Today everyone sits down and constructs a religion of his own.

Theoktistos the Cretan | August 8, 2026

 

 

Today everyone sits down and constructs a religion of his own. He takes a little from Christianity, a little from philosophy, a little from the Eastern religions, adds whatever his own reasoning dictates to him, and then says with certainty: “This is what I believe.”

But, my child, faith is not food, for everyone to put into it whatever ingredient he likes. Nor is Christ some vague idea that each person can adapt to his own desires and conceptions. “For me,” he says, “Christ was a good man, a social revolutionary, a wise teacher.”

Another says: “He was one of the many enlightened men of humanity.” These things are not faith. They are human constructions, usually born of ignorance and pride. Christ did not say that He is one of many truths. He said that He is the Truth. He did not leave each person free to interpret Him according to his passions, ideologies, and personal preferences. He founded the Church, sent forth the Apostles, and handed down the Gospel and the Mysteries. Therefore, whoever rejects the Church but retains a Christ whom he has fashioned for himself does not follow Christ. He follows himself and calls his own personal arbitrariness faith.

A person cannot fail to attend church, fail to confess, not know even the elementary things of the faith, never have read the entire Gospel, and then pronounce authoritatively on Christ, the Church, Holy Communion, Paradise, and hell. In every other field, people recognize that knowledge, study, and experience are necessary. To speak about medicine, one must have studied it. To build a house, one must know the craft. Only when it comes to God do they think they need to know nothing. Because they heard a discussion, watched a program, or read a couple of lines on the internet, they imagine that they have become theologians. And what is worse, they do not ask in order to learn, but speak in order to impose their ignorance. True catechesis, however, is not dry intellectual instruction, nor is it a series of religious lessons. It presupposes participation in the liturgical and sacramental life of the Church, repentance, prayer, confession, and humble discipleship. The faith is not learned only with the mind. It is lived within the body of the Church. If a person does not struggle to purify his heart, even if he reads many books, he will interpret everything according to his own reasoning. He may then use even the Gospel, not to correct himself, but to justify his delusions and passions.

Then another person comes along and says: “I believe in reincarnation, but I want to receive Communion.” What can you say to him? The Church confesses the resurrection of the dead and eternal life, while he believes that the soul passes successively from one body to another. In other words, he rejects the teaching of the Church, yet at the same time demands to approach the Holy Chalice. Another says: “I do not accept confession, I do not believe in the Saints, I do not venerate the Theotokos, I do not agree with the fasts, but I want to receive Communion because I am a good person.” But Holy Communion is not a reward for good behavior, a form of social affirmation, or a custom we observe at Pascha and Christmas. It is the Body and Blood of Christ. Whoever receives Communion confesses in practice that he accepts the faith of the Church and that he strives to live within it. He cannot deny the faith of the Church and at the same time demand her Mysteries. It is as though he were to declare that he does not acknowledge a household, does not accept its family, and despises its order, yet demands to have a place at the family table. Such things simply do not stand. The Church drives no one away. But she calls everyone to repentance. It is one thing to receive a person in order to heal him, and another to call his error truth merely so as not to upset him.

With the same superficiality, they also speak about the devil. “I do not believe,” one says, “that the devil exists. The devil is simply a symbolic image of evil.” And this is said by a person who has not even once read the entire Gospel. If he had read it with even elementary attention, he would know of Christ’s temptation in the wilderness, where the devil approaches Him and tempts Him. He would know of the many cases of the demon-possessed whom the Lord heals. He would see that the demons recognize Christ, speak to Him, fear Him, and entreat Him. He would also have read the Lord’s warning to the Apostle Peter that Satan had asked to test the disciples. They set all these things aside and then pronounce that the devil does not exist. In other words, they accept neither the Gospel nor the testimony of Christ Himself, yet they insist on calling themselves Christians. They retain from Christ only what does not offend their own reasoning and reject whatever does not fit into their theories. They do not accept Christ as He is, but try to correct Him. But when a person reaches the point of believing that he knows better than the Gospel, then his pride has become darker even than his ignorance. Ignorance can be healed through learning. Proud ignorance, because it thinks that it knows, refuses even the cure.

Others again say: “If God exists, then God created evil,” or “Why did God allow evil to exist?” With such a casual statement, they place upon God all the crimes, injustices, and calamities that are produced by man’s estrangement from Him. God did not create evil, because evil has no substance or creative principle of its own. It is the deprivation of good, the distortion of freedom, and estrangement from God.

Nor was the devil created evil. He was created an angel and, through pride and his own free choice, turned away from God. And man was not fashioned as a machine, compelled to do good. God gave him freedom, because without freedom there can be no true love. But we want to be free to do whatever our passions dictate to us and, when the consequences come, we blame God. Man causes wars, commits injustice, exploits, kills, destroys his family, ravages nature, gives himself over to the passions, and then asks resentfully: “Why does God allow these things?” If God forcibly prevented every evil act, those same people would complain that He had deprived them of their freedom. They want both the freedom to transgress and exemption from every consequence of that transgression. This is not a sincere search for the truth. It is an attempt to justify the unjustifiable and to shift onto God the responsibility that they themselves refuse to assume.

Therefore, this spiritual superficiality and arbitrariness must come to an end. Not everyone can take the name of Christian, reject what Christ taught, and demand that the Church adapt herself to his personal views. The Church has no right to alter the truth in order to accommodate anyone’s error. She has a duty to love man, but precisely because she loves him, she is obliged to tell him the truth. A doctor who loves the sick person does not call cancer health. He reveals the illness to him and offers him the cure. So too the Church receives the sinner, but she does not bless sin. She forgives the one who repents, but she does not vindicate the one who persists in presenting error as faith. Whoever sincerely wishes to know Christ, let him abandon self-sufficiency, open the Gospel, receive catechesis, enter into the liturgical and sacramental life, and approach the Church with humility. Then he will no longer speak about a Christ fashioned by his own reasoning. He will begin to know the true Christ, Who did not come to confirm our theories, but to free us from error, sin, and the tyranny of our own egoism.

 

Greek source: https://aktines.blogspot.com/2026/08/blog-post_533.html