“If we are going to communicate with the Heavenly Father, we need to forgive our debtors”

Pavel Gumerov was born in 1974 into a Muslim family

Priest Pavel Gumerov
Pavel Gumerov was born in Ufa in 1974. Although his father, Shamil Abilkhairovich Gumerov, came from a Tatar family, Pavel’s parents were not typical Muslims in their moral makeup.

In 1984, already in Moscow, the whole family (Paul, his brother and sister with their parents) received Holy Baptism. Later, the father of the future archpriest was ordained a priest, subsequently taking monastic vows with the name Job.

Pavel Gumerov began receiving theological education in 1991, when he entered the Moscow Theological Seminary in the city of Sergiev Posad.

After graduating from the Seminary, in 1995 he entered the Moscow Theological Academy.

After only a year of studying at the Academy, Pavel accepted holy orders and, by decree of His Holiness Patriarch Alexy, was appointed a full-time cleric at the Church of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker at the Rogozhskoye cemetery in Moscow.

Born in Ufa in 1974. In 1984 he received Holy Baptism together with his parents, brother and sister. Father Pavel’s entire family lived in Moscow at that time. (Father Pavel’s father was subsequently ordained a priest, and in 2005 he took monastic vows with the name Job. He is now a resident of the Sretensky Monastery in Moscow).

In 1991 entered the Moscow Theological Seminary in the city of Sergiev Posad, from which he graduated in 1995. In the same year he entered the Moscow Theological Academy. In 1996, while studying at the Academy, he was ordained. In the same year, by decree of His Holiness Patriarch Alexy, he was appointed full-time cleric at the Church of St. Nicholas of Myra at the Rogozhskoye cemetery in Moscow. In 2000 he graduated from the Moscow Theological Academy. On December 14, 2012, he was appointed rector of the Church of the Holy Blessed Princes Peter and Fevronia of Murom under construction in Maryino. Since March 29, 2014, he has been constantly serving in this church. On April 8, 2015, on Wednesday of Holy Week, by decree of His Holiness Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Rus', he was elevated to the rank of archpriest for his diligent service to the Church of God.

Archpriest Pavel Gumerov writes books and articles, records CDs, gives lectures, conducts seminars and conversations on the topics of family and marriage, and moral theology. He regularly appears on radio and television. Also, with the blessing of the clergy, he is a member of the choir of the clergy of the Moscow Blachernae deanery. Married, has two sons.

Father Pavel is the author of the books: “The Small Church”, “He and She”, “Family Conflicts. Prevention and Treatment", "Eternal Memory" (co-authored with Hieromonk Job), "The House of a Christian. Traditions and Shrines" (co-authored with Hieromonk Job), "Orthodox asceticism outlined for the laity", "The Sacrament of Communion", "Three pillars of family happiness", "Keys to family happiness", "Civil marriage". The beginning of family life or prodigal cohabitation?”, “Family life: advice from a priest”, “Vladimir Vysotsky: the tragedy of the Russian soul”, “The Law of God. New book" (co-authored with Hieromonk Job (Gumerov) and priest Alexander Gumerov), "Baptism and Churching."

The book “Three Pillars of Family Happiness” was recognized by the Publishing Council of the Moscow Patriarchate as the best book for young people in 2012 and was awarded a 1st degree diploma.

A number of Father Pavel's works have been translated into English, several books have been translated into Serbian and Romanian.

Archpriest Pavel Gumerov is a confessor and also serves as a prison priest in pre-trial detention center No. 6 in Pechatniki, where he is appointed as a full-time clergyman.

For his work for the benefit of the church in 2015, Pavel Gumerov was elevated to the rank of archpriest

Two years after graduating from the Academy, in March 2012, Father Pavel was appointed rector of the Church of the Blessed Princes Peter and Fevronia in Maryino and has been serving there continuously since March 29, 2014.

For his work for the good of the Church and diligent service, on April 8, 2015, by decree of His Holiness Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Rus', Pavel Gumerov was elevated to the rank of archpriest.

The priest regularly gives lectures on radio and television, conducts seminars and conversations about family life, and is the author of many books about family and marriage, about the church and Christianity, and about morality.

Here are some of the priest's sayings:

About family:

The family life of an Orthodox Christian should be based on three components: First and most importantly: love and a correct understanding of this concept, because not everyone knows what true love is.

The second is a correct understanding of the goals and objectives of family life. And third is the correct family hierarchy.

Family life is built on these three, so to speak, “pillars”.

About children:

Who are our children? A continuation of us? Our property? Or, even worse, material for the implementation of those projects or ambitions that we failed to realize in our lives? God gives children.

They are God's children, and only then our children. And God gives them to us for a while, so that later we can ask for them.

When we understand this, we will not harbor false illusions and then grieve from resentment against them.

They say they spent their whole life and energy on children, but they didn’t get what they wanted.

About foul language:

...when you meet a person who uses swear words inappropriately and inappropriately, you inevitably wonder if everything is okay with his head?

Because only a sick, sexually preoccupied person can mention genitals and sexual intercourse so often in colloquial speech.

Pavel Gumerov

priest

“If we are going to communicate with the Heavenly Father, we need to forgive our debtors”

Conversation with Archpriest Pavel Gumerov

Forgiveness Sunday is a good and pious tradition that helps Christians enter Lent. How not to turn this rank into a mere formality? Is it possible to reconcile with a person unilaterally? How to ask forgiveness from deceased loved ones? Archpriest Pavel Gumerov, rector of the Church of Saints Peter and Fevronia in Maryino, answered these and other questions.

