Interpretation of the Gospel for every day of the year. Friday of the 2nd week of Pentecost

Are a man's enemies his own household?

Estimated reading time: less than a minute.

Can children teach and instruct their parents, especially on such an important and delicate issue as belief in God and attitude towards religion? It would seem that the answer is obvious and perfectly expressed in the well-known formula - “Eggs don’t teach a chicken.” But this is if the children are still small. But what about adult children who grew up in non-believing families and then, in adulthood, came to faith on their own?

Unfortunately, folk wisdom says nothing about this, since in traditional society the treasure of faith was passed on from generation to generation as the most precious capital. The unity of faith among children and parents was a natural consequence of such a tradition, so the Russian people somehow did not come up with proverbs and sayings describing religious contradictions within the family - there was no reason for it.

But after the revolution of 1917, such contradictions became one of the most striking manifestations of a national tragedy in Russia. Young people then joined the “Union of Militant Atheists,” organized clownish “processions of the cross” on church holidays, tore icons from the walls of their parents’ houses, broke crosses in village cemeteries where their great-grandfathers were buried, and plundered churches in which they themselves had once been buried. then they baptized. They categorically declared to their believing parents that there was no God and never had been, man came from a monkey, the whole world just slowly came into existence on its own, and they (mom and dad) knew nothing about it only because the evil priests kept people in darkness and ignorance.

Eight decades later, the times of state atheism in Russia ended, the Church ceased to be persecuted, and people flocked to churches. And again, a turning point drew a dividing line between generations in society. Only this time everything is repeated exactly the opposite: now non-believing parents scold the Church and priests, forbid their sons and daughters to put icons in the house, and their faith in God is perceived as a symptom of mental illness. Of course, there are also families in which such conflicts occur less severely or are completely absent. But still, many young people, coming to the Church, have faced and continue to face this problem. And how hard it can be in your heart when you see that a blank wall of misunderstanding has suddenly grown between you and the people who are dearest and closest to you, and you can’t break through it or get around it...

Almost all believing children of non-believing parents can probably tell about their attempts to overcome this alienation, about their successes and defeats along this difficult path.

Here are four such stories told by our contemporaries.

“Where was your God?”

Oleg, high school geography teacher, 28 years old

My mother raised me alone. It just so happened that I never saw my father, and we didn’t have grandparents either. Mom worked as an ordinary engineer at a small machine-building plant that produced vacuum cleaners, washing machines and some other household rubbish. She earned little, but there were simply no other industrial enterprises in our small village, and she took overtime work home. Or, for little money, she helped part-time students prepare coursework and diploma projects. I still remember how often in the evenings my mother would sit for a long time over huge sheets of paper laid out on the table, which she called with the mysterious word “Whatman”, and would intently draw something on them using a hefty ruler with an equally mysterious name - “reisshina” " We were always friends with her and understood each other in everything. And how could it be otherwise, after all, it was she who took me to the sea in the summer, she taught me to swim and ride a bicycle, showed me how to tie the laces on my shoes not in a knot, but in a bow... She even taught me how to hammer nails. I could always tell her my worst secret or problem, I boldly shared any of my plans with her and knew that my mother would understand everything, and if necessary, she would help.

But when I believed in God and came to the Church, our mutual understanding suddenly ended abruptly. I was still a fourth-year student at the regional pedagogical university, but I went home every week, fortunately the distance to our village was only two hours by bus. On one of my visits, my mother saw a cross on my neck, saw the icons of the Savior and the Mother of God, which I took out of my bag and placed in my room on the bedside table. And somehow I immediately either became tense or confused - I don’t even know what to call it. No, of course, I told her before that I met guys from the Orthodox brotherhood, told her how wonderful our priest was, how we all went on a pilgrimage trip to Valaam together... Then she listened to my enthusiastic stories with interest, and, probably , considered all this just some kind of tourism with an ethnographic bias. But when I began to read the prayer rule at home, bow down and go to church for services, my mother began to look at me in fear, as if someone else had appeared in the house instead of me. No, she didn’t scold me, didn’t argue or try to dissuade me. I just immediately pulled away from everything that became very important to me, from everything that was connected with faith and the Church. I will never forget how one day I tried to tell her about Christ, about repentance and how important it is to believe in God, in His love. Mom listened to me, and then said in some unfamiliar, sick voice: “Where was He, your God, where was He looking when...” she suddenly broke off the phrase, but then still finished, as if through force: “And why, then, is He needed, even if He exists in the world?”

