord God in all things. Such trust makes it possible for us to remain internally calm even when someone publicly insults us. It humbles the naturally occurring thought to avenge one’s enemy. A trusting person thinks within himself, “God sees and hears this life, this insult. There will come a time that God will reveal the lies of the enemy and will turn it back on my enemy’s head.” In this way, the fully natural desire to avenge oneself is put down.

5. Do you suffer humbly?

The fifth sign indicating the accord of our will with God’s is endurance in humble-minded silence of universal dishonor, slander, and other accusations against our good name and deeds. There is no more sensitive wound for a righteous Christian soul than brazen insult and slander of his good intentions and actions, all done for the glory of God and the salvation, instruction, and benefit of mankind. However, a true follower of Christ will silently endure all such cruel blows, always gazing with his mind’s eye with reverence at the much-suffering Jesus, who remained silent during countless accusations and tortures, during the unjust judgment of the Jews and the Romans.

6. Are you enduring?

The sixth sign of a human will in concert with God’s will is readiness to accept all hardship and deprivation, to subject oneself to the worst dangers, to endure all sorrows and difficulties at the limit of human endurance, all for the sake of the glory of God and the fulfillment of His commandments, firmly trusting in God’s providence and help.

[…]

…the most clear sign of the accord between the human and divine will is courage in the face of troubles and sorrows, when we, willingly having rejected ourselves (i.e., our self-will), bear the Cross of Christ on our backs. In other words, we do not refuse to follow the dictates of the divine will along the difficult, narrow, and sorrowful path of a Christian life, courageously enduring all offenses, grief, diseases, and other misfortunes that God allows.

One of the most common problems I overhear among Orthodox is whether one is following God’s will or not. The Sunflower is essential reading to help resolve that.

Learn More: The Sunflower on Amazon

When the True God is abandoned, false gods rush in to take His place. One of the most treasured false gods in the Western world is the stomach. Whether through satisfying it with food or gaining pride by displaying it externally for others to admire, worshipping this hunk of human anatomy is causing many to risk their salvation.

Is my beloved stomach fed with delights? Did the last meal make me happy enough to feel that life away from God is worth living? Was I able to momentarily forget all my problems with meats and fats and sugars that produced a glorious mouthfeel of mush against my tongue and palate? For most people, every day is a feast day. Every day must have animal products and luxurious foods that excite the flesh and passions. There is no limit to our eating besides the physical size of our stomachs, but even that can be overcome by training it to distend beyond its anatomical size.

My life is far from God, my consciousness burns me, so I eat as much as I can. While chewing the sweet or savory food, there is no God but my mouth pleasure, and since food is often seen as life’s principal source of happiness, there are not two or three meals a day but one continuous meal, filled with engineered snacks and the incessant sip sip of caffeinated sugary drinks that give me the “energy” needed to compensate for my gluttony. When pleasure is sought from food, any hour is fit for eating, even if you just happened to eat. We don’t eat to live but live to eat.

If it’s not pleasure that I seek from food, it is vainglory and pride. Is my stomach flat enough? Does the opposite sex think my stomach is attractive? Is it pleasing to the eyes of those viewing pictures of my body on the internet? The gym is full of people who stare intently at their stomachs from every angle as if they were a scientist peering through a microscope. The smallest imperfection must be identified and targeted for elimination with religious fervor through strenuous workouts, diets, and intermittent fasting. The stomach has to be ironing board flat! It must look perfect in the mirror! There cannot be a blubbery bulge, a fold, or even excess hair around the belly button. YouTube experts must be sought and training programs studied so that this piece of flesh in the middle of our bodies looks perfect and sublime.

Who cares if the inside of our soul is filthy and full of darkness and demons and death as long as our stomach is flat and toned, with the muscular ripples that proclaim our bodily superiority to others? The blessed with washboard abs examine their stomachs in the mirror daily, caress them lovingly, the supple firmness, and select clothing to immodestly display it to the masses. Because of our stomachs, we are exalted, we are somebodies, we are loved by strangers who will desire us because of it alone. Even before old age arrives, we already have a bulletproof plan in place to ensure it remains the best-looking stomach around, and no expense, medical procedure, or workout regimen will be spared to ensure this end. To maintain our stomachs, we’ll starve ourselves if we have to, with a zeal that surpasses the pagans and their worship of stone idols.

“A soul moved by physical beauty reveals that it is moved only by this vain world; that it is attracted to the creation and not to the Creator, to clay and not to God. It makes no difference if this clay is pure and does not have the mire of sin in it. When the heart is drawn to earthly beauties, which though not sinful are still vain, it feels a worldly and fleeting joy. It is a joy that brings with it no divine consolation, no fluttering of the heart from spiritual exaltation. When however, we love and desire spiritual beauty, then our souls become whole and beautiful.” —Saint Paisios in Spiritual Counsels

The young fornicators make a god of the outside of their stomachs. The rest care about their hourly mouth pleasure. Both have strayed from the royal path, both have missed God and worship a part of creation instead of the Creator. Only the Orthodox Church, with its weekly practice of fasting, treats the stomach not as a god nor as a source of pride or vanity or pleasure but as a human organ that must function according to God’s plan. Its appearance is not treasured or glorified. It is not sated beyond what is needed to do one’s labors and worship Lord Jesus Christ. You don’t stare at your stomach longer than you stare into your soul. You don’t grab an extra bite if you already feel full, or eat beyond what you need for your daily duties, and to help you achieve this ideal, for approximately half the calendar year, you are told to constrain your portions and struggle against your desire for foods that contain meat and dairy, which comprise the ingredients of the tastiest, most satisfying dishes and sweets. And daily you pray to the Lord God in humility—not bodily pompousness—to recognize what a wretch you are, whether you have a six-pack or not. Outside of the Church, the royal path is impossible to achieve, and the stomach remains a god in one way or another, besides a host of other false gods empowered and promoted by Satan and his fallen angels.

“This kind [of demon] goeth not out but by prayer and fasting. (Matthew 17:14-23) If this kind goes out by the prayer and fasting of another person, then it is even less able to enter one who fasts and prays. What protection! Although there are a slew of demons and all the air is packed with them, they cannot do anything to one who is protected by prayer and fasting. Fasting is universal temperance, prayer is universal communication with God; the former defends from the outside, whereas the latter from within directs a fiery weapon against the enemies. The demons can sense a faster and man of prayer from a distance, and they run far away from him so as avoid a painful blow. Is it feasible to think that where there is no fasting and prayer, there already is a demon? Yes, it is. The demons lodging in a person, do not always reveal their presence, but lurk there, stealthily teaching their host every evil and turning him away from every good thing; so this person is certain that he is doing everything on his own, but meanwhile he is only fulfilling the will of his enemy. Just commence prayer and fasting and the enemy will immediately depart, then wait on the side for an opportunity to somehow return again. And he truly will return, as soon as prayer and fasting are abandoned.” —St. Theophan the Recluse

The stomach is not the only fleshly organ we make a god of, but it might be the most common. I insist to you that your stomach won’t save your soul, no matter how flat and toned it is. Your stomach won’t give you eternal life no matter how many delicacies you feed it. It was created by God as a way for us to digest food so that we may seamlessly live a life in Christ with Him at the center and not our appearance or the pleasure received from whatever Frankenfood laced with seed oil that titillates our taste buds. If we insist on making a god out of our bellies, putting it above Lord Jesus Christ, we will miss the reason for our existence, and have an eternity of tears to ponder our mistake.

Read Next: Why Do You Get “Hangry”?

Strength In Weakness is a booklet authored by Bishop Irenei of ROCOR that I picked up in the Jordanville monastery bookstore. It offers a simple but clear answer for those who are confused as to why God allows us to suffer.

The spiritual fruits of suffering

Suffering has the power, despite its origin so often in tragedy, to draw us into a better character of life—and this God permits, for He knows that it can change us.

[…]

Suffering opens the reality of the heart—what is good within it, as well as what is bad and requires healing. In such a circumstance the life of the Gospel is tested and made perfect—for that which is tested is tried, and that which is tried becomes stronger, like iron in the forge, and the weakness of man’s nature is made mighty and capable of bearing the grace of God.

[…]

…suffering befalls us for many reasons and from many sources. Some suffering comes from God, Who rebukes and chastises those whom He loves; some comes from the world; some from ourselves; some from the demons. But whatever its origin, the suffering that we receive in faith is that which can save us.

[…]

St. Maximus the Confessor: “Suffering cleanses the soul infected with the filth of sensual pleasure and detaches it completely from material things by showing it the penalty incurred as a result of its affected for them. This is why God in His justice allows the devil to afflict men with torments.”

Strength through suffering

…in order for God’s power to be made perfect in a man, that man must become weak. He must be rid of the “strength” that resides in his flesh and his will, and learn to be emptied of its illusive power. Then, in a life that is weakened of all its self-possessive fortitude, broken down into spiritual emptiness (often, precisely through physical trials), the Lord fills the heart with a strength that at last has room to reside there.

This book would be helpful for those who are experiencing feelings of despair during a difficult trial, such as a major illness, divorce, or general life crisis. It can give you “fast-acting” medicine to help endure the pain. On the other hand, a “slow-acting” medicine that also helps you understand why God allows us to suffer from a more big-picture view is God’s Revelation To The Human Heart by Father Seraphim Rose.

Learn More: Strength In Weakness

Last year I published 69 articles. Out of those, here are the top ten most popular based on page views:

10. 7 Ways To Stop Heart Palpitations And Improve Digestion

I researched my condition and conducted some experiments to find out what was going on. It turns out that my heart palpitations stem from two main causes: magnesium deficiency and improper digestion.

Read The Article

9. Stop Eating Seed Oils Challenge

All chain restaurants have a “Nutrition” section on their website that lists all the synthetic and unnatural ingredients they use in their “food.” For the restaurants you frequent, check out the ingredients in the meals you usually order. I’ll save you some time: they are all loaded with seed oil.

Read The Article

8. Hugs Are Dangerous

Another reason not to hug is that it becomes impossible to properly evaluate and vet a woman for marriage when you are in a state of even mild passion, and if you’re trying to evaluate a woman you’re having sex with–forget it! You might as well marry a woman sight unseen to at least have a chance at a marriage that doesn’t end in divorce!

Read The Article

7. Bankers Rule The World

It’s safe to assume that a politician is controlled if his country is a member of the Bank of International Settlements, the central bank of central banks. If you happen to control the BIS, you essentially control the world.

Read The Article

6. The End Of Roosh Hour

It was quaint to think that, upon repentance, I could seamlessly incorporate Christ into all my existing activities, but some activities are so predominately secular that they must be abandoned entirely.

Read The Article

5. I Am The Peasant Revolt

The plan of the regime was simple: culturally sterilize the white population, their greatest threat to power (as clearly evidenced by the recent Canadian truckers’ protest), and replace them with atomized non-European people who will obey any directive to come and reside in the United States to enjoy its first-world comforts.

Read The Article

4. 4 Reasons Why Lifting In Gyms Is A Bad Idea

There seems to be a competition among gym-going women to see who can display the most skin without technically being naked according to local ordinances.

Read The Article

3. Forecast Of The End Of The World

It is my opinion that the regime believes the only way they will survive is if they are able to monitor and control all financial transactions that comprise human life, which would allow them to manipulate the economy in any way they see fit to serve their interests without destroying it, and in a way which would allow surplus or problematic citizens to be removed from centers of power, commercial activity, and the public square to die off in a controlled, predictable, and gradual manner

Read The Article

2. 33 Things Christian Men Should Know About Women

The more secular a woman is, the more likely she will set out to deceive a man without ever believing she is being deceptive. How this plays out is that everything will seem to be going well with her while in a romantic relationship, and then one day you are blindsided by her shocking behavior.

Read The Article

And the most popular article I published in 2022 is…

1. Vegetable Oils Are Toxic

I suspect that many of the chronic health problems Americans face today, and which the pharmaceutical industry is only too happy to treat with expensive medicines, are caused by the consumption of vegetable oils, moreso than a sedentary lifestyle.

Read The Article

From this list, I take it that my readers most enjoy my writing on food, health, Jewish power, the end of times, and women. I plan to continue writing about these topics for 2023 in addition to what I learn concerning the Orthodox faith.

Read Next: How To Attract A Woman As A Christian Man

The silenced, censored, and slandered have recently experienced an incredible reversal of fortunes on one of the largest social media platforms on the internet: Twitter. The malodorous fog that has hovered over it for the past decade has been blown away by a man named Elon Musk. While the platform hasn’t quite become perfect, I can’t believe I can breathe in the fresh air of freedom and truth like in the days before Jewish organizations such as the ADL and SPLC wrapped their slimy tentacles around Silicon Valley’s biggest companies. Elon Musk has shined a bright light on the diabolical influences of Twitter and scattered the liars and transgressors. Through his triumphant actions, he is on his way to becoming a savior for conservatives in a similar way as Donald Trump, but therein lies an incredible danger if he builds the trust of men only to lead them away from the Kingdom of God and into the deepest layers of hell.

Elon’s takeover of Twitter has been nothing but a string of victories for the righteous, and left me stunned that such a fast turnaround could be accomplished for a company of its size. Within only the first six weeks of becoming CEO, Elon fired large swaths of the Twitter workforce that was almost entirely leftist, replacing them with Asiatic men who know how to code; he banned much of the porn (including child porn) that previous management refused to address; he unbanned the banned, including my favorite Catholic Dr. E. Michael Jones; he depressurized the moderation to the point where you can talk about Jewish power without getting insta-banned, he removed the aggressive censorship policy on COVID; he allowed journalists access to files that revealed how previous management colluded with the Democratic Party and FBI; and he even helped share details of Twitter’s in-house blacklisting program that limited the influence of many Twitter users, including yours truly, judging by the numerous “I can see your tweets now” messages I’ve received since Elon took over.

Twitter before Elon vs Twitter after Elon pic.twitter.com/rnhsgWc2IN

— Lauren Chen (@TheLaurenChen) November 19, 2022

It’s not entirely clear if the platform allows me to doubt the paramount Jewish dogma of the Holocaustâ„¢, but nonetheless I’m gushing that so much speech is being allowed. Twitter is fun again, and before I came to my senses, I was sorely tempted to re-enter the insanity of the daily news cycle to receive massive dopamine spikes when tweets go viral and crushing withdrawals when they get less than 1,000 likes.

Can I pour my hopes and worldly desires for victory and justice into Elon Musk so that I can feel like a victor in this earthly life? Or is the fact that he’s doing so many things I like a sign that a big trap is being set by the prince of this world (Satan)?

This is a battle for the future of civilization. If free speech is lost even in America, tyranny is all that lies ahead.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 29, 2022

Who is Elon Musk?

Elon Musk is an immensely rich man who allegedly runs several successful companies with the freedom to rock the boat more than his oligarchical peers. He has a tendency to speak his mind, without a politically-correct filter, and gives at least the convincing exterior of someone who isn’t a slave to the elite agenda. It’s this man who has taken over a social media platform whose power is shaping the daily news cycle, opening the floodgates of truth that has been suppressed for so many years.

Elon may not be a big O oligarch like George Soros, who wields not just wealth but global political power, but big enough that he is at liberty to sometimes—from all appearances—follow his ego and do what he wants even if the media establishment doesn’t like it. Also relevant is his robust relationship history with women: so far he has sired ten children with three women. At least he’s a staunch heterosexual who enjoys the company of women, which is more than we can say about many members of today’s elite, but this is a low moral bar indeed. I also do not recall him forcing the companies under his control to perform gratuitous displays of gay pride in June. It’s possible that he even dislikes gays and prefers their behavior be performed behind closed doors as most reasonable people.

How about his spiritual beliefs? Only God can see in his heart, but Christians should know where a public figure stands on matters of the faith before they decide to support his causes or businesses. For example, if a man admitted to Satan worship and decided he’s opening a children’s charity, it would be safe to assume that children in the charity will be put at risk in some way, just like how children who are read by transgendered monsters are being groomed to not be fearful of dangerous men. Is Elon being predominately guided by God, the demons, or his fallen flesh?

Coarse jesting or blasphemy?

I’m not qualified to judge anyone’s faith, because I only need to look in the mirror and see someone who daily transgresses the Lord’s commandments, but I will attempt a speculative guess of his faith based on his public actions. It seems that he views Christianity as a sort of “wisdom philosophy” that can be the source of sound teachings, similar to stoicism.

Jesus taught love, kindness and forgiveness.

I used to think that turning the other cheek was weak & foolish, but I was the fool for not appreciating its profound wisdom.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 1, 2022

I’m amendable to changing that opinion, and perhaps he possesses an ascetic-tier faith in private, but I have not seen anything from him that suggests he’s leading an active Christian life with the aim of the salvation of his soul. His faith is for God to judge, but since he’s a powerful public figure, I use the information I have on hand to speculate about his disposition so that I can protect myself from being tricked or negatively influenced by him and powerful men like him. There have been two recent incidents, however, that made me wonder if he’s really behaving in a way that is pleasing to God.

First, the small matter. He shared a meme concerning Donald Trump that is—at the minimum—offensive to Christians. The image has a cartoon woman bent over a bed and beside her is what’s likely a depiction of Lord Jesus Christ with his eyes closed in prayer. The text that Elon typed is “And lead us not into temptation,” which refers to the Lord’s Prayer. We don’t know if Elon believed the man in the meme was Lord Jesus Christ or not, but I don’t know any Orthodox Christian who would pair the words of the Lord’s Prayer with such a suggestive image in order to make a point. This tweet is one indication—though certainly not proof—that he doesn’t take Christianity seriously beyond the level of wisdom teaching.

The second matter is more serious. This past Halloween, his costume was the “Devil’s Advocate,” a sort of warrior for Satan. The costume featured an upside-down cross encased in a large image of Baphomet, the occult symbol for Satan. At risk of diving into the weeds, the upside-down Cross is not Orthodox and is not at all used in any manner of worship. While some internet Catholics may claim that it’s a rightful symbol of St. Peter’s upside-down crucifixion, I have never seen a Catholic wear such a cross. If you see this cross in modern times, it is either on the demonic altar of the Church of Satan or on the necklace of someone who dabbles in the occult and does not follow the Gospel.

Elon’s notion of doing Satan’s bidding in a rebellious manner, as represented by a costume that displays clear Satanic imagery, is an indication that he is not an active Orthodox Christian, Catholic, or even Protestant. It doesn’t help that Elon uses a photograph of himself in the costume as his current Twitter avatar. Is he trying to signal where his “power” comes from? I know many individuals in various Christian confessions and have never seen someone displaying public fealty to wanting to serve in Satan’s legions, whether on the level of fantasy or not, while also claiming that they are actively on the path to salvation. This is Elon’s choice, and we are all free to pray for him, but his choice is relevant to us all because of the worldly power he has accumulated that affects us, especially those like myself who use a platform that he runs, Twitter, and who may have the option to use one of his products or services in the future.

The danger of Elon Musk is that he is executing Christian-like justice on Twitter by going after pornographers, Jewish censors, the Democratic party, and the FBI, building the trust of Christians, while displaying a level of devotion to the devil. If Christians write off his costume as playacting, which I have seen many do, and they continue to trust him, they will be disappointed in the future if he halts carrying out righteous justice and performs overtly evil deeds, and that is in the best-case scenario, because if Elon becomes a forerunner of the Antichrist (a prototype of the final evil ruler of human history)—and that’s a big if—and Christians still maintain their trust in him, he could potentially cause them to lose their salvation if they choose to follow him and Satan into eternal hell, in a way that we cannot currently foresee.

The slave girl and Nebuchadnezzar

In the Book of Acts, a demon-possessed slave girl was stalking St. Paul. The demon prophesied through her, which earned money for her handlers. (When demons prophesy they are often making good guesses or “predicting” things they are about to do.) She professed that Paul was a servant of God who “proclaim[s] the way of salvation,” which was completely true, but St. Paul exorcised her anyway.

Now it happened, as we went to prayer, that a certain slave girl possessed with a spirit of divination met us, who brought her masters much profit by fortune-telling. This girl followed Paul and us, and cried out, saying, “These men are the servants of the Most High God, who proclaim to us the way of salvation.” And this she did for many days.

But Paul, greatly annoyed, turned and said to the spirit, “I command you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her.” And he came out that very hour. But when her masters saw that their hope of profit was gone, they seized Paul and Silas and dragged them into the marketplace to the authorities. —Acts 16:16-19

Why did St. Paul exorcise her when she was speaking the truth? Because her truth could build trust in her listeners to later deceive them with lies that tear them away from the path of righteousness. St. Paul clearly showed us that we don’t need the help or aid of those who don’t serve God, even when they seem to be doing an immediate good deed. Of course, God through His infinite wisdom can use any sinner as part of His plan to save mankind—a prime example is how He used Babylonian pagan ruler Nebuchadnezzar to chastise the insolent Jews, going so far as calling him “My servant.” This chastisement was necessary to preserve the Jewish remnant and fulfill the prophecies of the coming of our Lord.

“Therefore thus says the Lord of hosts: ‘Because you have not heard My words, behold, I will send and take all the families of the north,’ says the Lord, ‘and Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon, My servant, and will bring them against this land, against its inhabitants, and against these nations all around, and will utterly destroy them, and make them an astonishment, a hissing, and perpetual desolations. —Jeremiah 25:8-9

Whether Elon fits the archetype of the possessed slave girl or Nebuchadnezzar—and we can all hope that his costume was merely coarse jesting—the danger remains that we must not put our trust in any man, especially one with worldly power, even if we approve of all his temporal political actions. We have a recent example of Donald Trump which exemplifies this danger.

The false savior’s path of destruction

In 2016, Donald Trump, the slayer of journalists, the grandmaster of 4D chess, the high-energy defender of everything Americana, was my hero and many others. I eagerly subscribed to his personality cult and hung a huge portrait of him making a thumbs up on my bedroom wall. He laid waste to the enemy on many fronts and was arguably the best President that all living Americans have ever seen, and yet what happened at the end of his term? He led astray his most committed followers.

Trump’s biggest supporters are today rotting away in jail when they attempted to cheerily support him on January 6, 2021. They instead fell for an insidious FBI trap that Trump was not prepared to handle or mitigate in the aftermath. Thankfully, he has offered to financially support the defense funds of many of the defendants, but is it consolation enough while they serve in solitary confinement?

Yet another group of Trump’s supporters may have done irreversible damage to their bodies if they took the coronavirus vaccine because of his incessant urgings. We don’t know their true number, and I hope it’s zero, but I wouldn’t be surprised if scores of boomers took the vaccine at least in part due to Trump’s unequivocal recommendation that the vaccine is safe. We now know the truth: the coronavirus vaccine is incredibly dangerous and has so far caused tens of thousands of people to drop dead, usually from a failure of their circulatory system. Whether willingly or unwillingly, consciously or unconsciously, Donald Trump played a part of the massive psyop to shorten the lifespan of American citizens. I’m not accusing him specifically of keeping people in jail or hurting their health, but I believe his influence ended up harming at least some of those who trusted him the most.

The Neuralink nightmare

Elon Musk has the potential to do far greater damage than Trump, without at all becoming President, not only because he owns one of the largest propaganda outlets in the world (with over 124 million people who follow him directly), but because he owns a company called Neuralink that has absolutely insane aspirations.

We’re aiming to design a fully implantable, cosmetically invisible brain-computer interface to let you control a computer or mobile device anywhere you go. Micron-scale threads would be inserted into areas of the brain that control movement. Each thread contains many electrodes and connects them to an implant called the “Link.” … We are designing the Link to connect to thousands of neurons in the brain, so that it may one day be able to record the activity of these neurons, process these signals in real time, and translate intended movements directly into the control of an external device.

The company has some good news: they only need to make a one-inch hole in your brain to insert a chip that will save you maybe three minutes a day of typing out text messages with your old-fashioned thumbs. Maybe in the future Neuralink will promise to make the blind see, the lame walk, and the deaf hear.  They are a mere six months away from human trials, and if the hand-chip-loving Swedes are any indication, I expect a long line of completely healthy people to volunteer for this ridiculous implantation. As if to confirm that this technology is evil, Bill Gates has begun investing in brain implantation.

The most immediate spiritual problem of Neuralink is the potential to affect your free will through its two-way communication ability. While the chip mainly receives your thoughts, the company has already tested the ability to control animal behavior by sending signals into the brain, and this two-way system is connected to the internet. A medical device like a heart pacemaker is designed to only affect the heartbeat and not your decision-making, and cannot be updated in real-time with the internet, but it doesn’t take a sci-fi writer’s imagination to see how a brain chip with internet access will fall under the control of hackers or whoever happens to run the company—the government, powerful black holes of capital like Blackrock, or perhaps more banally a bored employee who wants to play a prank on you by inserting homoerotic thoughts in your mind while you go for a stroll with your trad wife.

Is it really a stretch to imagine an evil owner of Neuralink pushing an update with the aim of controlling humanity, perhaps turning those with a chip implant into slavish zombies that are simply unable to process certain thoughts or resist specific types of sins that are profitable in some way for the owner’s power or depopulation agenda? (Sadly, a lot of people seem to be mindlessly living as if they already have an evil brain chip installed, including me in the past.) What will those with the implant do when it takes more assertive control over their thoughts and behaviors? It’s not like they can take out the chip themselves when it is behind a wall of cranial bone. They’d be captive to the software, the programmers, the CEO, certainly the Jews, and the devil himself, who will inspire the Antichrist during the end times to persuade humanity to receive something called the Mark of the Beast which looks strikingly compatible with what Elon is developing at Neuralink.

[The Antichrist] causes all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on their right hand or on their foreheads, and that no one may buy or sell except one who has the mark or the name of the beast, or the number of his name. –Revelation 13:16-17

To accept the Mark of the Beast is to make a consensual act of fealty to the Antichrist, a world ruler controlled by Satan. Taking the Mark allows the citizen to buy and sell (i.e. participate in commerce) and be a “good” person who is on the side of science. Those who do not get the Mark will not be able to buy and sell. It is not known what final form the Mark will be, but in the most literal interpretation, an implanted hand microchip linked to your identity would fit the bill, though it could take on a more metaphorical form that we can’t foresee. The holy Orthodox elders who are alive during that time will help us discern whether the Mark has arrived or not. —Forecast Of The End Of The World

While the Antichrist has a scary name, he will initially be charming, full of moral teaching, and beloved by the masses, especially among Christians. The point of the Antichrist from Satan’s perspective will be to condemn as many souls to hell as possible, so it won’t be enough for him to only target secular people who are already on their way there. Instead, the Antichrist must also deceive those who already have some faith in Christ, whether Orthodox or not, and take their souls by getting them to believe he is the savior of mankind in place of Lord Jesus Christ. If the secular world loves a new leader but all Christians hate him, I say that he’s not the Antichrist, but if Christians of various confessions love him and the secular world loves him, then I believe we have a contender, and so we arrive at the point of how Elon Musk is unfortunately a rough qualifier for this horrible role (more so than widely hated Donald Trump), because he’s doing righteous things that Christians like while owning a company that produces a chip that fits the mold of the Mark of the Beast and at the same time showcasing himself in a Baphomet costume that gives a level of honor and fealty to Satan, the enemy of mankind.

Is Elon Musk a forerunner of the Antichrist?

I do not believe Elon Musk is the Antichrist, but I do believe that he’s only two or three momentous decisions away from fitting a mold of a forerunner of the Antichrist, and this terrifies me because, while I am not seduced by him as much as I was by Donald Trump, and would never hang a portrait of him in his devil’s costume on my bedroom wall, I am rooting for him to dispense with justice and cleanse Twitter from corruption, pornography, and filth, while behind the scenes he advances technology that will almost certainly be used in some part by the real Antichrist of the future.

These “forerunners” of the Antichrist also direct that world-wide process which the Apostle St. Paul called “apostasy” (II Thess. 2:3). The essence of this process is Christian mankind’s ever greater departure from the genuine, uncorrupted teaching of the Gospel and the replacement of the Gospel commands with other ideals. The destructive nature of these ideals proposed to mankind by the Antichrist’s forerunners is that they sometimes seem acceptable for Christians, compatible with Christianity, while in reality they are profoundly opposed to it; they gratify human passions and lusts and confirm mankind’s fallen nature in its fallen state. —The Spirit of Antichrist and the Forerunner of Antichrist by Archbishop Averky

…[the Antichrist] will come in the capacity of a supreme benefactor of mankind, a benefactor and even protector of the faith and the Church, and he will expect overall recognition and the subordination of all nations. From the predictions of the holy fathers we know that not only will those who are total non-believers accept and submit to the Antichrist, but also seemingly the faithful and even Christian clergy, including those who hold the highest of office, will be beguiled by him. —On Apostasy by Archbishop Averky

If you’re not an Orthodox Christian, and instead are part of a confession that is melding with the secular world, you won’t have a good chance of resisting the charm and power of the Antichrist, and if you are Orthodox, you’re still at great risk and must be sober and watchful, for the devil prowls around like a roaring lion seeking to devour your soul, and it’s the souls of those in the True Church, the Orthodox Church, that are most prized by Satan since they can still receive the full inheritance of our Lord’s Heavenly Kingdom as compared to the heterodox confessions which have sadly strayed from the dogmas of the once-united Church.

I like Elon Musk’s recent actions, but he’s not my worldly savior and will never earn my trust. I must drill this into my mind every time I see him crush what appears to be the evil forces of this world, because with no evidence of a striving Orthodox faith, I must continually ask myself which side is influencing his actions. If it’s the side of evil, I expect him to act like the demon-possessed slave girl, to execute truth and justice temporarily to later flip the switch by serving as a forerunner of the Antichrist, hurling many souls into the depths of hell. We all hope that this will not be the case, but I do wonder if he realizes the immense spiritual danger he’s in. In the meanwhile, let us not be seduced by him, and instead pray for him that he may repent and be received in God’s Church, and use his power to further not the kingdom of Satan but the Kingdom of God, for the eternal glory of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

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1. The Cosmic Significance of Tsar Nicholas II [Link]

2. Combating the sexual passions [Link]

3. Refutation of Islam from an Orthodox perspective [Link]

4. Choosing a spouse [Link]

5. “One must not become accustomed to a miracle.” [Link]

6. The incredible vision of Saint John of Kronstadt [Link]

7. “To deny that God can work through matter is to deny Christianity itself” [Link]

8. How not to lose grace after receiving Communion [Link]

9. The apostasy of the end times [Link]

10. One must have humility to believe in the truth of the incarnation [Link]

11. “Whoever prays with his lips but is careless about his heart prays to the air and not to God; he labors in vain, because God heeds the mind and heart, and not copious words…” [Link]

12. “Condemn yourself that you saw a temptation in the desert, which means you wanted to see it, more precisely, you were disposed to seeing it.” [Link]

13. “There will be a great war between Russians and Europeans, and much blood will be spilled.” [Link]

14. There is no such thing as “conservative” or “liberal” clergy [Link]

15. How should American Orthodox view the Russian Tsar? [Link]

16. What were the events surrounding the birth of Lord Jesus Christ? [Link]

17. Fr. Seraphim Rose is a Pathfinder for Americans to Ancient Christianity [Link]

18. What is the Russian Church Abroad (ROCOR)? [Link]

19. They were betrayed by all but blessed by God [Link]

20. The grievous state of modern Christianity [Link]

21. The Life of St. Nicholas “the Turk” who converted from Islam and was persecuted for it [Link]

22. Only Monarchy Can Save Russia [Link]

23. 14 people who are subverting the Orthodox Church [Link]

24. The meaning of the Divine Liturgy [Link]

25. Francis of Assisi was in an obvious state of deception [Link]

26. Understanding the signs of the times [Link]

27. The Art and Science of Prayer [Link]

28. Saint of the Romanian communist dungeon [Link]

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The Ukrainian government, a puppet regime controlled by the United States since 2014, has been making steady progress towards the unthinkable: the complete banning of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC). If this happens, it will undoubtedly pave the way for the banning of Orthodox Churches in America. Via Reuters:

The Ukrainian government will draw up a law banning churches affiliated with Russia under moves described by President Volodymyr Zelenskiy as necessary to prevent Moscow being able to “weaken Ukraine from within.”

