And it is not necessary to say that every illness is precisely a punishment sent from God for sins. Everything is more complicated in the world of our faith.

Yes, it happens that illness is the result of sin. I'm not talking about the vulgar sense - let's say, syphilis turned out to be the result of a drunken night. We are talking about something more hidden and therefore more serious. As the English writer C.S. Lewis (converted to Christianity by Tolkien's preaching) said, "God whispers to us with the voice of love, speaks to us at the top of his voice through the voice of conscience, and cries out to us through the megaphone of suffering." It happens that illness, pain comes into a person's life because he used to cause the same pain to other people.

But still, this is not the "law of karma". The effect here is not a copy of the cause. Any sin, especially a sin that is established and inveterate, is a falling away from God. And where can one fall away from God, who is the source of Life, the source of Meaning? - This is a fall into the world of dying, into the world of agony. Illness is the first convulsion of agony.

And yet, it cannot be considered that any disease is a punishment for sin and a consequence of sin. The Church's teaching (Synaxarion), traditionally pronounced on the fourth Sunday after Pascha (the "Sunday of the Paralytic"), says: "For it is not every illness that comes from sin, but also from natural illness, and from gluttony and uselessness, and finds many others."

In Kiev, recently Metropolitan Vladimir besieged some priests who were too "spiritual": "In Kiev, there are some clergymen who practice proofreading, without any blessing from the ruling bishop or diocesan confessor. These are serious things, you can't play with it. They aggravate the delusions of our believers, or rather even unbelieving people, that any illness is already a demonic possession. Everything is equated to this: success or failure, itchy left ear or right, even bad or good mood - already from the devil. In this way, there is a perversion of the Church's consciousness. Yes, indeed, the demon is a real force, the demon is a rational force, a dark force that exists in reality and acts within the framework of the Lord's permission. But the demon is not yet the main leadership of the entire church people. And it is not worth ascribing to demons such broad opportunities as some priests give them. Whatever happens - everything is from the devil, let's proofread. Because people like it, it's profitable... Such an attitude is unacceptable for both young and old priests. It is unacceptable because it provokes the people and leads them astray. This is truly a demonic delusion. Proofreading should be done very carefully. Yes, there are prayers of St. Basil the Great, there are prayers in the service book for the exorcism of evil spirits, but, I repeat, to attribute everything without prayer from beginning to end to a demon is a very harmful delusion, which spreads mainly among the young clergy. This is what is called young eldership."256

Many things in our lives come not from our past, but from our future. The Lord can give illness so that those people who are next to you can heal their souls in the experience of caring for a sick person, in the experience of compassion. Or maybe the Lord touches the pain so that your soul changes in this experience. So that later, on the other side of the illness, you would be able to contain more than you were able to contain before the illness. So it is very important for a Christian not to succumb to the provocation of linking other people's illnesses with other people's sins. If, having fallen ill, I say: "Yes, Lord, I accept what is worthy according to my deeds," then this will be a normal formula, a moral one. But if I walk up to another person that's sick, and say, "You're sick. It means that there were sins in your life and you are paying for them" - then it will be vulgarity. A healthy person has no right to condemn a sick person, no matter what disease he has.

Christianity is an ethic with a double bottom: I have no right to do to others what I should do to myself. According to Academician Averintsev, Christianity has created a truly virtuoso culture of appreciating one's own guilt. I must forgive others, but I have no right to forgive myself. I should not look for the sins of another person, even if he is in misfortune, but if a misfortune has happened to me, I should think about my sins.

Therefore, I could not ignore one note in "Arguments and Facts". In 1998, Archimandrite Sergius (Sturov) explained in the pages of this publication why several catastrophes coincided in December 1997: "Both clergy and believers warned television that it was impossible to show the film "The Last Temptation of Christ", that God is not mocked. Alas, no one listened to our voice, and we see how, after the film was shown, terrible disasters befell Russia at the mine near Novokuznetsk, in Irkutsk, in Naryan-Mar."257

Sounds pious. Archimandrite Sergius tried to appear in the eyes of readers as a deeply religious man. But – in whom? In what god does he believe? In the Gospel God of love and philanthropy, or in the extravagant Olympian god? Doesn't the Lord look like a mad sadist in his depiction? NTV really committed blasphemy by showing this film. But on what basis can we believe that God punishes the Novokuznetsk miners for the sin of Moscow TV politicians? How is the pregnant woman who burned in a helicopter near Naryan-Mar connected with this film? Is it possible that Providence does not know how to act exactly, repaying specific perpetrators of evil, but blindly destroys everything right and left, without distinguishing faces? If God in His love tolerates the immediate initiators of sin, without visiting them with illness or even sorrow, then why suppose that He punishes strangers so decisively and terribly for their sin?

From the theological-theoretical point of view, it is a dangerous matter to evaluate the ways of Providence so hastily (and, moreover, from such a short historical distance). From a theological-practical point of view, first of all, it is really necessary to recognize that the moral dignity of a person is determined by the extent to which he is ready to find meaning in his own suffering. As St. John Chrysostom, the one who learned to thank God for his illnesses, is not far from holiness. A person can think of himself with the words of a sick man from Pasternak's poem "In the Hospital": "Oh, Lord, how perfect are Thy works," thought the sick man... Ending up in a hospital bed, I feel the heat of Your hands..." But it would not be piety, but simply moral idiocy, to go to a neighbor and authoritatively announce to her the meaning of her troubles: "You, Marya, broke your leg yesterday because you didn't go to church with me the day before yesterday!" ...

And from a purely moral point of view, it is not good to use the pain of other people as an excuse to declare: "Well, I warned you! Do you understand now how right I was?!" 258

Providence has its own secrets. But these are secrets, not secrets, and there can be no quick-acting lockpicks to them...

- There is some intimate relationship between the disease and human capabilities. I mean wisdom and sickness, creativity and sickness. Does the disclosure of the patient's creative abilities occur THANKS to or DESPITE the disease?