After "chats", it may be more difficult to communicate with real people. And this is an escape from reality, from complexity. But for someone who finds it too difficult to talk to others face-to-face, online dating can be a stepping stone to breaking the ring of self-isolation.

Virtual worlds of computers help many people to overcome the barrier of alienation, make up for the lack of communication, help to find like-minded people (through the same Internet networks and e-mails), teach them to listen to others, hear their words, teach them to defend their opinions and beliefs. Electronic computer mail and the Internet can help to find interlocutors who, by virtue of their faithfulness to Orthodoxy and humanity, are alone in their real everyday environment. But they can meet each other in virtual space.

Of course, there are also dangers on the Internet. They are primarily related to anonymity. The person in it is often nameless. What Alexander Galich once said about the Soviet country can be applied to the electronic world: "Over block-panel Russia, like a camp room, the moon is like a camp room." A number instead of a name. An Internet user is an invisible person. He sees everything – no one may know about his presence.

The Internet is a reality to which you have no sense of duty. Anonymity makes it possible to treat the Internet as a reality devoid of a moral dimension. This, again, is nothing new. In the past, people often sought to lose their name, to gain anonymity. They – at least for a while – "got lost" in foreign big cities and "pulled back" there. Remember the behavior of Soviet "business travelers" or "New Russian" tourists in Europe. So the Internet is not to blame here again. You just need to remember that even in virtual reality you have to be a human being and you have to be a Christian.

The task of religion at all times has been to give a human, morally meaningful, value-based dimension to the world in which man is immersed. It is important not to fight against virtual reality and the computer world, but to give them a vertical – a human, moral and hierarchical dimension, it is necessary to ethicize this sphere.

If the Orthodox leave the Internet, its world will become flat. Sects will remain there. So isn't it better to show your own activity instead of cursing their activity? Not to condemn printing houses for printing "depraved" publications, but to create their own printing houses, where the same technologies for reproducing texts will reproduce church texts.277 Not to condemn the demonism of television, but to invest church money in the creation of their own TV channel. Yes, there are nasty pages on the Internet. But it is all the more important to create our islands of light there, so that a person wandering on the Internet can catch his breath on them. Precisely if we leave somewhere, this sphere becomes completely hostile to us.

A computer and its networks are simply a technique that helps people transmit and receive information. And what kind of information it is depends on us. If some Orthodox Christians have nothing to say to people face to face, they will not be able to do it remotely, with the help of a computer. As you know, there are people who, "if they keep silent, will pass for smart people." But the means of modern informatics and journalism make our world transparent. They require words and arguments from a person. If one has neither, what can one do, the world of computers and television simply exposes one's lack of talent.278 And there is no need to sulk and be offended by cars! In the beautiful words of M. Markish, through the Internet "people are given only the opportunity to use technology for good. We cannot control the behavior of others; we can use this opportunity ourselves."279

Yes, the computer was not created by us, not by the Orthodox. But there is a parable in the Gospel about an unfaithful steward who stole the property entrusted to him and, having distributed it to his friends, eventually received the praise of Christ (Luke 16). And there is an interpretation of this parable by St. Theophilus of Antioch: Paul, who had once studied at the feet of the Jew Gamaliel and was appointed to govern in the house of Jewish laws, then turned to Christ, and used the knowledge given to him to preach Christ and polemic against the Jews... 280 A Christian who uses even pagan inventions to put them at the service of the Church acts righteously.

Only in one case will a computer really be able to do real harm to the Church. If now pseudo-Orthodox horror stories and puffers about the "satanic seal emitted by a computer" become widely known and are perceived as a common church position, then a shameful shadow will lie on Orthodoxy for many generations to come. Just as for centuries, when they hear the word "Catholic", they say: "These are those who judged Galileo", so it will be said of us: "Orthodox are those who were afraid of computers."

A MAN AND HIS COMPUTER OR A COMPUTER AND HIS MAN?

(Interview with Upgrade magazine, August 2000)