Prot. A. Tkachev: “Answers to children’s questions about faith must be hard-earned”
At meetings with one of the favorite Orthodox authors and preachers, Archpriest Andrei Tkachev, believers ask Father Andrei various questions, but the topics of family and raising children and adolescents in dialogue with the pastor remain the most discussed, acute and polemical.
Why does it “swirl” to the sides?
Arriving in Tula in mid-March 2021 for Orthodox Book Day, the experienced preacher captured the attention of the audience from the first words, inviting the meeting participants to talk about what worries everyone, “so that it worries us less.” During more than an hour of communication with the audience, Fr. A. Tkachev outlined the most pressing problems of church and family life.
Father Andrei suggested that the topic of teenagers in the Church is close to everyone who has children. After all, how does it usually happen?
Until adolescence, daughters and sons obediently walk hand in hand to church, and then fall away from the Church, as if the world begins to “swirl” their movement in other directions .
This problem existed before, but today it is becoming more acute: children stop living church life and begin to think in other categories and standards.
How to approach this and what is it? According to Archpriest A. Tkachev, faith should correspond to different periods of growing up, and each age should correspond to its own level of faith.
An old man with gray hair does not have the right to believe with childish faith and be like a child in his mother’s arms. An adult must believe consciously, maturely and understand how to make the transition from childhood to adult faith; an internal milestone must come: I myself believe, but not because I was led to church by the hand.
There must be crises in faith. Father Andrei cited the parable of the prodigal son as confirmation of this thesis. In fact, the son of his father who left is better than the son who did not leave, who left and returned - the experience of falling away turned out to be useful for him . But his brother is a gloomy man who doesn’t love anyone.
He, it seems, does not leave his father (that is, from God), but he also does not share his joy about his brother. And therefore it is no coincidence that he stands in the corner of the parable, he refused to call his brother brother, he says about him: “Behold, your son.” He did not fall away, but he did not approach God the Father, and that is why all manifestations of fatherly love do not go to him.
According to Fr. Andrei Tkachev, the Church consists of such prodigal sons - people who came to it in adulthood, had some experience of searching, and were interested in something spiritual.
When a person comes to faith, he cannot immediately enter the Church, burdened with mistakes and sins. And many experienced these difficult periods - difficult churching, the experience of falling away, and the experience of life without prayer.
So teenagers would not leave the warm embrace of family and church if they did not have questions, for example, why such a loving God allows pain, illness and suffering? The answers must be spoken and suffered from within, and until this is not the case, they will continue to stagger, and parents need to be prepared for this.
Faith and its crises
“Few are saints from cradle to grave. The overwhelming number of people follow an incomprehensible trajectory and fluctuate during adolescence .
We have no experience of a holy Christian childhood. Coming to Christ with repentance is more or less clear to us, but what does it mean to live a holy childhood? What is it like to be a Christian and, say, play football and study in the fifth grade?
We adults don't know this. We came scattered and crippled, we have nothing to say to the child when normal children’s questions arise,” noted Father Andrei. It often happens that a teenager, feeling changes in himself, thinks: “Let me rule the world,” calms down at the age of 16, and then becomes an adult and begins to go to Church. But we do not have this in experience - in fact, only the first generation of people are Christians from childhood.
In our childhood, there were not many things because of which souls began to die en masse - including pornography. Drugs were not in use. And today sin is very accessible, easy for everyone, there are so many temptations.
In fact, today’s young people have a completely different life, they have their own sorrows, illnesses, their own calls to Christ, and we can only look from the outside and wonder how they are still alive. Yes, faith involves crises. Chekhov wrote that a person must either believe or seek faith, otherwise he is an empty person.
We need to worry about how we can help children sort out their confusion.
So what do we want? So that nothing changes. So, a child goes to church with his grandmother, and suddenly - at the age of 14 - he says, that’s it, I won’t go. And that's okay. His faith must change. It cannot be that everything remains in one direction - at the age of 45 a person must have the faith of a 45-year-old, not a 7-year-old, faith must grow with the person. Go through all the crucibles, temptations, temptations.