And she cried. She sat hunched over on a stool, small and unhappy, like an offended girl. And she cried quietly. And I stood next to her like a pillar, silent, like a fool, and for the first time in my life I didn’t understand how to console her. There seems to be nothing wrong with asking for forgiveness; I haven’t done anything wrong. What then? I did not know. He just stood next to her and silently stroked her graying head, and she cried and cried and didn’t say a word...

Since then, I have never tried to talk to her about faith. And I try to pray so that my mother doesn’t see it. I don’t know what kind of grief happened to her once, what kind of insult like an icy splinter still torments her heart so much that she even blames God for this misfortune. I don’t know... But I don’t want to torment her with conversations that hurt her. I just pray for her as best I can, and hope that the Lord will hear me someday.

“We always wished only the best for you”

Svetlana, student, 19 years old

After baptism, I immediately told my parents to now call me Fotinia, by my baptismal name, and that I would no longer respond to “Sveta.” Mom didn’t particularly object, but dad was severely offended because he named me after his beloved sister. Well, I explained to him that a person’s name is given at baptism not in honor of relatives, but in memory of the saint who will be the heavenly patron of this person, that for me this is the martyr Photinia and there is nothing offensive to Aunt Sveta here. In general, I told him everything as it should, but he still pouted and did not talk to me for several days. Then, however, he calmed down - my mother persuaded me not to argue. I’m their only daughter, their beloved one. If I think something is necessary, I definitely achieve it, it has always been like that. I said in the eighth grade that I needed a dog, and a month later a setter, dear Anzor, appeared in our apartment. Although at first there was also a cry: “No dogs in the house! Only over my dead body!" But I just know the secret - drop by drop and the stone is chiseled. Also, two years ago, my dad didn’t want to play sports. I then told him: “Dad, what is it - you’re only forty-five, but you already have a belly like a drum. Let's get ourselves in order." He then also puffed, swore, and said that his belly gave him solidity. And it all ended with him and I going to the store, buying him good sneakers and now we run together in the morning, and Anzor and I can’t keep up with dad. In short, I learned to intensify the process in the right direction at school.

But so far nothing is working out with spiritual life. No matter how much I explain to my parents that they need to be baptized, that they can only be saved in the Church; No matter how much I say that as long as they are not baptized, they cannot even get married - everything is useless. They were in earnest, this has never happened before. Mom says: “You used to have portraits of your hairy loved ones on the walls in your room - Lennon, Cobain and others - my father and I didn’t say a word to you against them. Now you have hung icons instead of them, a calendar with a portrait of the patriarch - we also have nothing against it. Pray, fast if you need it. But please leave me and my father alone with our religion, we are no longer at the right age to ruin our lives in a new way. Just don’t forget, daughter, that we, even though we are unbelievers, have always strived to give you the best and only wished and wished the best for you.” And then I blurt out: “The good of an unbeliever is magnificent evil.” As a result, they didn’t talk for another week, and now they were both offended. But this is not my thought, this was written in the book of one Caucasian elder of a very high spiritual life. But here, however, as it turned out, I messed up big time. When I told my confessor about this, he looked at me as if I was mentally ill and ordered me to immediately run home and ask my parents for forgiveness. Because according to Orthodox teaching, good is always good, no matter who does it. Well, I know how to admit mistakes; if I’m wrong, I’m wrong. She ran home, as the father ordered, and began to ask for forgiveness. The parents sulked a little, but forgave. After all, my beloved daughter is the only one...

In short, I can’t yet imagine how to church them. In the summer, on Sundays, they are strictly at the dacha, and they are also offended at me because I don’t go with them, but run to church. I have no idea what to do with them. I don’t want to declare a “Holy War”, I feel sorry for them... And the priest says: “Be patient, no one has ever led anyone by the hand to faith. God Himself gives faith to a person when He sees that he is ready to accept it.”

I understand everything and don’t argue. But sometimes for some reason I feel very sad and scared for my parents. After all, if something happened to them, I wouldn’t even be able to submit a death note for them, for the unbaptized...

“Are you having a good time with your little god?”

