“Christianity” that exists outside the Church
The wish to reason upon this subject was stirred in me by the dreadful reality in which our people stand. Namely, I have often heard: “I believe in God, but I do not believe in the Church and in the clergy.” Why? What is the matter? Is it possible to believe in God and not in the Church and her hierarchy? It seems it is possible, since such a thing is met with in life. But in this case a new question arises: what kind of faith is this, and what may it be called? Call it what you will, but you cannot call it Christian, for the simple reason that Christianity does not exist outside the unity of the Church. The apostle Paul teaches us that “the Church is the pillar and ground of the truth” (1 Tim. 3:15–16), that the Church is “the body of Christ” (Col. 1:2; Eph. 1:23). The Saviour says: “I will build my Church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it” (Matt. 16:18). Now let us say: can one be a Christian and not be in the Church of Christ? Can one receive the teaching of Christ and not receive His Church? One cannot. Yet in life we meet with such “faith”; but this is not a normal thing, just as sin — the falling away from God's righteousness — has its place in the life of men, but its name is lawlessness.
It is worth asking what feeds this kind of sin, which is called departure from the Church, the rejection of her. The causes are many, but in the main this multitude may be divided into two rough groups. On the one hand, the rejection of the Church, that is, the fight against the Church on the level of the state or of society; on the other, departure from the Church for subjective, that is, personal reasons, which in a number of cases proceeds from the first cause, and in a number of cases is quite individual. The fight against the Church on the level of society or of the state is well enough known to us. It means the utmost limiting by the laws of the state of the rights of the Church and the bounds of her activity — an ideological war against the Church, which is expressed in the use of art and culture to discredit the Church and the clergy by means of feature films, plays, television and radio broadcasts, literary works and other means. In this way the evil seed of unbelief is sown in a man's mind, in his consciousness; doubt and mistrust towards the Church and towards the clergy are born in a man, which little by little takes a Christian away from the surroundings of the Church (and even makes him hate them) and makes them strange to him.
For decades caricatured notions of the Church were artificially created in men's consciousness. And if today we meet in many of our countrymen mistrust of the Church, and perhaps even hatred, in truth these are aimed at those caricatured notions in the shape of which they perceive the Church, while in truth they do not know what the Church is.
Not long ago it even happened that the security services watched over admission to the theological schools, and honest, clever, educated people were hindered in every possible way.
As for departure from the Church for subjective reasons, here we shall touch upon cases of individual falling away from the Church:
To perceive in full what the Church is, the mystical (hidden) side of her life, her spiritual depth, to a certain degree exceeds human powers. A man is joined to the life of the Church not fully, but in part; yet there are different degrees of entering into the life of the Church — into the mystical divine service. To grasp with the mind what takes place in the Church is impossible, for “great is the mystery of godliness” (1 Tim. 3:16). Living participation in the life of the Church is needed. And only in this case does the Church open herself before a man as the highest reality. In order for a man to tell the essence of the Church from the various forms of her outward showing, there is no need at all to be a theologian; but, alas, these are often confused, which a man perhaps cannot escape; and in fact it comes about that, if a man did not like something in the outward ordering of the Church, or it became unacceptable to him, along with this he departs from the Church inwardly, in substance also.
This very thing is the common psychological root, the common ground upon which a greater or lesser apostasy from the Church springs up. For example, if in some church a priest is in some way a stumbling-block to someone (by his voice, his manner of serving, his unworthy conduct and so on), the man who has stumbled often leaves the Church altogether. Of such examples many may be given. Let us ask: why does a priest's unworthy conduct become a stumbling-block to a man with regard to the whole Church? Are the priest and the Church one and the same? Is it hard to understand that the Church remains holy and is not defiled even if her servants behave unworthily? Is the whole essence of the Church really to be found in the clergy? For the Church is the mystical body of Jesus Christ, which has the unity of heavenly bodiless beings (angels) and of the saints (people justified before God). This unity is called the heavenly Church. Otherwise it may be called the Church triumphant. The visible side of the Church is made up of the society of the faithful and the clerical hierarchy, with a place specially appointed for divine service, with rules and traditions received by succession from the apostles. This is otherwise called the earthly, or militant, Church. The head of the unity of the heavenly and the earthly is Christ the Saviour Himself. But, alas, we men are often given to sweeping judgements, and the same befalls us with regard to the Church: the Church is blamed for that in which her servants sin. Such conduct is, of course, not right, for the Church is not some priest or servant of the Church; and yet he who acts unworthily within the Church becomes, willingly or unwillingly, an enemy of the Church; and however mistaken it is to judge of the Church by the principle of generalisation, so it has always been and probably so it will be. In a man's consciousness the name of God is bound up with holiness, with righteousness, with honesty, and the same he requires of His servant. That is precisely why the greatest responsibility lies upon a servant of God in every action of his — and not upon the servant only, but upon every member of the Church, whether layman or clergyman. By their conduct the name of God may be glorified and His Church may truly become the promised quiet refuge, and it may also be reviled and rejected.
