Blessed Averky of Jordanville: The Lie of Private Religion

 

The most pernicious lie of our time is the idea, vigorously propagated by many, that “religion is the private affair of each individual,” and that the social and governmental life of people should proceed apart from religion, should be “separated” from it. And no one wishes to notice the absurdity of such an assertion. For this is the same as saying: a person’s private life is one thing in itself, while his social and governmental life is another. The source from which this and similar kinds of falsehood flow, skillfully concealed under various plausible appearances, is clear to us. To whom, if not the enemy of man’s salvation, is it important to deprive the social and governmental life of people of God, so as thereby to create conditions favorable to depriving each individual human person of God as well?

And is this not precisely what we observe in the modern world?

For the whole history of mankind is nothing other than the persistent and cruel struggle of the devil against God for human souls. The Church of Christ is God’s stronghold in this struggle for believers. That is why the enemy’s chief blows are directed against the Church. The enemy strives to destroy the Church, or at least to enslave her, and thereby deprive her of her grace-filled power and influence upon the faithful. The whole history of the Church of Christ on earth is, in essence, a struggle for spiritual freedom—a struggle for truth against the demonic falsehood that seeks to enslave the Church. When the enemy of human salvation is unable to strike the Church from without, by means of external persecutions, he attempts to strike her from within, by means of falsehood—by substituting falsehood for truth. Thus, after the terrible bloody persecutions of the Church in the first centuries of Christianity, there arose heresies—false teachings whose purpose was to blow up the Church of Christ from within.

We see the same thing now. This is the source of the great multitude of different “Christian confessions,” whereas Christ the Savior founded only one Church. All this is the work of the enemy of human salvation, acting according to the principle: “Divide and rule!”

 

Russian source: “К предстоящему Архиерейскому Собору. Путь Русской Зарубежной Церкви – путь духовной свободы”, written on the occasion of the 1956 ROCOR Council of Bishops. Published in Volume 1 of Современность в свете Слова Божия [The Modern World in the Light of the Word of God], Institute of Russian Civilization, Moscow, 2012.