Tatyana, 28 years old

I don’t remember my father, the family never talked about him, and I haven’t even seen a photograph of him. My mother worked at school all her life, teaching history. I came to faith on my own. First, in the eleventh grade, there was a tattered, almost crumbling little book - the New Testament of the pre-revolutionary edition, which I, with great difficulty, begged on my word of honor from a friend for three days. The spirit of some new, still unknown freedom beckoned, the premonition of something very important and good entered the soul with quiet joy. I intuitively understood then that the entire world culture carries the reflection of this nondescript-looking book. And I finally wanted to understand what all the idols of my youth, from Dostoevsky to Grebenshchikov, were hinting at in their works. With my first scholarship, I bought a Bible with illustrations by Doré at a second-hand bookstore. I really enjoyed immersing myself in these strange, not always understandable, but fascinating words with their ancient beauty and wisdom. Then the moment came when I said to myself: it’s time! I came to church and was baptized. Baptism was in vogue that year. Five or six people stood with me at the font. I never met any of them in the temple again. And I immediately had the feeling that I had finally returned home after a long journey.

But soon a war began in our family. My mother, who was raised in the spirit of militant atheism and who herself spent her entire life struggling with “remnants of religious obscurantism” and “duping people,” took my conversion to faith as a personal insult. It was very offensive, I was completely confused, cried, and consulted with my confessor. Father consoled me as best he could, promised to pray for my mother and me, but warned that it would be difficult and advised me to arm myself with patience. Once I managed to persuade my mother to look with her own eyes at something that she had been blaming in absentia all her life, having a very vague idea about it. We came to the service together. She was unable to see either the meaning or beauty of the service. But I got a good look at the idle priests begging from the “god” for “great and rich favors,” the trampled floor on which some fat old women were kneeling, the stuffiness and general senselessness of what was happening. Since then, the mother has become even more convinced that her daughter has either gone crazy or is simply mocking her. She decided to fight for me, and when she realized that no rational arguments worked, she tried to cleanse her house of everything that she considered dope and evil. She firmly demanded that all the icons be removed from the apartment, and once, when I was at the institute, she collected them in a bag and took them to the trash. I ran into her at the elevator. After this incident, I had to put a lock on the door of my room. I didn’t have the money to leave or even rent a place. Life gradually turned into a nightmare. The situation became especially tense during fasts. The scandals in the house did not stop, and one day my mother announced that she had nothing to discuss with crazy people, and as long as there was a blackout in my head, she would not talk to me. The boycott lasted three weeks, all of my mother’s acquaintances and co-workers knew that “the churchmen had taken her daughter away from her and were turning her against her own mother.” My non-believing acquaintances knew that if my mother answered the phone, they would have a long, detailed conversation about my bad behavior, with the obligatory request to influence me at the end. Believers heard only short beeps on the phone.

This confrontation ended only when I married a young man from our parish. Misha liked me for a long time, and the situation in my house forced him to act more decisively, and he proposed to me.

Mom didn’t go to the wedding; she went home from the registry office by tram. Misha and I settled separately, rented a room in a communal apartment - as they say, it’s better to have bread and water than cake and disaster. But mom didn’t calm down. Each of our meetings still ended in scandal and tears, and she irrationally hated Misha so much that she never addressed him by name.

Three years ago, my mother privatized the apartment in my name, put all the papers in order, and a month after that she committed suicide by taking a lethal dose of sleeping pills. At the funeral, everyone was depressed and pitied me, but one of my mother’s friends couldn’t resist and asked, “Am I okay now with my “good God”?

I still cannot forget all this horror.

My husband and I will soon have a baby. But it is unlikely that we will ever tell him how his grandmother died.

“I will not kneel before anyone”

Alexey, seminary student, altar boy of one of the Moscow churches, 24 years old

Our relationship with my parents after I came to the Church resembled a mutual non-aggression pact. When my father found out that I wanted to enter the theological seminary, he told me directly: “You know, son, you are already an adult, you decide for yourself how to live and who to bow to. Just please don’t involve me in your hobbies. This is not my thing, I cannot calmly see how people are brought to their knees, even before God. And I’ll never get up myself, that’s not how I was raised. I haven’t bowed down to anyone all my life, and now I’m not going to in my old age, and let’s leave it at that.”

My father is an officer, a retired police lieutenant colonel. All his life in the criminal investigation department, he started after police school as a simple detective officer, and retired as the deputy head of the police department. The person is direct and principled, sometimes even too much. He didn’t take bribes, he drove an old “Zaporozhets” for the amusement of the whole district, and during all the years of service he never hit a defendant, and he didn’t allow his subordinates to violate the regulations, he said that they should “stab” not with their fists, but with “evidence.” He was also “retired” to retire because of his adherence to principles as soon as his age approached. Arguing with him is a waste of time; if you say something, then it will be so. But here I still risked objecting: “Dad,” I say, “forgive me, of course, but we all have to die someday. Have you ever thought about how it will be there? What if all this really exists - heaven, hell, and the Last Judgment? We must at least take this possibility into account, this is not a joke.”

