How much has been said about the need to save children from the "influence of the street". And that's what the computer does. I'm a little sorry. I am sorry that for so many years in the spring I have not seen boys launching boats along the streams. And in winter there are no snow fortresses and their "captures". And even snowwomen have become a rarity in the yards. Computers and video game consoles have taken children off the streets. They returned the children to our homes. But is it the fault of children or computers that children get bored at home without electronics? If we are bored with ourselves, if we cannot be more interesting to children than colored spots on the screen, this is our fault, and not the fault of technology or "Western civilization".

Yes, the computer is captivating and distracting. Internet dating, games, search for information - interesting, but not always necessary... However, is this a reason to anathematize computers and keep your child away from their world? You can get carried away with anything beyond measure. And here it is important to determine: what, in fact, is the measure itself?

The critics of the computer and computer games seem to proceed from the conviction that man is called to remain in prayer continuously, and therefore any action (which engages a person in something else) distracts him from prayer and, therefore, is anti-Christian.

That's right – a schema-monk who would put down his rosary and start looking for news on the Internet would be strange. But are all Christians schema-monks? And is schema podvig the only way of serving God and people? And apart from the computer, does nothing distract us from prayerful concentration? And if our lives and the lives of our children are not all filled with prayer, is it necessary to immediately call for this "unprayerful" remnant to be reduced, to disappear and to be "covered" by the multiplied prayer rule?

It seems to me that book calls to unceasing prayer today are much more dangerous than any computer games. The fact is that if an Orthodox person takes seriously such a call (printed in a pious book or pronounced by a parish preacher) and embarks on the path of continuous prayer, then he is very, very risky. Before a Christian cleanses himself of passions and sees the uncreated light, he will most likely acquire a bouquet of mental and spiritual illnesses, fall into the deepest delusion. For in the absence of an experienced spiritual father, who himself has been practicing "mental prayer" for more than one year, without constant advice and guidance, a person who has decided to master the higher form of prayer from books will find himself almost defenseless in the face of charming delusions. And how many spiritual fathers do we have today who can lead people along the highest and straight path?262

Therefore, the general church requirements of piety are quite sober. Read daily morning and evening prayers from the prayer book. Begin each deed by turning to God for blessing and help. Go to church more often. If you have the strength, time and diligence – read also the Gospel chapter per day, according to the kathisma and according to the canon... But everything that goes beyond the usual rule is only with the special blessing of the spiritual father.

Thus, in the life of a person there is a place for other activities that are not directly combined with prayer. There is a place for play, and for communication, and for correspondence, and for the consumption of new information (including non-church information). If a person is engaged in something that is not directly related to prayer, it should not be immediately regarded as a sin. A person can play, walk, talk with friends on secular topics – and this will not be a sin.

Play is a necessary and inevitable part of the life of almost any person, not only a child. A game is the ability to be different. This is the identification of a person with the social role to which he is "attached" and in which others are accustomed to see him. If only you knew how monks and even bishops play! No, they are not playing with dolls or "war"... For example, you meet close people, for example, classmates in the seminary. Now they have different ranks, different positions in society and they live far from each other. All of them are serious and respected people. But I really want someone to communicate with you simply, in a human way. Without "reverends" and "bishops". I would say a heartfelt "you" to you and in a schoolboy, old, simple way "give out" what people from your current environment will not say. Someone from the outside will listen to this conversation and say: "Well, they are fooling around! And how can my lord (or my father) allow himself to be treated like this!"

And isn't it a type of game – traditional (including for the clergy) soulful Russian gatherings with a "communication intermediary" in the form of a bottle? No, not alcoholism, not drunken piggery. There is, indeed, such a degree of touching alcohol when wine cheers the heart and helps a person turn to his interlocutors with a different side, unexpected and very human. One of the brightest memories of my life is parties at the seminary. Then I was convinced of the correctness of the Apostle's words: "To the pure all things are pure" (Titus 1:15) For what is in the mind of a sober man is on the tongue of a drunken man. And what if cleanliness is still on your mind? And if in secular companies wine immediately turns into fornication (at least in the form of anecdotes), then the "relaxed" seminarians stepped over completely different taboos. For example, a taboo on stories about one's spiritual path. After all, in the Orthodox Church it is not customary to talk about the miracles that have happened in your life, it is not customary to talk about your experience of being a church and about your path to faith... But wine lifted this prohibition. And the man who seemed to be a cracker and a rationalist suddenly revealed such a living facet of his life...

So there are games in which a person turns out to be more human than in his official uniform. A person understands his irreducibility to his habitual social position. In this sense, play is a faint secular shadow of repentance. For repentance is the thirst to be different...

From the point of view of philosophers, anthropologists and psychologists, a game is a human action that is not aimed at making a profit. The game does not set goals that go beyond what is happening. She is closed in on herself. And in this sense it is unselfish.263 Therefore, you should not be alarmed every time you hear the word "game". It's just that everything should have its place: time for business, time for fun. Or, more strictly, in the words of St. Theophan the Recluse: "The work is one thing, the rest is the appendages."264 And, of course, this is the right place to recall the words of Blessed Augustine, who believed that all the misfortunes of mankind arise from the violation of the true hierarchy, when we use what should be enjoyed, and enjoy what should only be enjoyed (De diversis quaestionibus.

But if the world of adults is not devoid of game moments, then even more so the life of a child cannot be approached with the requirements imposed on the life of a schemamonk.

If we tell children that the computer is their enemy, they will end up hiding in the computer world from us. So, maybe we just need to control the contents of this "box", the quality of the games that are stored in it?

I know Orthodox families who buy video recorders and televisions,266 but do not connect them to shared television antennas. Such a TV does not show what is broadcast from Ostankino, but it can show children videos bought by parents. The Orthodox video library in such houses consists not only of church films. It has Soviet cartoons and – again Soviet – film classics: "our good old cinema". A child cannot live without a fairy tale, without a "multi-pulti". Today's American cartoons are monstrous. Many of these series are permeated with occult and pagan ideas and "miracles" ("Come to me, Spirit of Fire!", "My strength, do not leave me!"). And a video recorder gives the family a certain measure of independence from state television. Just as the tape recorder made it possible to listen not only to the music and not only to those songs with which Soviet radio stations inspired the Soviet people to build communism, but also to the "humanizing" songs of Okudzhava, Vysotsky, Galich, Nikitin, Gorodnitsky, so the video tape recorder can become an aid to creating a climate in the house that is different from the one that prevails in the country as a whole.