– Father Paul, what does it mean to forgive a person from a Christian point of view?

– Forgiveness is the most important Christian virtue. The Gospel says: If you do not forgive people their sins, then your Father will not forgive you your sins (Matthew 6:15). And we read the prayer “Our Father,” which contains the words: And forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors. These words refer to our sins, not our debts. There are other words: if you want to pray, bring your gift to the altar, but first go and make peace with your brother, then you will bring your gift (cf. Matt. 5: 23-24). If we do not forgive offenses to our offenders, our relatives or people with whom we are not personally acquainted, oligarchs, presidents whom we are offended by, whom we condemn, then we simply cannot pray.

Why do people start fasting with Forgiveness Resurrection? Because, generally speaking, there was a tradition according to which the monks of the monastery in which they labored asked each other for forgiveness before prayer. That is, prayer is not performed if you have not made peace with the people against whom you have something. Or if someone is offended by you. And when it is not possible to meet in person, you can at least ask for forgiveness over the phone, and if it is not possible over the phone, you can reconcile with these people in your soul. Because it’s impossible without it. If you do not forgive people’s sins, then your heavenly Father will not forgive your sins: then we cannot count on the forgiveness of our sins.

I know a certain priest, he is very merciful and kind, he served in one church for 50 years. The only case when he could not allow people to receive Communion and when he was very strict was when people said that they could not forgive. Someone could not forgive his son-in-law, his daughter... He answered: “How are you going to take communion? How are you going to approach the Holy Mysteries of Christ if you have not forgiven the person? You cannot approach the Chalice."

If we are going to pray, if we are going to communicate with the Heavenly Father, we need to forgive our debtors. This is an axiom. It’s simply impossible without this.

– Is it possible to reconcile unilaterally, without the participation of the other party?

- Good question. Because there really are situations when we ask for forgiveness, but the person does not forgive us. To this the Apostle Paul answers us: if it is possible on your part, be at peace with everyone (cf. Rom. 12:18). So we must make every effort to achieve reconciliation. And pray before this: if we go to make peace with a person, we need to pray internally before that, so that the Lord will manage the situation. If we used this opportunity, tried to reconcile, said kind words, then we did everything we could. There are situations when a person simply does not want to communicate and that’s all.

When we go to make peace with a person, we need to pray internally so that the Lord will manage the situation

– Is it possible to reconcile with deceased relatives with whom it was not possible to reconcile during life?

– I think that our deceased have already forgiven us, because there is a completely different vision there. What is resentment? What is anger? This is the dissatisfaction of our aspirations, our ambitions that we have. And in the next world there are completely different ideals, a completely different vision of the situation. The person understands perfectly well what he is.

There is something else: a feeling of guilt before our deceased relatives. This is the feeling 99% of people experience when they lose a loved one. We always have the feeling that we have offended someone or that we have not done something for a loved one. This feeling of guilt is overcome by what we can actually give to the deceased person. What do we do for the person to whom we are guilty, if such a person is in the hospital, for example? If we really love him? We bring him gifts, medicine, and say kind words. And if a person has already left us, he needs only one thing - prayer. Because the deceased themselves cannot pray for themselves. They need earnest and regular prayer. Especially until the fortieth day. And then too. Our deceased will definitely not be offended by us if we pray for them. If they feel this prayer connection. With this we will atone for the guilt we feel.

– What to do when a person manipulates with resentment? How to react correctly to this situation?

– Situations are different. It is best to act on the principle: do no harm. If we are too annoying to a person who does not make contact, we will overwhelm him with gifts, flowers, SMS, congratulations - nothing will come of it. You can step aside, distance yourself from the person, so that some kind of path remains. Because such resentment does not last forever. If you feel that there is a connection, for example, the “offended” person congratulates you on the holidays, then you can take other careful steps. And endlessly admitting your mistakes, repenting, banging your head against the wall is not always reasonable. Need time. Big things can be seen from a distance. Our feelings sometimes must survive some kind of separation, but at the same time we need to show the person that goodwill, love, and a good attitude towards him come from us. But you don’t need to be intrusive: you won’t be nice by force.

– The Apostle Paul says: “Alexander the coppersmith did me much harm. May the Lord reward him according to his deeds!” (2 Tim. 4:14). Can we ask God to reward the offender?

– It seems to me that the Apostle Paul means something else. The Apostle does not want to take revenge, to pay evil for evil. Evil is not defeated by evil, evil is defeated by good. Here he simply leaves this person, he does not take revenge on him. It was in the Old Testament: an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. The Apostle leaves this man to the judgment of God. But we don’t know what the Lord will do. This is the mystery of God's Providence, how He will reward the sinner. Maybe God will turn some circumstances for good.

– How should one overcome increased sensitivity that prevents a person from living?

- Touchiness comes from pride. The man loves himself too much. We need to understand that 90% of our grievances, the grievances that people inflict on us, do not happen because someone specifically wants to offend, hurt, or humiliate us. This happens by chance. For example, I said something harsh to a person, without thinking that it could be offensive. Or maybe this happened due to lack of upbringing. Maybe the person was in a bad mood. Maybe these grievances, as the Americans say, are just business and nothing personal. And not because people somehow wanted to make fun of us and offend us. It's just circumstances that made us feel offended.

Offended - a verb with a reflexive particle. We have offended ourselves. Imagine what “hit” means. You hit the table with your fist and it hurts. I got hurt and was offended. “Xia” - the offense comes back to you.