In a move condemned in Moscow, Ukraine’s National Security and Defence Council told the government to draft the law following a series of raids on parishes that Kyiv says could be taking orders from Moscow as Russia wages war on Ukraine.

Other outlets called the Ukrainian Orthodox Church a “sect” in order to downplay the move, but make no mistake that it is the canonical Orthodox Church in Ukraine with the vast majority of Orthodox believers (70%) and succession to Saint Vladimir the Great, the baptizer of Kievan Rus in 988 AD, and then on to the Holy Apostles through the Greeks of Byzantium.

Constantine the Great was for the Roman Empire what Prince Vladimir was to be for Rus, for the latter performed the great work of converting the entire Russian people to Christ. His life is exceptionally instructive for us. He clearly attests to the regenerative power of Christian teaching; how—when it is taken to heart and brought to life—it can utterly transform the human soul. The pre-baptism Vladimir and post-baptism Vladimir were two completely different people. At first brooding, cruel, suspicious, coarse, a lustful barbarian, after his baptism he becomes a tender, welcoming prince, full of love and mercy, a true father of his subjects.

The other Orthodox church in the country, the Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU), hereby referred to as the schismatic church, was established in 2018 as a geopolitical attack against Russia thanks to its recognition by Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople, whose political aspirations lead him to continually meet with American officials. He granted the Tomos of autocephaly to the schismatic church in spite of vocal outcry and protest from Orthodox in multiple countries. Parishes of the schismatic church exist today because they were obtained through intimidation, seizure, thuggery, and outright violence.

First came the American coup in 2014 that took over the country and then little coups of the individual churches, with a design to move the geopolitical center of Ukraine from Russia to the West and its spiritual center from the Patriarch of Moscow to the Patriarch of Constantinople. These moves were not done to serve God’s will, save Ukrainian souls, or engage in missionary outreach, but for the sake of benefiting the power of the Western elites and the wayward Orthodox hierarchs who love them.

History tends to repeat itself, and so it becomes instructive when we start asking who is behind the proposed shutdown of the Ukrainian Church. If your eyes and ears have been damaged by mainstream media consumption, maybe it’s better to start off with a hint: those involved are the same group who proclaimed that they have no king but Caesar, who accepted a curse upon them and their children when they crucified the God-Man, who were called by our Lord the synagogue of Satan for aiming to serve as the devil’s go-to henchmen for carrying out plots and schemes meant to flush the world down into a sewer of lies, immorality, depravity, and lawlessness. In the desert, Christ refused Satan’s temptation for the world’s kingdoms, but members of the synagogue were quick to make lucrative deals. The actions and behavior among the most elite of their members against Christians and humanity throughout world history have positioned themselves to be the enemy of mankind. Of course I’m speaking of the Jews, whose accumulation of world power has reached such an apex that it is impossible to speak the truth of any cultural, political, financial, or military matter without eventually being labeled an “anti-semite.”

A rap star by the name of Kanye West, who has been vocal about his Christian faith (he released a music album in 2019 titled “Jesus Is King”), had a recent run-in with the synagogue when he truthfully pointed out their immense power. Shortly thereafter, his credit and bank accounts were shut down, he was slandered by multiple media outlets, and his sponsorship deals came to an abrupt end. According to him, speaking the truth cost him two billion dollars. He was also menacingly threatened by a member of the synagogue, Harley Pasternak, that if he didn’t shut up, he’d be put into a drugged-out “zombieland.” The Jews really showed Mr. West how disenfranchised and oppressed they still are by making quick work of Mr. West’s life.

I must point out that the President of Ukraine, Zelenksy, is Jewish. Most of the cabinet directing Joe Biden is Jewish. The U.S. government official he’s posing with at the top of this article, Antony Blinken, is Jewish. It’s so boring to mention these facts, but many people don’t know them because the “fact-checkers” and “news” disseminators happen to be the same group who don’t want you to know that they are in control, just like how Satan, as he floods your mind with temptations, filth, and hopelessness, does not want you to know that he exists, and will only make his evil handiwork known when you start making big steps into developing Orthodox spiritual life.

From the pages of the Gospels and the Book of Acts, Christians have documented the same people performing the same tricks. They persecute the Church and shut down those who speak the truth in the public square and who want to maintain God-fearing moral traditions, but even the Ottoman Mohammedans didn’t shut down the churches. Even the Bolsheviks, who martyred more Christians in the 20th century than the Romans did in the 1st, only de facto shut down the church, not de jure as is being attempted now. But why wouldn’t the synagogue of today launch a direct attack? Who will challenge them? Who will call evil evil and brace for the removal of their income and prized comforts for the sake of our Lord Jesus Christ?

Russian Christians, in 1917, came up against a vigorous force, which had been created not in their own country in their own tradition, but in the secularized West, and which had found its leader in a German Jew [Karl Marx] who had made his home in England. —The Russians And Their Church by Nicolas Zernov

You must understand, the leading Bolsheviks who took over Russia were not Russians. They hated Russians. They hated Christians. Driven by ethnic hatred they tortured and slaughtered millions of Russians without a shred of human remorse. It cannot be overstated. Bolshevism committed the greatest human slaughter of all time. The fact that most of the world is ignorant and uncaring about this enormous crime is proof that the global media is in the hands of the perpetrators. —Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

In the market towns and cities invaded by Jews, local authorities are either in a state of bribery, a state of blackmail, or in a state of destruction. —Corneliu Zelea Codreanu in For My Legionnaires

If stout resistance is absent when the Ukrainian Church is banned, its faithful dispersed, and its remaining assets seized, next on the chopping block will be Orthodoxy in America, first the Russian Church Abroad (ROCOR). If the synagogue can shut down the Ukrainian Church and its 12,000 parishes, would it be easier or harder to shut down ROCOR with its 280 parishes in the United States? Who will put their neck out to defend the Russian Church Abroad? Will the Protestants or Catholics care enough to send out at least a tweet of support?

Before you think that other Orthodox jurisdictions will come to defend ROCOR, based on their “scientific” response to COVID, I expect them to convert their multiple spoons into multiple knives to thrust into ROCOR’s back. One Church will make a statement that they never liked us anyway, another will send a letter saying they were concerned that our traditionalism was “cloaked in extremism,” another will say the matter is “unfortunate” and offer ROCOR orphans the opportunity to venerate icons while wearing an N95 face mask, and another will task a liturgical commission to rid its services of anything Russian. If they simply distance themselves from the big bad Russians who according to the lying members of the synagogue must be an agent of Vladimir Putin, they think they’ll be safe, but with those actions they would become altogether dead and easily scattered when Satan deems the time is right, and looking at my watch now it seems that true believers are not far away from tribulations that will turn Sunday from a day of piety and fellowship to one where we must go underground and wonder if this is the day when the hired agents of the synagogue will surround our secret church and force us to make a decision whether we are ready to lose our life to save it.

Before you seek out the diabolical guidance of a Fordham academic or a homosexual “Orthodox” scholar who receives institutional money, it’s worth asking yourself why the canonical Russian Church is being directly assaulted by Jewish authorities yet again a mere 105 years after the Bolsheviks came into power: because it is the true and faithful Church, the savor of Orthodoxy, the preserver of Christian traditions, the upholder of dogmas unchanged, and if ROCOR in the USA goes, the other Orthodox Churches who kept quiet will rot both from the inside out and the outside in. They will be infiltrated and liberalized at double speed, moved from their roots on the rock of Eastern Orthodoxy to a husk placed atop a garbage heap. Only then will members of those Churches ask themselves, “Why didn’t we defend the Russian Church when we had the chance? Why did we tolerate their persecution?”

The essence of the ideology of the Russian Church Abroad consists of her complete and uncompromising refusal to accept that worldwide Evil which has spread broadly now over the face of the whole earth, and which, to a greater or lesser degree, has brought under its control all aspects of human life—not excepting religious and church life. —Archbishop Averky in Membership in the Russian Church Abroad

…no one else is reacting. Who cares if people are trying to destroy the Church. They’ll tell you, “Oh, it doesn’t matter!” They’re like feathers in the wind, so long as they are comfortable. How can they possibly be comfortable? They’ll be made comfortable by Satan in the end. —Saint Paisios of Mount Athos in Spiritual Awakening

Whether you are in the Russian Church or not, this is one of the boldest attacks ever on the Body of Christ, and yet, distracted by news closer to home, by politics, alleged COVID outbreaks, and cool memes on Instagram, and without the benefit of exciting battle footage of Slavs killing each other, the legislative actions by the Ukrainian Jewish puppet of the American Jews to wipe out the Ukrainian Church is being set in motion without even a shrug. Satan’s plans are coming together at rapid speed, and unless you make a spiritual stand today through repentance and prayer, and a bodily stand by speaking the truth to all those who have ears, the storm will come to your own church. It will be picked up and blown away with ease while the secular horde, overcome with demonic indifference to anything holy, will not even bother to care.

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Seraphim stood in line to receive communion, his arms crossed against his chest, right over left. He had prepared himself. The previous night he went to All-night Vigil, he moderated his dinner meal (as tempting as it was to engorge his belly on a Saturday night), he refrained from all internet entertainment, instead reading a book that taught him how to discern the will of God, and he did his pre-communion prayers, which took half an hour. His restriction from worldly concerns was even more rigorous in the morning. He put his phone in airplane mode and prayed the Jesus Prayer during the entirety of the one-hour drive to church. No liquid or food touched his lips since midnight. By the time he got to church (early, to hear the 3^rd and 6^th Hour prayers before Liturgy), he was supple of heart, ready for the grace that God deemed him worthy and necessary to receive based on his spiritual labors. Not even an old woman dressed inappropriately, wearing a hip-hugging green skirt and bright red lipstick without a head covering, could distract him from receiving in pure faith the Body and Blood of his Savior.

He partook and then drank of the unconsecrated wine and ate a piece of antidiron. He glanced toward the back of the church and there by the door was a familiar face. “No, it can’t be,” he said to himself. He looked again, and she stared meekly at him, not into his eyes but at his chest, as if she did not want to intrude on his worship. “Is it really her?”

Normally, Seraphim would close his eyes and pray while everyone else received communion. Sometimes he would feel a serenity, a clearing of his thoughts, and other times he would shed tears that started without cause but then had gained the cause of realizing his unworthiness before God. He never knew how God would impart grace unto him each Sunday, if it would be palpable or not, but it seemed to Seraphim that the more seriously he took communion, the more he felt.

How many of those in his church really believe that the bread and wine transform into the literal Body and Blood of Jesus Christ? Judging by the number of people who miss communion for the most trivial of reasons, including a man’s excuse that he had to mow his big lawn, not many. Otherwise, every Sunday you’d crawl into church on your hands and knees, you’d withstand a three-hour drive each way, you’d hide whatever illness you had that was described by atheist doctors as deadly contagious, all to unite with God, but in these late times even a few drops of rain is enough of an excuse to stay home and worship the god of the stomach and the god of comfort. “I had a hard week,” the catechumen of apostasy says. Was your week harder than the week the Lord suffered for your sins? Were you scourged this week, betrayed, abandoned, denied by those you loved, and then crucified? Seraphim’s mother, a carnal woman who does not walk in the way of God, refused his invitation to Pascha one year because she “didn’t have anything to wear,” and this was said near a closet that is the size of a child’s bedroom.

After recognizing the woman’s face, Seraphim could not concentrate on prayer. He could not concentrate on the hymns sung after communion, the prayer of the priest from behind the ambon, or the church updates. He only came to himself at the very end, when Father Sergius welcomed visitors and asked for their names, and the woman who broke his heart, who was the biggest reason for him being received into the Church, said “Elena” in a timid, sweet voice.

It was someone’s name day. Many Years was sung, the cross was kissed, and then there was a polite dash to the food hall to begin feasting (you had to be among the first in line to secure a coveted meatball to your plate), though many remained in the temple to chit-chat about the weather, home improvement plans, and the like. Seraphim, not quite prepared to talk to Elena, stood in the front of the church without looking back and was the last one out. He accepted that the only food left for him would be supermarket salads made with soybean oil.

—

Seraphim met Elena four years ago in Chicago when he was more commonly known as Tyler. Elena, a new arrival from Russia, was working as a waitress at Pequod’s, a famous deep-dish pizzeria whose cult following loves thick, corrosive layers of tomato sauce. To Seraphim, a regular, everything about her titillated his senses… her Slavic accent, the sculpted angular features of her face, her direct style of communication where she told you exactly what she thought, her unnecessarily long hair, her seeming lack of all anxiety, and her waif-like figure, a welcome sight when compared to the local women who had indeed made a god of their bellies.

Luckily for Tyler, Elena was craving the “American experience” as defined by those who produce television and Hollywood movies exported abroad, and she wanted to go on a date with an American man. He asked her out in a roundabout American way, suggesting to “hang out,” and she corrected his lack of masculine courage, saying, “What are you talking about? Tell me what you want.”

Taken aback, Tyler stiffened up. “I want to take you out on a date.”

“Yes I will go on a date with you,” she replied.

Their first date was successful, and they went on many more. A physical romance developed. The fact that it took three whole dates to get her into bed confirmed to him that Elena was a girl of quality; she didn’t sleep with just anyone. He chose her, and she chose him, and this was meant to be in a way that made Tyler’s life more pleasing. He made sure to show her off to all his friends, because even an average-looking Russian girl (though Elena was clearly above average) would impress men who had an American girlfriend. Is it really the fault of American women, who were trained in the school of gruff “self-esteem” and cold-hearted “assertiveness” that they lost the faculty to perceive the feminine and act like a woman? In Tyler’s mind, the answer was yes: it was their fault, because they’re pretending to be something they’re not, as if a cat, not pleased at its puny meow, attempts a bark worthy of more ridicule than the worst of meows. It’s not only the women who deliberately dress like men who are transgender, but all of them to some degree have internalized the satanic inversion of transgenderism.

One of his friends, after beholding Elena’s beauty (he had never seen a Russian girl up close before), told Tyler, “You’re winning at life, bro, you’re so lucky.” Yes, Tyler was winning at life. He had an unfulfilling but stable job, his weekly dining options were satisfactory, he understood how to use all the apps on his phone that eliminated at least three minutes of inconvenience per day, and the vein in his right bicep would pop out if he did only twenty pushups.

Enamored by Elena, he would stare at her face while she was sleeping. He decided that he could gain pleasure and satisfaction from that face for the rest of his life… along with her body, of course. He soon wanted to take the relationship to the next level, but the “American experience” was valued by Elena more than he knew. She greedily ate at the trough like a pig.

—

The new wrist tattoo that Elena got should have been like a firetruck siren to Tyler. It was a generic rose, a totally gratuitous defilement of her body, a Holy Temple before God, a truth she was taught as a child by one of her grandmothers in the motherland. It added neither value nor intrigue. She thought it would make her unique, as if she wasn’t created unique already, but it cheapened her instead. She did not know that her accent made her sufficiently endearing. The way she pronounced ‘th’ sounds as ‘z,’ and the way she pronounced ‘w’ sounds as ‘v,’ as in the sentence “Let us vatch ze veedeo” did more to make her an individual, a child of God, than the permanent ink stain on her wrist that was put there by a high school dropout who gave her a 10% discount because he wanted to sleep with her. Stupid Tyler, already seduced by Elena’s external appearance, blind to the internal, as he was blind to his own internal, actually complimented her. “Very cute,” he said, encouraging her rebellion against him and the natural order. With his finger he grabbed her wrist and rubbed on the tattoo, as if subconsciously trying to erase it, his soul knowing that she is sustaining permanent damage as part of her American experience.

What happened next should not have been surprising to Tyler, but it was. He was at her house on a Sunday afternoon, which she shared with six other people. After a few Aperol spritzes, a trendy European drink that Elena introduced to Tyler, they were getting handsy and moved to her room. Elena plopped down on the bed and as Tyler was about to dive in after her, he noticed something sparkling on the floor. He bent down and picked up a half-inch piece of foil and made out two letters: “ex”. Tyler recognized the font immediately. It was a piece of wrapper from a Durex condom. The carnal arousal Tyler had for his girlfriend, fueled in part by the Aperol spritzes, immediately vanished, and out of instinct he investigated her tiny closet, which no man could have possibly fit into. Tyler didn’t know whether to cry or yell. The piece of foil rested on the palm of his hand and he stared at it for a full minute, as if realizing that everything must now change.

“Yes, but it meant nothing.” She fixed her shirt and sat up on the bed. “Don’t be upset. Listen. I always wanted to do one-night stand. It was an experience I wanted when I was in Russia, but never did it because I lived in a little village. Only one time I wanted to see what it was like. And I did not like it. But it’s finished.” She said it all matter-of-factly, as if it was completely logical for her to do what she did, and perhaps even obligatory as a modern female. How could she continue life otherwise without conducting this experiment? She stopped one step short of saying how her infidelity would help their relationship by making her more sure of her love for him, a statement that many of her kind have used on many broken-hearted men.

“But I loved you,” Tyler thought. He dared not to utter this aloud, to give any satisfaction to the one who broke him. As weak as Tyler was, as ignorant as he was, he could not tolerate cheating. The mere thought of her body being used as an amusement park by a man who wanted a thrill made him sick. So he ended it. The cool and calculating demeanor of Elena evaporated, and she responded to him in a fury, stating what an idiot he was to leave her for a trivial reason, and that he would regret it, since she only made a “small” mistake. Her outburst somewhat satisfied Tyler, because it did show she had feelings for him, but it wasn’t enough to stay with her.

If she were a man, he thought, she’d be a serial killer. How could she cheat in the name of experience? She was cruel, a destroyer of hearts. All women are evil and selfish. And they are supposed to be the caring ones? To add salt to the wound, no longer could he go to the Pequod’s near his house. Instead he had to settle for an inferior pizza without all the tomato sauce that his digestive system had adapted to.

Tyler began to lose interest in women, and even Chicago. When a job opportunity came up in St. Louis, he took it. There was nothing tying him to Chicago anyway. All the pleasures of a city get boring after a while, yet those very same pleasures in a new location make them seem novel, or at least perceived differently, so less than a year after Tyler broke up with the woman who impressed all his friends, and with the hope that life could be better, he moved to St. Louis.

While Tyler was trying to restart his life, Elena was treated like the Grand Duchess of Chicago. Just by the fact she looked like a woman and acted like a woman attracted hordes of suitors while she waitressed, and quickly the suitors turned into gentleman callers. The offers they made for a single night with her exceeded the monthly incomes of most men. This confirmed to her that men were “stupid.” Since she already accepted casual sex for free, why not get paid for it? So she became a prostitute, a word that she would never use to describe herself, but that’s what she was, and she quit her waitressing job to devote most of her free time to enhancing her appearance, which went on to attract the exact type of guy who would pay money to be with her appearance, which further confirmed to her that all men are dumb beasts, and so the spiral downward propelled itself, yet in her mind the sugar daddies she surrounded herself with made her think of how correct she was about men all along.

In St. Louis, Tyler had no luck finding Elena’s replacement. He would sleep with a woman and then she would ghost on him, or he would ghost on them, but it was one woman who insinuated the night after that he took “advantage” of her that made him realize the danger of the game he was playing. A memory of Elena surfaced in his mind. One night in bed, she told him that as a baby in Russia she was baptized in the Orthodox Church, and when a baby is baptized, the priest holds it up in the front of the church and makes the sign of the cross with its chubby body. That image stuck and his curiosity grew, and since he stopped going out on Saturday nights, preferring to watch movies instead, he decided to visit a Russian Church in St. Louis.

The story of a man being set on fire by God is an old one, and does not need to be repeated here, but when Tyler stepped foot in St. Basil the Great Orthodox Church, he felt that it was more home than his home. He inquired for two months, was a catechumen for nine months, and then was baptized by triple immersion. Spiritually, Tyler became Seraphim. Three years after he was baptized, when he began to pensively wonder what was God’s will for him concerning marriage, and whether he should become a monk, Elena showed up at his parish.

—

Competition for women in the parish was fierce. There were too many single men who wanted to marry, and not enough single women. There were a few young handmaidens in the age range of 13-17, but when they graduated high school, their parents sent them off to the University of Satan. They would inevitably fall into a pit of some sort. You could see the change manifest itself when they visited in winter and then summer–their clothes became more snug, their hair shorter, piercings would appear in random locations and then came the tattoos, first little crosses and then flowers, infinity symbols, and music notes. And that was in the better scenarios. More often, the women would completely disappear, and then ten years later you’d see them in a big-city parish, worse for wear, with a man they forced to get baptized, but such is the will of God, and a lot of these women, after their extended Polonaise with the devil, came back to the Church and were saved. That is good for them, but not so good for the men who remained in the parish and wanted to get married to an Orthodox woman.

Two men in the parish, Nicodemus and Cyprian, were eager (some say desperate) to find a wife. They had brought all sorts of women to the parish, including nominally Muslim women, but regardless of how strapping and handsome they might’ve been, unless a woman craved God first before a husband, she would run away from them, not knowing that it wasn’t a man they were running away from but Lord Jesus Christ, his Blessed Mother, and all the saints, whose presence in the form of the holy icons reminded their souls of the Day of the Dread Judgment. It has become impossible to find a secular woman who didn’t think she was above being judged, because all her life she was taught that judgment of any kind is evil and wrong, and that essentially everyone goes to heaven. Such a person cannot even tolerate church icons, with the eyes of the saints reminding them of how far they’ve strayed.

Seraphim prowled the nightclubs for years, but never had to face the level of competition for women he was facing in the parish. In the nightclub, he figured out that most men, while under the influence of alcohol, did more to repel women than to attract them, so it was his deliberate strategy to allow a doofus or two warm up his target for a real man, which he hoped would be himself. Rarely did a man in the club know what he was doing. They all played the casino game of the flesh, hoping for a score that they believed had something to do with their charm or looks but had just about everything to do with a woman’s emotional state at the exact moment he started talking to her (and whether the guy she was already sleeping with was busy that night or not). Seraphim learned that it wasn’t the men in the club who were actively dancing and flirting that he had to worry about. No, he had to worry about the man who was hardly moving, because like a snake he was conserving his energy and plotting his strike, and if the snake had beat him to a target, he would lose the girl, because two snakes cannot feed on the same meal.

Those days were long gone, and Seraphim hated to recollect them, but the reality of parish courtship forced him to remember it. When a new woman enters the church (usually a friend of another parishioner), she is first subjected to smiles and Hellos from the men, and then in the fellowship hall they angle to sit near her. The most popular opening line is “So what did you think of the service?” They ask for her religious background, share their own testimony of coming to Orthodoxy, and all this is done properly and piously, but Seraphim is getting up there in age, and cannot react as fast as the young men who feel they are inspired by the Holy Spirit to discern whether this young lady is the one that they can soon have babies with, because a six-month timeline from meeting to marriage seemed to them perfectly sufficient when in a state of obvious grace.

One time a woman who was slightly older came alone to the church. Seraphim thought that this woman could be for him, since the young men all insisted on a bride who was younger than themselves. He was on his way to talk to her, to ask her what she thought of the service, when Cyprian, who was Greek by birth, popped out of nowhere with a piece of baklava in his hand and gave it to the visitor, explaining how this particular baklava is unfortunately mass-produced and does not taste as good as what his beloved Yia-yia makes, but it’s close enough to give her the general idea of how baklava should taste (Cyprian was always surprised by how few Americans had ever tasted baklava). Harking back to his days in the clubs, Seraphim thought he’d wait it out, but the Greeks know how to talk and talk for hours at a stretch, and Cyprian closed down the parish hall with her, only to update Seraphim the next week that she was “too old” for him and does not want to date her. She never came back to the church again.

Not every man can be as charming as the Greeks. Nicodemus, whose birth name is George, grew up playing too many video games, to the detriment of his social ability. He knows that women like funny guys so he tries to be funny, or at the very least entertaining, but he fails on all fronts and has developed a reputation as the church “autiste.” He’s so awkward that he once set a girl’s hair on fire. It happened like this: a new girl was in the church and Nicodemus wanted to beat Cyprian and the others to the punch by chatting her up immediately after the Liturgy while still in the temple. He introduced himself to the handmaiden by the candle stand and went into a monologue about what candles mean. Then he removed one of the candles from the holder and started waving it around like a sparkler, to show her how “the smoke rises up like our prayers.” Next thing he remembered was the smell of burnt hair and a shriek from the girl. Thankfully the fire was put out before she was badly burned.

Seraphim was disappointed that some “game” could emotionally attract an Orthodox woman. He meditated on the issue and concluded that this was due to two reasons. First, no Orthodox woman in the parish is a nun who is attempting to completely annihilate her flesh. A part of her—sometimes a strong part of her—craves pleasure, and the best way for a woman to gain pleasure is by being desired by an attractive man who makes her laugh and feel the whirlwind emotions of romantic desire. Survey all the Orthodox women in the world and ask them if they would marry an ugly man with no charm but with saintly faith, or an attractive and charming man who had a mustard seed of faith. Most of them would pick the latter in the hopes that she can change him into the saint. She would even justify this effort by saying she needs a “project” or “purpose,” but the reality is that it feeds her ego to think of herself as a potential savior when really she just wants to be with someone who makes her flesh feel good in the moment. Second, and perhaps more severely, women are legally allowed to pick their own husbands. At the risk of entering the realm of misogynistic thought, Seraphim was not too confident about a woman’s logical faculty in weighing the pros and cons of a new suitor. His experience with Elena proved that point. She weighed the pros and cons and decided that infidelity was a good idea because she would “learn” about herself. Many times Seraphim asked himself if women should be permitted to choose their husbands, but when he told that to Cyprian, he was shot down as being anachronistic. Nicodemus, however, whose latest joke about anime girls fell flat with the group, had been intrigued with the idea, because it would be much easier for him to please a father by displaying his commitment to providing for a future family than it was to impress a woman who owned a smartphone and had access to endless entertaining content that the devil curated especially for her. Seraphim could turn on the charm if he wanted and compete with Cyprian, but he didn’t want to, because it reminded him of how he got a girl like Elena in the first place, who on this extraordinary day was glancing at him periodically while talking to the priest’s wife in the fellowship hall.

“Did you see the new girl?” Cyprian asked. “She looks Russian.” He rotated his entire torso to triangulate her exact position.

“Wasn’t your ex-girlfriend Russian?” Nicodemus asked Seraphim.

Seraphim hesitated to tell them the truth, but felt it was best to do so to avoid any potential embarrassment.

“Yes. That is my ex-girlfriend. Her name is Elena. I don’t know what she’s doing here. I haven’t talked to her since we broke up so she didn’t know I was at this parish.”

“Whoa, really?” Cyprian asked, reevaluating his plan of attack. “The one that cheated on you with another guy?”

“That one.”

“But she looks so wholesome,” said Cyprian. “Her head scarf is covering all her hair instead of leaving the longest, most fluffy parts exposed at the bottom. I mean, it’s so modest that it’s possible she has no hair at all.”

“I won’t be able to burn her hair,” added Nicodemus, hoping for a callback snicker, but no one bit.

“How old is she?” Cyprian asked. He needed new information before he could decide to pursue or not.

“She’s 14 years younger than me. We dated when I was 34 and she was 20, and that was a few years ago, so she’s around 23 now.”

Cyprian nodded his head, deciding that she would be a worthy pursuit as long as he proceeded delicately, which by Greek standards was not delicate at all. “So what are you going to do? Do you want to date her again?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t thought about it.”

“She does look wholesome,” Nicodemus said, echoing Cyprian’s sentiment.

“Do you mind if I talk to her?” Cyprian asked, completely oblivious to the time Seraphim might need to make a decision on a woman with whom he was seriously involved.

“Can you wait a minute for me to think about this?” Seraphim answered, annoyed.

“Oh sure no problem.” Cyprian put his hands in the air, submitting to Seraphim’s wish, but shortly after, while on his way to get more chips and salsa, he couldn’t help himself and complimented her on the pattern of her head scarf, a dicey opening line. Elena was nice to him, smiling all the while, but didn’t even ask for his name and glanced over his shoulder towards Seraphim. Cyprian got the hint and politely bowed out, deciding not to fetch a dessert for her, but the tenacity of melanized men must never be underestimated, and Cyprian was determined to try again before she left.

Theodora came to sit with Seraphim and Nicodemus. She was only 19 years old, with an attractive face, but no man desired her because she was fifty pounds overweight. Everyone in the parish were sinners, but for the most part, only the priest knew of their sins. Theodora’s was on display to all. She felt ugly in her body and projected that ugliness outwards to relieve her inner unhappiness by endlessly complaining about everything, especially the men in the parish, saying they were “boys who want to LARP as monks,” when really they would prefer the life of a monk to marrying a woman who was already hefty before birthing her first child. A fat person does not need to be told they’re fat, but at times when they describe their life problems, and the “bad luck” they’re facing concerning romance, they seem not to know that it primarily stems from their obesity and addiction to food. Women may have strong fleshly desires, but they are nothing compared to a man’s desire for a beautiful woman who is thin.

“I don’t like her headscarf,” Theodora said, complaining about Elena.

“What’s wrong with it?” asked Nicodemus.

“The colors are too loud. It’s like she wants people to look at her. We need to bring modesty back. Everyone is after attention.” She held her phone up as if she were taking a selfie. “Look at me… I’m pretty… I have a pretty scarf.”

“There’s something wrong with your eye makeup,” Nicodemus said. Theodora took out a pocket mirror and fixed herself. She went on to complain about the food, how it was too cold, and then she complained that the temperature in church was always too hot. Seraphim periodically looked at her to force a weak smile, and remarked to himself that she at least had a pretty face.

Elena was slowly making her way toward him, getting stopped every few feet. Cyprian was on standby mode near the bathroom. He had a belief that he must strike when the iron is hot, that the window for opportunity is short, but based on the 100% failure rate of his romantic endeavors, the iron has not once been hot for him.