Let's say, why do marriages break up? After 15 years, the family has a lot of problems, people can no longer drown in each other’s eyes, they need to solve a lot in everyday life. Love must mature and be mature, like old wine - you cannot love with the naive love that was once - it must be different in 15 years, and completely different in 30 years.
“Love must mature, harden with you, become a treasure, and we want everything to remain the same. It’s the same with children and with marriage – you need to grow up in time,” concludes Fr. Andrey.
The shepherd believes: children will inevitably inhale the poisoned air of the street and the Internet and try to be like someone. Youth is the most dangerous time of life, saints, for example, Tikhon of Zadonsk, speak about this.
“We survived our youth - thank God that we survived - this is the worst time. Who can envy the young? No less young people die than mature and old people. Youth is no guarantee that you will live to old age. The unclean will begin to wander through life from sin to sin. They die from a meaningless life, and we don’t understand how to properly treat our children.
How can adults help? Young people need to hear in time correct and sober, fair words about themselves and about the youth that is passing,” the priest notes.
And again a woman's face
Another problem that Father Andrei highlighted is the dominance of women in the Church. It has long been said that Orthodoxy has a female face.
“Where, one wonders, are the men? After the Great Patriotic War, women harrowed, plowed, and built. They also prayed in church, and then it happened. But today all women would like their men to be believers. And there is no priest who would not want at least 40 percent of his parishioners to be men, but for some reason it doesn’t work out.
Do we have bad men? Not at all, and in intelligence, and in courage, and in endurance, they are no worse than others. What do they lack to go to church? Probably something important has not been done by both priests and women. Something is not said correctly, and somewhere a man is afraid that a woman will command him not only in everyday life, but also in church.
«A man has a mind, and he needs to be fed the solid healthy food of church life - to interest him in history, liturgy, dogma - a man has a head like a nuclear reactor, it needs to work.
And if you coo with him, what will happen? He will leave and not return,” says Father Andrei. “Yes, our children must go to church, but first our men must go there.” How can a boy go to church while looking at his mother? He needs male examples - show him believing men, heroes, show Fedor Konyukhov, it will be interesting. Therefore, first it would be necessary to bring men to church.”
Father Andrei Tkachev is confident that religious knowledge should be taught in the family and should be done constantly, systematically, without shifting Who will be saved by one hour a week of the Law of God or the OPK? This needs to be constantly instilled at home, and he believes that men should teach it. Why? Because masculine and feminine words weigh differently .
Ideally, grandfathers should teach religion; a grandfather should tell his grandson, taking him fishing, about the holy fishermen apostles, how they followed Christ, about St. Nicholas the Wonderworker, about St. Spyridon.
Teach prayer, teach a child to read books, so that the grandfather and father tell the children about God, and not the grandmother and mother. Men are ordered from above to do this work, and not to plant a tree or build a house.
Father Andrei recalled Joseph the Betrothed, how Saint Joseph protected the childhood of Christ and the peace of the Mother of God - Joseph created the illusion of a human family, protected the Virgin Mary, and little Jesus called Joseph dad, although His only father is the God of Truth.
Joseph could have earned such mercy - to take care of his Son, preserve his life, teach him to read the sacred texts of the Old Testament and the prophets, visit the temple - that is, teach him all religious education. In addition, every pope in ancient times had to pass on his profession or teach his son some business .
“Find such dads today, and just find dads - many families don’t have them. But it is the father who is obliged to open the Bible with the child, read it, discuss with him the events described there - this is his task,” says Fr. A. Tkachev.
Uncle Tom's Cabin
At the end of the meeting, the shepherd and writer answered questions. They asked about a child's Wushu practice, about forcing teenagers to pray, about premarital relationships, about biometric data, about a priest's ban, about how to forgive parents who curse their children, and much more.
When asked if it was a sin to think, when giving alms, that you are storing up treasures in heaven, he answered: no, it’s not a sin, but it’s better to forget about it right away, because if you collect the pennies that we gave into the hands of the poor, you’ll still have Even 20 thousand rubles, is this enough to build yourself at least a small house?