You need to understand how to deal with touchiness and irritation. We need to understand that this very habit of being offended is directed at ourselves. This is a double-edged weapon. It destroys first of all the one who is offended. The person, perhaps, did not even think of offending us. And then we worry for another week, salting our grievances, plunging into the abyss of despondency, into some plans of revenge. This is completely wrong and destructive. When we get offended, we hurt ourselves. After all, we begin to worry about this.

Resentment destroys first of all the one who is offended

– On the Sunday before Lent, a service with the Rite of Forgiveness is held in churches. How to approach it wisely? How to enter Lent correctly, without ignoring this tradition, but also without stopping at reconciliation with those whom we actually know little?

– I recommend coming to the Ceremony of Forgiveness at your parish church. It will be sincere. Maybe we offended the priest during confession, we will need to ask for forgiveness. I had the most touching and sincere ceremony of forgiveness in the seminary. There, many seminarians cried. We offended someone, said something bad. But it is very important to enter Lent without a burden on your soul.

Nikita Filatov spoke with Archpriest Pavel Gumerov

Father Pavel wrote more than 10 books on the topic of family and marriage

In his book “He and She,” Archpriest Pavel Gumerov tries to answer questions about why the Lord created us this way, what a woman and a man expect from each other, what their purpose is, how to understand each other and come to mutual understanding.

“People have a need to speak out, take a burden off their minds and want advice. But they often go not to church, but to a psychoanalyst.

But no psychologist has the power to bind and solve human sins. A person will never completely solve his spiritual problems if he does not turn to God.

It’s also good if the psychologist is a believer and can direct a person to church.”

Buy the book “He and She” in the online store OZON.ru

The book “Small Church” talks about how to build a family so that it is morally healthy and happy. Father Pavel turns to modern life and talks in detail about how to protect a family from the dangers that await it, which have a destructive effect on it.

“The Christian family is sometimes called the small Church.

And the mission of this Church is to bring light to people, to preach the truth that there are strong, happy families where people believe in God and love each other.”

Buy the book “Little Church” in the online store OZON.ru

“Family conflicts. Prevention and treatment. The Priest's View" is a book about how to learn to calmly and constructively resolve family conflicts, how to overcome disagreements in the family and come to unity, and survive crises.

The publication is dedicated not only to family conflicts, but also contains rules for a happy family life of an Orthodox Christian.

“...how to learn to resolve family conflicts calmly, productively and constructively, how to overcome our differences and come to family unity, how to survive family crises...”

Buy the book “Family Conflicts. Prevention and treatment. The Priest's View" in the online store OZON.ru

This is how the author himself talks about the work “Civil Marriage”. The beginning of family life or prodigal cohabitation?”: People living in a “civil marriage” often come to church, either to confession or to talk with a priest.

Many of them feel great discomfort from their dubious condition; they want to know why the Church condemns “civil marriages” and want to get an answer from the priest: what should they do next, how should they live?

“I very often have to talk with such people and based on these conversations, I wrote this book.

I hope that it will help someone understand their personal life and their “marriage” will change from a “civil marriage” to a real one.”

Buy the book “Civil Marriage” in the online store OZON.ru

The publication “Three Pillars of Family Happiness” was recognized by the Publishing Council of the Moscow Patriarchate as the best book for young people in 2012 and was awarded a 1st degree diploma.

“Books about family and family problems will always be popular with readers. This topic is always relevant, because family is the basis of any human society.”

Buy the book “Three Pillars of Family Happiness” in the online store LiveLib.ru

All books by Pavel Gumerov, articles, conversations and interviews with him can be found on his official website.

Official website of Pavel Gumerov

There is also a biography of the archpriest, photo albums, reviews of books and a website. Here are some of them:

Alexei:

Father Pavel, your books are truly a breath of fresh air for me! God bless you and help you in all your endeavors! Low bow to you!

Review on the website of Pavel Gumerov

Irina:

Hello. I read your book “He and She”, although I am not married, I learned many interesting things, I will try to remake myself in some moments on my own.

Your books are better than any psychologist, I am the person who cannot open up to either a psychologist or a priest in church, it’s hard for me to do this, I don’t know why.

After reading your book “He and She,” I regret only one thing: I lived in a civil marriage with a man, I realized that we are not testers, we have one life and we must be “painted” in front of the church.

THANK YOU. I will continue to read your literature; I haven’t fully figured myself out yet).

Review on the website of Pavel Gumerov

On the website Pravoslavie.Ru there are articles by Father Paul about family, fidelity, and the life of an Orthodox Christian.

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Around the family: children, books, Orthodoxy

Do Orthodox families need psychologists? Isn’t confession and a conversation with a confessor enough? These were among the questions raised by the famous Moscow priest, rector of the Church of the Holy Blessed Prince Peter and Princess Fevronia of Murom in Maryino, Pavel Gumerov, when starting conversations with family psychologists. The first of them was published on the Pravoslavie.ru portal. We recommend.

SECRETS OF FAMILY LIFE Popular family psychology. First conversation Archpriest Pavel Gumerov

From the author: I have many years of friendship and fruitful cooperation with family psychologists. And recently I was also honored to become a psychological confessor. With its director, Irina Anatolyevna Rakhimova, we took part in many joint projects, wrote books and articles together. Experience convinces us that resolving a difficult family situation and helping with family problems is always much easier when both priests and Orthodox psychologists begin to work. Family pastoral counseling and the work of a psychologist have much in common. But at the same time, our methods and approaches sometimes differ. Russian and especially Moscow priests are heavily loaded with services, demands, obediences and other useful matters. Sometimes there is simply no physical opportunity to talk with a person or a married couple for an hour and a half, as is done at an appointment with a psychotherapist. Again, there is a lack of experience and special knowledge in psychology. Priests and psychologists graduated from completely different educational institutions. But the clergyman has very powerful means in his arsenal: the sacraments, the opportunity to pray intensely for the family, especially during the Divine Liturgy. He is familiar with the experience of the holy fathers in solving spiritual problems, and he has his own pastoral experience. During confession, a person not only opens his soul, but also begins to see his problems, receives the grace to fight passions and shortcomings that interfere with his family life.