The priest’s wife came over and introduced Elena to the table. Theodora was full of smiles and compliments. Nicodemus, in a rare moment of social calibration, dragged Theodora away so that Elena and Seraphim could talk alone. She sat down opposite him and stared at his empty plate while he unconsciously squeezed his lips shut, signifying that he was not quite ready to talk.

Elena spoke first. “I’m surprised to find you here.”

“Why?” Seraphim replied. Then he thought to himself, “Easy, big boy.”

“You didn’t… or I guess we didn’t… have interest in the Church when we were together.” Her accent was slighter than in the past. Her English had become perfectly fluent.

“When I moved to St. Louis, I decided to visit, and I felt the presence of God, so I converted.”

There was a long pause. Then Elena decided to open up her soul. “I went really wrong after you,” she said. “It took me a while to realize it, but I woke up one day and I wanted to kill myself for what I became, but I remembered a memory from when I was a child. My grandmother would take me to church—my parents were practically atheists—and it was Theophany. She told me that when Jesus Christ was baptized, the heavens opened and God the Father said that this is my Son, with whom I am well pleased, and then the same happens when we get baptized, that God and the angels celebrate, and when I remembered that, I began to cry, because what have I done since my baptism that is worthy of the singing of angels? I came to America and came to believe I was a princess, and it was hard not to act this way because men were treating me in ways that made me believe I was much better than I was, that I didn’t need anything but my body or my accent. I didn’t say no to any temptation, because I thought the point of this life was to enjoy it. I did many wrong things.” Tears welled in her eyes, and she made no attempt to stop them. This was the first time that Seraphim saw her cry—not even when they broke up did she shed a tear. He had decided that she was so heartless and cold that she was not even capable of tears, but many tears were falling from her eyes at that moment, and Seraphim had to look beyond her towards the wall and focus his eyes on an icon of Archangel Gabriel so that he would not cry also.

“It’s a good thing that you came back to the Church,” Seraphim managed to reply.

“And you, are you baptized?”

“Yes, it feels like a long time ago.”

“Is it Seraphim from Sarov?”

“No, of Vyritsa.” He hesitated to give her credit for his conversion, but seeing her in such a repentant state, he thought it would be kind to do so. “One positive that came from our relationship is that you put the idea of the Russian Church into my mind, because I didn’t know about it before. Our relationship wasn’t for nothing… at least from my perspective.”

“I’m glad… I’m glad.” Elena put her hands on the table and looked at Seraphim intently. “I did not know that you would be here, but I’m happy, because I wanted to apologize for what I did to you. I acted horribly, like I didn’t have a heart, and after you, I did things that were worse. It does not seem like you are angry with me right now, but please forgive me.”

Without a second of hesitation, Seraphim replied, “I forgive you. And I apologize for any hurtful things I may have said or done.” Elena bowed her head.

Seraphim’s mind flooded with thoughts. Has it really happened that Elena had become a devout Orthodox woman through the grace of God, a type of woman he had been fantasizing about marrying along with many other men in the parish like his friends Cyprian and Nicodemus? Elena wasn’t wearing a drop of makeup, yet her prodigal living did not affect her outward beauty. If possible, she was more beautiful than before. Her body was concealed, and Seraphim wouldn’t have stared at it even if it wasn’t, but there was no sign of excess damage (there were only two more small tattoos that she got after their relationship ended, one on the top of her foot and the other on her hip). During their conversation, Cyprian looked on, trying to judge the tenor of their interaction and if there would be a reconciliation or not. It would bother most men to marry someone who had been with a friend, but Cyprian was despairing, not because he was getting too old, but because of the passionate nature that many Greek men have. He had fallen backward a couple of times, and saw marriage as the best way to deal with that.

“Do you live in Chicago?” Seraphim asked Elena.

“No, I moved here. Everyone is trying to leave Chicago. The crime is so bad. Most retail shops have closed. Then you try to order online, but your packages are stolen, either at your door or from the truck… or from the train. It’s worse than what my parents told me of Russia when communism ended.”

It turned out that they lived only ten minutes from each other by car. To Elena’s mind, this was all Divine Providence. Before, when she was prostituting herself and swimming in money, she thought that she had completely gotten over Seraphim, but now she reasoned that she really did love him. She knew he was in St. Louis, but did not know where, and did not know that he had joined her Church, so to see him here was a powerful sign that could not be ignored. Her interpretation was that God had destined them to get married. To Seraphim, her demeanor seemed more flighty than what he remembered, but that was because she was in a dream state, imagining their reconciliation, his tender embrace, their little wedding in this very chapel, and even children.

Seraphim wasn’t dreaming like her. He had accepted not long ago that his cross may be loneliness, and was ready to depend on God to help him endure. Elena showed up to his church, in the best possible condition she could be, and a part of him wanted to forget about the past and start anew, but how could he? They fell together in sin, he corrupted her and she corrupted him, and then she betrayed his trust and stomped on his heart. While Elena stared lovingly into his eyes, the memory of the condom wrapper came to his mind. He flashed a grimace that Elena did not notice and shifted in his seat. This beautiful creature before him, beautiful not because of her appearance but her repentance, stabbed him in the back. She didn’t kill him, it’s true, but in one sense he did die that day, necessitating the act of being reborn through baptism, where he could begin his second life while still in the flesh.

“Remember that night we used a cardboard box as a snow sled?” Elena did not wait for Seraphim to respond before continuing the memory. “You ordered a humidifier, and for some reason it came in this massive box. There was that big snowstorm that ended with ice, which made the hill near your apartment really slippery. You put me in front and then we went down. You were yelling at me to shift my body this way and that way, and you tried to steer with your hands. We were going so fast!” She was telling the story as if it didn’t matter whether Seraphim was listening. “We didn’t know it but the kids made a bump and we flew in the air and landed on the ice. I was bruised for days!”

Seraphim gave a meek smile, a much more restrained display than Elena expected. Did he not have fun with her in that naturally spontaneous moment that was perhaps the only truly spontaneous moment of their relationship? He did have fun, but the memory on his mind at that moment was a different one, a painful one.

After Elena finished recounting the story, little Balthazar came up to them holding one of his action figure toys. Balthazar looked at Seraphim with an excited smirk and asked, “Is that your girrrrrlfriend?” Elena intended to let out a prolonged “Awwww” but Seraphim immediately addressed little Balthazar as if he were a grown adult with a curt “No.”

Elena was confused. Her fantasies and recognition of destiny were not matching up with Seraphim’s demeanor. How could he not see what she saw? Is he really still hung up on the fact that she used an app to order a man to her apartment while they were sinfully dating? Is he really not going to forget her mistake when it’s so obvious that God has put him in this church to marry her, and put her here to marry him? Is he really going to be lonely for the rest of his life?

Seraphim waved over an excited Cyprian and introduced him to Elena. “This is my Greek friend Cyprian, he’s a charming fellow.” Elena didn’t want to meet Cyprian, or any other man. She tried to rationalize that maybe Seraphim was just being friendly to set up a full-scale charm offensive where he would court her like an Orthodox Christian man should, but he went completely quiet on her as Cyprian talked and talked. Elena wished at that moment that she could read Seraphim’s mind, but if she could, these are the words she would hear: “Lord, I forgive Elena for what she did to me, and please forgive me for what I did to her, but I do not want to marry her. I will continue to bear this cross of loneliness and seek for my will to be absorbed into Your will to prepare for life eternal.”

Seraphim waved over Nicodemus. “This is my friend Nicodemus, he’s a serious Christian.” Two single men were at the table, staring at Elena, hungry for her love. Just a few minutes ago were the beautiful fantasies, the fairy-tale wedding, their children wearing cute wooden crosses around their necks. Seraphim got up from the table, told Elena that it was nice to see her again, and he’s happy that she returned to the church, and then walked to one of the deacons to have a conversation about mystical Byzantine theology, leaving Elena with two men who would cut off their ear if it meant marrying an Orthodox woman. Cyprian was so self-absorbed in his conversation, and Nicodemus so oblivious to body language, that they did not notice that Elena was occasionally wiping tears from her face.

A little over one year later, Elena was married to Nicodemus. Seraphim was the best man, and seemed cheerful that he successfully played matchmaker. Elena gave Theodora a collection of Russian beauty tips early in their friendship that could be summed up with the phrase “starvation diet.” Theodora lost all her extra weight and became quite ravishing. Her complaining stopped. Cyprian was the lucky man to marry her.

Previous Story: Heaven Or Hell

For most of my adult life, I lived as a child in an adult body. I never grew out of the desire to play in a selfish way, to pack every day with something “fun” that took my mind away from the reality that I have a soul. Only when I came back to Christ have I begun to put away the childish notion of having fun.

The word “fun” is not found in the Bible. At no point did God command us to idolize fun, pursue it, or engage in it, yet I don’t have to look back many years to see that I elevated fun as a mainstay in my adult life. Fun is an unserious pursuit of pleasure, ease, whimsy, and irreverence that often involves entertainment, novelty, and laughter. The epitome of fun is the modern amusement park, of partaking in stimulating rides and games for many hours until one gets nauseous from overstimulation and extreme movements, yet we do not need to physically drive to an amusement park to duplicate its effect upon our souls, to spiritually drive far from all seriousness and only pursue things that give us a spike of dopamine and adrenaline, cheap thrills that distract us from our vital mission before God.

In 1982, Father Seraphim Rose wrote that if a society values fun, they are not a serious people [PDF]:

When [a modern] child becomes an adult, he naturally surrounds himself with the same things he was used to in his childhood: comforts, amusements, and grown-up toys. Life becomes a constant search for “fun” which, by the way, is a word totally unheard of in any other vocabulary; in 19th century Russia they wouldn’t have understood what this word meant, or any serious civilization. Life is a constant search for “fun” which is so empty of any serious meaning that a visitor from any 19th-century country, looking at our popular television programs, amusement parks, advertisements, movies, music—at almost any aspect of our popular culture—would think he had stumbled across a land of imbeciles who have lost all contact with normal reality. We don’t often take that into consideration, because we are living in this society and we take it for granted.

Fun is a relatively new idea that entered the world when material ease and comfort became idolized. If your material needs were easily being met, and you did not take your faith seriously, you would experience black voids of “boredom,” where the antidote was not serving others or communing with God but engaging in fun. The easier life got, the less we thought of God and the more fun we desired, until the only thing we desired in life was fun itself, the idol that is on full display in pure form within any major international city on Friday and Saturday nights. The apotheosis of fun may be the existence of a band by the same name who a decade ago sang about all the impious, drunken fun that we must enjoy.

My friends are in the bathroom getting higher than the Empire State
My lover she’s waiting for me just across the bar
My seat’s been taken by some sunglasses asking ’bout a scar, and
I know I gave it to you months ago

Tonight
We are young
So let’s set the world on fire
We can burn brighter than the sun

This song (i.e. work of social engineering) was extremely popular when it came out, and I know that because I had fun in the venues that played it, alongside other adult children who were totally missing the point of life and desperately needed to be reminded that our Creator has expectations of us that have nothing to do with fun.

Mentally, we have all struggled to shake loose a childish desire to enjoy ourselves without responsibility or seriousness. How often does it happen to you that, after a tough day at work or a particularly long Orthodox service, you want to clock out and “enjoy” yourself? You desire to unwind, relax in front of mindless entertainments, “take it easy,” drink and feast and engage in idle chatter. Instead of seeking a reward from God for our labors, we instead reward ourselves in instant time to the point where the length of fun we experience exceeds the length of true labor we performed. Surely, we will have our reward in the form of an alcoholic buzz, a laugh from an internet meme, or a feeling of pride when we let loose our tongue concerning others, but that’s all we will receive from our misguided pursuit.

When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things. For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall know just as I also am known. —1 Corinthians 13

In this verse, Saint Paul was referring to spiritual maturity, because during his time I imagine there were no adult children he encountered whose mission in life was to have fun. We’ve fallen so badly with our obsession to have fun and turn this life into a fit and a laugh that the early Church Fathers didn’t see the need to address that which didn’t then exist. To put it starkly, I have behaved worse than a pagan even though I was born after the revelation of Christ, and I am currently in the Orthodox Church and still must battle with my need to kick back and clown around like I were still a boy.

During moments when I’m engaged in fun, my tongue is inflamed, ready to commit sin, and I’m not thinking of God. I become temporarily hypnotized with the notion of pleasing my body with a cheap laugh, spectacle, or piece of gossip, and miss the mark when it comes to serving God. I don’t know how much longer I will live until I’m judged by Him at His Judgment Seat, but what a disaster if I were to leave this earth in the middle of having “fun”! There was a time for fun in my life, and that was childhood, but I am no longer a child, and so I must struggle to put the desire for fun behind me once and for all.

Read Next: Girls Just Want To Have Fun [Pre-Christian article]

The biggest stumbling block to communing with God is pride. Many Church Fathers have said that most sins, if not all, stem from pride. If Satan can amplify your pride then he can get you to commit all manner of sin. This will be made easy if you are born with one of three natural gifts that effortlessly make you proud: beauty, singing ability, or intelligence. The more of these gifts you have, the easier it is for Satan to turn you away from God.

1. Beauty

…the root of all sin is self-love. From self-love proceed pride, mercenariness, love of pleasure; and from these proceed all other passions, eight of which are considered to be chief, while the rest are without number. Every sinner has all the passions—some in deed, others in embryo—because everyone who sins conducts his affairs with self-love, the seed of all passions or sinful inclinations. —Saint Theophan the Recluse in The Path To Salvation

The worst trait to have in modern times is beauty. The world has become so carnal that possessing just a smidge of beauty, whether you are a man or woman, will lead to limitless material benefits and sexual offers that are hard to refuse. I have witnessed how beautiful women are treated, and I feel sorry for them. To no fault of their own, they are tempted multiple times every day by young men who want to date them, older men who offer them gifts and money for favors, modeling agents, casting agents, charming men in Italy, policemen, politicians, and on and on. What never happens to an unattractive woman is daily background noise to one who is beautiful.

With such a tsunami of temptation, often starting from pubescence, a woman develops enough pride in her beauty and what it can give her that she sees no need for an Orthodox faith. Why supplicate her will to God when there is an unlimited number of men around the world at her beck and call, who treat her like a false god? She merely needs to read one of the hundreds of unread dating app messages on her smartphone to order up her own male slave. What woman can resist this if she hasn’t been brought up with a zealous love of God?

While being a handsome man may not lead to as many material benefits, it does lead to continuous sexual benefits. Such a man will never have a hard time securing female attention and sexual partners. The women who love his appearance will keep him distracted and carnally pleased enough that he also doesn’t see the need to pursue the faith. Even worse for men is that their pride can elevate to stratospheric proportions, to the point that they believe they are without fault. A beautiful woman may look in the mirror and still see a flaw that she cries to others about, but a handsome man may look in the mirror and think he’s some kind of human god. His pride can actually end up separating him from God more than a woman who is tempted at a far greater rate.

2. Singing Ability

Pride is denial of God, an invention of the devil, the despising of men, the mother of condemnation, the offspring of praise, a sign of sterility, flight from divine assistance, the precursor of madness, the cause of falls, a foothold for satanic possession, a source of anger, a door of hypocrisy, the support of demons, the guardian of sins, the patron of pitilessness, the rejection of compassion, a bitter inquisitor, an inhuman judge, an opponent of God, a root of blasphemy. —John Climacus in The Ladder of Divine Ascent

I can’t sing, but I have observed the effects of those who can. During a concert, a male singer receives enraptured and adoring looks from women who have decided that are ready to be intimate with him—just from his singing ability alone. This phenomenon even affects women in the audience who have boyfriends or husbands. The singer doesn’t have to be famous or a major rock star, and he doesn’t have to be good-looking. If a man sings well in a tiny concert at a hipster café, he can probably pick from half of the women present with whom to at least go on a date. This makes him feel that his singing is a superpower that will get him what he wants in life instead of God.

Once I encountered a woman who was not attractive in my eyes, but because she was an incredible singer, she comported herself with a proud air as if she were a celebrity. While men don’t generally flock to female singers because of their singing, female singers still receive limitless compliments that elevate their pride. Satan will be quick to come in with thoughts convincing her that she deserves an elevated material existence without any need for God.

3. Intelligence

The flatterer is a servant of devils, a guide to pride, a destroyer of contrition, a ruiner of virtues, a misleader. Those who pronounce you blessed, lead you astray… —Ibid

If you’re ugly and can’t sing, there’s one more source for you to gain unlimited pride: intelligence. If your IQ is at least 115, which is one standard deviation above the norm, you will be filled with thoughts of intellectual supremacy. If your IQ is 130, it will be a constant temptation to not identify all the people around you as dumb and you as someone who should be their leader. You develop a superiority complex that causes you to not empathize with your fellow neighbor or have compassion for them. You believe that the unwashed masses are “beneath” you and not deserving of the material benefits that you’ve received according to your intelligence. Such an idea has infected oligarchs of the West to the point where their agenda involves massive depopulation through heinous means involving cultural degeneracy and medical poisoning.

Most of my pride has come from my intelligence (it’s fine if you believe I don’t have any). My attractiveness to women varies but my brain productivity is stable, so I have existed for many years in a state of mental superiority. I believed that I was better than other people because I was smarter than them, and they should shut up and listen to me because my big brain visibly pulsates at a more rapid frequency. Not only did this lead to pride, but I developed a false confidence that all my thoughts were correct simply because I was smart. In reality, my intelligence allowed me to better rationalize actions and behaviors that were completely wrong, sinful, and abusive. I believe the intelligent are even more susceptible to delusion because they believe they can never be tricked due to their intelligence.

Conclusion

‘Praises exalt and puff one up; and when the soul is exalted, then pride seizes it, lifts it up to heaven, and casts it down to the abyss.’ —Ibid

Woe to the man or woman who is intelligent, beautiful, and can sing! Within them will be a constant fountain of pride that not only stops them from humbling themselves before God, but which also leads to regular sins of the tongue and body. As someone who has decided for Christ, I’m happy to state that I’m steadily declining in physical attractiveness and also that I can’t at all sing. I may possess some intelligence, but I have my odious past to confirm that it cannot be trusted nor can it be salvific without the Orthodox faith. If you have at least one of these natural gifts, you must be on guard that it does not become a source of pride and distance you from the Lord God. Unless our gifts are used to serve God, we’re using them unwittingly to serve Satan instead.

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Young single women in the Orthodox Church don’t stay single for long. Since the ratio of young men to women is so high, it doesn’t take long for single women to be taken off the market. As Orthodox men calculate their prospects, a common question is asked: “How can I attract a woman?”

In the past, I developed a lifestyle around answering this question. It inevitably involved transforming myself into a man I thought women would be attracted to. I exaggerated my strengths, concealed my weaknesses, lied without ceasing, uprooted myself to locations where it was easier to meet women, and engaged in numerous sins to win over a woman’s fleeting affections. I can’t help but chafe when a man asks me how to attract a woman because—without spiritual considerations—the answer that “works” is to deceive and manipulate.

To attract a woman, one can mimic the approach of the Protestant Churches and be “seeker sensitive.” You could identify your target (the woman), find out her desires, and then mold yourself to satisfy them, even if that’s not who you are. You become a phony to, at the minimum, lie by omission so that she becomes attracted to the “best version of yourself.” You toss overboard the useful but socially mundane gifts that God has given you and instead summon qualities you don’t possess so that the women of this evil age lust after you. If they like a muscular man and you are puny, you hit the gym with urgent zeal. If they like a funny man and you are not, you practice comedy. If they like a “bad boy” but you are not, you must insinuate that you are a great sinner (if you served time in jail, that would be a plus in their eyes!). The whole idea of wanting to attract a woman presupposes that your current state is not attractive, and that you must transform both your physique and personality into that which pleases a woman to satisfy her in a carnal manner while using the flimsy pretext that it is all being doing for “spiritual” reasons.

Can you not already see how seeking to attract women makes an idol out of them? We are supposed to transform ourselves into children of God through prayer, obedience, and worship, and we attempt that with hardly any vigor, but when it comes to being liked by a woman, we are ready to change ourselves wholesale to be with a female creature who was made in our image. Indeed, wanting to attract a woman inverts the natural order, because we were made in the image of God and women were made in the image of man. Before you even meet her, by possessing a desire to win her over, you’ve already stepped foot into the pit. Without even knowing it, and in the most subtle of ways, she will control you as long as the ensuing relationship lasts, directly or indirectly.

Attempting to attract a woman through techniques or tactics is secular behavior, and I know this because I did it for nearly two decades, and learned exclusively how to do so from secular sources. There is nothing Christian about modifying your essence and nature to be more pleasing to women than God while they are busy modifying their essence and nature to be more pleasing to men than God. There is nothing Christian about becoming handsome or socially astute through effort in order to excite a woman, to be vainglorious to attract the vainglorious. No, you do those things not to please God but to please yourself through the female flesh. I wholeheartedly condemn all efforts at “self-improvement” or “transformation” where the aim of your effort is to attract a woman instead of serve God. Men who are desperate to find a wife think they must attract a woman to please God when really they must please God so that He sends them a suitable woman. Surely it is better to evaluate a woman that God sends you versus one you met using sales tactics while talking to dozens of women on internet apps so that maybe one desires the result of your false transformation enough to get into a relationship with you.

The correct question to ask is this: How can I identify a woman who recognizes my love for Lord Jesus Christ? Instead of manually attracting a woman through superficial changes that clash with your God-given qualities and gifts, you instead use your eyes and ears to identify the one woman who wants you to lead her with faith. Notice the word “one.” You don’t need to attract a lot of women: you only need to find one woman who sees your own attraction for Christ. This means you can come across thousands of women who discard you as if you were trash, who do not see your love for God and call you all sorts of insulting names, and you will be tempted to fall into despair to think that no woman will ever love you, and be tempted to inject yourself with testosterone and wear cool skinny jeans like they do in Sweden, but you should deny that instinct, stay true to the faith, and wait for God to enlighten a woman that you are her match, and to enlighten you that she is your match, because an Orthodox marriage is not a sales drive or a numbers game, but a game of patience and faith where we put our full trust in God to deliver what we need for our salvation and the salvation of others.

It is infinitely better for you to do a prostration to please God than a rep at the bench press to please a woman. It is better to make a spontaneous prayer glorifying God when you behold a beautiful mountain or vista than to make a worldly joke that you hope will make a woman laugh. It is better to shed tears of repentance at your sins than to puff out your chest to make a woman think you are an alpha male. I did all the latter and have nothing to show for it but darkness and sin. If you don’t think that you can get married using God alone, without tips and advice from the secular world of which I once preached, then you have not a woman problem but a spiritual problem.

Allow me to predict your future if you go on trying to attract a woman outside of the clean waters of the Church. In order to transform yourself into an “attractive” man, you will create a fantasy persona and wade into the sewage of the world, of dating apps and the like, and get the attention of a lukewarm woman who likes your personality, your skin-deep transformation, who transformed herself to attract a man and uses no less deception than you. You may enter a relationship with her, a pseudo-courtship infused with secular behaviors, because she was on the app after all and demands physical and emotional pleasure like all other women on the app, but you will rationalize to yourself that you’re doing God’s will and all will be fine. After some time passes, you become tired of wearing the mask, of being someone you’re not, but she is attracted to the mask, the false persona, the man full of self-pride and self-will, and you are scared to take it off because the pleasure and validation her affections give you will be withdrawn. Soon her secular flaws become more glaring as your attempt to flirt-to-convert her into the Church reveals that she’s only converting because she wants to receive the secular benefits of being a married woman, not because she wants to worship God in his True Church. You’re overly committed and don’t want to lose her. You fall for the false despairing notion that no other woman will love you due to your impatience and lack of trust in God. You decide to marry her before she flees into the arms of another man. How many good years will you have until the expensive bill comes due? I’ve seen this bill with my own eyes concerning other men, and let me tell you, this is a bill that is so expensive that no man can pay it in full. The payment plan lasts for the rest of your life, and if that’s God’s will for you then so be it, but I fail to see how using deception to hunt for secular women who were never serious about the faith in the first place is what God ordains for Orthodox men.

My advice for men essentially boils down to “be yourself,” but with a huge caveat: you are like Christ. Be yourself where yourself is Christ, who the Church teaches us to be like, and identify a woman who wants to cleave into one flesh with an icon of Christ, of which you will be upon marriage as you establish a “little church” in your family home. What additional advice do you need in this case? You need to be a man with basic strength, courage, and communication ability. You need to notice when a woman stares at you for more than two seconds or when she asks around about you, and petition God to help you meet this woman and get to know her and discern if she could be your wife. That’s it! If you think I’m exaggerating, this is all I’m using in my own life, for anything else will kindle my passions and undoubtedly lead to sin. While I have reams of secular experience with women, and can analyze their behavior on the most minute level, it’s only useful when giving advice to other men in various stages of relationship difficulty, usually with women enflamed with worldly desires. For myself, however, I use my senses to identify which woman is interested in me and then my brain to discern her level of faith and then my heart to lean on God for help, because no matter how much experience you have with women, you will never see inside her soul and know for sure if she’s the one. It is effortless for her to pretend to be someone she’s not, whether subconsciously or otherwise, and since women are more socially advanced than men, you will be tricked and end up marrying a stranger, but know that God can see into her soul, and He knows who she really is, so don’t listen to me or other men when evaluating a particular woman: lean on God instead.

If you make googly eyes with a pretty woman and think to yourself how you can attract her, you’ve already lost. You’ve made her a false idol and have decided to trust your eyes and fallen flesh more than God. I pity you because you remind me of myself! You’re already in the pit and don’t know it. Through your weak faith and self-trust, you are about to make this woman into your god, and your inevitable fall may shatter you. I wish I can relay to you all the horror stories I’ve seen and heard that sum up thusly: the more desperate a man is to cleave to a secular woman, the more painful the outcome will be. It’s possible you may get an adorable child or two from it, but there will never be peace for them if the home is broken, and there is a high chance they will grow up to be broken themselves, and every day will be full of regret. Wake up, Christian man! A woman is not your God! Do not attempt to attract anything besides the grace of God within His Orthodox Church, because you will be surely chastised, as I have been chastised, of wasting most of your life with secular women who keep your eyes away from God and onto the pleasures of your body and the feeding of your will and pride. Love God and simply wait for a woman who sees your love and wants to love God the way you do, and then you’ll have a good chance, and God will be with you. Whatever cross we have to bear in this life, whether it be a painful marriage, divorce, singledom, or something else we can’t foresee, may God give us the strength to bear it so that we retain our Orthodox faith until the end.

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I have an overactive imagination. Not an hour of the day goes by when I don’t insert myself into a future that is not yet realized. Such a faculty may be useful for some aspects of creative work, but most of my fantasies are not directed on a specific outcome. Instead, I’m led astray by my imaginative faculty when I’m trying to undertake normal tasks like reading, writing, or listening, and it regularly distracts me when I should be serving God with zeal and vigor. I’m often in a fantasy land that creates an escape from my Christian duties.

What is imagination? Unlike a distinct memory, a relic of something that has already happened, an imagination (or fantasy) is something that has not yet been realized in material existence. You are using your mind to conjure a scene, situation, or outcome that—at the current moment—is fiction. Therefore, imagination is future-oriented, whereas a memory, whether enjoyable or not, is past-oriented. Your ability to recall memories is limited by the fixed limitation of memories, but with imagination, there is no limit to what you can invoke. Taken to the extreme, imagination may lead to a complete break from reality.

Orthodox Church Fathers state that imagination comes from the nous, which is the eye of the soul. The more damaged your soul, and the further you are from Lord Jesus Christ, the worse your fantasies will be, to the point where they cause you to sin and completely intrude on the ability to have a normal adult life.

…imagination is one of the faculties of the soul that plays an important role in the action and development of passions. It forms the image of a person or thing within us, then provokes sensual pleasure to capture our nous. Once taken captive we commit sin.

[…]

Since the Fall man’s imaginative faculty has run wild and is full of fantasies. Apart from man, the devil also has imagination. For precisely this reason fantasy and imagination are an efficient conductor of satanic energy and the devil uses them to ensnare people. Fantasy and imagination are a bridge between man and the demons, which the demons cross to trouble him.

—Metropolitan Hierotheos of Nafpaktos

When classifying imagination, I noticed two variables that determine the severity of one’s disconnection from reality. The first variable is the proximity of the fantasy. Does it take place in the next hour or does it take place in a faraway future? The second variable is the likelihood that the fantasy will happen. Are you imagining the conversation you will have with your friend as you are driving to his home or are you fantasizing about being a world-famous singer? If the imagined event is proximal and likely to happen, your fantasy can possibly be described as a rehearsal, but if it is distant and not likely to happen, your fantasy may be a dangerous form of delusion.

Here are five types of imagination that I have noticed myself doing…

1. Things right about to happen

A type of imagination that I’ve never heard labeled as dangerous is rehearsing for an event that will soon happen. Examples include same-day preparation for a speech, job interview, sporting performance, work meeting, or difficult conversation with a spouse. You mentally arrange the pieces of what is right about to happen to increase the likelihood of success. Such imagination may include logistical planning, dry runs, and scheduling.

To write this article, I had to imagine various ideas and test them in my mind before committing them to paper. My imagination was focused, deliberate, practical, and based on a reality that I wanted to perform. Most jobs require this mode of imagination.

One limitation of this type of imagination is when conversing with others. If you already prepare what you’re going to say to someone, or what advice you’re going to give, you may neglect to listen to new information or perceive the shifting needs of the listener and end up speaking at them instead of with them. It’s easy to turn spontaneous conversations into a lecture through excessive rehearsal and planning.

2. Things that are likely to happen soon

We now extend the timeline to things that are planned for the future but which may not happen. Last year, I was booked for a speaking event in Atlanta. I drafted a speech with the expectation I would deliver it, and imagined speaking before the crowd, but the event was cancelled by multiple venues. Another time, I planned to visit my friend in the mountains. I imagined some topics I was going to talk to him about, but my car broke down and I could not go. Another time, I imagined making vegan banana pancakes and the joy I would get from eating them, but my mom ate all the bananas and I could not make them.

In this category, we’re starting to see a failure in the realization of our imaginations, even though the failure is unexpected. After all, you did expect the event to occur, and wanted to be prepared for it. I wonder if the most useful aspect of our imaginative faculty is simply helping us prepare for common tasks so that we can give and receive the most spiritual value from them.

3. Things that are unlikely to happen anytime soon

The more spiritually sick a person is, the more he is dominated by all kinds of fantasy and imagination. The healthier he is spiritually, the freer he is from fantasies and imaginings. Even what are referred to nowadays as psychological problems are produced and retained in our souls by fantasies. The more we are freed from their oppression, the more we are healed from various psychological problems. This is why St John Cassian the Roman writes that a sign that someone has acquired the virtue of holiness and chastity is that his soul pays no attention at all to imagination or fantasy, even when asleep. —Ibid

With this category, we’re beginning to escape from reality, because we imagine things that—even if realized—won’t happen for a long time. There becomes a huge gap between the present time and when the fantasy can occur. For example, a man may meet a pretty woman and then later imagine her as his wife, or what it would be like to be intimate with her. A woman may get a haircut and imagine a handsome man who will sweep her off her feet because he finds her so ravishing. An unemployed computer programmer may imagine being a top executive at a prestigious firm. A single woman may imagine the names of her future children and how beautiful they will be.

