The fact is that there is no attitude to struggle with the passions in the Bible. The New Testament, through the mouths of the holy apostles, calls us not to struggle with anger, rage, malice, and so on. (cf. Col. 3:8), but to "lay aside" (apotithemi), that is, to take off oneself, as one takes off one's old clothes, or "to put off oneself" (apekduomai) all these vices. It is these two words that are repeatedly used in Scripture when it comes to passions and vices, but the struggle with passions is nowhere mentioned here. It must be thought that everything that concerns the struggle with the passions that dominate us and nest within us came into Christian literature from Stoic and ancient philosophy in general in later times.

The Holy Apostles see the path of a Christian not as a path of struggle with passions, but precisely as throwing off old clothes, as growing out of these clothes. Just as a child grows out of his clothes, a Christian must grow out of his sins, out of his laziness and malice, out of his egoism and rancor. And this is fundamentally important, because if we believe that evil is like a garment that can be thrown off, it means that we understand that it is something external, inorganic in relation to the depths of our "I", it does not touch these depths, just as clothes do not touch our heart, which do not stain the soul, but only the skin. A dirty dress must simply be thrown off, and the disease of internal organs must be fought, its essence must be delved into, pondered, its features and course of course must be studied, analyzed, etc.

The apostles advise us to throw off sin like a garment – not to think about what it is, not to analyze it, but simply to reject it – and that's it. And Jesus Himself says the same thing: "If your right eye offends you, pluck it out and cast it from you" (Matthew 6:29). Of course, the Sermon on the Mount is not talking about self-mutilation, it is about not keeping in mind, not considering one's evil thought, but immediately throwing it away from oneself, not fighting against it, but in an instant, sharply and irrevocably, really throwing it away from oneself.

If we begin to dissect sin bone by bone, subject it to analysis, then we are inevitably captured or sucked in by the very process of struggle, we turn into fighters, and our Christianity simply ends there. From the depths of our consciousness, we transfer the struggle to the outside world and begin to fight with everyone who, as it seems to us, thinks wrong, does the wrong thing, etc.

The triumph of lack of culture

When Christians killed Hypatia or burned books in Constantinople, it was not a statement by the Church against paganism, it was simply a triumph of lack of culture over culture. Christianity was used by this crowd simply as a pretext, as a pretext, or as a purely external argument. Her hatred, directed exclusively against culture, culture, and learning, was, of course, dressed in the garb of Christian piety, but it did not become Christian because of this.

At the moment when the path of rejecting sin, throwing it off like an old garment, is replaced by a struggle with sin, at first everything works out for us perfectly: quickly and effectively, through ascetic feats, we begin to remake ourselves and achieve a lot in the shortest possible time. Then we get tired, and then imperceptibly there is a substitution – we begin to fight not with the enemy that is inside us, but with the one who is outside. That is why the path of struggle was not blessed by the apostles, for Christianity it is a dead end. It was into this impasse that the Alexandrian crowd fell. Imitating the great ascetics of the Thebaid, she took the path of struggle, but quickly strayed in search of enemies. It is always a little dangerous to fight with rich people, because they have power in their hands, and also because the crowd usually has an almost biological sense of respect for wealth, for there is always a hope of getting some handout from rich people. Scientists are another matter. They have always been despised by the crowd, and the pagan crowd in Hellenistic Alexandria of the second century was no less hostile to them than the supposedly Christian crowd that tore Hypatia to pieces. Her death was a triumph of simple lack of culture. The same triumph of lack of culture was the bonfires of books of spiritual content, which flared up in the 20s of our century in the courtyards of closed seminaries and theological schools throughout Russia. The organizers of these auto-da-fés, and this is very important to understand and remember, were obsessed not only and not so much with the idea of fighting religion – no, they simply gave vent to their hatred of culture, education, and educated people. It hurts when pagans are obsessed with this hatred, such as the Bolsheviks were in the 1920s, or the red-cheeked Athenian boys who cackled over Euripides (remember Gumilev?) in the fifth century B.C. But it hurts a thousand times more when we, Christians, burn with the same hatred. Breaking an old TV in the garbage, burning Nicholas Roerich's books, denouncing those who perform Bach and Chopin, declaring that we do not need fiction, etc.

***

Важно не забывать, что тех мучеников, которые теперь нами благоговейно почитаются как святые, лишало жизни государство на вполне законном, с его точки зрения, основании, по решению суда. Разумеется, это государство было языческим и боролось с христианами как с врагом, но все-таки согласно законам. Народ при этом либо просто безмолвствовал, либо (и это как раз в большинстве случаев) был на стороне мучеников. Вообще народ всегда на стороне того, кого преследует и сажает в тюрьму государство (за исключением советской страны, где народ всегда был против тех, кто сидит в тюрьме, и вставал в оппозицию к государству, как только оно объявляло амнистию).

Но Ипатию растерзал именно народ! Не христианское государство, а считавший себя Церковью народ. Здесь мы вновь сталкиваемся с тем феноменом, о котором говорила мать Мария: вчерашний язычник, видя в себе и своих друзьях и единомышленниках Церковь, причем не часть Церкви, а всю ее, решает действовать, используя те методы, принципы и способы активности, которые присущи государственной власти. Это происходит, наверное, по той причине, что выросший в условиях, когда государство было обожествлено (а именно обожествлены были и СССР, и Римская империя!), человек к Церкви начинает относиться именно так, как его в школе учили относиться к государству.