My father looked at me carefully, smiled and said: “Son, I have always, all my life, tried to live honestly. And I don’t need to be reminded about death, I always remembered it - that was the work, you know... If there is a Court there, I’m ready to answer for everything. But I still won’t kneel before anyone. This is humiliating and wrong. You can’t humiliate a person, that’s my whole story.”

Everything is simpler with my mother, she sometimes asks me to light candles in the church for our deceased grandmother and Aunt Mila, and gives me notes, but everything is done in secret. He doesn't want to upset his father.

That is how we live. My wife and I often go to visit them, sometimes they visit us. We try not to talk about religion, but during Lent, my mother always tries to prepare something tasty for us from lean products. And when my wife and I read prayers before the meal, my father quietly goes out onto the balcony, like, to smoke. He has already come to terms with the fact that his son is a future priest. But a principle is a principle. Although, perhaps, this is not the point in principle.

Last winter, my mother became very ill and had to undergo surgery. Dad was very worried about her, he couldn’t find a place for himself. I then suggested that my father pray together that everything would go well with my mother there. He paused for a moment in confusion, thought, and then said: “No, sorry, son, I can’t. Will not work. If I were a believer... But it wouldn’t be fair. I’m sorry, but I can’t, somehow you yourself…” And he went out onto the balcony to smoke.

Thank God, my mother recovered, everything ended well then, and everything is going on as before. Although, my parents now sometimes still come to church. The fact is that my wife and I had a daughter four months ago. Smart and beautiful. Grandfather and grandmother just can’t get enough of her, so I came up with a cunning move, or rather, it just somehow worked out that way. After all, I serve as an altar boy, and my wife sings in the choir in our church, and when we are at the service, my parents sit at home with the girl. But if they need to give communion to a child, they can’t get away with it - they have to get ready themselves, take the girl and go to church. Mom goes with joy, and father, although he frowns and grumbles, is afraid to let mother and granddaughter go to church alone. True, he rarely comes to the temple; more and more he walks in the yard with a stroller. But this is a joy for me too. After all, just six months ago it was impossible to even imagine my father inside the church fence. And here - please! It didn’t work out for my son, but my granddaughter brought it.

“The main demand is from Christians”

Commentary by priest Igor Fomin

Unfortunately, such conflicts in the family are not uncommon and not an exception. Any parish priest can tell many similar stories. Therefore, I would really not like to analyze the behavior of these particular people, to evaluate their words and actions, since all of these are quite typical situations for our time. And, probably, it would be wrong to just take it and say who is right here and who is wrong. I believe that all these and other similar sad stories are a natural consequence of the unprecedented, monstrous persecution to which our Church was subjected in the 20th century. We simply do not always realize what our parents had to endure, what damage was done to their spiritual life then. After all, for several decades in a row, from early childhood, a standard set of atheistic ideas was hammered into their heads - that there is no God, that priests are deceivers and parasites, that the Church is a stronghold of obscurantism and ignorance. Their generation was purposefully crippled, the slightest manifestations of religiosity and sympathy for the shrine were eradicated from their souls. Is it any wonder now that many of them cannot find the strength in themselves like this, right away - to take it and come to faith...

I’ll tell you about one more sad reality of those terrible times. For eighty years, the Church in our country was systematically destroyed by the state, not even tens, but hundreds of thousands of priests were killed, churches were destroyed, monasteries were closed... Then they stopped killing priests. But as soon as some conscientious priest began to tell people about Christ, about salvation, about the essence of Christianity, he was immediately sent to such a wilderness where he could preach only to bears. It was almost impossible for a person with a higher education to enter a seminary and become a priest in Soviet times.

