First of all, let's put the question more broadly. And the unbaptized, "who have not brought great benefit" – well, it is not worth talking about them, well, there is only one road left for them – to hell? Let's think about what the Lord says, "No man will come to my Father except through me." This means that without Christ, outside the Church, there can be no salvation. Indeed, without recognizing Christ as the Son of God, no one can be saved. But this does not mean that hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of people who knew nothing about Christ and Christianity will be severely punished, think, for example, of the American Indians before the discovery of America by Columbus, or of the Africans, or of the Polynesians, or even of those people who may have heard something about Christianity, but have never had in their lives the experience of preaching about it – which could be called apostolic. But if a person saw the image of Christ before him, and suddenly for some reason did not accept it and turned away, and, like the Jews during Christ's life, said: "No, we have no king but Caesar, we do not want to be with you, Christ God!" but the judgment of God and this judgment is just and merciful.

25. I have various doubts now. I believe that there is hell and demons. But paradise and God, as they are told, are presented to me in a different way, somehow not so simple. How can I be confirmed in the faith?

Paradise is when God will be in every way and in all, when Christ will be and all who are Christ's around him, and when we will be in eternity with God, and when there will be our loved ones, those who will be vouchsafed, and all will be near, and nothing will be far away, when everyone will be truly neighbors, in whatever different ages they may live and in whatever different countries on earth they may be. And paradise is not some kind of place where pancakes with sour cream and strawberry jam fly right into your mouth. This was probably told or shown in fairy tales, well, an Orthodox person does not care about them. And what is hell? Hell is a Greek word, it comes from the even more ancient word "Avidus" – a place, as it is written in the Catechism of Metropolitan Philaret, invisible, that is, one where it is impossible not to see, not to know God. In hell, you will no longer see anything good or bright, you will not know and feel in your heart that you can be saved and changed, and this is very scary. This terrible state is hell, and not at all frying pans and not demons throwing logs into the fire.

26. God knows all things in the future; it means that He knows who will sin and who will not in any case, so why are we given a chance?

The Holy Scriptures say that the Lord desires everyone to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the Truth, and He sent His Only-begotten Son, so that whoever believes in Him would not perish, but would gain eternal life. Salvation, as an opportunity, is given to each of us precisely as an opportunity – after all, every moment of our life, in every situation, the Lord is with us, so that we, like a thief on the cross, who even one minute before death could change and say: "Remember me, Lord, when you come into Your Kingdom" – and hear: "Today you will be in paradise." There are no people predestined to perdition or predestinated to salvation, but if the former is true, then the latter is also true; if we are not computers, and not refrigerators, and not televisions, but beings who have in us the image and likeness of God's freedom, then it means that we are saved not by force, but by cooperating with God, who saves us. There are great words of one of the saints: "God does not save us without us." Try to think carefully about these words. Christ saves us, but not without our answer and not without our effort.

27. Why does the Lord not forgive sinners in hell?

Because sinners themselves do not want it. Because those who are in hell are those who have voluntarily determined themselves in evil, they are those who have lived their lives saying: "No, I do not want, Christ God, I do not want Your salvation, nor Your sacrifice. My sin, my passion is dearer and more pleasant to me. God does not force anyone, neither in this life nor in the hereafter.

28. What must be done to get to God?

What should be done? The Lord says this: "He who loves me keeps My commandments." This is the path by which one can go to God. Only if we fulfill not just as a promise, as the pioneers once promised: we will do this and that, as the Communist Party teaches, as bequeathed... and so on. And let us love these commandments ourselves precisely because they teach us to love God, Christ, and our neighbors. If we do not just practice the lesson, like mercenaries and slaves who are afraid to die, but with joy because of love, then this path will lead us to Christ.

29. What is faith in God?

Belief. The most important thing in it is to believe that the Lord exists. But simply to know, to understand with one's mind that God exists, is not enough for an Orthodox and for a Christian in general. After all, it has been said that even demons believe, that is, they know that the Lord exists, but at the same time they do not depart from sin, so knowing is not enough, we need to trust God, to trust the will of God both in good qualities and in bad ones, and when we are praised, and when we are blamed, and when we are healthy, and when our health leaves us, and when we are loved, and when we are scolded, to know that the Lord is always with us, that he will not give us a test more than we can endure. And thirdly, to be faithful to Christ, faithfulness is also an obligatory attribute of an Orthodox Christian, faithful and resolute at all times, and to decide: either to be faithful to the end and to lose everything in this life, and maybe life itself, or to have everything, but to renounce Christ. This faithfulness is cultivated from small things: for example, there is a fast, you are walking past an ice cream stand, you want to eat a portion, but you want to be faithful to Christ and refuse: "I will be faithful to Christ and will not eat what pleases me." Here is a neighbor sitting, whom I passionately want to pull more painfully by the pigtail, but I will restrain myself and will not do it, for Christ's sake. That's what faith is: confidence, trust, and loyalty.

30. Why do some people not believe in God?

Some do not believe because they did not have the opportunity to know and love God and the Orthodox faith. But the words of the Apostle Paul, which he addressed to the Gentiles, are applicable to them, saying that they have their own law in them – this is the law of conscience – and will be judged according to this law. This is the law of conscience, the natural moral law that every person has. He is the voice of God in our souls, and the one who has acted in essence, according to God's truth in his life, means that he can still be saved and meet Christ. But there are people who do not believe because they do not want to believe. And we can say that these people rather believe, feel that there is a God, know it, but rebel against this faith, against this knowledge, either because this faith prevents them from living the way they want, that is, according to their own will and desire, or because it is uncomfortable, inconvenient, or interferes with it. After all, ask yourself how often it happens that we believe only as much as faith does not prevent us from living. In this sense, we are sometimes even worse than unbelievers.

31. How did you personally gain your faith?