Psychologists, unlike priests, can talk with a person for an hour or more and over several sessions about his problems, getting to the bottom of their depths, rooted in the family of parents, childhood complexes and psychotraumas. They have their own methods for solving these problems. Therefore, spiritual, pastoral experience and competent psychotherapy can complement each other very well.

I would like to offer the supportive reader a series of conversations with Orthodox psychologists, which I called “Popular Family Psychology.” In each conversation, I ask questions to psychologists, we discuss some relevant, interesting family topic. But although these conversations are structured in question-and-answer form, they are not interviews in the strict sense - they are rather discussions, a kind of seminars. I actively intervene in the process, comment on the psychologists’ answers, and conduct a dialogue with them so that the given topic is covered from two sides: the psychologist and the priest.

I conduct my first conversation with practicing psychologist Natalya Borisovna Kiseleva on the topic “Secrets of family life.”

*** Priest Pavel Gumerov: Natalya Borisovna, my first question is sad. You said that most of the family cases that you have to deal with are divorces. And this is not even some kind of pre-divorce situation, but an already completed breakup. Divorce is, of course, a tragedy.

But what is behind divorces? Quite a few people also come to me in pre-divorce or after divorce. What is the reason for divorces?

After all, having understood all this, realizing what is stopping us, we can help people avoid divorce.

Natalya Borisovna Kiseleva: Until January 2016, indeed, a huge number of people came who were divorced or were going to get divorced. And I already began to believe that I was becoming a psychologist who deals only with divorces. It’s sad, but we fought for every family together with spiritual fathers, lawyers, doctors, so that these families would survive. And so we got together with fellow psychologists and other specialists to think: why do we still have such a number of divorces, and this number is increasing? And everyone, especially lawyers (and we work with serious lawyers with extensive experience and experience), came to the consensus that modern people have become very nervous, they simply cannot stand even the most basic things: some word, some, perhaps , an absurd problem. Of course, there are quite serious problems, for example, infidelity, and other very compelling reasons when divorce can be very difficult to avoid. Then one of the spouses can decide to divorce. But if the spouses have even the slightest desire to save the family, then we save it.

Father Pavel: Tell me, is this a situation only in Moscow, because our life is so nervous, traffic jams, stress, delays, etc.? So, it’s not like that in other cities, there are fewer divorces?

Natalya Kiseleva: You know, Moscow is a huge industrial city, it leaves its mark on our value system, dictates some of its own rules. Yes, people in Moscow are very nervous, it’s especially difficult here. Here is literally a very recent example. Today I attended a service in our church. After the liturgy, three mothers came up to me. And these women practically did not sleep. One tried to send her 18-year-old son to bed by turning off the computer, and they argued with him until three in the morning. Others tried to bring the child to communion, and there was a quarrel until the morning. It would seem that you are an intelligent, adult person, you understand what is happening to you now, and you can now interrupt the conflict. But no, it doesn't work.

Someone must go out first and stop, because the consequences can be very sad. In a state where you are overwhelmed by emotions, you will not be able to solve a single problem, you will not be able to prove anything. So go out and get away for a while.

The same is true in marriage. The husband, naturally, gets tired at work - yes, now is a difficult time, many people have hard work, difficult bosses. In general, it has become difficult to earn our daily bread. And so the man, having quarreled with his boss, comes home with this image of the enemy. He brings everything that happened to the family. Waiting at home is a wife who is tired of household chores, problems with children, and has her own difficulties. And a skirmish begins. Well, let at least someone freeze for a while, be patient. In psychology there is such a thing as active passivity. A very good term, which, in principle, responds to the recommendation of the Bible, which says: “The power of God is made perfect in weakness.” Well, freeze for a while, go away, pray. If you cannot control your angry emotional state, then psychologists offer this technique. Yes, you cannot cope “here and now” with your anger and irritation. You want to react, you want to hit, even kill. Say that you can’t control your emotions: “I’m worried,” “I’m angry,” “I’m irritated right now.” Speak for yourself. So that you understand only your feeling. That no one is to blame. Neither the boss nor the family.

Especially during fasting times, the task of maintaining peace becomes even more difficult. Tensions in relationships usually escalate during fasting. Tension also increases in families, but nevertheless we need to learn to control our emotions and feelings. How to do it? The question “how?” is a matter of action.

Father Pavel: Natalya Borisovna, I’ll summarize a little here. That is, we lack patience and lack action, doing. A.P. Chekhov has a story “Duel”. There is one of the heroes, an elderly man, wise with worldly experience. And this elderly man says that family life is patience. That is, some kind of first-love emotion or feeling alone will not get you far. Family is patience, daily work. Patience and humility, without them it is impossible. For people in difficult family situations, due to the fact that they cannot endure, it seems that there is only one way out - divorce. But this is not true at all. Most problems can be solved; conflict is not the end of life.

People now have truly forgotten how to humble themselves, have forgotten how to endure. They don’t see value in marriage or family. For them, values ​​are career, work, wealth, something else. For example, the cult of health. Glossy magazines, TV shows, books advertise all this. All kinds of fitness centers, rejuvenation clinics.