And when at the end of the eighties the persecution finally stopped and a huge number of people seeking God poured into churches, our long-suffering clergy was simply not ready for this. Deacon Andrei Kuraev said very precisely: they broke our legs for eighty years, and now they want us to dance the butterfly polka. It is not surprising, therefore, that the churching of newly converted Christians often took place with distortions, without realizing that the main thing in Orthodoxy is changing one’s heart, and not one’s appearance and way of life. We all very quickly learned that we needed to fast, wear long skirts and beards, read akathists and prayer rules... But the heart remained the same. You know, there is such a wonderful proverb - if Christ lives in your heart, do not forget to tell your face about it

.
I would advise all believing children: do not rush to drag your unbelieving parents to church, do not frighten them with hell and eternal torment. Let's first think - what is written on our faces and does Christ live in our hearts? After all, Christianity is not proven, but shown
. Our life, actions, our attitude towards our neighbors. And prayer and fasting are all things that the Lord Himself commanded to be done in secret from other people. People often ask me: “Father, we are invited to visit, but it’s Lent. What can we eat? I answer: “Whatever they put on your plate. Fast more strictly later, when no one will see it, and if you come to visit, do not dare to offend by refusing people who with all their hearts want to please you with their food.”

So, the trouble is that, having come to Church, we immediately brought all these hidden pious deeds - fasting, prayer - out into the open. And this really turns people off. Both from us and from the Church.

I will try to explain this, so to speak, in a mathematical way. Let’s assume that an unbelieving husband’s wife believed and came to the Church. Her attitude towards faith has, relatively speaking, a “+10” potential. And the husband has a negative attitude towards religion, his potential is “-1”, that is, he has not gone far in his unbelief, and rather this denial is directed not against God, but against his wife, who suddenly began to live some kind of life incomprehensible to him and thus I moved away from him the most. And so the wife, with her “+10” potential, pounces on him and begins to literally strangle him with her faith: “You must fast, let’s go to church quickly, you urgently need to be baptized, we live unmarried, and this is a terrible sin...” And further in the same spirit. Moreover, she is driven only by love, only by anxiety for her loved one, there is nothing negative in her motives. But what is the result? “-1” multiplied by “+10” immediately turns into “-10”. The husband is immediately thrown back by this pious attack. A minus for a plus will always result in a minus. What should a wife do in such a situation? You need to completely stop putting pressure on your husband, remove the words “Christ”, “faith”, “Church” from your vocabulary, and reduce external manifestations of your religiosity in the family to zero. Then the husband’s “-1”, multiplied by this zero, will also end up equal to zero. The husband and his wife will be at the starting point from which he can freely move towards God or away from God. And here the wife will be able to help him make a choice, because now they are in an equal position, now she does not pull him to her level, but offers to go to God together, side by side.

If in this scheme we replace husband and wife with children and parents, then the principle, I think, will remain the same.

In no way do I blame believing children for the conflicts described. These problems, and sometimes tragedies, are our common great misfortune. On one side there were elderly people crippled by anti-religious propaganda, on the other - their children, who, due to their inexperience and ignorance of the elementary foundations of spiritual life, simply did not understand that it is necessary to change first of all themselves, and not those around them, that Christianity is not limited to to its external forms, on the contrary, formal Christianity can only cause hostility. Well, who is to blame here... I feel sorry for everyone.

And yet I would like to say that the conflict between believing children and unbelieving parents is, first of all, a conflict between Christians and non-Christians. And in this case, the demand is primarily from Christians. And no religious justification for our actions will add righteousness to them if we upset our loved ones with them. Moreover, the parents who raised us, who love us and are very worried that faith can separate us from them. After all, if such thoughts arise in them, it means that we ourselves somewhere gave rise to such fears, it means that we were not able to share with them our joy in the Lord, perhaps because we ourselves do not have this joy too much.

Yes, in the Gospel there are the words of Christ: “...I came to divide a man with his father, and a daughter with her mother, and a daughter-in-law with her mother-in-law. And a man’s enemies are those of his own household.”

(Matthew
10
:35,36).
These words can be confusing because they are so categorical. But we are talking here exclusively about the attitude towards God, about the fact that unbelieving parents can be hostile to the faith of their children. But these words of Christ in no way free children from fulfilling the commandment to honor their parents
.
The commandment does not imply a distinction between believing parents and unbelieving parents. No one in their right mind would argue that, for example, the commandment “thou shalt not steal” applies only to fellow believers. And if, after we came to the Church, our parents suddenly became enemies of our faith, we can only follow the words of the Lord: “... love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who despitefully use you and persecute you”
(Matthew
5:44
) . There is simply no other way out of this situation for a Christian. We must maintain relations of subordination and respect for parents until they themselves become like children in their old age and weakness. Then we will not only be able, but will already be obliged to lead them and take care of them. And it’s a shame that not everyone has the mental strength to do this.