The sins, errors and unworthy acts of the clergy are the sorrow and the trial of the Church.
Saint John Chrysostom, reproving the clergy of his own day, once uttered this thought: “Of the clergy only few will be saved.” And still the Church lives in all the fullness of her life, is filled with hidden powers of grace, and even when the clergy do not stand at the height of their calling, the Church remains holy and undefiled. To justify departure from the Church people often name various causes: for example, that those who pray irritate them and are a stumbling-block, that they cannot bear crowds, that they cannot pray when there are many people in the church. It may be so; but such feelings are rather a pretext for leaving the Church than a cause. Is it really so hard to find such a church, or such a place in a church, where there is no disturbance, where no one will trouble you?!
One serious cause which in many cases becomes a stumbling-block to a man is ignorance, that is, a lack of understanding of what happens in the Church and why; that is, they do not know the order of the divine service and its inward essence and meaning. But it must be said that whoever sincerely and seriously wishes to take part in the common divine service and to understand what happens in the Church and what is read will always manage to understand it, if only he truly wishes to. But the true causes of departure from the Church lie very little in the causes we have listed; the whole trouble is that the Church and the divine service little by little become needless to the soul; an inward estrangement takes place, which is bound up with spiritual laziness, and still more with that state which shows itself in a man's being sunk, soul and body, in the affairs of this world.
Nor should we pass over those cases where every bond between a man's religious life and the Church has been broken because of a wrong, unchurchly upbringing. This question requires no small attention.
A man's religious countenance depends greatly upon what upbringing he received in childhood. I have met people who truly have reverence for the Church and are marked out among others by a certain piety, but who find it hard to enter a church, to make the sign of the cross and to bend the knee, who find it hard to kiss icons and holy things for the simple reason that the habit of such acts has not been formed in them, and in their grown years they can no longer do it: it is unfamiliar to them. On the other hand, I have witnessed such a case too: a grandmother is leading her grandson. The moment the grandmother saw two priests on their way, she led the grandson across to the other side of the street and said to him: my child, spit three times, the priests are coming. Of course the child carried out his beloved grandmother's instruction; but let us now say: when this child grows up, will he simply be an unbeliever? It is rather to be thought that in him there will be hatred of the priest, and from this of the Church as well. Today in many schools they teach in some places “the Law of God”, in others “the history of religion”, and in some “religion and culture”, and try by this means to fill those gaps and serious failings which exist in the system of teaching. Yet I think that in many cases they do not manage it, for they teach about Christianity, but they cannot give an example of Christian living, which gives a far worse result than not teaching at all, for in fact a lie, a divided way of life, takes root in the child's consciousness. By this I wish to underline the great responsibility that lies upon the educator. Our society, our country needs a man armed with Christian faith and a Christian way of life, and not people who have only a certain store of knowledge about Christ and His Church. The Church should be a home to a Christian. A man should show the same care for the Church as for his own house. But in many cases we are only guests of the Church. Many people regard the Church just as they do the cinema, the theatre, a club or some other place of entertainment. Until such an attitude (at least in some measure, of course) is changed, the revival of church life, and from this of the spiritual life of our people, will not take place. There are people who so “love” beasts and birds that they go into the forest, kill them, take out their innards, stuff them with cotton and set them up at home. They love not the animal but its stuffed skin. We become like such people when we show particular care for solving a young person's social problems (and a man's in general) or for bettering the questions of this earthly life, while we set at nought the truly valuable and necessary questions of the spiritual life; or, at best, we commit a far more cruel crime, for in the case cited above we have to do with a beast or a bird, while here we have to do with a living man, with the image of God.
