Fr Vsevolod Chaplin (1968- ), zamglavy of the MP DECR
Does sin change? Has it become transmuted in our contemporary world? The reasons for sin remain the same as they were many thousands of years ago. These are pride, lust, perversity, greed, hatred, and selfishness. However, the main cause is a lack of connection with God and the refusal of his Paradise. Of course, the outer circumstances of life change, and supposedly new sins are truly old in their essence. Earlier, the worshippers of the passions were fascinated with bones and maps, whereas today they are wedded to virtual reality. In ancient times, those who haughtily attempted “to enlarge the scope of human nature” turned to witchcraft and the black arts. Today, they abuse science with their experimentation upon genes and organs.
The nature of sin is changed by new and powerful means for its propaganda. At one time, people concealed their sin, but, today, it is paraded for show and calls for the masses to take part in it. The very concept of sin has begun to irritate some “leaders of public opinion”. They declare it an outdated legacy of the gloomy Middle Ages and claim that it should not be spoken of in normal polite society. If you dare to speak of sin openly, you shall be silenced in the schools, in most of the media, and in public debate. What was considered, until very recently, sin, is now considered a way of self-realisation of personality. Not without reason did Catholic Bishop Gian-Franco Girotti, the head of the Apostolic Penitentiary (the papal board that has responsibility for questions of repentance) once say, “The sins of our time have social resonance… the reason for that is the overwhelming phenomenon of globalisation. Now, it is important, as it never was before, for us to focus our attention on our sins, because their consequences are more significant and more destructive than they were earlier”.
It is difficult not to agree with this. When sin comes in “robes of light”, and declares itself the standard, people lose their immunity to it. Only over the course of time, all too often when it is too late, people begin to understand the truth. Sin always leads to misfortune and destruction. It does not matter if it is an “old sin” or a “new sin”, or shameful and wild indulgence, or something “fashionable and trendy”. Only those with inner understanding of their own fate, who do not surrender to the television, shall escape.
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I have frequent arguments with Catholic theologians on natural moral law. Scholastic theology describes it as an indelible deposit of standards placed into the soul of man by God. For me, it is quite obvious that moral feeling and conscience are present in all of us, even the most inveterate sinner. People do understand how sin enters our lives; it enters through a confusion of the moral sense. However, can we call this sense a law? Is it a self-evident deposit of universal moral rules that subsist without exhortation, without education, or without social conditioning of an individual by society?
It is well-known that many ancient societies considered the murder of parents, promiscuous and degenerate sex, suicide, and cannibalism “normal”. Only Christianity taught against these things and, indeed, brought them to an end. Let us look at the contemporary “civilised” world. Conjugal infidelity and homosexuality are declared quite “normal”, which opens the road to euthanasia, paedophilia, and insatiable greed. Many are convinced that things that were once considered sin are now commonplace. So, where does one find the evidence of a firm law here?
The Apostle Paul speaks of this “law” in clearer terms than does scholastic theology. For when the Gentiles, which have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, these, having not the law, are a law unto themselves: Which shew the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts the mean while accusing or else excusing one another (Romans 2:14-15). Thus, the discussion deals with “the law” and the “work of the law”, the conscience, and the inner conflict of the person struck by sin. After all, it is about the fact that the people who had not heard of Christ had “the work of the law written in their hearts”. However, if one studies the entire oeuvre of the Apostle, this “law” alone is not sufficient for salvation or for achieving the moral ideal.
In our world, where sin rules and the tenets of the Sermon on the Mount are rejected, where God and Paradise are despised, the natural morality spoken of by the Evangelists undergoes erosion because the supports for it are removed. Yes, some moral feeling remains. Yes, the voice of conscience cannot be completely muffled. However, to place one’s reliance on the stability of the natural moral law, and to assume that it is sufficient for our life in “secular” society, is naïve, at the least.
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At the beginnings of the 90s, Western Christians brought much humanitarian assistance to Russia. This was a great help to our parishes, monasteries, and dioceses at a time when many were teetering on the verge of starvation. However, was all of this aid sincere? Were those who said, “they are buying souls with soup”, correct? I am confident that millions of simple people in the West rendered aid with a pure heart, requiring nothing in return. We should remember the efforts of the students who helped us to restore our ravaged churches, the parishioners who collected items to be sent to Russia as aid, and the church activists who came to help strangers in a distant land in a time of need, and left when it was over.