Longevity, health, life extension, weight loss, perfect body. That's what's valuable now. And what has always been a real value is love, family, friendship...

Natalya Kiseleva: Peace in the soul...

Father Pavel: All this has become worthless. Think about how difficult it is to create a family for people who now have to create one, that is, the generation of the 90s. You and I are from a different era, born in the USSR. And these young people, not only did they not see the Union, but in general, their entire childhood and youth occurred during a period of terrible collapse of values, when families were breaking up and their single mothers worked several jobs just to survive and feed the family. They, mothers, often having higher education, stood in the markets and sold Chinese consumer goods.

Well, it’s clear, what example of family life can be set here? Now this young generation has grown up. I sympathize with them very much, but it seems to me that there is still nothing fatal here.

Of course, it is much more difficult for people raised in single-parent families, people who grew up without a father, or, say, with an alcoholic father, to create a strong family. But I knew family people, including priests, who grew up in not very prosperous families, but then somehow began to think about family life, read books, and learn from the example of their friends. And then they themselves came to the understanding that family is a real value and that it is worth investing your soul, life, strength into it and enduring for its sake.

But we keep talking about who is to blame. And it's not that hard to understand. But what to do?

Natalya Kiseleva: Let's voice questions with which you should come to a psychologist. Problems of parental relationships, parental scenarios, childhood traumas - these are all things that work “here and now”, already in your family. You know that someone in the family was dysfunctional or the mother raised the child alone. If you have a companion with whom you are building a relationship, study his nature, family. Just understand, log into his system in which he resided. How each client introduces a psychologist into their space. A person comes to you and starts talking about himself, about his family. And you, listening to him carefully, begin to imagine: dad is sitting there, watching TV, mom is there. You enter his space and begin to understand. The most important thing is to master the technique of understanding. Well, when you understood your young man, saw that his dad was drinking, that his mother was suffering and being beaten, then you said: yes, I can do it, I can handle it. I am a rescuer by nature, and my dad did something bad to my mom. But know that from now on you are shouldering this burden yourself. Not just anyone, but you yourself become the authors of the process. Decide: can you bear it?

Or, let's say, your partner didn't have a dad, didn't have a grandfather. He was raised by women. For example, there was a wonderful grandmother and mother who loved their child endlessly: they would lay out straws and cook porridge. Well, he doesn’t know, he hasn’t seen this example of a father, a man, he can’t do anything normally and adequately. At the same time, by the way, he can be a very good person.

And then there is one wonderful word “but”. After all, how often do wives talk? “A friend’s husband is the general director, he built a house, a dacha, and bought an expensive car.” And that's what these wives do. They say: “Don’t be yourself, you become like my friend’s husband.” What happens then? We force a person into some image, and he begins to rush around. Or he is closing himself off from us. What happens? We become each other's experts. We begin to criticize endlessly. The Gospel says that everyone has a talent, and we must call on that person to the resource. A wise wife will take a closer look at this resource. She will say: “Yes, you have such and such talent, you have good potential. Your grandfather was a gifted man." Research your husband's ancestry. Surely in his family there were talented warriors, agronomists, builders, people who succeeded in certain professions. And then this resource, the reserve, just needs to be kept in the flow. Then my husband will understand: yes, I can get a job now, and I can chop wood. I'm strong and smart. And his wise wife will help him with this.

Let me give you one example of such female wisdom. A beautiful, wise woman comes to see me; her husband is a famous violinist. But this man absolutely cannot function without her. He is a great musician, he can make money. But with the help of whom? With the help of my wife. She completely provided him with the entire infrastructure, and he became a great musician with her help. And it’s surprising: the woman is practically Galina Vishnevskaya, but from the outback, somewhere from the village. And it was this natural female mind that allowed us to “pull out” this wonderful talent. Moreover, I must say, we have a huge amount of talent that simply needs to be supported.

This couple also did not have everything smoothly at first, not out of great love. At first she rejected him and didn’t take him seriously. I thought that he was completely unadapted to life - maybe this was providential. But over time, they developed a wonderful union in love, creativity, and life. Now they are a very harmonious couple and complement each other perfectly.

Father Paul: Let's summarize what you said. The first thing you can take away from all this is that you need to see a person not only the way you want. That is, you have a certain ideal, an idealized image, which you created based on, for example, your best friend’s husband or your own dad. But your spouse can have his own merits and be a wonderful person and family man.

Again, you need to be responsible for your own choices. If you have chosen a person with all the advantages and disadvantages, you need to accept him as he is. Here's an example. A woman once came to me and was very critical of her husband. Moreover, at first she denounced her mother-in-law that she raised him to be such a “mama’s boy” that he earned little, because his parents supported him until he was 30 years old, and he, living with them in Moscow, received 12 thousand rubles.

I tried to convince her that her husband himself was not a bad person at all and that the fact that he did not quite cope with the role of the head of the family was not only and not so much his fault, but rather a misfortune. There may be several reasons for this, first of all, the parents’ family, improper upbringing. Here you need to remember that very “but”.

Yes, he doesn’t have a big salary (before that she complained that he now earns about 30 thousand rubles, and therefore she is forced to work, but wants to take care of the child and so on). I tell her: “Well, look, the man is a believer, he doesn’t smoke, doesn’t drink, and doesn’t cheat on you.” Yes, he doesn’t get much, devotes little time to the child, but he has such and such advantages. Ideal people, in general, do not exist. Even the saints were not perfect.