In the Creed the teaching about the Church begins with the word “I believe”. A question may even arise in us: why is faith needed with regard to the Church, since the Church is a living and undoubted reality? Is faith really needed in order to perceive this reality? As it seems, it is indeed so. In the hearts of the Christians of the first century, together with faith in Christ the Saviour there was born faith in His Church; but afterwards the direct perception of the Church in all her fullness became ever harder. Even faith in Christ the Saviour Himself was no longer given to men so easily. Unlike early Christianity, a man's heart no longer burns with the fire of faith; a time of spiritual impoverishment has come, and this has made the strengthening of church consciousness necessary. By this are explained those inward difficulties whose overcoming requires particular effort. We must remember that all who were baptised “in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” already belong to the Church and are within her; but the act of baptism only brings us into the Church. A door is opened before us and we are given the possibility of being under the protection of the powers of grace that are in the Church and of receiving from them spiritual food. But all our life afterwards depends upon how actively we live within the bosom of the Church; otherwise the grace received at baptism, which is necessary for the mystical transformation of a man, remains in him as a potency — a possibility, straitened and almost choked by the cares of this world rather than by a churchly way of life. If from childhood, from infancy, a man grows used to the divine service and to receiving the holy mysteries, in such a case a firm inward (and outward) bond with the Church is formed, and whatever crisis may come in that man's church consciousness, this bond keeps its strength. But if there is no such bond, then when a crack appears in a man's church life (when he stumbles for some reason) there remain practically no possibilities of turning back to the Church, of renewing church life. What may church consciousness take in? Everything that is bound up with the Church, with the divine service, with the church hierarchy, with the teaching of the faith; and if in connection with any of these there arises in a man's heart a feeling of dissatisfaction, and perhaps even a stumbling, then, because of our characteristic thinking by the principle of generalisation, it passes over into other areas of our church consciousness as well. For example, if a man has stumbled over a hierarch, this stumbling will pass over into questions of faith, into the divine service, and in general the metastases may take in his whole consciousness. That this may not befall us, we must learn the defence of the Church. We must be able to see clearly amid the whirlwind of slander raised against the Church, that we may not fall into temptation and find ourselves outside the Church, that is, that we may not be left without the truly saving grace.
It is very easy to criticise the clergy. From whom do we hear such criticism for the most part? From those who set the commandments of God at nought for themselves, but who with great eagerness, and even with a certain malicious joy, tell all manner of slanderous tales, even if they be true. Probably no one is criticised so easily and so unrestrainedly as the representatives of the Church; now they are charged with pharisaism, with hypocrisy, with love of money, with a disorderly way of life. This criticism comes for the most part from those who have neither faith nor the sense of being sons of the Church. And the result is painful enough: people who do not tell the essence of the Church from her outward, formal expression and marks go off to the sectarians, to those who spare nothing to blacken the Church; they even say: “What need is there of clergy, why do we need a mediator before Christ?” If you look attentively at what demands are made of the clergy, you will be convinced that to satisfy these demands is practically impossible. Of the clergy they require what they so easily release themselves from. If a priest has erred, or grown angry, or overlooked something or someone, they by no means forgive him. Even a human weakness seen in a priest becomes a stumbling-block to them with regard to him. Yet a priest is the same kind of man as any other; and in him too, as in every man, there is a potential (inherited) inclination towards sin. With him too the evil one fights; he too may err. And we shall say more. It cannot be denied that in the clergy there may be those who truly do not stand at the height of their calling; but the chief pain is still that the great majority of such believers have no church consciousness at all. For them the Church is not a mother; for them the church hierarchy is strange; they have no love whatever for the clergy — not as a hierarchy, but as people. Hence that pitilessness, and often hatred, which they show towards the Church and her hierarchy. In fact, in this lies the cause of “Christianity that exists outside the Church”.
In a man's mind many questions naturally arise for the reason that the truth of the Gospel and modern ideology differ diametrically; and if a man does not read the Holy Scriptures and the teaching of the apostles daily, then, to get an answer to every such question that arises in his mind, he turns not to the Holy Scriptures, not to a high spiritual man trained in questions of theology, but gives free rein within himself to everything that, on the contrary, deepens the spiritual crisis. Such a thing is probably explained also by the fact that our modern life is full of mistrust towards the Church. The more so since the laying of the foundation for this mistrust was, in our country, provided for by a state programme. A Christian view of the questions and problems that stand before us requires of us great labour, a deepening in the teaching of the Church and in her history. The way of Christian life is strewn with many difficulties, for the overcoming of which not only knowledge but great spiritual courage is needed.
Archpriest Guram Berbichashvili (now Archbishop Grigol). “The law is good, if a man use it lawfully”, Ozurgeti, 1995