Photo by Rolands Lakis

Jesus Christ does not call for leaving your family for the sake of faith

In religious life, there are often cases when young people, whose views were not accepted by their parents, break with their families. This is not the Christian way.

Let us not forget that Holy Scripture is not just one quotation, but a rich context. The calls of Christ from the phrase in question exist surrounded by fundamental concepts: compassion, love, kindness, care. All this the faithful are capable of spiritual life.

Christians should not run away from their neighbors, but forgive them and strive for them. An excellent example is the gospel parable of the return of the prodigal son. It shows a truly Christian attitude towards people, therefore the phrase about cutting off family ties should not be taken literally. Photo: upload.wikimedia.org

Only a selfish person can break with his family for his own good. In reality, a Christian should try to improve relationships to the last. Only in extreme cases does it make sense to say that hostility has passed a critical point and there is no turning back. After all, life is not endless enough to knock on a closed door.

But at the same time, a Christian must remain ready to forgive his loved one, just as the loving father in the parable forgives the prodigal son.

Laziness

And another enemy of man is laziness. We all sometimes get lazy, saying: “It would be better if I didn’t do anything.” We are lazy for a day or two, and then it becomes a habit. But water does not flow under a lying stone. With our laziness we end up losing a lot of opportunities and a lot of time. You can and should fight laziness, and not look for excuses.

How are all these “enemies” connected to each other? They were written about in ancient manuscripts and all this was called real damage. But for many they are habitual character traits! Our ancestors said that these unpleasant things can only be driven out by movement. You need to move, instead of sitting still, getting angry, taking offense at someone, wishing harm and making excuses.

That's the whole secret, as soon as you get rid of these five things, your life will definitely improve for the better! Don't give up, fight!

The interpretation says that you can move away from your relatives only if they interfere with your faith

Theophylact of Bulgaria, Archbishop of Ohrid, wrote in his “Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew”:

“Concord is not always good: there are times when division is good. The sword means the word of faith, which cuts us off from the mood of our family and relatives if they interfere with us in the matter of piety. The Lord does not say here that we should move away or be separated from them without a special reason - we should move away only if they do not agree with us, but rather hinder us in faith.”

Theophylact of Bulgaria

Archbishop

This interpretation echoes the ideas of many other Christian commentators. Nowhere is the sword seen in Jesus Christ as a weapon of murder or punishment. The sword is an image of the word, but not of war. Accordingly, the passage itself should be interpreted in a peaceful context.

Excuses

Excuses are when you start explaining to everyone why you acted the way you did. Firstly, you are not obliged to report to anyone for anything, and secondly, by making excuses, you seem to make someone guilty - circumstances, people, etc. For example, here are some more questions for you! Why can't you get along with your parents? Why can't you build a career or why can't you save money? What excuses and justifications will there be? A person can justify himself a hundred times a day. In the old days, excuses were called slander, and it was even considered damage! And gossip is damage, and resentment is also damage!

Resentment

Resentment was even previously called hidden revenge. Think for yourself, what are you giving yourself if you hold a grudge against a person? You are only tormenting yourself, making things worse for yourself. But why revenge? But because why is unwillingness to make peace because of an insult not revenge? Yes, we are all living people and we sometimes feel hurt and offended. This is how you reason when you have been offended and some third party says that it’s time for you to make peace? Probably like this: “Why am I going to put up with it, they offended me!” Well, that's true, right? It is doubly difficult when you are offended by a person with whom you live under the same roof, for example, your husband. And imagine that your children are “bathing” in all this horror!

Gossip

Any gossip, slander of people and any unkind condemnation of others is your enemy No. 1. Back in the old days, everything like that was called hula. Let’s say, if I ask you: when have you thought badly about someone around you? It's hard to answer that, isn't it? Then the question is: how long has it been since they offended you, spoke badly about you, insulted you? You will probably remember immediately, because the offense hurt you! So, when this same blasphemy is directed at us, we always understand it, but, unfortunately, we often do not perceive it when we behave like those around us.

Revenge

Haven't you ever had this experience when you suddenly find out that a person who once hurt you is now suffering himself? If yes, then there is nothing good about it. Even if you didn’t take revenge openly, you waited for the person to feel bad, you remembered the pain, you were offended. It is also considered revenge when, let’s say, something happened to you, but your friends didn’t, and you say something like: “if only they could do that, I’d look at how they lived.” These are words of revenge, and words have destructive power and can materialize.