This, it seems to me, is the first principle of family life: to see what the Lord has sent you. Or maybe it’s no coincidence that God gave you exactly this person to correct your own shortcomings. Why should you not correct yourself, but in every possible way adjust him to some standard, re-educate him, force him to do something? There is an expression: “Marriages are made in heaven.” Yes, for some reason it happened, and such a person was given to you.

Natalya Kiseleva: That's for sure: everything in life is not accidental. It is very good that we are discussing this topic with you, Father Pavel, because you have a pastoral, spiritual point of view. And usually in our work with a couple, with a young man who wants to get married, and a girl who wants to get married, we go from what the priest tells us. If the priest gives his blessing, then you need to start a family. And we begin to work on this topic with them, to build the initial steps. But there must also be the desire of the person himself. Because the first line: I want. The second thought of a mature person: what should I do for this? A rolling stone gathers no moss.

But let's return to the fact that there are no coincidences. If we are talking about preserving an already established family, then we must understand that we meet this or that partner not by chance. And it’s not just that certain situations happen in life. For example, a woman is abandoned twice during pregnancy. This means there is a reason to think seriously about something.

Read the end of the conversation here: www.pravoslavie.ru/99290.html

Orthodox Life

In our unstable times, the situation on the labor market often develops in such a way that for the prosperous existence of a family, its members have to try on unusual roles: the wife becomes the breadwinner, and the husband takes care of the children and the household. Doesn't this undermine the traditional foundations of the family? We asked Archpriest Pavel Gumerov to answer this and other questions related to the change in social roles between women and men.

Gosha, hero of the film “Moscow Doesn’t Believe in Tears”

– Father Pavel, in the film “Moscow Doesn’t Believe in Tears,” the main character expresses the following thought: if a woman in a family earns more than a man or is higher than him in position, then this is no longer a family at all! Do you agree with this statement?

– I won’t say that this is not a family at all, but such a couple will have to face certain spiritual and psychological problems. Since the creation of the world, men and women have been predestined by God for certain social roles: a man must be the breadwinner of the family, while a woman must give birth and raise children and be the keeper of the home and help her husband. If we are believers, then we cannot ignore the commandments and laws given to us in the Holy Scriptures. One of the first laws of family life established by God tells us that the husband must “by the sweat of his brow” obtain his daily bread (Gen. 3:19).

We are also given another commandment, which says that a man is the head of his wife, and not vice versa: “and he will rule over you” (Gen. 3: 16). Or, as the Apostle Paul says: “The head of every man is Christ; to a wife is a husband” (1 Cor. 11:3). What kind of head is he if he earns less and cannot provide for his family?! Even the weakest man is endowed by the Lord with certain qualities due to his gender, including the ability to make decisions and take responsibility. The woman is assigned the role of her husband’s assistant, the one who will inspire and support the man. The roles assigned to each of the spouses are very important, and if we switch them, both masculinity and femininity suffer from this. The man becomes weak and infantile. Likewise, a woman, when she takes on functions that are not characteristic of her nature, violates the harmony commanded by God, which is why conflicts and quarrels occur in the family.

“Nevertheless, life circumstances often develop in such a way that it is necessary for a husband and wife to switch roles.

– As a temporary state, role reversal is quite possible. We all walk under God; we can get sick, have an accident, or lose our job. In such a situation, the wife should support her husband and not reproach him for not providing for the family. The person needs to be given the opportunity to come to his senses, perhaps not work at all for some time, and, most likely, after a while everything will return to normal. In a normal state, a man should provide for his family; by and large, this is one of the meanings of a man’s life: to serve God and his family, to work not just to buy another beautiful car, but for his family, where he is welcome and is waiting for him. If his wife or his parents do this for him, a man's self-esteem will inevitably suffer. It’s another matter when a man has never really worked and doesn’t want to look for ways to feed his family - this cannot be encouraged.

– Is competition appropriate in the relationship between husband and wife, who will earn more?

– A reasonable woman will not compete with her husband. We are talking about the fact that a wife should be an assistant to her husband and should support his endeavors. If she wants her husband to earn more, she should earn less. When a man feels that there is not enough money, he will begin to look for some additional income. It is normal for a man if he earns more than a woman, but if a woman begins to compete with him, then the man, as a rule, cannot stand such a struggle or begins to get irritated. When a wife strives to earn a lot so that their children have everything, she thereby deprives the man of the incentive to do this instead of her. As a result, the spouse is more tired, both physically and mentally: when you are doing something that is not your job, instead of joy it brings only irritation. And, despite the victory achieved, a woman actually wants to see a strong man next to her.

Even if a woman manages to earn good money, she should not emphasize this once again. Before making a complaint to her spouse that he does not provide for the family properly, she must decide for herself what is more important to her: family, husband, children or career aspirations; does she want material wealth or for her husband to be the head and breadwinner of the family. Maybe it’s better to live for some time without an increased salary, because more than one generation of people has grown up in extremely difficult conditions, and this has not affected their health in any way, there is no need to be afraid of this. But after some time, the husband will understand that there is not enough money. And if the wife is pulling the entire family load, then after a while he will feel like a failure and his hands will give up. Or the dependent’s situation will begin to suit him.

If a woman works in a high-paying job that devalues ​​her husband’s ability to earn money, she needs to switch to a job with lower earnings under any pretext (it’s hard, her health doesn’t allow it, doctors forbade it). It would be nice to go part-time altogether. At the same time, it is important not to humiliate or express your dissatisfaction with your husband, but to show yourself as his real helper: continue to furnish the house, cook food, run the house well, and take care of the children. It is only important not to take on any male functions, not to make any decisions for him. He must feel the complexity of the situation himself. When he sees that the portions have decreased and he does not have money to pay for the Internet, mobile phone, travel, then he will go to the store and realize that buns do not grow on trees.