Pleasure has begun to seep into the fantasy. The fantasizer disconnects from a boring reality and imagines a future that is pleasurable and more gratifying on the ego, just like how a drug addict ingests a drug to go somewhere else with his mind and body. He doesn’t like how his life is at the current moment so he imagines a better one in the future, which in turn causes him to neglect the present reality.

Prevalent are fantasies of the flesh. Unfortunately, I have spent untold hours with these types of fantasies in my secular days, which enabled my addiction to carnal living. The fantasies become the main fuel to engage in lawlessness. Fantasies can also exist on the complete opposite end of the spectrum where you imagine catastrophes, traumas, and other bad events that lead to anxiety, despondency, and despair, feelings that tear you away from the Lord.

4. Lofty fantasies that will never happen

Since the greatest and most terrible passion of all is pride, fantasy and imagination are closely linked with pride. Someone who is proud has something wrong with his imaginative faculty. It is inflamed. It conceives all kinds of images and fantasies and makes his soul an earthquake zone. —Ibid

The previous category had a shred of connection to reality, but now the fantasies become completely void of realism. For example, a man may imagine himself as president of a great empire while deliberating all the excellent laws he should pass, maybe even writing them down. Another man may imagine himself as a hero in a train accident, where his actions save dozens of lives. A woman may imagine herself as a saint who lived centuries ago. A timid man may imagine telling off a politician or policeman to a cheering crowd. A woman may imagine herself as inventing a cure for cancer and winning the Nobel Prize. These fantasies usually involve receiving adoration from a mob, absolute power, or a level of worldwide fame for nonexistent talents or virtues.

I admit that I have delved into this category more often than I like to admit. My insane pride has effortlessly led me to exalted fantasies where I was placed above all men to receive rapturous attention from the most beautiful women in the world. Someone can be especially prone to these fantasies if they are “bored” with their lives and want to add excitement or ego gratification without ever leaving their computer chair.

Ultimately, this category of imagination allows a person to believe that they are someone they’re not. Their entitlement grows and they begin to detach from reality. They fail to empathize with those who are “beneath” them in their fantasies, and in heightened states of delusion, they may actually believe their fantasies are truth. If you are experiencing this level of imagination, your soul has likely experienced heavy damage from secular life.

5. Vivid dreams, visions, and outright delusion

Dreams are fantasies, and they relate to the passions existing within us. From the images in these fantasies we can discern which passions we have.

[…]

It is noticeable that studying the writings of the holy Fathers crucifies the imagination, whereas reading impassioned writings, especially fiction, excites the imagination. The Fathers never concerned themselves with so-called Christian fiction, narrative tales and so on, because that sort of writing provokes fantasy. By contrast, even poetry written by the saints has an element of repentance and theoria of God. The poems of St Symeon the New Theologian contain a revelation of God. There is no trace in them of speculation or contamination with figments of the imagination.

—Ibid

If you’re regularly imagining yourself as a king or queen, chances are you have vivid dreams that further reinforce the belief that you are special, different, or better than others. The cycle becomes self-perpetuating: vivid dreams at night beget crazier fantasies during the day, begetting even more vivid dreams that you want to believe as truth or see as prophecies. More and more of your time is spent outside of reality to the point where you essentially have a second personality that none of your relatives or friends would recognize. You may be an office worker but, according to your imagination, you are an illustrious figure who is not “understood” by the common people you interact with. In such a stage of delusion, you buy your own hype and will almost certainly be humbled in a way that will cause despair, when how you see yourself is not confirmed but what life’s mirror displays.

The imaginative faculty can be so damaged that some people can experience disassociated hallucinogenic states and visions while awake without the use of drugs. In other words, they dream while awake. In extreme conditions, medical treatment may be required, which often requires doping the patient to turn down the biological activity of the brain.

Conclusion

Outside of sensible rehearsing for upcoming events, I don’t see any positive use of being taken hostage by my imaginative faculty at times when I should be focused on other tasks. The fact that random fantasies come to me when I’m attempting to serve God, such as while praying or attending a Liturgy, tells me that imagination is more of an intrusion upon my mind instead of an aid. If I want to write a short story, I will sit down and direct my imagination onto the story, but more commonly it seems that my imagination is directing me into strange places and ideas. Before, I would play with fantasies and use them to help me escape the meaningless of life, but since I have found meaning in Christ, I have little use for the games that my imagination wants to play. Unfortunately, I damaged my nous to such an extent from so many years of secular life that I must now battle with this problem daily to attend to my obligations before God.

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I recently listened to Father John Valdez’s 10-part lecture series called Survival Course for Orthodox Christians, which offers a renewed take on Father Seraphim Rose’s lecture series of the same name. The talk on Eastern cults was especially helpful because Father John gave a list of signs that one has been deceived by a cult or false movement. I couldn’t help but notice that I had fallen for most of them to some degree in my secular past. Using Father John’s lecture as a starting point, I’d like to share seven of those signs with more detail.

1. The rules don’t apply to the guru

In all cults and false movements, Lord Jesus Christ is either discarded or used as a nominal head, but the real head is a guru who prescribes a litany of rules and commandments for his adherents to follow. The only problem is that the leader has a hard time following his own rules. The excuse of his “transcendence” will often be used to exempt him from the group’s moral teachings, since he will be “above” all rules, as if he were a god.

Guru Alan Watts taught a detachment from the world, viciously attacking the Western rat race, yet he was an alcoholic. Osho also taught detachment, yet he was attached to luxury European brands and sexual intercourse with his followers. Many Protestant leaders teach sexual morality, yet they all become embroiled in sex scandals. A worthy leader should follow the rules that he teaches, but that’s not what happens when a guru teaches a false gospel.

2. There is no external need for God

In a false movement, without the guru, you’re lost. He’s not directing your soul to God but onto himself so that he gets all the rewards. Since all cults are sex cults in disguise, this means more fleshly rewards for him along with wealth, fame, and riches. The movement manipulates its adherents to think that they are lost without the leader. Guru co-dependency is encouraged.

In Eastern philosophies, a big lie is added: “You are God.” The gurus insist that you are perfect, already a literal god, and only need the guru’s guidance to unlock the divinity within you. This notion is pleasing to the pride of Western man, who flock towards these teachings to be constantly reminded that they are of the divine and do not have to heal their fallen nature through the grace of God upon repentance.

3. The promise of fast results without strenuous labor

The striving to defeat the qualities of the fallen nature inspires the monk to such asceticism that those who have never attempted it cannot even imagine. This labor, which is a rejection of one’s very nature, supplements the crucifixion and cross of poverty, which is only a rejection of money. This labor leads one to the very depth of humility, it brings one to living faith, it raises one to a state of grace. —Saint Ignatius Brianchaninov in The Field

The key to hooking someone onto a false movement is quickly giving them a positive experience that shows the guru’s teachings “work” without having to expend much labor. This type of fast-food spirituality is often done with other adherents who are enraptured by the alleged bliss, peace, or pseudo-grace they are experiencing, enough for the law of social conformity to take over so that the inquirer eagerly misinterprets his feelings as empirical proof of efficacy.

Just meditate for 20 minutes in the way the guru says and you will feel sublime calm. Just attend the rock star church service and you will be buzzing with the Holy Spirit. Just watch all the people falling down in ecstasy before the guru’s feet and you will feel ecstasy as well if you collapse like the others. Even these kinds of paltry labor are becoming too onerous for modern man, who wants more exalted spiritual experiences with even less work. This has led to the rampant use of drugs, especially psychedelics. Under the guru’s guidance, you will smoke a potent weed in a hot room, or take mushrooms, and you’ll feel such peace and maybe even encounter demonic creatures you are told are your pals. You are indebted to the guru for such a mystical journey and commit yourself to him.

4. Guru rediscovered ancient wisdom that was “lost”

The guru refuses to accept canonical teachings and instead looks for obscure sources to pour in his will and judgment. Osho wrote a book on the Gospel Of Thomas, a non-canonical Gospel, and used it to affirm his own ideas, even blaspheming that Lord Jesus Christ received his teachings from Indian mystics. Many Gnostics on YouTube accept historical speculation as fact to push their own teachings which ultimately reject Orthodox Christology. Protestants read the scripture with their fallen minds and become their own pope, claiming that the teachings of Christ were lost from the time of the Apostles until lawyers and apostate monks enflamed with sexual desire rediscovered them in the 16th Century.

The truth is that since the time of Christ, the truth has never been hidden or lost, because Lord Jesus Christ promised us that His Church would not fall, and through the Orthodox Church, it has not.

5. The familiar is used to build instant rapport

In modern hip-hop music, it’s common for a producer to sample an old song and blend it with new degenerate lyrics. This is done so that you feel an instant connection with the new song even though you’ve never heard it before. False movements do the same by incorporating popular trends existing in the culture so that you quickly feel comfortable in new environs where you must begin to obey the guru. Another example is the similarity between the production values of a rock concert and megachurch. Both use advanced video and audio technology alongside programmatic laser lights. If you want to go to a free rock concert, they occur all around the United States on Sunday mornings.

Millennium ’73 was a three-day festival held on November 8—10, 1973 at the Astrodome in Houston, Texas, United States, by the Divine Light Mission (DLM). It featured Prem Rawat, then known as Guru Maharaj Ji, a 15-year-old guru and the leader of a fast-growing new religious movement. Organizers billed the festival as the most significant event in human history which would usher in a thousand years of peace. The festival’s official schedule described the three evening addresses by Guru Maharaj Ji as the highlights of the event. Big-band music, rock bands, religious songs, choral works, a dance performance and speeches by other DLM leaders filled the program from noon to 10 pm. —Millenium ’73 event in Houston featuring an Indian child who many thought was god

It’s difficult to find a false movement that is traditional or critical of modern trends because that would involve real ascesis that sends the adherent to the true source of traditionalism: Orthodoxy. Instead, the guru must use secular features to hook people into quickly making the decision to become a member so that the fleecing can begin.

6. There is no objective morality or truth

No one has rightly sought the truth who has not encountered at the end of this search—whether to accept or reject Him—our Lord, Jesus Christ, ‘the Way, the Truth, and the Life.’ —Father Seraphim Rose in Nihilism

The main method to retain members is through the management of their feelings (i.e. emotional manipulation), but since feelings and moods change, the teachings and lessons must also change to keep the coffers filled. This method of control is incompatible with objective truth, which does not change. Since false movements are more concerned with retaining dues-paying members and sex partners, the guru will mold the program so that there is continual growth, as if it were a business.

In the Orthodox Church, if you don’t want to believe in one of its dogmas, you are outside of the Church. The hierarchy does not soften its stand on a dogma or begin to change because you believe strongly about a lie. Your feelings have absolutely no value when it comes to Church teachings. Compare that with the “seeker sensitive” approach of some Protestant churches, whereby a prospective member’s needs are identified and catered to so that they fill the pews and open their wallet. It’s possible to be in a modern church and have everyone believe in different dogmas. The truth no longer becomes important while relativity is openly encouraged. It doesn’t matter what you believe as long as everyone is on the same “wavelength” in helping the guru achieve his self-centered mission.

7. A snippet of scripture or historical text is taken completely out of proportion

Falsehood is a diabolical trait. He who has assimilated false thoughts has assimilated an attribute of the devil. He has entered into a relationship with the outcast angels; he has made union with God alien to himself and unnatural. He who is a stranger to God is a stranger to salvation. —Saint Ignatius Brianchaninov

Famous Russian author Leo Tolstoy went against the Orthodox Church and created an entire heretical movement by misinterpreting what the Bible said about peacemaking. He was eventually excommunicated from the Church but managed to cause immense damage to those who believed his lies.

I suspect that modern gurus are less concerned with the truth than appearing different or unique to hook wayward souls onto their movement. They are eager to provide new exegetical accounts that are absurd on their face, but since man is so far from God, born in iniquities and conceived in sin, he is prone to falling for such lies, and so new cults are continually being made.

Conclusion

The Holy Spirit, descended on the apostles on the day of Pentecost, according to the words of the Lord Jesus Christ Himself, who promised to send Him down at the Last Supper, is primarily the Spirit of truth and was sent to the disciples of the Lord in order to instruct them on all truth (Jn 16, 13), and therefore the true Church of Christ, informing the believers of the grace of the Holy Spirit, is the one who keeps, confesses and preaches the Truth. In the same place where, instead of Truth, lies are proclaimed, whether in dogmatic doctrine or in moral or in the sense of any untruth in general, there certainly is no true Church, there is no God’s grace that saves man, but only one appearance, blasphemous deception. —Archbishop Averky

I fell for many of the above tricks when I believed in the Eastern lie of becoming your own God. I believed in my thoughts and feelings and essentially did whatever I wanted to do in the name of being one with the Universe and acting as a dead fish to “go with the flow.” There was no grace and no healing to my soul. Shamefully, I even went to a couple of yoga classes while living in Europe to mimic bodily configurations that were historically used to commune with Hindu demons. Thankfully, Lord Jesus Christ has removed the scales from my eyes and allowed me to see the full truth—without adulteration and without error—through His Orthodox Church. No one converts to Orthodoxy without having sustained prior damage from false movements, so may God help them all be received into the only true movement that is God’s Church.

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A common lament from chaste Orthodox men I meet is their lack of experience in dealing with women who are more socialized than them. How can these men understand women, identify one with strong faith, and make confident decisions concerning marriage? As an unmarried middle-aged man, I stress to them how I’m not in a better situation, but they nonetheless feel that I can give them profitable lessons in their quest to enter an Orthodox marriage due to my excessive secular experience.

I have tried to be thoughtful about what I’m about to share so as not to interfere with God’s will in bringing together man and woman in one flesh within the Church sacrament of marriage, because most of my experiences with women took place sinfully outside of marriage, causing me to lose all manner of healthy child-like innocence when viewing the opposite sex. I do not consider myself bitter, but I am surely cynical from partaking in behaviors that went against the commandments of God for so many years. If you perceive undue pessimism or even anger in my words, it is due to the damage I inflicted upon myself, not because God made a mistake in how he constructed man or woman. If you participate in evil for a prolonged period of time, you will carry distorted views of reality even long after repentance.

It could be possible that a secular woman you have feelings for will possess every negative trait I’m about to describe. When a woman lacks spiritual life, she does not struggle against her passions and sins, or even think they are wrong. On the other hand, the Orthodox women I’ve met and observed possess at least a basic desire for moral goodness, and will automatically be more suitable for marriage. However, some Orthodox women are more zealous than others, and they all swim in a putrid secular fishbowl. The tainted water corrupts us without our conscious awareness, and so it’s not uncommon for an Orthodox woman to possess deep-seated secular beliefs that can strain a marriage. You must be discerning when it comes to identifying any beliefs that would be detrimental to maintaining a Christian family home.

I will often use the secular word “game” in this article. Game is a collection of psychological and behavioral techniques to attract a woman physically and emotionally for the purpose of fornication and fleshly pair bonding. Game includes: approaching an unknown woman in a public place while play-acting as a confident man, optimizing one’s aesthetic so that it pleases worldly woman, using salesman techniques of rapport building and scarcity to make a fast “sale,” hiding flaws while showcasing strengths, deliberately pumping up a woman’s emotions, lying, omitting the truth, putting a woman in a negative state of anxiety or dread to modulate her attractive feelings, and exploiting a woman’s human weaknesses for selfish gain.

In the game process, God is absent, and the primary goal of the man is to satisfy his selfish craving for positive female attention, worldly love, and physical pleasure. Even if you claim to desire abstinence before marriage, you can still be using game by implementing secular techniques to meet women, get their phone number, arrange dates, and so on. A sign you are not using game is if you adhere to the old cliché “be yourself,” where yourself is a child of God who follows His commandments with the understanding that marriage is a sacrament whose purpose is to usher two souls into heaven. The Christian way is to trust in God to pair you with a woman who is on your social and spiritual level instead of pretending to be an alpha male to deceive a woman into liking you using mostly physical and psychological means.

That said, here is a list of general guidance for men who want to pick the right woman for marriage in an Orthodox courtship where the man clearly expresses to the woman beforehand that no intimacy can take place until they are united in one flesh through the Church sacrament of marriage.

1. Assume that you will never change her

Who can find a virtuous wife? For her worth is far above rubies. The heart of her husband safely trusts her; So he will have no lack of gain. She does him good and not evil all the days of her life. —Proverbs 31:10-12

It’s a fatal temptation for a man to look at a woman, especially a young one, as a tabula rasa, a blank slate for him to mold into his perfect, traditional wife who bakes cookies and croissants all day. Such a man sees all her flaws and thinks that, with time, he can eradicate them one by one as if using a laser beam. Or he sees her annoying personality traits and thinks that he can dampen them with a sort of punishment-reward stratagem. This is delusion. Who she is is who she is, and if she does change, it will be entirely dependent on her own will and its cooperation with God to serve the good. Any immediate change you do see in her, without much in the way of effort, should be viewed with suspicion.

Do you know how hard it is to change a single behavior, personality trait, or quirk? For example, I have the bad habit of taking the Lord’s name in vain by saying the word “Jeez” as an exclamation. For a couple of months, I have tried mightily to stop using this term, but I have not yet been successful. I have a bad habit of eating past 8pm. I’m grumpy in the mornings. I’m overly sensitive to noise and odors. I prefer socializing only in the evening. I have innumerable preferences that a potential wife may not like and will try to change, but chances are she will fail until I’m enlightened by God to work harder at correction not for my sake but for the sake of the marriage.

Through God’s grace, I’ve been able to step away from sinful behaviors, but the little things that are entrenched into my personality, and which do not pose an immediate risk to my salvation, have remained. This is also the case with women. Do not assume you will change her. Do not assume you can even get her to grow her hair an inch longer than it already is. Do not assume she will change at all. Of course a woman will do many things to please her man, such as to lose a few pounds or dress differently, and she may be motivated to improve for you in a way that she didn’t while single, but don’t expect immediate, permanent change.

2. Women are capable of deceiving men

An excellent wife is the crown of her husband, But she who causes shame is like rottenness in his bones.
—Proverbs 12:4

The more secular a woman is, the more likely she will set out to deceive a man without ever believing she is being deceptive. How this plays out is that everything will seem to be going well with her while in a romantic relationship, and then one day you are blindsided by her shocking behavior. I wrote books on women, thought I knew them better than myself, but was still badly deceived by them, because as a man, we are not given natural tools to spot every female deception under the sun. There are thousands–perhaps millions of men–who came home one day and stumbled upon a horrible discovery that changed their lives forever. In heartache, they concluded that they never really knew their significant other at all.

It’s possible for a woman to pretend to be someone she is not, sometimes for many years and certainly for the short amount of time needed to put forth a favorable impression and cement a man’s affections during courtship. I’ve seen it with my own eyes. Depending on how skilled she is, the lie may be something as minor as a political opinion she’s hiding to not displease you or as serious as living an entirely different lifestyle behind your back. The man who is lusting after a woman will not be able to see through the deception, but a chaste man whose eyes and ears are not tainted by lust should be able to see through any false façade by picking up on inconsistencies in behavior while continually self-checking whether she is “too good to be true.”

At the risk of getting philosophical, I believe that women themselves don’t know when they’re being deceptive or not. Their behavior is subconsciously driven to maximize the rewards received from a man with whom they want to be in a relationship. On the other hand, it is unlikely that a woman is consciously deceiving you if she is open about confessing all her flaws and problems.

3. If her spirit and behavior are more secular than Orthodox, she is abiding by the secular world

Wisdom rests in the heart of him who has understanding, But what is in the heart of fools is made known. —Proverbs 14:33

A fish may strongly desire to be a healthy fish, but if it’s swimming in polluted water, many of its biological functions will be impaired. As sincerely as we wish to be Orthodox, the waters around us are dirty and foul, and though our intentions may be good, we simply cannot block out all the toxic effects that are seeping unaware into our souls. I believe that even listening to one pop song can be damaging to the soul, and yet if we don’t voluntarily listen to such music, we are subjected to it every time we walk into a retail store.

It’s great that a woman goes to Liturgy every Sunday and confesses her sins and receives Communion, but it is not great if for the six remaining days of the week she is glued to her smartphone, watches Netflix, attends a university, listens to rap music, reads feminist influencers online, uses TikTok, watches reality television, follows celebrity gossip, and participates in Snapchat exchanges with men. In such a case, her behavior will be more driven by secular trends than her faith, driving her away from traditional family life.

If I met a woman who consumed over 20 hours of secular content a week, but spent only 5 hours on her faith, yet proclaimed to me that she wants to be a traditional wife, I would think she’s confused, because it’s not traditional to be attached to worldly content streamed from her smartphone. If, however, another woman said she wants to be traditional, and shares a sentiment of hatred toward the modern world, and I can hardly get in touch with her because she leaves her smartphone off for most of the day, I can be more assured that she is sincere.

Since a woman’s smartphone is an extension of her personality and innermost desires, I may ask any female I’m considering if she can show me all the apps installed on her phone. If she has all the popular social media apps, and not even a single Bible or prayer app, you have an answer.

Just because a woman is Orthodox does not mean you must throw away all discernment and think everything will be fine. She is still a product of this corrupt world and you must keep your wits about you to see if she possesses the most important qualities needed to be a wife and mother. You must examine her flaws and ask yourself if you can endure them, and ask if your flaws can be endured by her. You don’t want a woman exclaiming “I’m Orthodox” to cause you to close your eyes and jump in without discernment.

4. A woman who maintains a perfect physical appearance may crave validation from men more than God

And there a woman met him, with the attire of a harlot, and a crafty heart. She was loud and rebellious, her feet would not stay at home. At times she was outside, at times in the open square, lurking at every corner. —Proverbs 7:10-12

It is my experience that the more time a woman invests into her external appearance, the less time she invests in the internal (her soul). This was most vividly shared with me during my long-ago stint in Ukraine, which had the most beautiful women out of all the nations I’ve visited. Part of their beauty was natural, as the beauty of Slavic women is renowned, but much of it is time spent on manual physical enhancement at the beauty salon.

On my dates with Ukrainian women, they revealed to me how much time they spend on their hair, nails, makeup, skin, clothing, and so on, and yet those same women could not tell me the last book they read. It turned out that I—as an impassioned foreign tourist—was selecting the most materialistic women in Ukraine who wanted to trade their beauty for an increase in adventure or living standard. Consider that these women spent a huge percentage of their low incomes simply on beauty upkeep, which in hindsight was depressing because Ukraine is an Orthodox country with God’s bottomless grace available to them if they walked around the corner of their home into a church. I enabled their materialistic behavior by giving them my attention, interest, affection, and time in the hopes of a carnal reward.

Be on guard for a woman who has excessive concern for her appearance, because that may signify that her flesh is getting more maintenance than her soul. That will be a large problem for a passionate secular man who marries her, because a woman’s vanity may only please his eyes for a short period of time.

5. You will not choose a woman with wisdom if your passions are elevated

With her enticing speech she caused him to yield, with her flattering lips she seduced him. Immediately he went after her, as an ox goes to the slaughter, or as a fool to the correction of the stocks, till an arrow struck his liver. As a bird hastens to the snare, he did not know it would cost his life. Proverbs 7:21-23

Passions are fleeting, temporary, and capricious. Making life decisions based on your passions and emotional urges is like building a house on sand. If a passionate woman likes you, it is more likely because you please her physically and emotionally in the current moment, not because she has assessed your faith and values for the long term. Passionate secular men, of which I was one, want to be pleased in the moment. They think that every flight of fancy that enters their mind is a worthwhile pursuit that can maximize their happiness. It was my unbridled passion that allowed me to waste two decades of my life, selecting the wrong women continually for bodily pleasure, pride, and masculine ego gratification. I had built my whole life on sand and realized at a late hour what a folly that was.

If you meet a woman you like, and for the next few days you can’t even think straight because your mind is whirring with fantasies about how beautiful she is and how great your future life will be and how many children you will have, you are aflame with passion and emotion. Even adrenaline may be at play if you find it hard to sleep because of thoughts concerning her. This behavior is actually feminine, codified in hundreds of romance novels. We are men, not women, and must check ourselves when we enter “romance novel” mode, of which I have done innumerable times.

It’s safer instead to make a more detached assessment that allows logic to reign so that you can build any future relationship on rock instead of sand. One sign you are proceeding correctly is if you’re patient and take your time to evaluate a woman before even speaking with her. If there is a woman in my church who I’m interested in, I will not immediately strain to talk to her. Instead, I will observe her from a distance, politely ask about her situation to married parishioners or church elders (without fishing for gossip), and then contemplate the matter for days or weeks until I can make a calm assessment of whether it’s even reasonable to have a conversation with her. On the other hand, if I see a new girl in the church and run up to her after the Liturgy with a church pickup line, I’m simply following my passions.

I am surprised how much pickup culture has infused into the minds of young Orthodox men, but I can tell you that such techniques are a blind alley. You must not be burning with desire when deciding to get to know a new woman.

6. Beware if “game” works on her

The wise woman builds her house, but the foolish pulls it down with her hands. —Proverbs 14:1

If game works on a woman, either she’s naive in a healthy manner, and has not been previously exposed to men who methodically trigger her fallen nature, or she is a woman who has chosen to feed her fallen nature. Think of game as an offensive joke. Even if you’re pious, the joke may get a laugh out of you, but then you quickly comport yourself and decide not to “enjoy” it further since it comes at the expense of others.

In the same vein, game can “work” on a pious Orthodox woman in that it can get her attention, pique her interest, and create temporary feelings of attraction, but she should have the spiritual tools to fight this common temptation. She knows that pursuing a man because of romantic or sensual feelings is not pleasing to God, and will let the temptation fade away like all other temptations she faces throughout the day. If a woman acts on the temptation by seeking a man’s attention who is obviously unsuitable (i.e. a “bad boy”) and actually wants to date him, she may not be ready to sustain a “boring” monogamous relationship with a devout Orthodox man where the household revolves around serving God instead of her emotional feelings.

It’s a simple matter to use some game on a Christian woman to command her attention, but it should quickly fizzle out when she comes to her senses. However, game reliably works on any woman-—Christian or not–who is individualistic, selfish, narcissistic, impious, and carnal. In fact, such a woman may only respond to men who use game. If a man is able to use a couple of game tricks to inflame a woman’s emotions and send her on a roller coaster ride of excitement and desire, and she makes a choice to be with that man to seek a further amplification of pleasure and “happiness,” fornication can happen in no time because it is merely a culmination of the emotional satisfaction she craves.

All women can have their emotions stirred by a cad, but the mature woman with an active spiritual life and pious support circle should be able to isolate those emotions, know that such a man is not good for her salvation, and move on to a more suitable match. If you see a woman who whips her head this way and that for the most attractive men with big muscles, a cocky attitude, and affected gorilla-like movements, pray for her that she can fight her passion. The same, of course, applies to you. If all it takes is a pretty face for you to forget about God then you must increase your spiritual labors. Until you gain maturity, run away from the type of woman who stirs up your passions.

7. A woman who simultaneously communicates with numerous men likely has an addiction to male attention

This is the way of an adulterous woman: She eats and wipes her mouth, and says, “I have done no wickedness.” —Proverbs 30:20

I assert that a woman who is addicted to male attention will wreck a marriage. This addiction has affected me personally and made me extremely sensitive to a woman who must continually present herself to random men and converse with male “friends.” What happens is an acquaintanceship or “friendship” turns either into something more or something inappropriate, where she seeks in those men what she should be seeking from her man alone.

At best, she may view the other men as friends, but at worse they are “backup plans” for the moment when you dissatisfy her by trying to uphold an Orthodox or moral standard upon the relationship. In the minds of the men who are orbiting around your woman, they may view the friendship as an investment where one day they can cash in with an instance of sin.

It is certainly possible that a man and woman can be friends, but it should be within a strictly Christian context. With my current female friends, we talk about God more than anything else, and if their gender happened to be male instead, the topic of our conversations would hardly change, only the tone would. All my conversations with women are structured around the fact that we are in the same Church looking to save our souls. There is no innuendo, flirting, or double entendres. If a woman you are evaluating has friendships with men that do not present like this, she is either in pre-courtship with multiple men, using them for favorable attention, or sizing up suitors as if shopping in a department store. I wouldn’t trust any platonic relationship that doesn’t have a spiritual foundation, because if the root of her problem is an addiction to male attention, that addiction doesn’t magically go away when you marry her. In that case it’s not only her you marry, but all of her male “friends” as well.

8. A woman who can’t maintain small commitments may not be ready to make larger ones

For why should you, my son, be enraptured by an immoral woman, and be embraced in the arms of a seductress? —Proverbs 5:20

If a woman cancels her first official meeting (date) with you, she’s setting a bad tone. As men we should not be entitled, and adapt graciously when unexpected things happen to people, but if there’s a clear pattern of a woman not respecting your time or treating you flippantly, it could be a warning sign that she is not that interested in you or using you as a backup plan. In my experience, a woman who is genuinely interested in a man will go out of her way to uphold dates and show up on time. If she repeatedly cancels dates, is silent with communication for prolonged periods though you were expecting a response, or actively flirts with other men (even in your presence), she may be using you only for attention.

Think of all the steps it takes to go from meeting a woman to marrying her: all the phone calls, text messages, meetings, Bible studies, planning sessions, and so on up to the wedding date. What is a woman telling you if very early on she takes days to reply to a text message or cancels multiple meetings for the flimsiest of reasons? The earlier a woman displays flakey behavior to you, the less serious she may see you as a marital prospect.

9. A woman is capable of making it crystal clear that she likes you

He who finds a wife finds a good thing, and obtains favor from the Lord. —Proverbs 18:22

The most common problem I see in men is not being able to realize that a woman is completely disinterested and has moved on from them many moons ago. They relay the story to me as if wondering if there is some type of chance remaining when she has probably cycled through several new suitors in the meanwhile. We’re not living in an age of coquetry where a woman displays her interests through a fleeting stare, incidental touch of the hand, or a written letter doused with her favorite perfume. No, we live in an age where a woman does the child equivalent of throwing little rocks at the men she likes. It’s a myth that women are “hard to read” and that we must “read between the lines” to know if they like you. Frankly, I’m shocked at how blatant even meek women can act toward men when they have an interest.

If you’re not sure if a woman likes you or not, simply wait a short while. Your inaction will cause her to escalate the means by which to get your attention, and only after that fails will she give up. If she doesn’t take any small steps in the first place, her interest in you is either slight or non-existent. Women want what they want, and they want it quickly with the least amount of delay, and can only tolerate playing games for so long.

Beware: don’t try to stir up a woman’s interest by acting aloof or pretending you are disinterested. Technically, this is game, and you will one day regret that you used negative emotions to build fleeting attraction.