“You can’t build Uncle Tom’s hut for our heavenly stay, unless you throw a mat - such is our alms, so that only the soul does not harden... The volume of our alms - what we have earned for the Kingdom of Heaven does not allow us to be proud.
But if someone got rich legally, took an old car and gave it to a large family, or bought a stroller for a homeless person, or gave a dacha plot with a house to a homeless person – that’s already an investment. Helpless old people, those with many children, those in prison, everywhere need help. Good deeds should flow like a deep river, and there is no need to be proud of it.”
When asked about the main factor keeping the world from evil, the priest replied that while we are at war with noticeable evil, inconspicuous evil often silently approaches us with a ballet step, and everyone needs to think alone with themselves where the real enemy is hiding.
“Let’s start praying and we will be the Church. Yes, we have many sores, and we must, according to the apostolic word, wash them with wine and anoint them with oil. Work, get saved, study, humble yourself, be in church every Sunday, otherwise you will never truly come to Church and will not love Christ.
Who is He who keeps all evil at bay? Christ living in the liturgy. Only the Divine Liturgy keeps the world from evil and gives us all kinds of blessings from heaven. Divine service holds us. Love the liturgy, otherwise you will be lost,” the shepherd admonished.
Valentina Kidenko
Photos from open sources
Andrey Tkachev answers your questions (12/24/2018)
My comments on one of the YouTube channels on this topic: Oleg: For myself, I collected a folder where, from the point of view of science, the existence of God (the Higher Mind, the Absolute...) is proven. Any scientist looking at this would change his point of view, unless he is a biorobot. In short, the order can be seen everywhere, be it the distance between the planets, the connection of astronomy, music, numerology, incl. biology.
Oleg: I have pictures there collected from the Internet without explanation, i.e. My comments on them are welcome, this will take time. To make it interesting for everyone, I’ll try it here. 1. The planets of the solar system are located at proportional distances from each other and form a musical scale (do, re, mi...), which in turn in eastern teachings is projected onto the chakras of living organisms, and in physiology onto the nerve plexuses and endocrine glands. If we go deeper, then the zodiac circle with the planets turns, roughly speaking, into a dial, which actually shows two-hour periods of activity of the flow of various energies in 12 meridians in living organisms. That is, I don’t know who it is, but I see that life is conceived outside the Earth and rhythmically and harmoniously, i.e. Reason is involved in this. You can also look at the table “The energy of the number 34560 and the structure of the Universe”, it shows the proportional distances between objects in the macro and microcosm from the galaxy to microorganisms and cells. Then I see a connection between the musical scale of the planets, the Platonic solids and the periodic table. By the way, there should be a connection between the musical scale and the alphabets (it seems that I even read about this a long time ago). Many people already know about the “Golden Section” or Fibonacci numbers in nature on Earth and in space; for me this is also a confirmation of the Absolute.
Oleg: People are simply not attentive, they have no time to think in the era of consumption. The simplest proof of God (the Absolute...) is the watch on your wrist. As I already said, the stars of the zodiac are projected onto the dial, among other things. And each segment on the dial shows the activity of a particular organ and organ system. For example, if you have poor sleep and anxiety from one to three in the morning, check your liver, if from three to five in the morning, then check your lungs and bronchi, etc. etc.. At this time, there is also a reconfiguration of organ and tissue systems over time, as already mentioned. And the clock does not show “time”, but something completely different. Isn't it true that everything is rhythmic and harmonious? God is order. Then what is chaos? But the most important thing is that control of this goes to the stars of the zodiac, etc.... And this is external control... “We think God sees us from above - but he sees us from the inside.” Gilbert Sesbron.
Oleg: The clock cannot have other divisions, because... this is a unified system associated with the compass and wind rose and astronomical calculations, as well as the creation of calendars and horoscopes. About the last question. It also seems to me that at first everything developed in space from simple to complex, from the simplest forms to multicellular and consciousness, then superconsciousness, etc. to the Absolute. And only then could life be introduced, in addition to nature and artificially, by more developed creatures. PS From this it follows that we need to be critical when the “holy fathers” say that the spirit is primary. It is still unknown under the dictation of which spirits they wrote their biblical tales, especially the sayings of various biblical prophets.