– Do men turn to you asking for help in a situation where their spouse’s excessive business activity prevents them from expressing their masculinity? What do you advise in this case?

– As a rule, a wife begins to dominate and look for some kind of work not because of a good life. A woman's concern for her family and children is higher than a man's. In order for her children to have “everything like people,” the mother of the family is ready to make very big sacrifices, including trying on roles that are not typical of female nature. It is curious that such “directive behavior of a woman,” as psychologists say, is usually caused by her insecurity. If a woman does not feel that the man next to her can protect her, provide for her, make decisions, then she begins to command and engage in hectic activity. In this situation, the woman needs to be reassured, shown more attention and affection. At the same time, it’s worth thinking about how to earn more.

A family is a single organism, as the Bible says: “let the two become one flesh.” So one person's behavior is completely dependent on another. Both members of this cell must understand their roles. If a woman wants her husband to act more masculine, she needs to act more feminine. If a man wants his wife to behave more femininely, he must act like a real man.

– In many European families, men are calm about the fact that the woman works, and the man takes care of the children and housework, if this is more profitable. Maybe there really is no crime in this?

– If, after all, we are talking about the fact that this is not on a permanent basis, but as a temporary, short-term option: until I find a suitable job that will provide for my family, then this is quite possible. For my part, I also listened to men who had to look after their children while their wives were away, and they all affirmed with one voice that they had never done anything more difficult in their lives! None of them wanted to change places with their spouse, but it helped them appreciate her daily efforts.

But no matter how economically beneficial it is for a man to stay at home, there is still a certain hierarchy, which the Holy Scripture tells us about: men and women are assigned certain social roles: for a woman it is the birth and raising of children, and a man is the breadwinner, the breadwinner of the family . And if we strive to get away from these foundations, we will get only one thing: family relationships will begin to collapse. This is exactly what we are seeing in both Europe and America. A family model built on the principle of partnership, where there is no hierarchy, no main thing, does not stand the test of time.

Even in popular books on family psychology it is noted that of the three models of relationships between spouses, when a husband and wife treat each other, respectively, as father and daughter, son and mother, spouses-partners, the most stable relationship is “father-daughter”, when the “daughter” respects and obeys the “father”, the head – the husband. There may be many exceptions, but if we are talking about the rules, then I believe that a man can be a “householder” only temporarily (anything can happen in life).

In general, this topic is very difficult and more individual than general. I often have to talk about this with women for several hours because each case has its own characteristics and nuances that cannot be considered in one article. A specific situation is always much more complicated, and for it it is quite difficult to choose the “ready-made recipe” that we talked about above. Therefore, before deciding which spouse should go to work and which should stay at home with the children, it would be good to discuss all this again with your confessor.

Archpriest Pavel Gumerov

Pravoslavie.Ru

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Recently, we often learn from news reports about the unpleasant life stories that clergy find themselves in. And the worst of them end in death. Nine days ago, Father Ioann Petunov killed a woman in Petrozavodsk. We ask our readers to pray for the deceased Maria Zhulyabina and her family. And also about Ioann Petunov himself and his family.

We asked Archpriest Pavel Gumerov to comment on the situation. Why does this happen? How to react to this?

Tragedy in Petrozavodsk

It's very difficult to talk about this. A person died, I feel sorry for the unfortunate woman and her relatives, but no less sorry for the culprit of the accident, his children and wife. How can they live with this now... He will face years in prison and, most likely, expulsion from his rank. I think that Father John’s whole life was divided into two halves: the one that happened before that terrible day, and the one that awaits him after. No earthly court could give him a worse punishment than what had already happened to him. I have had to repeatedly confess to people who have hit a pedestrian. Believe me, this is a very great grief for any person with a conscience, this is a pain that will always be with you.

When you learn about such cases, each time you perceive the sin of your fellow clergyman as a personal misfortune. For all of us, for priests and laity, this is another reason to think: how do we travel, how do we live, where are we in such a hurry?

In Russia, traditionally everyone drives quickly, carelessly and breaks the rules. Everyone drives like this: young, old, traffic cops, journalists, students... alas, and priests. Although, of course, it is the clergy who must set an example of compliance with the rules. A huge number of people die under the wheels. About 30 thousand people die on Russian roads every year. This is twice as much as during the entire 10 years of the war in Afghanistan. Terrible data!

A car, as is known from the Road Traffic Rules, is a “high-danger vehicle.” This is terribly dangerous stuff. The most dangerous transport in the whole world is considered not an airplane, not a ship, but a car. Especially in Russia. This is explained by careless driving, bad roads, poor traffic management, and fairly lenient penalties for violating traffic rules. In our country, even those responsible for fatal accidents are entitled to several years in a general regime colony. And more recently, they served time in special colonies, where they wore ordinary civilian clothes and where there was a very lax regime.

Something needs to be done about all this. After all, in countries where there are many more cars per capita, much fewer people die, and there are many fewer violations. Apparently, it is necessary to completely review driver training and tighten the rules.

But even people who follow the rules and have considerable driving experience are not immune from unexpected emergency situations. None of us knows when we get behind the wheel what will happen today: either you, or in you... There are moments when you can’t do anything - we all walk under God. All that remains is to pray. I say this with full responsibility as a driver with more than 20 years of experience, who has the right to drive vehicles of several categories. I know that some priests therefore, on principle, do not drive – so as not to accidentally become a murderer. Although, of course, this is difficult to achieve in practice. Most clergy are fathers of many children; without a car it will be very difficult for them in family life. If the priest is the rector of the temple, he also constantly needs to carry something for the church. Well, of course, every priest can be called day or night to give a farewell to a dying person, but how can one travel with the Holy Gifts in a crowded city transport?