10. There is no excuse for an Orthodox woman to support leftist causes like feminism, climate change, and abortion

Do not let your heart turn aside to her ways, do not stray into her paths; For she has cast down many wounded, and all who were slain by her were strong men. Her house is the way to hell, descending to the chambers of death. —Proverbs 7:25-27

While uncommon in the Orthodox Church, I have met women of other Christian denominations who were fully on board with the leftist Satanic agenda (I remember once when a non-Chalcedonian woman told me that eating meat is bad for the environment). Such a woman may be Christian in name only, and you must understand that it’s not her faith that will predominantly determine her behavior towards men, including her approach to marriage, but the beliefs that the oligarchs of our times implanted into her through propaganda and various psyops. It won’t be a surprise to you that many of these women respond readily to a man using game.

A temptation is to try to change the beliefs of such a woman, perhaps by saying to yourself, “She’s so close to the truth; if only I can get her to believe that abortion is wrong, and face tattoos are ugly, then she will be the perfect wife.” I already talked about the foolhardy endeavor of trying to change a woman. If a woman has beliefs that are not Orthodox or traditional, it may be best to leave her alone and pray that she accepts the truth on her own with the help of the Holy Spirit.

11. Beautiful women live in a different reality

Do not fall for the beauty of a woman, and do not long for her beauty. —Ecclesiasticus 25:20

In general, the more beautiful a woman is externally, and the more urban the environment she has lived in, the less work she had to do internally on her soul, personality, charity, and demeanor, because since puberty, worldly men freely gave her everything she wanted in exchange for simply being beautiful. No merit or effort was required. In these times, where it takes only one selfie on Instagram for a girl to be propelled to minor fame, a beautiful woman is put on a different life track than one who is not beautiful. The former live in a fantasy world where everyone is nice and polite, it’s so easy to get a job, it’s so easy to date, everyone holds doors open for them, Uber drivers are all supreme gentlemen, and so on. Unless they know they are being treated better for their beauty, they risk becoming detached from reality, and if she remains outside of the Church, this will cause huge problems for her future husband.

I’ve seen firsthand how very beautiful women who did not mature in the Church become allergic to struggle (since eager men always bailed them out from it). They may find it difficult to dive deeper into the more ascetical features of the Orthodox faith. Therefore, if you insist on marrying a beautiful woman, you will have to discern carefully so that you don’t marry someone whose best quality is her beauty. One exception is if a woman used to be very ugly or obese but is now beautiful, because she actually did live a period of struggle.

12. You must examine yourself if you pass on a woman of strong faith because you seek a more beautiful woman

A wife’s grace will delight her husband, and her skill will put fat on his bones. A silent wife is a gift from the Lord, and there is nothing worth as much as a disciplined soul. A modest wife is blessing upon blessing, and there is no scale adequate to weigh a self-controlled soul. Like the sun rising in the Lord’s heaven, is the beauty of a good wife in the ordering of her house. —Ecclesiasticus 26:13-16

If you turn down the opportunity to court a devout Orthodox woman because she wasn’t pretty enough, I don’t know what to say to you. Do you know how hard it is to find a woman who has strong faith? So because you are receiving less carnal pleasure, you will pass on her for a prettier girl who is less likely to have the same type of faith? Do you know that if your Orthodox marriage goes the distance, any beautiful wife will look not so beautiful in a few years due to the hands of time, and that it’s her faith that is the most important feature of deciding the course of your marriage? As long as a woman is not abrasive on the eyes, and has a figure that is at least average, why covet more? I ask these questions primarily to myself.

13. A woman who is overly comfortable around strange men may have had a lot of experience with men

I would rather live with a lion or a snake than with an evil wife. —Ecclesiasticus 25:15

I interpret it as a warning sign if a woman talks with ease and confidence to strange adult men, especially when she is holding court with multiple men simultaneously who are all lavishing her with attention. While many women fantasize about a scenario where they are the queen of the ball, it’s another thing if she has no social heistation, nervousness, or awkwardness to be surrounded by virile men who are attracted to her.

Have you seen the shyness of a female child? When a strange man tries to politely talk to her, she literally runs away and hides behind her mother. For a grown woman who has not been socialized around passionate men all her life, she will feel uncomfortable when a strange man approaches her and certainly not enjoy it when men with inflamed passions are surrounding her. If she has no problems with such a scenario, we can assume that she has grown up like this and thinks it’s completely normal to talk to men who want to sleep with her. If this indicates an addiction to male attention, her future husband will surely be upset when she spends suspiciously long times talking to other men while in a visible state of delight.

14. She may hide her most negative qualities, behaviors, and admissions until you have invested in her

For the lips of an immoral woman drip honey, and her mouth is smoother than oil —Proverbs 5:3

This is more common with secular women than Orthodox. A crafty woman will embark on a deliberate program to hide things that she believes a man wouldn’t like, and go to great extents to do so, and only reveal things slowly after the man falls in love with her or has invested so much time in her that she believes he wouldn’t turn back because of sunk costs.

If you’ve been courting a girl for many weeks or months, and she drops a big bomb on you, it was probably planned and rehearsed, and not the first time she has done it. She wanted you to like her, you did, and she has calculated that you wouldn’t dare leave her now. Maybe you will choose to stay with her, and that’s your right, but what you have to ask is if there’s an even bigger bomb coming in the future, perhaps after you’ve married her.

I believe an honest woman should do a full disclosure of her physical and mental health conditions, her major flaws, and any serious sins that are relevant to a potential husband relatively early in the courtship. The same applies to men. A woman has a right to know that you used to be a world-famous pickup artist who wrote a dozen books on how to fornicate. The bad decisions we make in life will have consequences until we die, even if our repentance is earnest.

15. A woman who constantly updates her social media profiles should be examined closely

She opens her mouth with wisdom, and on her tongue is the law of kindness. She watches over the ways of her household, and does not eat the bread of idleness. Her children rise up and call her blessed; Her husband also, and he praises her. —Proverbs 31:26-28

The point of social media is to receive attention for your random thoughts, low-quality opinions, and vainglorious selfies. The problem with heavy dependence on social media for attention, which I had in the recent past, is that you rewire your brain to prioritize “electronic love”—or at least a digital substitute of love—over love from people in the flesh. A woman receiving “love” from 100 men online, who leave comments on her latest selfie, will spike her dopamine more than receiving love from one man who may only show it by quietly sitting in her presence or taking her out to Culvers for a burger. If a woman gets addicted to the neurochemical aspects of receiving favorable attention, your love will not be able to compete with the attention that hordes of men give her online.

A warning sign that a woman is addicted to internet attention is if she updates and curates her social media profiles as if it were a job. If she’s uploading videos or pictures multiple times a week, it’s safe to assume that she has a strong attachment that will not be immediately broken upon entering a real relationship. On the other hand, if she’s online simply because she’s lonely, you should see a rapid decrease in her usage upon easing into a relationship with you. You will have to discern if her social media is due to loneliness or due to an addiction that has to be broken through effort, lest it harms any relationship she eventually enters.

16. Unless you have evidence to the contrary, she will become her mother and treat you like her mother treats her father

Better to dwell in a corner of a housetop, than in a house shared with a contentious woman. —Proverbs 21:9

Men and women mimic the roles they saw while growing up. If you meet a woman, you may think to yourself that she is nothing like her mother, but consider that she has yet to get married and have children. Once she gets married, assume she will treat you similarly to how her mother treats her father. Once she becomes a mother, assume she will treat the children in similar ways that her mother treated her. If you want to know how married life will be with a woman, you can start by looking at the mother’s behavior. Unless the woman you like has wholesale anathematized her mother’s conduct, it’s safe to assume that she will become similar to her mother. There is nothing wrong with this, and it also works with you becoming your father, but if you see major problems with her mother, you must investigate further.

For example, if you notice that her mother constantly complains to the father and tries to put him down, you may want to ask how long that has been going on. Perhaps the woman is not complaining to you right now, but that’s because she is trying to put her best foot forward in the courtship phase so that you like her. Once you get into the humdrum of marriage, she will fall back on what she knows, which she subconsciously learned from her mother.

I haven’t talked much about a woman’s relationship with her father, but it cannot be overstated that the healthier her relationship with her father, the healthier her relationship with her future husband. Heavy discernment must be used if she was not raised properly by her father or is not on good terms with him.

17. Take signs of heightened passion, mental instability, mental illness, self-harm, and a violent or abusive upbringing very seriously

Houses and riches are an inheritance from fathers, but a prudent wife is from the Lord. —Proverbs 19:14

A sign that a man may be in deception is if he says the following: “Yes it’s true that she is mentally ill and cut herself when she was a teenager, and was beaten by her alcoholic parents, and ran away from home a few times, and just got off psychotropic drugs, but she is completely fine now.” Getting over an abusive past or mental illness is not like the flu, where once you get over it you’re essentially back to full health. Instead, it presents as a continuum of symptoms that, in one way or another, stay with a person for much of their life.

When it comes to mental health problems, which are quite common, I’m sure there are success stories of women who have been able to manage their illness in a marriage, but you must not close your eyes to the problem or else you will get caught unaware when she has an episode that is triggered by the stress of marriage or child raising. Before you marry her, examine her mental health problems as if you were a doctor. Find out what triggers her episodes, how debilitating the episodes are, and then ask yourself if that’s the sort of cross you are able to endure.

If you are considering marrying a woman with mental illness, you should be comfortable with bedside caretaking. During a mental health episode, you will have to devote time to taking care of her until the episode passes, and that will include feeding her and watching over her so that she doesn’t hurt herself.

18. Do not delude yourself into thinking that you can command a woman to do whatever you want

Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is head of the wife, as also Christ is head of the church; and He is the Savior of the body. Therefore, just as the church is subject to Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in everything. Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for her, that He might sanctify and cleanse her with the washing of water by the word, that He might present her to Himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she should be holy and without blemish. —Ephesians 5:22-27

A naive man with only casual sex experience may think he’ll simply be an alpha male in the relationship and command his wife to do whatever he wishes, and that alone will preserve the marriage. One problem with that notion is that a woman has free will given by God. She has two other options in the face of your blunt commands: (1) not obey while making excuses for her disobedience, or (2) obey in such a way that she will make your life miserable.

There are always house tasks that a woman doesn’t like doing but does anyway, just like there are tasks at work you don’t like doing, but if she simply does not want to do what you’re asking her, and you attempt to force her through your masculine authority, you will probably regret it in due time. A wife is not a mindless slave, and if you persist in forcing her to do things, she will “pay you back” in ways that you didn’t imagine, starting with nagging and then escalating all the way to having an affair.

To avoid this problem, you should find a wife who wants or has agreed to do the things you want a wife to do. These conversations must be had before you get married. If you want a wife who cooks and cleans, you must inquire if she is willing to do these things (better if she already does them) and then verify her words. However, if you marry a woman in the secular way, based more on romantic compatibility, you will neglect to test her for these values and may come to find out that she refuses to do most of what you find important. Where is that romantic compatibility now when you’re eating out more than you like, the house is a mess, and she listens to hours of brain-dead music every day? In such a case, you may have been too busy lusting over her body to know what kind of person she really was.

It’s impossible to test a woman for all her little values, but you can test her for meekness and the willingness to please her husband in accordance with Church teachings. It’s preferable to find a woman who doesn’t need to be persuaded or commanded to do every little thing that you believe is important.

19. If she’s an adult and doesn’t yet know how to cook, bake, or sew, she may never learn it

Do not be wise in your own eyes; Fear the Lord and depart from evil. —Proverbs 3:7

If a woman made it to 25 years of age and hasn’t yet learned the household skills that are critical to maintaining a Christian household, don’t assume that she will learn it and be good at it. That works the other way around, too. If a woman wants a husband who is good at home maintenance, but her current prospect can barely use a screwdriver, it would be unwise of her to think he will learn that skill just because he says he will. The reality is that both men and women will say almost anything to have their affections returned.

The proof is in the pudding. If a man is looking for a wife, and he is not currently learning the things he says he will do in a marriage, his wish may be aspirational. If a woman is looking for a husband and knows that she will have to cook daily in a family home, but is not currently doing it, there is a disconnect that must be evaluated. The only exception that could be valid is if the activity is dependent on having a certain kind of home. For example, I want to learn how to work with wood, but I can’t do it while living in an apartment. I also want to learn how to garden, but I can’t because I have no land and only north-facing (low-light) windows. However, I do maintain a few plants, so a woman who hears me say I want to garden can see that I have started that endeavor. She can conclude that it’s possible I will someday garden. When it comes to woodworking, however, she will not find any evidence of that skill, so she should not assume I will ever woodwork.

Personally, I am extremely skeptical of a woman who says she will learn how to cook but hasn’t turned on her stove in months. The reason is that she has 2-3 opportunities every day to do what she says she will do but is not doing! What’s stopping her now? If she lives in a home with a kitchen, nothing. If I encounter such a woman, and know that she eats takeout every day, I will have to assume she will never cook, and account for that in my decision to marry her or not. The same goes for other skills that are important to me, like sewing (buttons do fall off), laundry, ironing, and being organized in general. I must see these qualities now or at least hints of them, because talk is cheap, and we need more than talk to have a successful family home.

20. If she has a career, don’t assume she will quit when you want her to

Do not give water an outlet, nor boldness to an evil wife. If she does not follow your good leadership, cut her off from yourself. —Ecclesiasticus 25:24-25

Chances are that you will find a woman who has a full-time job. Either that job is a waystation to a family, and she will quit when the children start arriving, or she will want to hold onto that job for as long as possible because it validates how she sees herself (independent, strong, high-achieving, etc.).

If you meet a woman who tells you that she desires to be a stay-at-home mother, and that her job isn’t necessary for her, but she will work at it for as long as needed, it may be safe to assume that she will eventually quit. However, if a woman hints that her career is important to her because it gives her a sense of “purpose,” or she likes making money, it is not safe to assume she will quit, even if she does not react vehemently to your wish for her to be a stay-at-home wife. Generally, the more feminist she is, the less likely she will quit when you want, for she may have succumbed to the lie that a career is the most important part of a woman’s identity.

Failure to discern in this matter could be catastrophic: the children are sent to daycare, they will not be homeschooled, the household duties do not get done, she never learns how to cook (since it’s time-consuming), she is in obedience to a boss at work which effectively means she has two men in her life, and she is frequently fatigued and irritated. She may even try to push you into the role of stay-at-home dad so that she can have her cake and eat it too. I’m fearful enough of accidentally marrying a feminist that I must be convinced of a woman’s insatiable desire to be a traditional stay-at-home mother before entering a courtship with her.

21. She will lose respect and attraction for you if you become emasculated and allow her to take control

But I want you to know that the head of every man is Christ, the head of woman is man, and the head of Christ is God. —1 Corinthians 11:3

A common failure of men is backsliding on their masculinity and leadership. It is true that a woman will constantly test her man for strength, usually by nagging him to have more say in decision-making, but if that request is actually granted, she loses respect for him, because he becomes less of a “him” and more of a “her.” We don’t really know why women petition men for things that ultimately make them unhappy, but it is a test we must pass by maintaining our leadership position in the household.

If we fall for the trap of “equality” that is so common in secular relationships, the woman will start to lose respect for her man and so begins the typical side effects of her withholding sex, going out more often with her friends, maintaining inappropriate relationships with men online, neglecting household duties, starting a new gym routine with a young male trainer, and so on. It’s hard to relay to men the severity of this trap when it starts in such a banal manner, that obeying a woman who really believes she must choose where to go out for dinner, for example, will actually begin a process where the husband is feminized, weakened, and destroyed in divorce. I’m sure you’ve seen this personally in your life as I have. Maintain your masculine frame or else she will take up that mantle and despise you for it.

22. No matter how thoroughly you vet her, you will be upset at her behaviors during marriage

And Adam said, this [is] now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man. Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh. And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed. —Genesis 2:23-24

Human behavior tends to be domain specific. My daily habits and routine when I was living in a European city is different from when living in an American suburb. The foods I eat, the times I shower, and how much I read are all different depending on the domain I find myself in. In one domain, a woman acts this way, but in another domain, she acts differently. How a woman behaves when she’s single or in courtship is not going to be identical to her behavior as a wife or mother. A woman may appear perfect to you in the courtship phase, but after marrying her and living with her, you will see her flaws that may even make you feel regretful. This doesn’t mean you made the wrong choice, or that she deceived you, but that wifely behaviors had no outlet for display within a stress-free courtship.

The point of marriage is not to eliminate the potential for failure or hardship. I’m tempted to make sure a potential wife doesn’t have any major problems that may cause me pain in the future, but this is not the Orthodox Christian way. We are not gods who can see the future, and we are called upon to have faith in Lord Jesus Christ to pair us with a suitable spouse, not our own ability to avoid worldly pain. When you marry a woman, and she displays an odd behavior that displeases you, do not think, “What have I done to marry this woman? My life is ruined!” Instead think, “My Lord commands me to pick up and carry my Cross. Now I must bear and endure that which my wife is doing, as she is flesh of my flesh, and she must endure my innumerable flaws. So be it, so be it.”

23. If she doesn’t like to be corrected, signifying a strong will, you will have many disagreements

Better to dwell in the wilderness, than with a contentious and angry woman. —Proverbs 21:19

People who don’t like being corrected, like myself, often have elevated pride. It’s impossible for their ego to handle someone telling them that they are doing something wrong and that they must change their thinking or behavior. If you attempt to correct a woman, the most common response will be that she starts crying. If she’s more of a combative type, you may hear, “Why don’t you do it yourself then?” Even if you are exceedingly gentle, her pride will perceive the correction in the worst possible way and be wounded by it.

I’ve had experiences with women who simply could not take loving correction, and let me tell you: it’s a total drag. Their pride is preventing them from doing simple things that you like. For example, once a secular girlfriend was preparing lunch for me. I politely asked her to cut my apple in a way that I preferred. She got angry and made a big stink about it. It’s no surprise that the relationship later ended in a bitter way. I can’t imagine how life would have been with her if I tried to correct her on matters bigger than how an apple is cut.

During your courtship with a woman, it may be useful to correct her on something that is genuinely bothering you. The best response is if she accepts and does it the correct way. If she gets upset and sheds tears, but still performs the correction, that may not necessarily be a bad sign. However, if she responds with a nasty attitude, is resistant to change, and even starts hitting you, you have to understand that this behavior will carry through in a marriage. Ask yourself if you can deal with it.

24. She may lie to you but not think it is a lie, because she believes the lie to be the truth

The mouth of an immoral woman is a deep pit; He who is abhorred by the Lord will fall there. —Proverbs 22:14

As the psalm says, “Every man is a liar.” The lying of women is unique compared to men because, in my opinion, much of the time they don’t really believe they are lying. The most prime example is when she states that a man she knows is “just a friend.” The reality is he is a suitor, biding his time for the best moment to attempt intercourse. In order for the woman to say the suitor is a friend, she had to view the interaction with him through a particularly narrow lens. Because there has been no physical intimacy, she thinks they are “friends,” but she ignores the emotional and romantic bond the man has for her. If she were to admit that he’s more than a friend, she would also have to admit that she’s enabling or encouraging a man who has romantic affection for her, and also admit that their relationship is only one text message away from physical intimacy. She is telling the truth only through the deliberate omission of numerous relevant facts.

Another example is when a woman says, “I have had three boyfriends,” and then gives you ample details on those three boyfriends without mentioning any others, as if she has never met any other man in her life. She frames the discussion in such a way that a man will want to conclude that she has only had intercourse with three men, but it’s quite possible she has been intimate with many more. Here she is lying by omission to a man who wants to believe the lie.

If you ask personal questions that hit upon her mistakes or flaws, and her faith is small, prepare for lies that she may not think of as lies. If you try to confront a woman on a lie, as I have often done, you should not be surprised if she refuses to admit fault and then blames you for not trusting her. The main persuasive weapon a woman uses against man, tears, will then make their appearance.

25. It’s common for a woman to conform to a man’s interests and hobbies to receive his affection

A woman shall not wear anything that pertains to a man, nor shall a man put on a woman’s garment, for all who do so are an abomination to the Lord your God. —Deuteronomy 22:5

I don’t know when it began that men started to desire women who shared the same masculine hobbies as them. “She loves watching sports, drinking beer, and shooting guns… I’m in love!” It must be a sign of the times when narcissism is so high that men look to women to be just like them instead of understanding that God created two sexes with a distinct division of gifts for maintaining a family home.

When men signal they like a woman with masculine hobbies, women will soon come to “love” masculine hobbies. There are millions of women in the United States who know more than me about pro football, craft beer, bodybuilding, shooting guns, comic book movies, and all the most appropriate times to use profanity in conversation. They may not admit it to you, but I believe they do these things to maximize their chances of receiving affection from men and to sustain that affection by being able to talk about the things that men like.

The problem for you is that a woman may effortlessly pretend to like what you like if she happens to have a strong interest in you, leading you to have the wrong idea about your compatibility. If you like reading books, she will express her interest in reading books. If you like baking, she will send you a picture of her baking (for the first time ever). If you love dogs, she will love dogs and send you pictures (even though she really loves cats). Whatever you like, she will like.

Even more dangerous is if you’re an Orthodox Christian. She may also claim to love Orthodoxy, and even convert to the faith for you, but will love you more than the faith, at least initially. Now there are many success stories of a man bringing his wife into the Church, and many of these women come to be light-bearers of the faith, but you must use discernment to confirm she’s converting because she believes Orthodoxy is the truth, and that it’s God’s Church, not that she sees you as an ideal man and doesn’t mind a lukewarm religious commitment of only going to church for two hours on Sunday.

None of us can look into a woman’s soul and know why she really is converting, but there is one question you can ask her: “If our relationship were to suddenly end, would you still convert to the Orthodox faith?” If the answer is no then she is converting for you alone. Proceed with caution.

26. If she’s had sexual experiences in the past, look for undeniable repentance

Any evil is small compared to the evil of a wife. May the portion of a sinner fall upon her! —Ecclesiasticus 25:18

Many secular men insist on knowing how many past partners their girlfriend has had. This is what I did in my secular relationships. As an Orthodox Christian, however, I’m not sure if it’s useful to ask this because of how our soul is reformed through repentance, a turning away from sin, a regeneration of the old man into the new. With grace, you quite literally become a new person, and can no longer recognize the old person you once were. There is a gulf that exists between the man I am today and the man I was in the past, and if a woman were to solely evaluate me by what I did a few years ago, she would not be getting a complete picture of the good fruits I’m capable of producing today.

However, if I stopped fornicating because I merely got bored, physically tired, or hormonally depleted, and did not repent nor struggle mightily against my lust, it’s safe to assume that I’m still dominated by sin and evil. The dark fleshly passions would still be lurking underneath in full strength. Without repentance, what I did in my most recent past would then be highly indicative of what I will do in the near future, or at least am capable of doing.

If you identify a woman who has fallen but whose repentance is genuine (i.e. she has taken steps away from carnal living and is pursuing a pious Orthodox life) then I don’t think you’ll gain useful information by asking her the gory details of her sexual past. Instead, you may only need a rough sketch of her past sins to know if she is successfully attempting an earnest struggle against them in the present.

I pray that my past fornication was a temporary aberration, but even if it was, there are other permanent features of my personality that a potential spouse will have to deal with. It may be useful to examine qualities of a potential wife that are ongoing or have a permanent quality in the body, such as her health problems, demeanor, attitude, personality, latent addictions, and so on, instead of sins that seemed to have ended. It’s possible that by focusing on her sexual past alone that you may be ignoring something even more disruptive to a potential marital union.

It is your right to exclude a woman whose sexual past is too much for you to bear. I will only add that the more you fell in a certain area, the more you should accept a woman who fell like you. If you’re a virgin, perhaps you should wait for a virgin, but if you’re like me and had sexual experiences before repenting, then a woman who repented from a similar passion could be a suitable match.

27. You don’t fully know a woman unless you’ve seen her angry

A continual dripping on a very rainy day and a contentious woman are alike; Whoever restrains her restrains the wind, and grasps oil with his right hand. —Proverbs 27:16-16

It’s a great thing that the woman you’re courting seems to always be pleasant, kind, and meek, but she is a human being, existing in fallen flesh, and it’s just a matter of time until she gets angry. It would be helpful for you to know what she’s like when she’s angry so that you can discern if that type of anger is manageable.

Some women withdraw when they get angry and give you the silent treatment. Other women explode, throwing household objects and using bad language. Other women pout and cry as if having a childish temper tantrum. I’ve seen all types of anger, and none are easy to work with, but I would hesitate with any woman whose anger is deranged and violent, where she temporarily loses sanity and takes on a rage that approaches murderous (I’ve known men who were physically attacked by their girlfriends, including the case of a knife attack). With such women, warning signs will be present before you face her anger head-on.

I’m not advising you to purposefully get a woman angry in the courtship phase, because that would be manipulation, but don’t fear it. As long as you are not deceived that she is immune to experiencing anger, you want to be mentally prepared for when it happens.

While a woman’s anger is dangerous, a man’s is worse, because we have testosterone, which allows us to kill a woman with our bare hands. It’s far more important for a woman to understand the type of anger you have than the other way around.

28. Be extremely suspicious of a woman who still communicates with past boyfriends

My son, give me your heart, and let your eyes observe my ways. For a harlot is a deep pit, and a seductress is a narrow well. She also lies in wait as for a victim, and increases the unfaithful among men. —Proverbs 23:26-28

It’s bad enough if a woman communicates with men online she claims are her friends, but it’s a serious red flag if she maintains a regular dialogue with someone with whom she had a romantic relationship. This is leaving wide open the door to sexual temptation and, in the case of marriage, infidelity. I believe women maintain such relationships because it makes them feel validated and proud that a man who had access to her heart and body still “cares” about her and wants her in his life. Even worse, it could be that she is considering him as a backup plan to return to in case her next relationship fails. You can completely discard her reasoning that she is only “friends” with the ex. It is not friendship if romantic emotions or bodily fluids were exchanged (starting with kissing).

I can’t stress how this scenario is a serious red flag that may come to destroy any relationship you attempt to build. Any woman I court must cut off all communication (including text messaging) with exes or I will walk away with no regret. If a woman raises a stink about it, but eventually complies, I would still proceed with extreme caution, and verify that communication was indeed cut off. If a woman is not ready to throw away the attention of men she had sinful relations with for the sake of the man she may marry, is she taking the ideal of Christian marriage seriously?

29. Don’t confuse her physical and emotional attraction towards you for deep compatibility

Do not let your adornment be merely outward—arranging the hair, wearing gold, or putting on fine apparel—rather let it be the hidden person of the heart, with the incorruptible beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is very precious in the sight of God. For in this manner, in former times, the holy women who trusted in God also adorned themselves, being submissive to their own husbands, as Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him lord, whose daughters you are if you do good and are not afraid with any terror. —1 Peter 3:3-6

You’re in danger if an attractive woman likes you, because your fallen nature is prone to entering a hypnotized state where you fixate on all the emotional pleasure she is giving you in the moment and the physical pleasure she may give you in the future. It can happen that a man is lukewarm about a woman, but then she accidentally touches him with her breast, wears a low-cut shirt, and smiles at him with extra-glossy lips that he then suddenly thinks she’s a perfect match.

Do you understand how easy it is for a woman of even average looks to ensnare a man if she is aided by Satan? All she has to do is wear makeup, put on perfume, wear a revealing outfit, bite her lip during key moments of the conversation, breathe slowly and deeply, and give you the green light for physical touching. Unless you are aware of what she’s doing, you will think there is a “natural” connection and in your blindness begin to see her as a woman ready for Christian marriage. Understand that in this world men have practically no resistance to a pretty woman who likes them. Most men do not even know that this is a temptation, and instead think they’ve received some kind of good luck or blessing when women look upon them as if they were a piece of meat.

When a woman is attracted to you, your mind begins the process of forgetting or rationalizing all her weaknesses while inventing strengths where none exist. She’s no longer impulsive—she’s spontaneous. She’s not addicted to the mindless secular culture—she’s avant-garde. She’s not filled with passions—she has a big heart. She’s not lazy with church attendance—she lives so far away and it’s hard for her pretty self to drive forty minutes each way. With attraction, any piece of coal can be instantly rubbed into a diamond.

You may think this sounds amusing, but the process is real and has caused men to marry women who later ruined their lives and made them consider suicide. If you readily get physically aroused in a woman’s presence or if you fantasize about being with her sexually then you are no different than a secular man lusting after a woman in a bar. The process is the same. It’s okay to be attracted to a woman, but if you’re feeling more than spiritually discerning, you may be setting up yourself for a hard fall.

I know myself and my inability to resist a pretty woman who likes me, so when I want to discern if a woman is right for me, I prefer to do it from afar before sustaining a relationship. I do not dive into any relations with an attractive woman because, without a plan to get to know her, I will fall into a trap of seduction because of the natural power of a woman’s beauty, allure, and femininity.

30. Evaluate her for the potential to become a great mother

But Ruth said: “Entreat me not to leave you, Or to turn back from following after you; For wherever you go, I will go; And wherever you lodge, I will lodge; Your people shall be my people, And your God, my God. Where you die, I will die, And there will I be buried. The Lord do so to me, and more also, if anything but death parts you and me.” —Ruth 1:16-17

A married man told me that the most important quality of a potential wife is if she will be a good mother. During a courtship, however, we are instead concerned about ourselves. How will she make me feel? How will she be a wife to me? How will she satisfy me? How will she please me? Me me me! Our entire standard, and much of what I’ve written above, concerns the relationship between future man and wife, but children do happen.

You will love your children with all your heart, but if your wife is a less-than-ideal mother, conflict and pain will enter your life as you try to correct her mistakes and deficiencies. Does it matter if your wife pleases you if you know your children are getting an upbringing that is hurting them? You will no longer perceive the prior-held romantic happiness. While you’re evaluating a woman on how well she will please you, try to also discern how she would be as a mother.

There are two major clues to knowing how good of a mother she’ll be. First, how does her mother treat her? Unless you have evidence to the contrary, she will be very similar to her mother. If her mother was neglectful or abusive, there is a chance the same traits may appear in her. Second, how does she act around children? If you meet her in a parish, it will be very easy to see how she interacts with kids. Personally, I want to see that a woman is patient, sensitive, and loving. I don’t buy the excuse that it’s okay for a woman to be cold to children that are not her own. If you love children, you love all children. I love pugs, and will give affection to all pugs that are not my own. I can’t fathom how I would only love my pug but not care about other pugs.

If a woman had a difficult childhood, hopefully she has a mentor in the Church, perhaps her godmother, who she eagerly learns from. If a woman doesn’t have the motherly ability you seek, but you’ve noticed she’s willing to be corrected, perhaps you can proceed, but if she’s not willing to be corrected at all, you will have a hard time. A lot of flaws in a woman can be somewhat discarded if she’s meek and readily obeys you. Otherwise, even the smallest flaw can become a threat to the relationship.

