Hieromonk Job (Gumerov)  

In Scripture, the distinction between the right and left sides has a symbolic meaning. At the time of Judgment, the Son of Man will place the righteous on the right hand and the sinners on the left (Matthew 25:31-46). The right hand (right hand) in the Bible signifies the righteousness of deeds and power. The inability of the inhabitants of Nineveh to distinguish between the right hand and the left hand (Jonah 4:11) indicates their moral ignorance, since they were pagans and did not receive Divine revelation, unlike the representatives of the chosen people.

I am very confused by the statement "... let the wife fear her husband." What does that mean?

Priest Athanasius Gumerov, a monk of Sretensky Monastery  

In a word, the translator of the Epistle of St. Paul. Paul to the Ephesians was translated into the Slavic language by the Greek phobitai, which has several meanings, including honor, respect, and care. Slav. The verb "afraid" also contains these meanings. The Apostle undoubtedly had this meaning in mind. This is easy to see if you read the verse in full: "So let each one of you love his wife as himself; and let the wife fear her husband" (5.33) The husband is commanded to love his wife as himself. Such love excludes the relationship of domination and fear. We will be even more confirmed in this understanding if we carefully read the entire fifth chapter and the last verses of the preceding one: "And do not offend the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed in the day of redemption. Let all anger and wrath and wrath and shouting and slander, with all malice, be removed from you; but be kind to one another, compassionate, forgive one another, just as God in Christ has forgiven you" (4:30-32). From verse 23, chapter 5, the Apostle says that Christian marriage is built in the image of the relationship between Christ and the Church: "Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the Church and gave Himself up for her" (5:25).

Is it a sin to watch TV?

Priest Athanasius Gumerov, a monk of Sretensky Monastery  

In the words of the Holy Apostle John the Theologian: "The whole world lies in evil" (1 John 5:19). These words refer exclusively to our age. There were periods of spiritual and moral upsurge and times of a sharp decline in morals. However, there has never been such an era when the norms that people have lived for centuries would be so crudely and boldly violated. You don't have to go far to see this. It is enough to sit in front of the TV for a few evenings and watch the main programs. He will see people who openly fight against morality. He learns with what rapture murders, violence and all sorts of pathologies are shown. Propaganda of corruption, depravity, cynical unchastity is consciously conducted. The "human rights" to all kinds of perversions (sodomy, etc.) are vigorously defended. All this is often presented in a language containing obscenity and profanity. Everything is completed by unbridled advertising, mixed with temptation, which penetrates into all programs, including children's. In the past, they used to say about an immoral person: "no shame, no conscience." Now the authors of some programs want to free people (especially young people) from both shame and conscience.

In defense of television, you usually hear: "But not everything is so bad. There are also good passes." In previous generations, the question was solved: how many fly in the ointment are enough to spoil a barrel of honey. Now many people who have fallen under psychological dependence on the "box" (as they themselves contemptuously call it) are trying to prove that even if there is a certain amount of honey in a barrel of ointment, then it is still not worth giving up such food.

But even if the ratio of what is harmful to the soul and what is morally acceptable in television programs were different from what it is now, it is still not permissible to solve the problem on the basis of quantitative indicators. This is a superficial and simplistic approach. Since ancient times, people have been aware that the house should be protected not only from violence, but also protected morally.

Therefore, they said "my home is my fortress." The walls protected the family from those passions and vices that the world lived and lives by. The walls made it possible to create an atmosphere of warmth, joy, and peace inside the house. Television canceled all this. The walls are broken. The world, boiling with passions, burst into the house. Everything that happens in different countries (conflicts, violence, immoral scandalous stories, etc.) has filled our homes. People turned out to be spiritually unprotected. A special threat of being morally crippled hangs over children, whose tender souls, like sponges, absorb this strongest moral poison. The immature psyche of children and adolescents is constantly traumatized by the daily flow of negative information. Nervousness, fear and self-doubt are born. Diseases of the psyche give rise to diseases of the body.

The long-time guardian of the myrrh-streaming Iveron Icon, Joseph Muñoz Cortés, a man of lofty righteous life, in a conversation with Priest Pavel Ivashewicz in Montreal on November 24, 1992, said: "I am also criticized for not wanting to participate in television programs with the icon, and television is a devilish thing that is changing Christian culture before our eyes. Was it not about television that St. Nilus the Myrrh, who asceticized on the Holy Mountain, in his prophecies? Yes, he talked about how the devil would make his box and his worshippers would worship him around it, and that the devil's horns would be on the roofs of all the houses. Many big American television companies offered me an incredible amount of money for 15 minutes of the program. But it seems to me that to participate in such programs would be the same as selling Christ, betraying the Mother of God."

What will happen to the young generation, which is now subjected to such a strong spiritual and moral radiation? The terrible consequences are already visible. Alcoholism, drug addiction, smoking, and sexual abuse among adolescents are growing rapidly. The fault is not only on the compilers of television programs. Legislators and politicians who have taken responsibility for the life of society have no right to be indifferent. All justifications for what is happening are built on the abuse of the word "freedom". But for many centuries people have known that the freedom of an immoral or criminal person makes people who live morally unfree. Therefore, there was a caesura, there were special laws, without which it is impossible to keep society healthy. "No wealth," wrote A.S. Pushkin, "can buy the influence of a published thought. No power, no government can resist the all-destructive action of the typographic projectile. Respect the class of writers, but do not allow it to take possession of you completely. Thought! A great word! What constitutes the greatness of man, if not thought? Let it be free, as man should be: within the limits of the law, in full compliance with the conditions imposed by society. … Are not speech and manuscript subject to the law? Any government has the right not to allow anyone to preach in the squares, and can stop the distribution of the manuscript, although its lines are written with a pen, and not stamped with a printing press. The law not only punishes, but also warns. This is even his beneficent side" (PSS, Moscow, 1978, pp. 206-207).

An individual cannot stop the resulting flow of anti-culture. However, it can move away from it, so that the turbid waters foaming with sewage do not swallow it. Not all burst water is suitable for consumption. The Word of God teaches us wisdom. "All things are lawful for me, but not all things are profitable; all things are lawful for me, but nothing shall possess me" (1 Corinthians 6:12).