Recently in Moscow, after a lecture, a woman turned to me with a question: "I am a homeopathic doctor and an Orthodox Christian. I replied that homeopathy is, in principle, a pagan practice, but if a discovery was made by non-Christians, this does not mean that it is non-Christian in itself. For example, Saints Theophan the Recluse259, John of Kronstadt, and Ignatius Brianchaninov used homeopathy260. However, the woman says: "I know this, but I am still restless, because I do not know how I treat."

An amazing situation has developed: she, a homeopathic doctor, feels that this is not good, and I, a theologian, persuade her that it seems possible to do this. But the problem here is really serious: no homeopath is able to explain the mechanism of the homeopathic method of treatment. It reminds me of Pavlov's dogs. Perhaps the dog realizes that if you bark here and press this button with your nose, you will be given a piece of meat, but it does not know how this button is related to the meat that has fallen into the bowl.

To be honest, I'm always afraid of being in the position of Pavlov's dogs, when we do something, the effect happens, but it's not clear where it came from. Are there really material mechanisms of interaction here, or is there some kind of psychotherapy that perhaps borders on some kind of spiritual and religious interaction (quite possibly not Christian)? What kind of "black box" is hidden there? It is the presence of this "black box" of homeopathy that does not allow us to say that everything is clear and safe here. Moreover, today it is clear how easily homeopathy is interpreted within the framework of fashionable occult jargon, which includes all the same "energy-informational carriers", "thoughtforms", etc. And homeopaths themselves too often resort to an occult interpretation of their methods...

I would liken the situation with acupuncture to a city captured by barbarians. Imagine that a city is captured by the most complete barbarians who do not know what electric light is. And in this city there is an autonomous nuclear power plant, which will work for a hundred years without control. There is light in some places, not all wires are broken. And these barbarians eventually notice that if you press that button, then a light bulb lights up here. They clearly understand that there is some connection here, but they do not know how the button and the light bulb are connected. And then they develop their own mythology: the spirit of this door influences the spirit of the Sun, and if you spit over your left shoulder and jump diagonally across the room on your right foot, you bring a bunch of sacrificial bananas to the window, then you can press this button and the Sun god will send his part to that lamp under the ceiling. A myth can be based on quite real observations, on which the explanatory attempts of mythology are layered. It seems to me that acupuncture is a similar thing. In time, quite materialistic explanations for the connections between the outer integuments and the internal organs (after all, they developed from the same original cell of the embryo) will probably emerge. Therefore, if a doctor uses acupuncture without using Chinese philosophy, I think he is not sinning.

In any case, St. Nicholas of Japan did not see anything magical in acupuncture, although he had a negative attitude towards it: "Stephen Kondo served as a catechist several times and left the service several times to earn his bread by acupuncture. Art is something like charlatanry... Kondo wanted to make his way to a new, very crowded place on the ridge of the church, to quack with his acupuncture."261

As for hypnosis - again, it all depends on who and for what purpose uses it. Purely medical hypnosis is one thing, when the task is to save a person from some obsessive memory of some trauma... But in general, the Church has a negative attitude towards any situation when you enter a state that you yourself do not control. You have to be extremely picky, and even more so when people like Alan Chumak or Kashpirovsky try to hypnotize you, then you can't open up to them in any case.

PROTECTING YOUR COMPUTER

The wary attitude of Orthodox Christians to computer games is understandable. The unfamiliar always requires caution. "We grew up without these games - so maybe it is better to protect our children from this new, incomprehensible influence."

Well, what if you try not to be afraid of the unknown, but calmly take a closer look at it and try to find a good use for it? The most dangerous "coupling" from the computer world: computer – computer games – children... Are our children's computers being stolen? Children already speak a language that is incomprehensible to us (chats - sites-chips...). You have to return them to the real world almost by force. Maybe to protect them from a strange and, most likely, harmful influence?

But wait. And is it the first time that children go to their own worlds, unlike ours? Didn't anyone who read Jules Verne, Dumas and Conan Doyle in childhood go into the worlds created by these writers? And did he grow up incapable of hearing the words of the Gospel in the end? Do not rush to condemn: Tsar Nikolai Alexandrovich read adventurous novels and detective stories by the authors just listed to his children in prison...

And those children who turned the neighboring grove into their secret and fabulous place – didn't they live in their "virtual reality"? Isn't any children's game already an "invention"? And is it easy to distract the child from the game?

But if boys still play war, then maybe it will be better if the kid aims from a stick or from a toy machine gun not at a living peer, but at a "virtual" target?