31. An examination of her living quarters can reveal gaps in what she tells you

Say to wisdom, “You are my sister,” and call understanding your nearest kin, that they may keep you from the immoral woman, from the seductress who flatters with her words. —Proverbs 7:4-5

We have to be able to trust our future wife, but until we have that trust, we must verify. A visit to her home with at least one mature chaperone can be a good check on the things she has been telling you about herself. If she says she’s spiritual, but you notice more K-pop posters on her walls than holy icons, you may want to dig deeper. She exclaimed to you how badly she wants to be a housewife, but is her room a pigsty? She claims she wants to cook every day for her husband, but is her refrigerator filled with only expired jars of Whole Foods branded condiments? Is the one cookbook she owns covered with cobwebs? It’s possible that many things she told you were aspirational, a work in progress, but you should begin to see movements toward the wife she yearns to be.

Do not go to her house alone! We do not want a check of her living quarters to lead to temptation. Family members or sober-minded friends should also be present. You may think this precaution is silly, but the second you enter her home alone, a legion of demons is behind you to tempt you both so that you desecrate your courtship. If you are underestimating Satan and think what I’m sharing is absurd, it is possible you are already in a state of falling.

32. If a woman complains a lot about other people, she will soon complain about you

Do not complain, brethren, against one another, so that you yourselves may not be judged; behold, the Judge is standing right at the door. —James 5:9

Complainers are equal-opportunity, meaning that they complain about everyone. I once knew a man who would complain to me about everyone we knew, and yet he would never complain about me. It didn’t take much time for me to be grouped into his complaints. Complainers may shift their targets, but they will always land on those who are closest to them. If you find a woman who is prone to complaining, the intensity of her complaints will be entirely focused on you after you get married.

I’m sensitive to complaints because I have relatives who are complainers. I see firsthand how complaining can strain relationships and simply make you not want to spend time with the person. A priestmonk in the Orthodox Church told me that complaining is a form of irritation, which in turn is a form of anger. Therefore, the root of complaining is anger, even if the complaints may be just or uttered in a light-hearted manner. Identify if the woman complains once in a while or if she complains all the time. If she’s an aggressive complainer, she has not found a way to tackle her anger in a way that will not damage her relationships, and you must keep a close eye on her pattern of complaining, assuming that one day the target of her complaining will be you.

33. Trust in God to find a wife, not in your own abilities

The wise shall inherit glory, but shame shall be the legacy of fools. —Proverbs 3:35

You can follow every piece of advice in this article, and be completely sure of any choice you make, but still fail if you don’t ask God through intense prayer for His will to be done. Be wary of only trusting yourself and what you can perceive with your senses when it comes to choosing a wife, because God can see things that you can’t see. He knows any woman more than you know her. If you’re relying more on worldly wisdom than God–and most of what I’m offering here is worldly wisdom–how can you possibly make a good choice? My suggestions are to get your foot in the door if you are inexperienced and chaste so that you are not easily manipulated, but more important than what I say is to pray daily and humbly to help evaluate any woman you are interested in. Pray to the Saints, seek out elders in the Church, and ask balanced Christians close to you for aid.

Conclusion

I’m sure many men will read this article and say to themselves that they will avoid the big mistakes, but then something happens: they become attracted to a woman. Once the attraction happens, which is an emotional and physical process involving our flesh, rationality is first to go out the window. I hate to admit this but I’m certainly more experienced than you when it comes to falling under the spell of a woman and letting my flesh take over the driver’s seat. You think that it won’t happen to you, that you have the knowledge, but if that’s what you believe, it will surely happen to you, because you are underestimating the power of your fallen nature.

Even though I have experience, I do not trust my judgment in the presence of an attractive woman, because even after returning to Christ, it happened that I entered a hypnotic spell of improper judgment. Thankfully, with the help of the Church and my faith, I pulled my soul out of the spell, but I don’t kid myself: I’m one chance meeting away from self-willingly entering a state of passionate delusion. Whatever the case may be, understand that it is God’s will that must be done. He allows us to fall for our benefit and He will permit us to enter a happy or unhappy marriage for our salvation. As long as He is in your heart more than any woman, accept whatever outcome arrives, love your wife in spite of all her flaws, and give thanks to God without ceasing for whatever situation you find yourself in, whether single or married.

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7. The historian whose life was ruined because he spoke the truth of World War 2 [Link]

8. “The people in power want a Great Reset, but what we are going to give them instead is a Great Restoration” [Link]

9. “We have been so hopelessly dehumanized that for today’s modest ration of food we are willing to abandon all our principles, our souls, and all the efforts of our predecessors and all opportunities for our descendants.” [Link]

10. “In the NFT community, we are witnessing the logical conclusion of a generation that is so alienated, so profoundly unfulfilled, that they are considering abandoning the physical world altogether. At least the metaverse is something new–maybe somewhere they can be rich, or important.” [Link]

11. Viruses have never been truly isolated [Link]

12. “[San Francisco] is carrying out a bizarre medical experiment whereby addicts are given everything they need to maintain their addiction—cash, hot meals, shelter—in exchange for . . . almost nothing.” [Link]

13. The United States is is trying to become the landlord monopoly class of the entire world [Link]

14. The Great Russian Restoration [Link]

15. How the Rockefellers took over medicine by pushing vaccines and other dangerous drugs [Link]

16. “…the petrodollar system was incredibly beneficial for (a) commercial banks, (b) arms manufacturers, (c) real estate owners, and (d) stockholders.” [Link]

17. The Intelligence Branch in the United States acts as an independent government free of supervision and constraint [Link]

18. A mother’s attempt to save her adult child from drug addiction [Link]

19. “…the collective West is now a totalitarian and aggressively anti-religious power-block that seeks to export its anti-Christian and anti-human ideology onto the rest of the world.”
[Link]

Read Next: 29 Secular Articles I Recommend

The Soul After Death by Father Seraphim Rose shares the Orthodox Christian position on what happens to human beings upon death. Father Seraphim reviews the teachings of saints to explain modern phenomena such as near-death experiences of those who have been revived after clinical death and also out-of-body experiences among psychedelic drug users. His book is critical reading for serious Christians, because if one were to subscribe to errant beliefs about death, and come to think that “everybody goes to heaven” or that “heaven is a state of mind, not a place,” it will start to negatively affect their spiritual life and may ultimately lead to eternal condemnation.

What is death?

Saint Ignatius Brianchaninov: “By the fall both the soul and body of man were changed. In the strict sense the fall was for them also a death. That which we see and call death is in essence only the separation of the soul from the body, both of which had already before this been put to death by an eternal death!”

Do you believe in a spiritual reality?

We who live on earth can hardly even begin to understand the reality of the spiritual world until we ourselves come to dwell in it. This is a process that begins now, in this life, but ends only in eternity, when we will behold “face to face” what we now see only “through a glass, darkly” (1 Cor. 13:12).

If you don’t believe in a spiritual reality then everything you do will be structured around pleasing your body and flesh until you die, and then when you die, none of that body-pleasing will be useful when you are fully aware and present in soul to be judged by God.

What can we learn from near-death experiences among heterodox and non-Christians?

…Dr. Kubler-Ross mentions one remarkable case where a blind person “saw” and later described everything clearly in the room where she “died,” although when she came back to life she was once again blind—a striking evidence that it is not the eye that sees (not the brain that thinks, for the mental faculties become quicker after death), but rather the soul that performs these actions through the physical organs as long as the body is alive, but by its own power when the body is dead.

[…]

It is characteristic of our times of unbelief that these people seldom use the Christian vocabulary or realize that it is their soul that has been set free from the body and now experiences everything; they are usually simply puzzled at the new state they find themselves in.

[…]

…most, perhaps indeed all, of [near-death] experiences have little in common with the Christian vision of heaven. These visions are not spiritual, but worldly. They are so quick, so easily attained, so common, so earthly in their imagery, that there can be no serious comparison of them with the true Christian visions of heaven in the past… Even the most “spiritual” thing about some of them—the feeling of the “presence” of Christ—persuades one more of the spiritual immaturity of those who experience it than of anything else. Rather than producing the profound awe, fear of God, and repentance which the authentic experience of God’s presence has evoked in Christians saints (of which St. Paul’s experience on the road to Damascus may be taken as a model—Acts 9:3-9), the present-day experiences produce something much more akin to the “comfort” and “peace” of the modern spiritistic and Pentecostal movements.

[…]

…[near-death experiences] may be said to “prove” no more than a minimum doctrine of the bare survival of the human soul outside the body, and of the bare existence of a non-material reality, while giving decisively no information on non-material reality, while giving decisively no information on the further state of even existence of the soul after the first few minutes of “death,” nor of the ultimate nature of the non-material realm.

What does it mean to see dead relatives?

St. Gregory the Great, in describing many of these experiences in Dialogues, explains the phenomenon of meeting others: “It frequently happens that a soul on the point of death recognizes those with whom it is to share the same eternal dwelling for equal blame or reward” (Dialogues, IV, 36). And specifically with regard to those who have led a righteous life, St. Gregory notes that “if often happens that the saints of heaven appear to the righteous at the hour of death in order to reassure them. And, with the vision of the heavenly company before their minds, they die without experiencing any fear of agony” (Dialogues, IV, 12).

[…]

These encounters, while they do not seem by any means to occur to everyone before death, still can be called universal in the sense that they occur without regard to nationalist, religion, or holiness of life.

[…]

…it must be that the dead relatives who are seen as not actually “present” as the dying believe them to be. St. Gregory the Great says only that the dying man “recognizes” people, whereas to the righteous “the saints of heaven appear”—a distinction which not merely indicates the different experience of the righteous and ordinary sinners when they die, but also is directly bound up with the different afterlife state of the saints and ordinary sinners. The saints have great freedom to intercede for the living and to come to their aid, whereas deceased sinners, save in very special cases, have no contact with the living.

[…]

…we need not doubt that the saints actually appear to the righteous at death, as is described in many Lives of Saints. To ordinary sinners, on the other hand, there are often apparitions of relatives, friends, or “gods” which correspond to what the dying either expect or are prepared to see. The exact nature of these latter apparitions it is probably impossible to define; they are certainly not mere hallucinations, but seem to be a part of the natural experience of death, a sign to the dying person (as it were) that he is about to enter a new realm where the laws of ordinary material reality no longer hold. There is nothing very extraordinary about this experience, which seems to hold constant for different times, places, and religions.

Applying discernment to near-death experiences

…we must clearly distinguish between genuine, grace-given visions of the other world, and a merely natural experience which, even though it may be outside the normal limits of human experience, is not in the least spiritual and tells us nothing about the actual reality of either the heaven or the hell of authentic Christian teaching.

[…]

One who is aware of this Orthodox teaching cannot but look in amazement and horror at the ease with which contemporary “Christians” trust the visions and apparitions which are now becoming so common. The reason for this credulity is clear: Roman Catholicism and Protestantism, cut off for centuries now from the Orthodox doctrine and practice of spiritual life, have lost all capability for clear discernment in the realm of spirits.

[…]

Those who are seeing “paradise” in the aerial realm today are “pleased,” “happy,” “satisfied”—seldom anything more; if they behold “Christ” in some form, it is only to indulge in the familiar “dialogues” with him that characterize experiences in the “charismatic” movement. The element of the Divine and of man’s awe before it, the fear of God, are absent in such experiences.

Demons will tempt you at the time of death and even right after

The Orthodox Lives of Saints have numerous accounts of… demonic spectacles which appear at the moment of death, usually with the aim of frightening the dying person and making him despair over his salvation.

[…]

The hour of death, then, is indeed a time of demonic temptation, and the “spiritual experiences” which people have at this time… are to be subjected to the same standard of Christian teaching as are any other “spiritual experiences.” Likewise, the “spirits” who may be encountered at this time are to be subjected to the universal test which the Apostle John expresses in the words: Test the spirits, whether they are of God, because many false prophets are gone out into the world (1 John 4:1).

[…]

It befits us, therefore, to be very suspicious (at the least) of the “beings of light” who seem to appear in the moment of death. They seem very much like demons posing as “angels of light” in order to seduce, not only the dying person himself, but even more those to whom he will later tell this tale if he is resuscitated (concerning the chances of which, of course, the demons are well aware).

The demons are not ignorant that people who are clinically dead may be revived, so it is profitable for them to give people a “peaceful” and “calm” vision so that, in the case they do come back to life, they will ecstatically share this vision to all, reinforcing the desired notion that everybody goes to heaven and spiritual labors are not necessary.

Also, don’t despair if you’re swarmed by imp-looking demons surrounding your deathbed. You may think that your judgment has arrived, but really it could be a final temptation by Satan for you to forsake God.

Demons provide a vision at death that corresponds to an individual’s beliefs

It is not necessary for us to define precisely the nature of the apparitions of the dying in order to see that they depend to some extent, as we have already seen on what the dying person expects or is prepared to see. Thus, Christians of past centuries who had a lively belief in hell, and whose conscience accused them in the end, often saw demons at death; Indians of today, who are certainly more “primitive” than Americans in their beliefs and understanding, often see beings that correspond to their still very real fears about the afterlife; while contemporary Americans, with their “enlightened” views, see apparitions in harmony with their “comfortable” life and beliefs, which in general do not include a very realistic fear of hell or awareness of demons.

On the objective side, the demons themselves offer temptations which accord with the spiritual state or expectations of those being tempted. For those who fear hell, the demons may appear in terrible forms in order to make a person die in a state of despair; but for those who do not believe in hell (or for Protestants who believe they are infallibly “saved” and therefore need not fear hell) the demons would naturally offer temptations in some other form that would not so clearly expose their evil intent. Likewise, even to a Christian struggler who has already suffered much, the demons may appear in such a way as to seduce him rather than frighten him.

The activity of demons

Saint Ignatius Brianchaninov: “The holy spirits avoid communion with men who are unworthy of such communion; while the fallen spirits, who have drawn us into their fall, have mingled with us and, so as the more easily to hold us in captivity, strive to make both themselves and their chains unnoticeable to us. And if they do reveal themselves, they do it in order to strengthen their dominion over us.”

[…]

Saint Ignatius Brianchaninov: “…the spirits who appear sensuously to men who are in a state of sinfulness and fall, are demons and not in the least holy angels. ‘A filthy soul,’ said St. Isaac the Syrian, ”does not enter the pure realm and is not joined to holy spirits’ (Homily 74). Holy angels appear only to holy men who have restored communion with God and with them by a holy life.”

[…]

Saint Ignatius Brianchaninov: “The fallen angels are dispersed in a multitude throughout the entire transparent immensity which we see above us. They do not cease to disturb all human societies and every person separately; there is no evil deed, no crime, of which they might not be instigators and participants; they incline and instruct men towards sin by all possible means. Your adversary the devil, says the holy Apostle Peter, walketh about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour (1 Peter 5:8), both during our earthly life and after the separation of the soul from the body. When the soul of a Christian, leaving its earthly dwelling, begins to strive through the aerial spaces towards the homeland on high, the demons stop it, strive to find in it a kinship with themselves, their sinfulness, their fall, and to drag it down to the hell prepared for the devil and his angels (Matt. 25:41). They act thus by the right which they have acquired.”

The foolishness of seeking visions and spiritual experiences

Saint Ignatius Brianchaninov: “The desire to see spirits, curiosity to find out anything about them and from them, is a sign of the greatest foolishness and total ignorance of the Orthodox Church’s traditions concerning moral and active life. Knowledge of spirits is acquired quite differently than is supposed by the inexperienced and careless experimenter. Open communion with spirits for the inexperienced is the greatest misfortune, or serves as a source of the greatest misfortunes.”

[…]

Saint Ignatius Brianchaninov: “One who perceives spirits sensuously can easily be deceived to his own harm and perdition. If, on perceiving spirits, he shows trust or credulity towards them, he will unfailingly be deceived, he will unfailingly be attracted, he will unfailingly be sealed with the seal of deception, not understandable to the inexperienced, the seal of a frightful injury in his spirit; and further, the possibility of correction and salvation is often lost. This has happened with many, very many.”

Judgment after death

[Concerning] our redemption by Jesus Christ, [Saint Ignatius Brianchaninov says,] “all who have openly rejected the Redeemer comprise the inheritance of satan: their souls, after the separation from the body, descend straight to hell. But Christians who are inclined to sin are also unworthy of being immediately translated from earthly life to blessed eternity. Justice itself demands that these inclinations to sin, these betrayals of the Redeemer should be weighted and evaluated. A judging and distinguishing are required in order to define the degree of a Christian soul’s inclination to sin, in order to define what predominates in it—eternal life or eternal death. The unhypocritical Judgment of God awaits every Christian soul after its departure from the body, as the holy Apostle Paul has said: It is appointed unto men once to die, and after this the judgment (Heb. 9:27).”

[…]

What is certain is that there is a testing by demons, who appear in a frightful but human form, accuse the newly-departed of sins and literally try to seize the subtle body of the soul, which is grasped firmly by angels; and all this occurs in the air above us and can be seen by those whose eyes are open to spiritual reality.

In the Orthodox Church, the initial judgment after death is called the “particular judgment.” Prayers can help the dead who have not fared well in this judgment, changing their eternal fate. The final judgment occurs on the Last Day and is, as you may have guessed, final.

What exactly happens when you die?

St. Cyril: “What fear and trembling await you, O soul, in the day of death! You will see frightful, wild, cruel, unmerciful and shameful demons, like dark Ethiopians, standing before you. The very sight of them is worse than any torment. The soul, seeing them, becomes agitated, is disturbed, troubled, seeks to hide, hastens to the angels of God. The holy angels hold the soul; passing with them through the air and rising, it encounters the toll-houses which guard the path from earth to heaven, detaining the soul and hindering it from ascending further. Each toll-house tests the sins corresponding to it; each sin, each passion has its tax collectors and testers.”

[…]

As a sensuous or “natural” experience, therefore, it would seem that death is indeed pleasant. This pleasantness may be experienced equally by one whose conscience is clean before God, and by one who does not deeply believe in God or eternal life at all, and therefore has no awareness of how he may have displeased God during his lifetime. A “bad death” is experienced, as one writer has well said, only by “those who know that God exists, and yet have lived their lives as though He did not”—i.e., those whose consciences torment them and counteract by their pain the natural “pleasure” of physical death. The distinction between believers and unbelievers occurs, then, not at the moment of death itself, but later, at the Particular Judgment. The “pleasantness” of death may be real enough, but it has no necessary connection whatever with the eternal fate of the soul, which may well be one of torment.

[…]

In the contemporary experiences the soul is most frequently offered a choice to remain in “paradise” or go back to earth; while the genuine experience of heaven occurs not by the choice of man but only at the command of God, fulfilled by His angels. The common “out-of-body” experience of “paradise” in our days has no need of a guide because it takes place right here, in the air above us, still in this world; while the presence of the guiding angels is necessary if the experience takes place outside this world, in a different kind of reality, where the soul cannot go by itself. (This is not to say that demons cannot masquerade as “guiding angels” also, but they seldom seem to do so in today’s experiences.)

Secular people are hung up on the delayed inevitability of physical death, and cope by distracting themselves in this life with endless amusements and doctor visits, but it’s really the potential for spiritual death that we should focus our labors on.

Death experiences of the Saints

Saint Ignatius: “The great saints of God pass through the aerial guards of the dark powers with such great freedom because during earthly life they enter into uncompromising battle with them and, gaining the victory over them, acquire in the depths of their heart complete freedom from sin, become the temple and sanctuary of the Holy Spirit, making their rational dwelling-place inaccessible for the fallen angels.”

The aerial realm

The realm into which the soul immediately enters when it leaves the body and begins to lose contact with what we know as “material reality” (whether after death or in a simple “out-of-body” experience) is neither heaven nor hell, but an invisible realm close to earth which is variously called the “After-death” or “Bardo plane” (Tibetan Book of the Dead), the “world of spirits” (Swedenborg and spiritism), the “astral plane” (Theosophy and most of occultism), “Locale II” (Monroe)—or, in Orthodox language, the aerial world of the under-heaven where fallen spirits dwell and are active in deceiving men for their damnation. This is not the “other world” that awaits man after death, but only the invisible part of this world that man must pass through to reach the truly “other” world of heaven or hell. For those who have truly died, and are being conducted by angels out of earthly life, this is the realm where the Particular Judgment begins at the aerial “toll-houses,” where the spirits of the air reveal their real nature and their hostility towards mankind; for all others, it is a realm of demonic deception at the hands of these same spirits.

[…]

The beings contacted in this realm are always (or almost always) demons, whether they are invoked by mediumism or other occult practices, or encountered in “out-of-body” experiences. They are not angels, for these dwell in heaven and only pass through this realm as messengers of God. They are not the souls of the dead, for they dwell in heaven or hell and only pass through this realm immediately after death on their way to judgment for their actions in this life. Even those most adept in “out-of-body” experiences cannot remain in this realm for long without danger of permanent separation from the body (death)…

[…]

Almost all contemporary researchers accept or at least are highly sympathetic to the occult teaching regarding this realm, for the single reason that it is based on experience, which is also the basis of science. But “experience” in the material world is something quite different from “experience” in the aerial realm. The raw material being experienced and studied in the one case is morally “neutral,” and it can be studied objectively and verified by others; but in the other case the “raw material” is hidden, extremely difficult to grasp, and, in many cases, has a will of its own—a will to deceive the observer.

What is really going on with modern near-death experiences?

The passage through the toll-houses—which is a kind of touchstone of authentic after-death experience—is not described at all in today’s experiences, and the reason for this is not far to seek. From many signs—the absence of the angels who come for the soul, the absence of judgment, the frivolousness of many of the accounts, even the very shortness of the time involved (usually some five to ten minutes, compared with the several hours to several days in the incidents from saint’ Lives and other Orthodox sources)—it is clear that today’s experiences, although sometimes very striking and not explainable by any natural laws known to medical science, are not very profound. If these are actual experiences of death, then they involve only the very beginning of the soul’s after-death journey; they occur in the anteroom of death, as it were, before God’s decree for the soul has become final (manifested by the coming of the angels for the soul), while there is still a possibility for the soul to return to the body by natural means.

[…]

It is not precisely an “after-death” experience; it is rather the “out-of-body” experience which is only the antechamber to other much more extensive experiences, whether of death itself or of what is sometimes called “astral travelling”… Although the “out-of-body” state might be called the “first moment” of death—if death actually follows—it is a gross mistake to conclude from it anything whatever about the “after-death” state, unless it be the bare facts of the survival and consciousness of the soul after death, which hardly anyone who actually believes in the soul’s immortality denies in any case.

There is an aerial realm above us that we cannot see because our spiritual eyes are shut. This aerial realm is infested with demons. When you die, your soul launches into the aerial realm for a brief period, where the demons can influence you with various visions, until the holy angels come down to begin your trial of particular judgment. Many psychedelic drugs have the ability to put you in the aerial realm where what you see is almost certainly a demonic trick. Proof of this is the fact that very few psychedelic users interpret their “spiritual experiences” of the aerial realm in a way that steers them into the Orthodox Church. The vast majority fall back into a variety of pantheistic, gnostic, deistic, or New Age belief systems that are not sufficient for salvation.

It is pleasing for the soul to separate from a body corrupted with sins

Our physical bodies in this fallen world are bodies of pain, corruption, and death. When separated from this body, the soul is immediately in a state more “natural” to it, closer to the state God intends for it; for the resurrected “spiritual body” in which man will dwell in the Kingdom of Heaven has more in common with the soul than with the body we know on earth.

What will our resurrected body be like?

[The] resurrected body, like that of Christ Himself, will be different from our earthly bodies in that it will be more refined and more like the angelic nature, without which it could not dwell in the Heavenly Kingdom, where there is no death or corruption; but it will still be the same body, miraculously restored and made fit by God for eternal life, as Ezekiel saw in his vision of the “dry bones” (Ezek. 37:1-14).

Erroneous concepts of heaven

…many Christians, in order to escape the mockery and unbelievers and avoid even the slightest taint of any materialistic conception, have gone to an opposite extreme and declare that heaven is “nowhere.” Among Roman Catholics and Protestants there are sophisticated apologies which proclaim that heaven is “a state, not a place,” that “up” is only a metaphor, the Ascension of Christ (Luke 24:50-51, Acts 1:9-11) was not really an “ascension,” but only a change of state. The result of such apologies is that heaven and hell become very vague and indefinite conceptions, and the sense of their reality begins to disappear—with disastrous results for Christian life, because these are the very realities toward which our whole earthly life is directed.

[…]

The Christian after-death experiences all affirm the existence of heaven, hell, and judgment, of the need for repentance, struggle, and fear of losing one’s soul eternally; while the contemporary experiences, like those of shamans, pagan initiates, and mediums, seem to point to a “summerland” of pleasant experiences in the “other world,” where there is no judgment but only “growth,” and death is not to be feared but only welcome as a “friend” that introduces one to the pleasures of “life after death.”

What to do when someone you know dies

As soon as someone has reposed, immediately call or inform a priest, so he can read the “Prayers on the Departure of the Soul,” which are appointed to be read over all Orthodox Christians after death. Try, if it be possible to have the funeral in church and to have the Psalter read over the deceased until the funeral. The funeral need not be performed elaborately, but most definitely it should be complete, without abbreviations; think at this time not of yourself and your convenience, but of the deceased, with whom you are parting forever.

The spiritual world is merging with ours

St. Gregory the Dialogist: “As the present world approaches its end, the world of eternity looms nearer… The end of the world merges with the beginning of eternal life… The spiritual world is moving closer to us, manifesting itself through visions and revelations.” The end of this world’s existence began with the coming of Christ, and sensitive souls are always seeing how the other world is “breaking into” this world ahead of time and giving “hints” of its existence.”

The only way to heaven is through Lord Jesus Christ

The Church’s teaching is that whereas before our redemption by Christ, no one could pass through the air to heaven, the path being closed by demons, and all men went down to hell, now it has become possible for men to pass through the demons of the air, and their power now is restricted to men whose own sins convict them. In the same way, we know that even though Christ “destroyed the power of hell” (Kontakion of Pascha), any one of us can still fall into hell by rejecting salvation in Christ.

I see the toll-houses as a way for God to show you his just judgment. It’s a fair court trial with detailed evidence presented by your accusers—the demons—and defended competently by the holy angels. Whoever ends up in hell after the Last Judgment will have no doubt why they are there, and has no standing to whine that God is unfair or arbitrary. With The Soul After Death, Father Seraphim Rose did a commendable job revealing the doctrine of death and the importance of believing in the truth instead of vague modern notions that try to exalt death for everyone, regardless of what type of lives they had. (For a podcast adaption of the book, listen to Father John Valadez’s Soul After Death lecture series. For a more academic approach to this topic, try Jean-Claude Larchet’s Life After Death.)

One caveat is that, unless you are firmly on the path of Orthodoxy, you will feel notions of despair about the perceived difficulty of being saved, at least from the anecdotes that were shared involving mostly monks who were greatly tried at their final hour. I purposefully did not share any of the hard sayings since my audience is not solely Orthodox. I cannot recommend this book to those not in the Orthodox Church except for those who have had near-death or out-of-body experiences and have fallen into a “spiritual but not religious” trap that needs to be corrected. If you’re Orthodox, this is essential reading to understand the stakes at hand.

Learn More: The Soul After Death on Amazon

When a man begins repentance, his heart is tender, contrite, and humble. He is ready to follow God’s commandments, obey Church teachings, and begin a new life in Christ. The problem is he is not yet fully healed, and still has elevated pride that is automatic for those who grew up in the West. Very soon, he may begin to make exemptions for himself concerning various sins or practices that he rationalizes as “small,” “temporary,” or serving the “greater good.” Satan’s foot is back in the door and will use his desire for exemptions to launch a strong attack that steals away the seed of new faith.

In Crime & Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky, the character Raskolnikov believes he is superior to his fellow man—so superior that he should have the right to kill someone if that person poses an obstacle to him.

“I simply hinted that an extraordinary man has the right… that is not an official right, but an inner right to decide in his own conscience to overstep… certain obstacles, and only in case it is essential for the practical fulfilment of his idea (sometimes, perhaps, of benefit to the whole of humanity).”

[…]

There is, if you recollect, a suggestion that there are certain persons who can… that is, not precisely are able to, but have a perfect right to commit breaches of morality and crimes, and that the law is not for them.

Raskolnikov goes on to murder someone he thought was a detriment to mankind, and in the process of that murder he ended up killing a second person who happened upon the scene. By usurping the mantle of God, Raskolnikov thought that his intellectual powers gave him the ability to dispense with a perceived miscreant and scourge to society, but very soon he is overcome by a crushing guilt that he cannot silence.

Before my repentance, when I was living in Catholic Poland, I adhered to the concept of “cultural Christianity,” meaning that I saw the overall good that Christianity was doing to those who practiced the faith, but believed it was an “opiate for the masses,” a tool for merely average men and women who needed external rules to have peace in life instead of ravenously following their worldly desires and carnal passions. Since I thought I was an exalted man, bestowed with innumerable gifts, including intellectual, I was not required to follow Christian morality and could instead live without any limits to my behavior or actions. My feelings and will were supreme, just like Raskolnikov, and I created wholesale exemptions for myself to God’s law even though I saw moral benefit in it for mankind. I did not murder anyone physically, but by teaching sin so vigorously through my books and videos, I was an attempted murderer of the souls of men who used them to fornicate, and I aided in the corruption of women who had relations with me and the men who followed me. What peace did I have in this time? What calm entered my soul? I was a dopamine junkie, a slave to bodily pleasure, prone to anger, unstable in emotion, reeking of disgusting pride, and deluded into thinking that I could operate my mind and body in a way that was not intended by God. It took a family death to wake me up from my demonic delusion.

It’s common to meet unmarried Christian men who are in sexual relationships with women. They justify it by saying that they are “monogamous” and “will get married eventually,” but will such self-justification suffice upon Judgment Day? God’s law is clearly against fornication, adultery, and harlotry. No man is given a divine imperative to exempt himself. Do you really believe that God is pleased that you’re fornicating with “only” one woman at a time? From what I learned in the Orthodox Church, such a man must stop fornicating until he gets married within the Church.

Even after I was received into the Church, I still made an exemption for myself that I can be the star of a popular live stream, one that spiked my adrenaline and led to numerous sins stemming from pride. It took me months to follow the basic Church teaching of halting that which causes you to sin.

True repentance is a change of the heart, and the change of evil ways into good ways. True repentance invariably creates shame and regret in the heart of the penitent, that he had acted so shamelessly and insubordinately toward God. There can be no true repentance when a man does not want to cease from sins and show obedience toward God. There is a delusional and false repentance, and therefore it is of no benefit to the penitent. For repentance and willful sinning are contrary things, and cannot exist together. —Saint Tikhon of Zadonsk in On True Christianity Vol. 1

God did not exempt me. I’m not exalted above others. I’m not a special boy. Without God, my natural gifts are more likely to be harnessed for evil than good. The morality we get from God is objective, clear, and for our eternal benefit; it’s our fallen weakness to shade it gray and think that God really wants us to transgress His law because we are somehow above it. Believing you can commit any type of sin to do a “favor” for God is delusion, and unfortunately, I am infected with it. What the Church teaches, I must abide, and if I ever get the notion that I don’t have to abide, I must conclude that a demon is whispering in my ear, and a damaging spiritual fall is near.