However, of course, there were those who came here with completely different motives. There were “missionaries” who required people to sign a paper joining them to the Protestant church when they received a meagre handout of canned goods. Sometimes, they transported young people free of charge to Europe or America, but, once there, without an adequate explanation, they tried to force them to take Catholic communion or participate in an “Evangelical circle” at a Pentecostal prayer-meeting.
The leaders of some of these “charity missions” would ask the recipients to pray with them. When Orthodox believers said that they could not do so, the “philanthropists” were offended and they refused to render any further aid. By the way, I believe there was no specific fraudulent intent here. These people did not know that we believe that not all of those who confess the Name of Christ can hold joint prayer together. We found out who our friends were. Some were our brothers and sisters in Christ, who understood the situation when we explained to them in a charitable manner why we do not pray with heterodox Christians. Others turned up their noses and refused to speak to us.
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The Russian law “About the freedom of conscience and religious conscience” clearly states: “The designation of a religious organisation must contain information about its religion. Religious organisations are under the obligation to indicate its complete designation when engaged in any activity”. Unfortunately, no penalty for the transgressing of this statute is provided. As a result, there are those who use “confessional anonymity”. That is, missionaries do not say what church or sect they represent. Often, they assert that they preach a “general non-confessional Christianity”. Some even try to mimic Orthodoxy.
I once received an invitation to be part of a course on the study of the bible in the cinema. On the cover of the enclosed leaflet were an inscription in Old Slavonic type saying “Zaoksk Spiritual Seminary” and a photo of a professor with long hair and a beard. That the course was run by the Seventh Day Adventists, which I could deduce from the return address, was probably only realised by me. Moreover, I know that the Adventist seminary is in Zaoksk in the Tula oblast. The “Transarctic Christian Mission of Mercy” operates in the northern town of Revda. Its leaders give the impression that their social work concerning recovering druggies and dipsomaniacs is not connected with religious work. Yet, they simultaneously declare that their method involves labour and prayer. Naturally, the prayer is of the Pentecostal sort. If this is not deceit, what is it?
Vladimir Semenko wrote some insightful words on this very topic. “All conversations about the fact that some assert that ‘evangelism’ must be totally isolated from a specific confessional or socio-cultural tradition, since they believe that that the imposture protects Christ, explains why some use deceitful methods… To separate the Faith and the Gospel entirely from the cultural tradition of a given people means simply that one connects it with another tradition! For there shall be tradition used, and if it shall not be Orthodox, then, it shall, by necessity, be Protestant (for example)”. We should speak clearly and unambiguously concerning this. We should not be troubled in conscience about reporting their violations of the secular law, to say nothing of their disdain for the standards of Christian ethics.
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The religious illiteracy that existed after the Soviet years was monstrous. A monk told me that, at the beginning of the 90s, a tour group visited a recently-reopened monastery. A properly-dressed lady looked piously at the icons and said to her companion, “For my grandmother, Nicholas the Merciful was god. My mum chose the icon of Kazan. As for me, I have selected the icon of Smolensk to be my god”. During the same period, I personally heard the following interpretation of a Baroque sculpture of the Archangel Mikhail dressed in a revealing tunic from a museum guide. “This sculpture is of a saint. God’s apostle, naked”.
The “educational level” of even church people was not high in those days. The monk I mentioned in my first example met on pilgrimage a venerable rural sexton and his wife. She said, “In Kiev, they were, the Mother Abbess took them there! There was the Cross and the relics laid out for us to venerate: the relics of St John the Theologian, St Barnabas the Martyr, and even of the Saviour Himself!” The monk asked her, “Mother, don’t you know about the resurrection?” She replied, “Ha! I tell you it was the Saviour Himself!” It’s great that such “revelations” are almost never heard anymore nowadays!
22 May 2008
Fr Vsevolod Chaplin
Zamglavy (Deputy Head) of the MP Department of External Church Relations
Pravoslavnaya Moskva (Orthodox Moscow)
Interfax-Religion
http://www.interfax-religion.ru/?act=print&div=8378
Vara Drezhlo
Voices from Russia 
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