Read Next: The Salvation Of Your Soul Is Not A Game

The Book of Acts continues where the Gospels left off and shows us how God further instructed the apostles through the Holy Spirit, the third person of the Trinity. It’s also important in documenting the early history of the Church. Archbishop Averky, former abbot of Holy Trinity Monastery in Jordanville, New York, offers a sound exegesis of the book in his volume The Acts of the Apostles. My favorite passages are highlighted below.

Previous Article In This Series: The Best Exegesis Of The Four Gospels

Why the book of Acts is so important

In this book, we see the fulfillment of those prophecies that the Lord uttered to His apostles in the Gospels. In it, we see the triumph of the faith of Christ over this fallen world, in spite of the human frailty of the apostles who had no money to ensure the success of their mission. In this book, we see how the apostles themselves became completely different people after the descent of the Holy Spirit. Fearlessly, with great self-rejection and courage, they preached the faith of Christ to the very end of the Greco-Roman civilized world, despite grievous persecutions. In a short time, they established many Christian communities who lived in the spirit of the commandments of the Gospels. The Book of Acts vividly shows us that the preaching of the Apostles was not the work of man, but of God…

Being filled with the Holy Spirit on Pentecost

Even before [Pentecost] the apostles were given some spiritual gifts, but now they were filled with the Holy Spirit, for the fullness of gracious spiritual gifts now had descended upon them. They were transfigured, purified, sanctified, and enlightened by the action of the Spirit of God. It was as if they became completely different, new people, with the Holy Spirit as their constant inspiration and guide. The external manifestation of this grace-filled transfiguration was the speaking in tongues, something that Christ Himself foretold (Mark 16:17). As soon as this divine fire lit their souls, they began to praise and thank God in the natural exuberance of their holy ecstasy, glorifying the majesty of God.

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It was appropriate for the grace of the Spirit to be given on the same day as the giving of the ancient Law [Jewish Pentecost], because as the Saviour willed to commit Himself to His passion in no other time than the time of the killing of the lamb, in order to tie the truth with the prefiguration. Thus also the coming of the Spirit could not have been given at any other time than the day when the Law was given, in order to show that the Holy Spirit is the same Lawgiver of both the Old and the New Covenants… In the same way that on Pentecost sheaves of the new fruits were gathered by many people from many different places to Jerusalem, so on this day it was appropriate that the first fruits of all nations living under heaven should gather into a single sheaf of piety, brought to God through the apostolic preaching.

The foreknowledge of God

It is important to note that [God’s] foreknowledge does not destroy human free will, for the predestination of God, expressed in prophecy, is founded only on His foreknowledge. God knows how a person will use his free will, and depending on this free choice, God predestines.

The gift of the Holy Spirit to Orthodox Christians

Before the coming of Christ, the greater part of mankind, the Gentiles, were deprived completely of the gifts of the Holy Spirit, while grace was given to some of the Jews who were chosen for a special ministry. In Christianity, every one of the faithful receives these gifts of grace through the sacraments.

The beginning of Christian worship

Every day, the Christian community participated in worship at the Temple of Jerusalem. Christianity was not a sect within Judaism, but rather, it was the completion and fulfillment of true Judaism. The entirety of the temple worship was established on the expectation of the Messiah, and so Christians could freely worship in the Second Temple. Because the Christians believed in a Messiah who had already come, their own unique worship would need time to develop in a form distinct from the worship of the Old Testament Judaism.

The beginning of such unique Christian worship was the establishment of the sacrament of the Eucharist, which in Acts is called the “breaking of bread.” To celebrate this mystery, the first Christians gathered in private homes—“from house to house”—where the Eucharist would be served in conjunction with the evening agape meal. The general character of these Christian gatherings is characterized by these words: “with gladness and simplicity of heart.” This is the fruit of living faith and the purity of a heart deeply involved in a burgeoning spiritual life, illumined by the abundant gifts of the Holy Spirit. Because of this, Christians were a model of true piety, even for the rest of the Jews who did not believe in Christ. Therefore, many respected them as “having favor with all the people.” This favorable reputation of Christians was the reason for the gradual increase in converts, an event that St Luke ascribes to the work of the Lord Himself: “and the Lord added to the church daily those who were being saved.”

Receiving help from God

The more severe the persecutions of the newly established Church, the more manifest is the miraculous help of God. By the command of the angel, immediately upon their release, the apostles fearlessly returned to preaching openly in the temple. This remarkable boldness and courage can be explained only by the grace of the Holy Spirit encouraging their natural strength, making them fearless.

The mistakes of Protestants

…to the end of his days, [Apostle Paul] resolutely battled [the delusion that Christians must follow the Mosaic Law], and all his epistles are imbued with the thought that man is justified by faith in Christ, not by the works of the Law. This thought unfortunately has been perverted by the Protestants, who teach that good deeds are not necessary for salvation, even though Apostle Paul would never even think of maintaining such an idea. He insisted on the irrelevance of only the Mosaic Law for Christianity. “The works of the Law” refer only to the rites of the Law of Moses, not to good deeds in general.

At only 120 pages, Archbishop Averky’s The Acts Of The Apostles is a quick read that can be tackled alongside reading the Book of Acts. If you were edified by his Orthodox exegesis of the Gospels, you will enjoy this book as well.

Learn More: The Acts Of The Apostles on Amazon

Over the centuries, Christian courtship in the West has become distorted into seduction, and seduction into unbridled fornication, the “hookup culture” we have today. Seduction and romance were gateways to normalized sexual sin because they facilitated fallen man’s propensity to self-love through carnal pleasure. Adam and Eve’s innate desire to please and love God was transformed through the fall into a vulgar narcissism where we eagerly abuse and desecrate the bodies of others. To target someone and perform a set of behaviors in order for them to “like” you, and then harness those affections into sexual pleasure, is a side effect of demonic narcissism that is normalized in our time.

Instead of pleasing God and instead of the humility and obedience to the Law of God and the Holy Church commanded by Christ, there now flourishes as never before truly diabolical pride: self-love, conceit, self-glorification, self-exaltation, vanity which oozes out of every pore, and seeking after popularity and earthly glory. This all leads naturally to hatred, envy, malice, and uncontrollable hostility, leading at times to frenzy, instead of to the mutual love and goodwill commanded by the Gospel… —Archbishop Averky in Enemies Of Orthodoxy In The Modern World

Imagine what a modern woman does to attract a man she likes. She will wear tighter or more revealing clothing, put on lipstick to mimic the color of her lips during a state of arousal, stare deeply into his eyes as if he were the only reason for her existence, bite her lower lip, purposely allow her chest, hip, or shoulder to graze the man’s body, laugh purposefully at his jokes, feign interest in his hobbies, preen ceaselessly, apply chemical fragrances to her skin, and deliberately conceal her personal flaws. This is but a sample of the manipulative weapons a woman uses when she methodically targets a man’s lustful tendency to get him to desire her for sex or love.

Why does a woman do this? To feel the emotional pleasure of being desired, to be validated through a man’s attention, to create a narrative that displays social value to her friend group (i.e. brag), to alleviate boredom, and to fulfill her own physically lustful urges. Each of these reasons is for the self: I want to feel good, I want to feel beautiful, I want to be desired, I want to experience physical ecstasy, I want to be loved, I want to be doted upon, I want to be happy, I want to be popular, I want to be in a relationship like my friends. In such a seduction, the woman deceives herself into thinking that she likes the man, or even loves him, but in reality her behavior is a projection of her narcissism. She loves only herself, proven by the fact that there is no pure sacrifice or virtue displayed in the seduction—only the expectation of gain. If that gain is not forthcoming, she halts the seduction (often in anger) and moves on to another target who can elicit the desired outcome. She sees a man as a character in a play that she scripted to appeal to her imagination and long-held fantasies that developed since childhood from consuming thousands of hours of secular entertainment and media. In essence, seducing a man allows her to be the princess in her own movie, someone who a man would die for, the ultimate confirmation of her perceived self-worth.

It’s similar when a man is seducing a woman. A man will claim he is fornicating for the physical benefits alone, but he is all too eager to share tales of his conquests, highlighting his need for emotional validation concerning his masculine prowess. Sadly, I fornicated with many women in my past not because I strongly desired them, but because I wanted to bond with other men by sharing all the details of the seduction and be rewarded with their commendation or laughter. If you were to ask the old me why I dived so wholeheartedly into carnal sin, he would answer you thus: I want to feel good, I want to feel masculine, I want to have fun, I want to show off to other men, I want to assert my superiority over others or get their attention, I want to be challenged, I want to think of myself as special or skilled, I want to be popular, I want to be the hero of my own movie. It was all done for my pleasure and egotistical needs. The women were merely supporting characters in the play that I had written myself for myself. It was so easy to forget about them after a short time because they were a mere instrument of my own pride and self-love.

For women, seduction is a gourmet meal while for men it’s like a trip to McDonald’s. Men want something quick and easy that fills the belly without a long wait, which is why it’s so much more common for a man to “take one for the team” than a woman. A man is more likely to see hooking up with any woman as a replacement for masturbation instead of the potentially life-changing narrative that women may prescribe to it. In both cases, the world revolves around the seducer and what he or she wants. The degree of patience may vary, whereby women are usually more patient than men since their sexual urges are less acute, but both use the other to receive material benefits, whether to the ego or to the body, and any authentic love or generosity displayed is only done to continue receiving benefits, remaining always transactional without serving a higher purpose.

All of the Holy Fathers, teaching on the spiritual life, with one voice agree that the root and source of all the passions is egoism or self-love, that is, unreasonable, wrongful love towards oneself. Egoism or self-love gives rise to three principal passions the three fundament roots of all the other passions: love of pleasure, greed, and love of glory. These three principal passions are enumerated in the Holy Scripture by the Apostle and Evangelist John the Theologian who says, Do not love the world or the things in the world… For all that is in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—is not of the Father but is of the world (1 John 2:15-16). From these three principal passions in turn come the following eight passions: (1) gluttony, (2) fornication, (3) avarice, (4) anger, (5) sorrow, (6) despair, (7) vainglory, and (8) pride. These eight passions engender yet more and more passions which then branch out into a multitude of diverse and subtle variations of each of these principal passions. All of these innumerable passions tyrannize and torment the human heart, never giving a person rest and causing him unbearable suffering, from which he loses spiritual peace, inner balance, and tranquility of conscience. He feels deeply unhappy, sometimes experiencing truly hellish torment, as if experiencing the onset of those torments that inevitably await all unrepentant sinners… —Archbishop Averky in The Struggle For Virtue

Let’s compare narcissistic seduction with Orthodox Christian courtship, where the I is removed and replaced with God. The self is no longer the main recipient of pleasure, happiness, or glory. Instead of a man using a woman as a vehicle for self-gratification, she is used as a vehicle to please God and serve His will for mankind. If a man identifies a woman he wants to marry, the questions on his mind will look entirely different compared to the narcissistic man: Is this union pleasing to God? Is she the one that God wants me to marry? Is this union necessary to increase our faith and ultimately our salvation? What is the will of my Lord God? Of course the woman must have some appealing traits, but the final decision to court her for marriage will depend not on personal satisfaction or pleasure but God’s good pleasure, which He can reveal to the man in time through a variety of methods. The me-centeredness of seduction is replaced with the God-centeredness of chaste courtship. The desire to receive pleasure is replaced by the desire to pick up a cross that pleases God and ultimately leads to salvation. Using a woman to receive bodily pleasure is replaced with loving a woman to receive divine pleasure (God’s grace).

If you don’t possess the true faith of Orthodoxy, I deem it impossible to purely court for God instead of seduce for the self, even if you’re a “good person” and covet marriage for wholesome material goals. Subconsciously, you will seek out a woman who pleases you in the here and now, and since it’s typical that we attract a mate who is a mirror to our spiritual state, you will attract a narcissist if you’re a narcissist. You will attract an egomaniac if you’re an egomaniac. You will attract a woman who is unconsciously serving Satan if you’re already serving Satan. On the other hand, if you’re a God-pleaser, you will attract a God-pleaser, for a God-hater will find it torturous to be with a God-pleaser. From this reality, it’s clear to see that the solution to finding the best spouse is to work on an Orthodox faith that is pleasing to God, but how many women instead devote their free time to makeup, clothing, or secular entertainment? How many men spend untold hours building huge muscles in a quest to spam a hundred women on Tinder after uploading shirt-less photos? Such behavior is surely a sign that more spiritual work must be done, because it’s only when we transcend the selfish needs of our flesh do we mature enough to enter a marriage with God at the helm.

Read Next: Hugs Are Dangerous

The coronavirus pandemic has revealed to me that science is not what I believed it to be when I received a bachelor’s degree in microbiology in 2001. Instead of striving for the pure, unadulterated truth of the natural world, it has blatantly become an authoritarian vehicle to enslave and spiritually destroy human beings at the hands of oligarchs who have the billions of dollars needed to fund science and therefore determine what is science. From my independent research into the germ theory of disease, which is the accepted theory of how we allegedly get sick from various pathogens, I can no longer say that I absolutely believe viruses are contagious.

A man who helped nudge me into my current belief is Dr. Tow Cowan, a medical doctor and researcher who has revealed the history of virology and other truths that were not taught to me in university. Breaking The Spell is a short 43-page book he wrote that reveals the sham of modern virology. After studying Dr. Cowan’s work and many others (see the reading list at the bottom of this article), I cannot in good conscience conclude that viruses are the main cause of respiratory illness and other diseases.

When I tell people that I don’t have a firm belief that viruses are contagious, they begin a series of “How about…” questions to which I sometimes have an answer and sometimes I don’t. If you’re new to virus skepticism, I hope the following passages from Dr. Cowan’s book and my explanations will be of aid.

Epidemiological observations are not proof that viruses exist

For more than a hundred years, people observed that one sailor after another got sick on ships. Their teeth fell out, and many went into heart failure and died. For many, it was “obvious” that something was being passed—a contagion—from one sailor to the next. At some point, however, a sailor ate a lime; the whole thing went away because, in fact, the sick sailors were suffering from scurvy, a disease caused by vitamin C deficiency.

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There are many other examples illustrating how epidemiological observations have misled a medical profession stubbornly wedded to the idea of contagion. Beriberi and pellagra two well-known nutritional deficiencies, were considered for decades to be caused by a contagion. It turns out the case was B vitamin deficiency, which, as one would expect, would often show up in the same family members at the same time.

Last year, I came down with a flu-like illness while traveling. I returned home and then three days later, my mother came down with a similar but milder illness. It seemed quite intuitive that something was transmitted from me to my mother, but in spite of the timing, I cannot say with proof that a virus was transmitted. I have the epidemiological observation that my mother got sick three days after me, but if I want to say a virus caused it, I would need to prove it. Scientists have not proven that a viral particle floating in the air can be the cause of illness once inhaled, ingested, or transmitted through blood. If I can’t say it’s a virus in the case of me and my mother then what happened? I don’t know, but just because I don’t know, I will not hop onto a deceptively intuitive theory that does not have sufficient evidential backing. (Another intuitive theory that many have fallen for is evolution.)

Do you believe in a yawn virus? Probably not, but I’m sure it has happened to you that someone you were with yawned, and then almost immediately after, you also yawned. We don’t attribute such yawn contagion to a particle. Do you believe in a haircut virus? When I see a man with a nice haircut, I look in the mirror and evaluate if I need a haircut as well, and sometimes I get one soon after. Since it is theorized that diseases are the body’s method of expelling toxins, it could be that when you see someone who is sick, your body does an evaluation if it should also expel toxins. There are many other theories available that are beyond the scope of this introductory article, and I cannot claim to know the complete answer, but I have not seen credible evidence that virus particles are the cause of flu-like disease or otherwise.

During the Spanish influenza, Milton Rosenau was tasked with researching exactly how it was infecting humans. After a series of experiments, he was unable to infect anyone with the alleged virus (then called Pfeiffer’s bacillus). He went so far as getting sick people to cough and exchange fluids with healthy volunteers, and when that didn’t work, he took fluid from dead people’s lungs and tried to use that to infect people. It still didn’t infect anyone!

As the preliminary trials proved negative, we became bolder, and selecting nineteen of our volunteers, gave each one of them a very large quantity of a mixture of thirteen different strains of the Pfeiffer bacillus, some of them obtained recently from the lungs at necropsy; others were subcultures of varying age, and each of the thirteen had, of course, a different history. Suspensions of these organisms were sprayed with an atomizer into the nose and into the eyes, and back into the throat, while the volunteers were breathing in. We used some billions of these organisms, according to our estimated counts, on each one of the volunteers, but none of them took sick. The Infectious Myth Busted: The Rosenau Spanish Flu Experiments

I know this may be hard for you to believe, since you were bombarded with viral theory when you are a child, and everyone you know believes in it, but they have never proved that viral diseases are caused by viruses. It’s just an intuitive theory that has been accepted as fact. When I go to national parks in the United States, there are information placards that say a particular rock formation is billions of years old. That is presented confidently as fact, but it is also a mere theory (Orthodox Church doctrine puts the age of the earth at about 7000 years).

How are viruses “isolated”? (Hint: they’re not)

In the history of medicine, not one published study shows the isolation of identical particles that would represent a disease-causing virus from any bodily fluid from any sick person.

Let me make this even more clear. If one takes any person with any “viral” illness—for example, chicken pox, rabies, measles, AIDS or COVID-19—the published literature does not contain any evidence of any virus that was directly isolated from any bodily fluids from even one person suffering from these illnesses. The interesting thing about this statement is that no health institution from any government in the world disagrees.

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…here are the steps Enders [the first scientist who “isolated” viruses”] outlined in his 1954 paper [describing viral isolation]. Enders started his experiment by taking a throat swab from seven children hospitalized with symptoms consistent with measles. He mixed the cotton swab with two milliliters of milk—interestingly, itself a source of genetic material. Then he added the throat swab in milk to a solution containing: “Penicillin, 100ug/ml and streptomycin, 50 mg/ml were added to all throat specimens which were then centrifuged at 5450 rpm for about one hour. Supernatant fluid and sediment resuspended in a small volume of milk were used as separate inocula in different experiments in amounts varying from 0.5 ml to 3.0 ml”.

“Inocula” is just the sample used in the next step, which was to inoculate this material onto a culture of “trypsinized human and rhesus monkey kidney” cells. To this culture medium, he added the following: “The culture medium consisted of bovine amniotic fluid (90%), beef embryo extract (5%), horse serum (5%), antibiotics, and phenol red as an indicator of cell metabolism”.

In simple language, Enders mixed his sample with six other substances that are known to be sources of protein and genetic material. We now know that these substances break down into particles with the size and morphology of what are called viruses. These six sources are milk, human kidney cells, rhesus monkey kidney cells, bovine amniotic fluid, beef embryo extract and horse serum.

To this culture, Enders’ research group next added antibiotics that are known to be toxic to the kidney cells, especially streptomycin. (Nowadays, scientists tend to use the antibiotics gentamicin and amphotericin.) Enders and colleagues then observed this brew over a number of days. When they saw a characteristic cytopathic effect (CPE) in the cells of the cultures—meaning the transition of healthy, normal-sized culture cells into giant, disorganized cells with internal holes or vacuoles—they concluded that these were proof that the virus from the throat swab was destroying the cells in the culture. To Enders, this cytopathic effect was the hallmark of dying cells, and he believed it could only have occurred because the virus in the measles sample infected and destroyed the cells in the culture.

To this day, with minor exceptions, every “viral isolation” starts with this flawed culturing process. Furthermore, every genetic analysis of any purported virus is done on the results of this cell culture, not on an isolated, purified virus. No exceptions. Thus, if virologists want to elucidate the genome of a new virus, they don’t isolate the virus from a sick person and sequence that specific particle. Rather, they take an unpurified sample from a sick person, run it through a tissue culture (as described above) and do their analysis on the resulting mixture—not on the virus itself.

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…every “live-viral vaccine” basically is nothing more than a partly purified (minimally filtered) cell culture mixture.

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Today, virologists refer to the inevitable breakdown products of dead and dying tissues as extracellular vesicles or sometimes as “exosomes.” These particles can be isolated and purified directly from bodily fluids of sick people. They are conceptually different from viruses in that viruses supposedly come from outside the person and, at least sometimes, are considered pathogens. EVs come from the breakdown of the person’s own tissues and are non-pathogenic. And, as of May 2020, virologists acknowledged that they can’t distinguish between the two. There is only one realistic explanation for this. All particles with the size, composition and morphology of “viruses” are, in reality, the normal and inevitable results of the breakdown of our own tissues. And our tissues break down for the same reason as the cultures in Enders’ experiments broke down: They’re either starved, poisoned or both. Dying tissues produce a myriad of particles, and these particles have unfortunately been mistaken for pathogenic, exogenous viruses. It’s time to clear up this misconception.

If I hand you a canister and tell you it’s gasoline, you will assume that the liquid inside is only gasoline. If I give you a bottle of extra virgin olive oil, you will assume it only has extra virgin olive oil without adulterants. With virus isolation, however, you’re getting a potpourri of genetic and medicinal junk in addition to the alleged virus. A virus “isolate” is anything but. They have not isolated any viruses, so whenever you hear in the news that a new virus has been isolated, they are using a definition of isolation that is quite different than what you would expect by the word “isolation.” To help convince you of their sham, they will say they’ve used electron microscopes and various dyes, pointing with a soy meme expression that the little particles are viruses that will go on to infect other human beings, when really it’s just cell junk and debris that is created when you expose healthy mammalian cells of various animals to a toxic brew.

Coronavirus spike proteins are only seen after adding protein-digesting enzymes

The authors [in a paper announcing the discover of coronavirus spike proteins] then describe the electron micrographs done on the resulting culture fluid: “Electron micrographs of sectioned Vero/hSLAM cells showed cytoplasmic membrane-bound vesicles containing coronavirus particles. Following several failures to recover virions with the characteristic fringe of surface spike proteins, it was found that adding trypsin to the cell culture medium immediately improved virion morphology.”

In other words, the particles the Australian researchers call “coronaviruses” included the characteristic halo of spike proteins only after the investigators added trypsin to the culture medium. Trypsin is a protein-digesting enzyme; viruses are alleged to have a protein “coat.” It would be reasonable to assume that if one adds protein-digesting enzymes to particles with a protein coating, some of the protein coating will be eaten away, leaving a final particle that might look in an electron micrograph as if it has spikes. This lab-induced result obviously would bear no relationship to what such a particle might look like inside a live person.

There is only one rational, logical and scientific conclusion that one can draw from this paper: These researchers had no idea what made the Vero/hSLAM cells break down. Moreover, they had no idea where any genetic material they subsequently tested for originated. Finally, they did not find any particle with the characteristic morphology of a coronavirus until they manufactured its appearance. In sum, there is no evidence in this paper that any particle known as SARS-CoV-2 was found, or that any virus had anything to do with this Australian person’s illness.

Spike proteins are a laboratory-made creation. They have not been observed in human tissue nor isolated from them. They do not exist naturally. If you’re watching a video of a based scientist who is telling you the “truth” of spike proteins as compared to establishment scientists, he is also far from the truth, despite his good intentions. Starting in the year 2020, there has been a wave of illnesses around the world, but I do not believe it is caused by coronavirus or spike proteins, and any research or content that discusses these alleged particles as the cause of illness is probably a waste of your time.

The coronavirus PCR test is actually a test for common human, bacterial, and fungal DNA

Doing a BLAST search for the Drosten primer sequences [of SARS-CoV-2], Davis came up with more than 90 matching sequences in the human genome and more than 90 matching sequences in the microbial world. This finding means that the primer sequences being used in RT-PCR testing to identify “SARS-CoV-2” could be possibly of human or microbial (bacterial, fungal, etc.) origin. Any claims that these PCR primer sequences are unique to SARS-CoV-2 are, therefore, false.

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…all illness creates genetic debris, and similar illnesses cause similar patterns of genetic breakdown. When these patterns are picked up by the PCR process and erroneously used as a diagnostic test, that is when we run into trouble.

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The biggest danger of using the PCR process as a diagnostic test is that the number of cycles will determine the percentage of positives and negatives. Any PCR “test” done with 25 or fewer cycles is likely to be negative in almost every case. With that amount of amplification, one rarely is able to pick up the primer sequence in question. On the other hand, if the amplification cycles are above 40, almost everyone will test positive because those sequences are present in every human-and every human has a baseline of tissue breakdown happening all the time.

The implications of this feature of the PCR process are clear. If any tyrant wanted to show that there was a “viral pandemic,” all they would have to do is increase the cycle numbers to more than 40. If they then wanted to show that whatever intervention they were using to combat this “pandemic” was helping, they could just lower the cycles to fewer than 25. Suddenly, all those “positive” cases would become “negative” simply because the sensitivity of the test was altered.

The only way to combat this potential fraud is to eliminate the use of any PCR process as a diagnostic test.

Most people I know have fallen for the “coronavirus is infectious” sham and relay their adventures with clinical testing. Today they test negative, and three days later they still test negative, and then a day after that they test positive. From my observation, those who don’t have symptoms seem more likely to test positive. Coronavirus testing is a spin of the roulette wheel because it does not test for what it claims to test. Instead of testing for a virus, it’s actually testing for burrowed pieces of your own DNA that sometimes shows up on the test. The result it generates could be completely random.

Dr. Cowan’s explanation of the virus sham is thorough, logical, elegant, and clear, because instead of merely theorizing, he’s deconstructing the research papers from the virologists themselves who have made claims that later became normalized in medical science. He’s using the words and techniques of the scientists to show how ridiculous their research and “isolation” really is. This means that the viral model for disease is a theory, just like the theory of evolution, and we already know how wrong that theory is. Scientists have not isolated viruses and have not proved they cause disease unlike with bacteria or parasites. Something is being communicated when you get sick after spending time with someone else who is sick, but there is absolutely no proof that it’s a virus.

After Dr. Cowan debunks modern medicine, he then theorizes about what he believes is really going on. This is where he loses me. In the last chapter of his book, he proposes a theory of water crystallization that ends up deifying water and how it can rearrange itself ad-hoc into needed biochemical structures. He stresses this is just a theory, but it’s one I do not accept. I did discover that Dr. Cowan believes in a spiritual reality, which is more than most modern scientists who are pompously atheist. I find that scientists who at least believe in God are more likely to be closer to the truth of our material world.

Scientists in the 20th century were sure that certain diseases were spreading from person to person, but they were being caused by something other than bacteria, parasites, or fungi. So what did they do? They invented a particle called the virus to solve the problem. All the scientists who believed in emerging viral theory went on to receive much acclaim, prestige, and financial success as many billions of research dollars poured into an exciting new field that was extremely profitable to pharmaceutical companies developing vaccines, which are essentially soups of cell culture mixed with toxic preservatives. Lies seem to have a momentum of their own, and viruses are just one of many lies that the average secular person believes in. (Ironically, I think that scientists may have created or become close to creating a man-made virus, or at least harmful biological matter that has a greater ability to spread than purely chemical agents.)

So what’s causing illness? I don’t know, but I do have my suspicions about seed oils, environmental toxins, and electromagnetic waves. The fascinating and well-researched book The Invisible Rainbow makes a very strong case that every stepwise advancement in radio and telecommunications technology has resulted in a worldwide “pandemic.” Getting sick from electromagnetic waves would end up having a similar epidemiology to person-to-person transmission. How else can we explain why sailors far at sea would get sick with flu-like illnesses at the same time as those on land?

If influenza is primarily an electrical disease, a response to an electrical disturbance of the atmosphere, then it is not contagious in the ordinary sense. The patterns of its epidemics should prove this, and they do.

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“The English warship Arachne was cruising off the coast of Cuba ‘without any contact with land.’ No less than 114 men out of a crew of 149 fell ill with influenza and only later was it learnt that there had been outbreaks in Cuba at the same time.”

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During the 1918—1919 pandemic, monkeys and baboons perished in great numbers in South Africa and Madagascar, sheep in northwest England, horses in France, moose in northern Canada, and buffalo in Yellowstone.47 There is no mystery here. We are not catching the flu from animals, nor they from us. If influenza is caused by abnormal electromagnetic conditions in the atmosphere, then it affects all living things at the same time, including living things that don’t share the same viruses or live closely with one another. —The Invisible Rainbow

If this is your first exposure to the “viruses aren’t contagious” position, I’m sure you’re skeptical and filled with questions, because I sure was. This article is not meant to be exhaustive, and cannot possibly answer all of your “what ifs” and “how abouts,” but as a truth-seeker, where truth is all that is from God, I can no longer believe in modern viral theory without question. The theory does seem intuitive at first glance from our own epidemiological experiences, but the facts don’t support the existence of a transmissible virus. I need to see direct, causative proof and not mere correlation or conjecture.

Unfortunately, we don’t have the absolute truth of why we get various illnesses, and while industrial food and EMF radiation are strong contenders as causes, it seems that God does not want us to know everything about disease and illness, and He is using them as part of His plan to save the souls of men. People of old never thought that diseases were caused by particles but instead were the result of God’s will; perhaps that is where we must return. I don’t believe in the scientists, but I do believe in God, so whatever the cause of the next disease I have, may His will be done.

Further Reading:

• “The SARS-CoV-2 virus has never been isolated or purified”
• Covid: There Is No Virus
• “If [the virus] isn’t a germ, then what is it?”
• Case of conjoined twins who would have different illnesses
• “If viruses aren’t contagious, then what are they?”
• The Rockefeller Institute and the Polio fraud
• Inventing The AIDS Virus
• Does HIV exist?
• What Really Makes You Ill?
• Viruses aren’t contagious [RVF thread]

Learn More: Breaking The Spell by Dr. Tom Cowan

The “hangry” meme is real. If you don’t eat for a while, you are more susceptible to the negative states of anger and irritation than if you were sated. This poses a problem for Orthodox Christians, who fast from animal products for about half the calendar year, not only abstaining from certain types of food but also reducing overall portion sizes. How can we perform the fast without falling into grumpiness that may open the door to passionate sins?

Can anyone think that where there is no prayer and fasting, the devil is already there? One can! —Saint Theophan the Recluse

[…]

Anyone who rejects the effort of prayer and fasting is capable of doing nothing but evil—and all his apparent good, if he has any, is in truth not good at all, but also evil; because according to Christ’s words: “A corrupt tree cannot bring forth good fruit”: “do men gather grapes from thorns or figs from thistles?” (Matt. 7:18,16). “Beware,” Christ therefore says, “of false prophets which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves” (Matt. 7:15). —Archbishop Averky

The key to understanding your mood in a state of hunger is blood glucose. After you eat a meal that contains glucose, which is found in sugars and carbohydrates, your body shuttles that glucose to your muscles and brain, where it is used as an immediate and accessible energy source. For the glucose that is not immediately utilized, your body converts it to glycogen. As an analogy, we can liken glycogen to glucose stored in a closed bottle and put on the shelf (it’s actually multiple glucose molecules chained together).

Depending on your unique physiology, your blood glucose concentration will dip 2-3 hours after eating. Your brain and muscles continually need glucose, so through a complex mechanism called glycogenolysis, the “bottle of glucose” (glycogen) is retrieved from the shelf and opened to release the amount of glucose that is needed for you to function normally.

The amount of glycogen stored in your body is not unlimited: you have about 2,000 calories worth stored in your muscles and liver. If you’re an athlete and hit the “wall” during intense activity, unable to perform further, you have used up all of your glycogen (and free glucose). You have run out of gas, so to speak, but you do not need to be an athlete to run out of preferred energy stores. It is estimated that a sedentary person who is fasting from food will extinguish all their glycogen in 12-22 hours, and that will depend on their muscular physique, metabolism, and general level of activity.

If you run out of glycogen and do not have an immediate food source, do you soon die? No, our all-wise God has implanted an exceedingly complex mechanism in the animal world called gluconeogenesis which converts fat into glucose. What’s amazing about the gluconeogenesis pathway is that fats contain no glucose molecules at all, but God has easily found a way to make the chemistry work. Gluconeogenesis will occur during prolonged exercise and fasting, or if you’re eating a low-carb diet. There’s only one major issue with gluconeogenesis: it’s slow.

Your body can convert glycogen to glucose pretty fast, but converting fats to glucose takes more time and happens in a stepwise fashion like a home thermostat slowly arriving at a set temperature. Therefore, if you’re all out of glycogen, you will enter a state where your body does not have a preferred energy source. During that time, you will begin to feel the classic symptoms of fatigue, mood irritation (i.e. “hangry”), bodily weakness, and even pain in the form of headaches.

When I’m hungry, and have not eaten for over 12 hours, I often enter a state of irritation. I’m much more likely to complain and snap at those who are close to me for the most trivial of reasons. I’ve since learned to not talk at all when I’m hungry, at risk of saying something I regret. Spiritually, I was told by a monk that not eating reveals the naked state of your being when it’s not being sated with food or some other pleasure. I have a history of anger and irritation, so when I’m not being fed, those problems are able to directly rise to the surface. Modern scientists theorize (i.e. guess) that glucose is needed to control the willpower centers of the brain. When your brain doesn’t have glucose, they say, it shuts down the willpower to be a decent human being.

I would have believed the biological theory if I wasn’t an Orthodox Christian, where states of grace can transcend the body’s immediate biological needs. This year, I went to a monastery for the first week of Lent. For several days in a row, I was able to eat the one served meal a day, something I had never done before, and experienced no irritation or anger. I didn’t even feel weak. The reason is I was attending several hours a day of services. My soul was able to use any grace received from the services to supplant my body’s need for food, but then the grace ended and I could not stop thinking of food. I again felt the desire to eat multiple times a day along with sharp periods of irritation.

There is certainly a biological reality, for we do exist in the body, but it does not supplant the spiritual reality of grace that God gives to our soul at His discretion. An Orthodox Christian only needs to read the lives of the saints to see countless examples of men eating only bread and salt for prolonged periods. It’s not that these saints were anatomical supermen like professional athletes, but they so pleased God that their faith was able to suspend biological laws by grace for a sustained period.

When I’m at home and only attending one or two divine services a week, I don’t have much in the way fasting grace, and every day is a struggle. I’m tempted to eat three meals a day or else I’m grumpy and can’t take my mind off food. From these struggles, here are five things I’ve learned on my quest to fast better…

1. If I’m getting angry and cannot control my thoughts or speech, it’s better to eat. Our faith is a faith of love, so if you’re a heroic faster but you’re having angry thoughts or actually attacking those close to you, you may be missing the point of the fast.

2. It takes about 30-120 minutes for your mood to be restored after eating. The bigger the meal you eat, the longer it will take for your body to digest the glucose. For an acute attack, you can try eating a couple tablespoons of honey with a slice of bread for faster relief.

3. It’s easier to fast for yourself than to fast for God. Before I came to Christ, I often did intermittent fasting and regularly went for 18 hours without eating. The reason I fasted was to improve my appearance to aid in achieving sin with women. Satan helped me every step of the way, and I did not notice being grumpy or having angry thoughts, probably because I liked my passions and thought it was an irrevocable part of my identity. To do the Orthodox fast is significantly harder because there is no worldly gain from it and the standard of Christian love is quite high.

4. Moderate bodybuilding can make you ravenously hungry. If I don’t do any workouts, and sit in front of my computer all day, I can eat two medium-sized meals without too many tears, but if I just do a little callisthenic training, I become rather hungry on the day of the exercise and the day after, and when I do eat, I have to fight the temptation to eat big. For fasting periods like Lent, you may want to tone down your workouts so that your fasting is not unnecessary hard.

5. Don’t immediately run to the pantry upon the first hunger pain. You won’t starve, though you may be tempted to believe so. I wait an hour for the sharp hunger pain to morph more into a dull ache.

This is the mark of Christianity: however much a man toils and however many righteous acts he performs; he must feel that he has done nothing. In fasting he must say, “This is not fasting,” and in praying, “I have not prayed,” and in perseverance at prayer, “I have shown no perseverance; I am only just beginning to practice asceticism and to take pains.” And even if he is righteous before God, he should say, “I am not righteous, not I; I do not struggle, but barely make a beginning each day.” —Saint Makarios of Egypt in The Fifty Spiritual Homilies

I’m a mediocre faster at best. I can abide by the dietary restrictions without much anguish, but I still eat a good amount and do not always lose weight during prolonged fasts. In times of grace where my prayer is strong and I’m attending daily services, I can fast harder, but while at home I am able to only do the bare minimum. Thankfully, God does grade us based on effort and struggle instead of pounds lost. With the knowledge of how my body works, and the fact that fasting separates me from the world to draw nearer to God, I continue to fast, and hope that my fasting becomes stronger in the years to come.

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Sometimes I wonder what is the most essential ingredient that makes me, me. Over the years I had many ideas of who I was, but it turned out that I was none of those things. And then I was absolutely sure I was other things, more internal things, but I was not those either, and the question remained unanswered.

In university, I thought I was my grades. If I got good grades, I was told, I would get a high-paying job and eventually be happy. If my grades were higher than my peers, I felt smarter than them, and if my grades were lower, I felt dumber. In the end, when my schooling was completed and I began to live a standard secular life, I discovered that I was not my grades.

As an adult, away from my parent’s nest, I thought I was my income, my car, my possessions. I thought what I owned would define me and differentiate me. If my income was higher than others, I was more successful than them, a better person, and if it was lower, I was inferior. My stuff had to be better than other people’s stuff, but in the end, I discovered that I was not the items I own or what is in my bank account.

Then I fell for the idea that I was my experiences, particularly my travel experiences and relations with women. The countries I visited would define me; the women I fell with would make up my identity. I was a traveler, a “player.” If I had traveled to more countries or slept with more women than you, I thought I was superior to you, but in the end, I discovered I was nothing external to me, nothing that could be grasped in this material world.

When someone is empty of Christ then a thousand and one other things come to fill his soul: jealousies, hatreds, boredom, melancholy, negativity, a worldly frame of mind and worldly pleasures. Try to fill your soul with Christ so as not to have it empty. Your soul is like a cistern full of water. If you channel the water to the flowers, that is, to the virtues, you will experience true joy and all the thorns of evil will wither away. But if you channel the water to the weeds, these will grow and choke you and all the flowers will wither. —Saint Porphyrios in Wounded By Love

So I must be my personality. I am my sense of humor, my quirks, my demeanor, my attitude. I am all the things that cannot be precisely duplicated in anyone else. If I made more people laugh than you, I had a better personality. If more people wanted to hear what I had to say, I was more interesting. I cannot so easily say that my personality is not me, because if it is not me then what is me? But then I asked, where exactly does my humor come from? Does it really come from inside me or was it influenced over the years by factors outside of me and by the milieu I live in? Does not my quirks, demeanor, and attitude, come mostly from my parents and upbringing? Doesn’t the way I act come mostly from wanting to become some kind of ideal of a man as defined by the culture? In the end, I had to conclude that I was not exactly my personality, which to my surprise has changed in major ways over the past few years through God’s grace.

I got it: I must be my thoughts. Many people have told me that I’m “sharp” and “intelligent,” and this must be because of the way my brain works on a functional, biological level. It is unique and solely mine, irreplaceable and unchangeable. My thoughts are definitely me… until they come from the demons in the form of judgments, temptations, and vulgarities. Or until they come from God or His angels in the inspiration to do a good deed. How can my thoughts be “me” if they can derive from beings external to me, if I can serve as a vessel for unseen spiritual forces? In fact, I cannot even prove to you that the words written here are definitively from me and me alone. In the end, I concluded that my thoughts are not solely me, and neither is anything else that allows me to compare myself with others in any way.

There is not much else I can declare as being me. It can’t be my body, which is constantly changing and will soon not be mine when I die. It can’t be my relationships with other people, which are also changing by the day. It’s not the foods I eat, the way I pray, or even my favorite books. No, those are all external; they aren’t me. So who am I? There is something in me that is “me” but I can’t grasp it with my hands or my mind.

One evening, in a state of contemplation, I looked up at one of my icons of Lord Jesus Christ. I asked Him, “Lord, who am I?” I stared at the icon for some time and then I felt a warmth in my heart, and the thought that came to me was, “You are a creature of God who can perceive God and give glory to Him, and behold His beauty with indescribable joy for all eternity.” And that thought seemed correct to me, that the “I” in I is a soul, a spiritual vessel, to recognize the God of all creation, the only faculty which makes me me, which will stay with me forever, and that I can only be defined according to my relationship with my Creator, and all that is separate or apart from my relationship with God is not me, and will soon pass away, and how eagerly do I await the day that I can commune in divine fullness, clarity, and love with the Father, the Son, and Holy Spirit, unto the ages of ages.

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In the spring of 2019, approximately two weeks after I started a daily prayer rule upon taking my first steps as a Christian, I took psychedelic mushrooms, something that I would not dare do today. Nonetheless, it happened, and I’d like to offer commentary on the out-of-body experience I had through the eyes of my growing Orthodox understanding.

Here’s a recounting of the event that happened while I was under the influence of the mushrooms:

I turned to lay on the right side of my body, almost in a fetal position, and closed my eyes once more. The geometric patterns were gone, my vision all black. My breathing became labored once again. My chest felt like it was being wrung out from the center. I tried to be careful with my breaths to make sure I received enough air.

The sound of my breaths was still loud, but now they were becoming spaced further and further apart. Don’t be afraid, I said to myself. Then the sound of the air entering my lungs went silent. I was no longer breathing. I could not perceive myself as breathing. I tried to open my eyes, but I couldn’t. Then I tried to wave my hands in front of my face, but nothing happened. I was no longer in my body. Then whoosh–I felt a great movement at amazing speed as if I was transported somewhere else.

I was placed in a great void. My breath was gone, my body was gone. I couldn’t hear Albert [my friend] or any sounds of the forest. And yet I was not afraid or worried. There was no concern for what happened to my body or if I would ever possess it again. There was no lamentation that I could not continue experiencing the world as I have for my previous 39 years of existence. In this great void, with no sign of stars or other physical matter, or even the perception of space or time, I felt complete serenity and peace with myself.

Then a large dome with a gray outline came into view. The bottom of the dome was flat. In the center of the flat bottom was a white light. I stared at the light and a warm feeling overcame me. The word “home” entered my mind. That [could be] the home of my soul, where I came from and where I will go back to, where I will rest for all eternal. I desired to be with the light, to float towards it, but then my eyes opened.

I was back in the forest, curled up on the ground. I took a deep breath and stood up. I wanted to talk to Albert but I had no voice.

What happened to my body? What did I see? Father Seraphim Rose of blessed memory has offered the most likely answers to these questions in his important book The Soul After Death:

[A near-death experience] is not precisely an “after-death” experience; it is rather the “out-of-body” experience which is only the antechamber to other much more extensive experiences, whether of death itself or of what is sometimes called “astral travelling”… Although the “out-of-body” state might be called the “first moment” of death—if death actually follows—it is a gross mistake to conclude from it anything whatever about the “after-death” state, unless it be the bare facts of the survival and consciousness of the soul after death, which hardly anyone who actually believes in the soul’s immortality denies in any case.

[…]

The beings contacted in this realm are always (or almost always) demons, whether they are invoked by mediumism or other occult practices, or encountered in “out-of-body” experiences. They are not angels, for these dwell in heaven and only pass through this realm as messengers of God. They are not the souls of the dead, for they dwell in heaven or hell and only pass through this realm immediately after death on their way to judgment for their actions in this life. Even those most adept in “out-of-body” experiences cannot remain in this realm for long without danger of permanent separation from the body (death), and even in occult literature such adepts are rarely described as meeting each other.

From Father Seraphim’s teachings, my understanding of death and the toll houses as taught by the Church Fathers, and my own contemplation of the experience, I’d like to pose three inferences about what happened.

First, I believe that my soul did leave the body for a period of time and enter the aerial realm (the antechamber to heaven or hell). In Church teachings highlighted by Father Seraphim, this is the realm where angels come to take your soul upon bodily death in an attempted ascent to heaven, but if you have failed to please God in your life, your ascent will fail and demons will pull you down to hell. Father Seraphim explains:

The realm into which the soul immediately enters when it leaves the body and begins to lose contact with what we know as “material reality” (whether after death or in a simple “out-of-body” experience) is neither heaven nor hell, but an invisible realm close to earth which is variously called the “After-death” or “Bardo plane” (Tibetan Book of the Dead), the “world of spirits” (Swedenborg and spiritism), the “astral plane” (Theosophy and most of occultism), “Locale II” (Monroe)—or, in Orthodox language, the aerial world of the under-heaven where fallen spirits dwell and are active in deceiving men for their damnation. This is not the “other world” that awaits man after death, but only the invisible part of this world that man must pass through to reach the truly “other” world of heaven or hell. For those who have truly died, and are being conducted by angels out of earthly life, this is the realm where the Particular Judgment begins at the aerial “toll-houses,” where the spirits of the air reveal their real nature and their hostility towards mankind; for all others, it is a realm of demonic deception at the hands of these same spirits.

If my soul really did leave the body, and this experience is similar to actual physical death, the best analogy I can give to dying is trying to squeeze a marble through a thin straw. Initially, there was the feeling that I was losing gradual awareness and control over my body, including a cessation of sensory feedback, including pain, then a tightness and squeezing in the center of my body as I was being pushed through the “straw,” and then a feeling of traveling at rapid speed into another realm, like being blasted off into space. It’s disconcerting and strange but not painful or frightening. I never lost consciousness or awareness of what was happening, which we would expect because the soul is eternally awake, and the time it took to “die” (the progressive shutdown of my body), was short enough that there wasn’t an opportunity for fear, just confusion as to what was happening. It is possible that real death is a completely different experience, but from my reading of after-death experiences, it seems to be somewhat similar.

Second, once outside of the body, my soul enjoyed a feeling of joy and peacefulness since it was unencumbered by sins of the fallen flesh, which was especially true for me since at that time I was riddled with a lifetime of mortal sins that were not yet cleansed through the sacraments of the Church. Father Seraphim shares that once outside of the body, you will experience less of your fallen nature.

Our physical bodies in this fallen world are bodies of pain, corruption, and death. When separated from this body, the soul is immediately in a state more “natural” to it, closer to the state God intends for it; for the resurrected “spiritual body” in which man will dwell in the Kingdom of Heaven has more in common with the soul than with the body we know on earth.

Most out-of-body stories of near-death experiences are positive because they describe the soul freely floating in the aerial realm (before any type of judgment takes place). Unless we have lived the lives of saints, our fallen bodies are opposed to the desires of the soul, so coming out of that body feels like taking off tight clothes. Even if you’re on your way to hell, for the time before the demons come to take you, you will feel free and joyful at the shedding of your flesh. If you’ve lived a holy life in the body then being out of the body may not offer a stark increase in the joy you perceive, since your body was already subverted to your soul’s desire to be in communion with God.

Third, I believe the vision I had with a dome containing a white light was either a projection of my preexisting belief of the afterlife or a deception by the demons to trick me into believing pantheistic notions. According to Father Seraphim, afterlife experiences are usually deceptions.

…most, perhaps indeed all, of [near-death] experiences have little in common with the Christian vision of heaven. These visions are not spiritual, but worldly. They are so quick, so easily attained, so common, so earthly in their imagery, that there can be no serious comparison of them with the true Christian visions of heaven in the past… Even the most “spiritual” thing about some of them—the feeling of the “presence” of Christ—persuades one more of the spiritual immaturity of those who experience it than of anything else. Rather than producing the profound awe, fear of God, and repentance which the authentic experience of God’s presence has evoked in Christians saints (of which St. Paul’s experience on the road to Damascus may be taken as a model—Acts 9:3-9), the present-day experiences produce something much more akin to the “comfort” and “peace” of the modern spiritistic and Pentecostal movements.

[…]

…we must clearly distinguish between genuine, grace-given visions of the other world, and a merely natural experience which, even though it may be outside the normal limits of human experience, is not in the least spiritual and tells us nothing about the actual reality of either the heaven or the hell of authentic Christian teaching.

My initial interpretation was that it was a vision from God, because I so strongly craved God at that time, but I no longer believe this interpretation to be absolutely the case because of my then gross impurity and the vague nature of the vision. Visions given by God as described by Orthodox elders are usually quite descriptive and vivid, not vague and open to multiple interpretations as if it were a palm reading. For many years before this experience, I had been closely following Zen and Buddhist ideas of the afterlife that detailed the “collective unconscious” and going back to the “source,” so when I saw the dome, I thought it was the source of all creation, somewhat matching Eastern teachings, but I was so zealous for the real God at the time that I eventually interpreted the vision as being from a personal God. The most neutral possible interpretation is that the dome was something like space junk in the aerial realm.

When someone begins a life of repentance, they can be given a heavy dose of zeal and often grace. It was while in a state of zealousness that I took the drug and saw the vision, and so I believe that this state blocked me from interpreting it in a way that would steer me away from God. I say this because the psychedelic experience did not veer me off the path to getting baptized into the Orthodox Church two years later. I hesitate to say it helped me, but it did allow me to more quickly come to believe in a concrete spiritual reality, in which I had a weak belief at the time. Unfortunately for the vast majority of people, psychedelic experiences more often create mistaken notions of a spiritual reality and pull them away from God into beliefs closely aligned with deism, pantheism, or Buddhism, with the associated universalist belief that “everyone goes to heaven” or “everyone will be in peace after death.” If this deception is not corrected, a person’s soul is likely to be damned upon death.

From Father Seraphim:

It may be asked: What of the feelings of ‘peace’ and ‘pleasantness’ which seem to be almost universal in the ‘out-of-body’ state. What of the vision of ‘light’ which so many see? Are these only deceptions also?

In a sense, it may be, these experiences are ‘natural’ to the soul when separated from the body. Our physical bodies in this fallen world are bodies of pain, corruption, and death. When separated from this body, the soul is immediately in a state more ‘natural’ to it, closer to the state God intends for it; for the resurrected ‘spiritual body’ in which man will dwell in the Kingdom of Heaven has more in common with the soul than with the body we know on earth…. In this sense, the ‘peace’ and ‘pleasantness’ of the out-of-body experience may be considered real and not a deception. Deception enters in, however, the instant one begins to interpret these ‘natural’ feelings as something ‘spiritual’—as though this peace were the true peace of reconciliation with God, and the ‘pleasantness’ were the true spiritual pleasure of heaven. This is, in fact, how many people interpret their ‘out-of-body’ and ‘after-death’ experiences, because of their lack of true spiritual experience and awareness.”

I see my psychedelic experience as a form of chemically-induced pseudo-grace. I used a chemical and happened to luck out that I didn’t have more of a standard experience that would keep me turned away from the Lord God. I attribute this entirely to the fact that I was in a new state of bountiful and genuine zeal at the time and God was closely watching over his idiotic servant. Since then, I’ve had potent spiritual experiences within the Orthodox Church, without using any type of drug, so it was wholly unnecessary to get blasted off into the aerial realm by using a poison for what amounted to a fireworks show for a man who denied fireworks for much of his life. In fact, I have had spiritual experiences in the body where the joy I felt exceeded the joy felt while out of the body induced by my experience of chemical intoxication, negating any temptation to try a psychedelic drug again.

In conclusion, I got lucky, and cannot claim that I saw God or the source of all creation. I did experience something I suspect is close to bodily death, but the vision that followed was likely a demonic attempt to put me back into agnostic or gnostic notions of reality. Thankfully, my hunger for God was so great that I was able to get on the normal path of developing spiritual life as prescribed by Lord Jesus Christ and the Church He created for us, and two years after the experience I was received into that Church. If I hadn’t typed out a record of what happened, I would hardly remember it, signifying how unimportant it was in my path to the Orthodox Church and developing faith in Lord Jesus Christ. Visions under chemical intoxication will not at all compare to what God can give you when He deems you ready.

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1. Do Muslims go to heaven? [Link]

2. Dabbling in occultism ruins your mental health [Link]

3. “We were happy in prison…” [Link]

4. “…meekness and humility do not mean spinelessness and should not yield before manifest evil, and that a true Christian should be far from sugar-sweet sentimentality and should not step away in the face of evil…” [Link]

5. The Lives of Saints Cyprian and Justina [Link]

6. Are Protestants Beyond Hope? [Link]

7. “The Lord gives pure prayer to him who, eschewing laziness, prays much and regularly in his own manner, even if it is marred by inattention.” [Link]

8. “Orthodox Christians honor the Theotokos Mary more than all the saints and angels of heaven…” [Link]

9. Self-pity corrupts everything we do [Link]

10. “God gave us the sacrament of marriage as a gift that allows us to attain eternal life through service to and love of another person” [Link]

11. The Theotokos Prayer Rule [Link]

12. “The Apostle Paul counsels us to flee from sexual immorality. Do you hear? Don’t even fight with it—but flee from it!” [Link]

13. “Yoga is beneath [the] umbrella of Hinduism, and in many ways is the pole of the umbrella. It acts as a missionary arm for Hinduism and the New Age outside of India.” [Link]

14. The nature of dreams corresponds to the person’s spiritual state [Link]

15. The Pharisee speaks madness in his prayer as he stands before God in the temple [Link]

16. “They were willing to face even death to uphold their conscience before God” [Link]

17. “…the entire structure of contemporary life in the so-called ‘free’ world, where there is no open and bloody persecution of faith, where everyone has the right to believe as he wishes, represents a far greater danger to a Christian’s soul by drawing the Christian wholly down to earth and making him forget heaven” [Link]

18. “To fantasize about a person is to fail to see the person as a person. Just as in pornography, it is to objectify, to fail to relate, to fail to love…” [Link]

19. How God Punishes Nations for Fornication for Many Generations [Link]

20. “The Russian nation in its present capacity, and hopefully, ever more so in the future, is a living reproach for the modern West because we have regained what we once lost while they lost what they once had” [Link]

21. The German who went to Rostov and became a Russian Saint [Link]

22. “True light is rejected because it causes a painful exposure of the true state of humanity and persons” [Link]

23. How life continues after death [Link]

24. Christianity is a Kingdom, Not a Religion [Link]

25. How to read the Bible [Link]

26. “[The Orthodox Church] may be the only church which attracts and holds men in numbers equal to women” [Link]

27. WW1 Ukrainian Priest, Murdered by Austrian Catholics, Made a Saint by Russia [Link]

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I’m an impulsive person. If I see something I want, I make an effort to get it as quickly as possible, and feel a temporary dopamine rush when I behold my new thing. This was a problem for me when it came to online shopping. I’d continually order from stores with little restraint. It got to the point where packages would be at my doorstep but I did not remember what I ordered. Junk started to pile up in my room. I was wasting money for no good reason and knew I had to make a change.

After experimenting with various ways to solve the problem, I found one that works: only order items online once every four weeks on a designated day. Look at your calendar, pick a date four weeks from now, and only on that day can you place any online order, no exceptions. When the day comes, place all of your orders, then for the next four weeks, you cannot order a single item online until the next buying day arrives.

No exceptions mean no exceptions. You cannot buy anything until your buying day. If there is something you truly “need,” you’ll have to find it in a physical store. If the store doesn’t have it then too bad, you’ll have to live without it. You’ll be surprised how strong the temptation to buy a “necessity” becomes. Your mind will formulate a barrage of excuses to get you to buy the “essential” item, but once the temptation passes, you realize you didn’t even need it. Instead, you were merely bored, lonely, or in a bad mood.

The first couple of months you do this, you may actually spend more money per month. This is because you are aggravating your flesh and it is desperate for a “release” through big shopping days. Your impulsive nature is yet to be fully tamed, and is coaxing you to go hog wild at the next opportunity. This will pass. By the third month, you will not receive as much dopamine from the shopping, and actually be annoyed at having to open so many boxes at once, and your expenses begin to decline.

Another benefit of having one shopping day per month is that you can carefully deliberate whether you need an item or not. For example, I’ll place many items in my Amazon shopping cart that I “need,” and then a week or two goes by without buying them, and I realize I don’t need them at all. Waiting to buy something removes the impulsivity behind it, allowing you to use your logical faculty on the usefulness of an item. While I may pile my cart with 20 items in the four intervening weeks, I may end up buying only 8 or so.

Yet another benefit is that you become fully aware of how much money you are spending. When you buy a thing here or a thing there, you don’t know your exact monthly expenditure, but when you make all purchases in one day from multiple online stores, the dent in your pocketbook is noticeable and painful. I remember on my first buying day I spent close to $600. On what, I hardly remember, but I could not ignore that expense so easily. Now I try to make it a game to see if I can spend less than the previous month. Do I really need a third Bible? Do I really need a pair of jeans made by a company that uses transgender models? Do I really need another knit hat when I already have one? No, no, and no. But I would have bought all of these if I didn’t constrain myself to a single buying day.

But what if an item you want is on sale? If it’s not your designated buying day, you cannot buy it, no matter how great the discount. It has happened to me where I had to pay full price on my buying day for something that was just on sale, but guess what: I still spend less overall. The purpose of sales and free shipping is to increase corporate profits, not help you to spend less money. Paradoxically, by responding to consumer incentives and discounts, you end up spending more. I don’t exaggerate when I say that “free shipping” may have caused you to waste thousands of dollars over your lifetime thus far.

I became so pleased with the results of this tactic that I extended my buying day to every five weeks. I’m spending less than ever online even though I have to wait a while to buy anything. When my consumer desires can’t be immediately fulfilled, the desire itself begins to weaken.

The most immediate benefit of having a designated shopping day is spending less money, but I noticed a subtle benefit beneath the surface: I’m less dependent on new things to make me happy. Sometimes when we become upset, we look for novelty to give us a boost, causing us to go online and buy something we don’t need, yet that thing doesn’t provide us with positive feelings that last, and it becomes a piece of junk like most of the other pieces of junk we have in our homes. This tactic may sound easy enough, but you’ll be surprised how hard it is to execute if you frequently shop online. Try it out and see what happens.

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I like to read the lives of the saints and also writings directly from the saints. From this I’ve noticed two things. First, there are recurring spiritual teachings that are common among saints who lived in different epochs and nations, signifying importance for all Christians. Second, I’ve noticed attitudes, sentiments, and behaviors that no saint has taught. I’d like to extrapolate on the latter and imagine some statements that I suspect no Orthodox saint has ever said. (If a canonized saint did advocate for one of the sayings, leave a comment with the correction.) Here we go…

1. “I only go to church once a week.”

2. “I don’t like to do prostrations.”

3. “Can you hand me a third piece of cake?”

4. “I’m bored.”

5. “This new piece of technology has made my life so much better.”

6. “I need to take some time off from praying.”

7. “We must fight climate change.”

8. “I wish my muscles were a lot bigger.”

9. “I need to update my style.”

10. “I need a vacation.”

11. “Let’s go have some fun.”

12. “I eat healthy so that I will never get sick.”

13. “You should always have a plan B.”

14. “You have to fight for your rights by hiring a lawyer.”

15. “I won’t ever forgive that person.”

16. “There is wisdom in crowds.”

17. “I’m happy with the level of faith I’ve attained.”

18. “Stand six feet away from me so I don’t get sick.”

19. “I like wearing pajamas in public.”

20. “It’s not important to fast.”

21. “The church services are too long for me.”

22. “I don’t have a spiritual father.”

23. “The humanity of Lord Jesus Christ evolved from monkeys.”

24. “Different religions all lead to the same God.”

25. “I regularly cut my hair and beard.”

26. “I haven’t picked up a Bible in a long time.”

27. “I stare at a digital screen all day long.”

28. “I’m concerned about the overpopulation of the Earth.”

29. “There’s a lot we can learn from the field of science.”

30. “I broke my personal record for bench press today.”

31. “Not everything in the Bible is true.”

32. “I’m scared that the new virus will kill me.”

33. “I’m stocking up on guns and ammo.”

34. “This house is my forever home.”

35. “Did you catch the game last night?”

36. “I’m too busy to help you.”

37. “I really need a tan.”

38. “I used a psychedelic drug to achieve a state of grace.”

39. “One doesn’t need the Church to be saved.”

40. “I love loud music.”

41. “I don’t own a prayer rope.”

42. “This outfit accentuates my physique.”

43. “Traffic makes me so angry.”

44. “I want to share a picture I took of myself with everybody in the world.”

45. “My personal opinions are very important.”

46. “Many of my good friends are Muslims and Jews.”

47. “I’m very close to hitting my wealth goal.”

48. “I don’t have time to feed the poor.”

49. “I can’t wait to retire and play golf all day.”

50. “My best friend is my dog.”

51. “I like to fantasize about things that may happen in the future.”

52. “I’m stuffed!”

53. “It’s important to listen to the scientific experts.”

54. “Cursing is a good way to let out steam.”

55. “It’s essential to have a sense of humor that makes everybody laugh.”

56. “It’s not important to pray to the Theotokos.”

57. “I only like to sit in comfortable chairs.”

58. “I won’t eat that because it’s bad for my physical health.”

59. “I must be treated with respect.”

60. “I need to live in a big house.”

61. “I’m tired of working.”

62. “I have to retrieve something out of my personal safe.”

63. “I hate that person.”

64. “Tomorrow we’re going to the movies!”

65. “I don’t want to burn myself out.”

66. “I have not memorized any prayers.”

67. “It’s good to let loose once in a while.”

68. “It’s better to be rich than poor.”

69. “I’m an expert at making gourmet meals that please everybody.”

70. “I don’t have to follow that commandment.”

71. “The government needs to fix this problem.”

72. “I like to live in the middle of the big city where all the action is.”

73. “Let me see how my 401k retirement plan is doing.”

74. “I don’t own many icons.”

It’s helpful for Orthodox Christians to do a self-examination of their modern lifestyles. Would the saints of the Church believe what you believe? Would they have your same habits and attachments? Would they sanction the things that you think yield temporary life enjoyment? In such a contemplation, I believe most would discover that they have allowed the secular world to intrude upon their lives and compete with what the Orthodox Church teaches. Since I came to the Church at a later age, much of my efforts seem to be chopping off the secular habits that are firmly gripped upon my soul.

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