Why do accidents with clergy always appear in news reports? I think the answer is simple: there is an information war going on

As I already said, everyone fights and gets into accidents. Of all my many motorist acquaintances, I don’t know a single one who hasn’t been in an accident at least once in his life. Unfortunately, this is our reality. Particularly intense and poorly organized traffic in Moscow and large cities. There are several million cars in Moscow, there are many accidents every day, some serious and fatal. Why do accidents with clergy always appear in news reports? What, few people fight and die? I think the answer is simple. Now there is an information war in the media and the Internet against the Church. I hope this is obvious to everyone. I'll give just one small example. A certain priest got into a very minor accident in his no longer new Niva. He decided to conduct an experiment: he filmed his car and posted it online with the title “The priest got into an accident.” This trivial video about an unknown person - but a priest - already collected a ton of views on the very first day. This means that there are people who are purposefully looking for such materials in order to use them as a reason for the next information scandal. Today the life of priests is, as it were, under a microscope. Now we need special caution, so as to, as the Apostle Paul says, “not give an opportunity to those who seek an opportunity” (2 Cor. 11:12).

Of course, the guilt of the priest who hit a woman in Petrozavodsk is obvious. Alcohol intoxication, failure to comply with the speed limit, gross violation of traffic rules. He hit her right at the pedestrian crossing. I myself have watched these videos several times. Creepy footage. There is and cannot be any justification for this act. This is murder, albeit an involuntary one.

But those who are familiar with the history of the Church and the life of the Church not from idle articles and television programs know very well that the Church has never been involved in glossing over reality. She didn't bury her head in the sand. On the contrary, she openly and directly told people the truth of life. Those who are trying to denigrate the Church with tales about unworthy priests, and those who listen to and heed these libels, apparently have never read not only church literature, but even the Gospel. They are also unfamiliar with the clergy and the life of the Church.

In the patericon you can find everything: the peaks of the spirit, and descriptions of the depths of the falls of some ascetics

In spiritual literature there is such a genre - patericon. These are short, unimagined stories from the lives of ascetics, priests and monks. Some of them date back to the most ancient, first centuries of monasticism. These books have always been favorite edifying reading among Orthodox people, along with the lives of saints and the works of the holy fathers. So, in the patericon the life of monasteries and monks is presented as it is, without any embellishment. In the patericon one can find everything: the peaks of the spirit, and descriptions of the depths of the falls of some ascetics. These texts speak about human weakness, about the sins of love of money, drunkenness, pride, cruelty and fornication. But the rebellion, repentance and rebirth of the souls of these sinners is also described. By the way, cases of repentance and correction are not always described there. Sometimes the fall of the heroes of the patericon is just an episode that is given for edification.

The Lives of the Saints is also a very truthful book - this is not a pious popular print, but true biographies of living people. I will give just one example, but there are many such examples.

Holy Righteous Alexy Bortsurmansky

In the 19th century, a priest served in the Nizhny Novgorod province in the village of Bortsurmany. He was not particularly pious, and even, on the contrary, was prone to drunkenness. One night he was called to bid farewell to a dying man in a neighboring village. The priest was angry that he was disturbed and said that, they say, it’s okay, the patient will live until the morning. However, he could not fall asleep again and after some time he decided to visit the dying man. But he found the peasant already dead, lying under the icons, and an Angel stood next to him and held the Holy Chalice for Communion in his hands. In fact, such a canonical crime - refusal to give parting words to a dying person - is usually punishable by a ban on the priesthood. But for some reason Father Alexy was not placed under ban. But he turned his entire subsequent life into repentance. He began to celebrate the Liturgy daily, imposed a huge prayer rule on himself, and began to help the needy and disadvantaged a lot. The Lord gave him the gift of healing and insight. The Monk Seraphim of Sarov himself revered him as a great ascetic and said of him that he was like a candle lit before the Throne of God. Now the Church reveres this priest as the holy righteous Alexy of Bortsurman.

Why did the Church leave these cases in its books? Of course, it is not for us to engage in condemnation of people described in patericons and lives. We need these stories for two reasons. First: show examples of repentance and correction of life. Second: give a lesson in sobriety. If even monks and priests - servants of God - are tempted by the devil and fall, how carefully should the laity behave! “Beware that you are walking dangerously.”

Much has been given to priests, but much will be asked of them. And priests may have more temptations than lay people.

Yes, we do not deny that our priests commit sins and offenses. Yes, we honestly admit: we have clergy who disgrace the Church. Some such cases do occur. No rank, even the highest, is insurance against falls and mistakes. I have already mentioned the Gospel. One of the 12 apostles, the closest and most beloved disciples of Christ, betrayed Him, the other denied Him as soon as the Savior was taken into custody. People are not angels, we all have sins to one degree or another - both laity and priests. At the same time, I in no way condone crimes and involuntary killings of people. This is criminal negligence and must be punished. But there have been unworthy shepherds in all centuries and times. The 4th century is the golden age of holiness. The family of St. Basil the Great alone is worth so much! Almost all the saints are there. So, Saint John Chrysostom in the 4th century writes about the immorality and love of money of some shepherds.

But you cannot judge the entire Church by these priests - this is absurd.

We see how a shepherd, a monk sins, but we do not see how he repents

In addition, we see how a shepherd, a monk, sins, but we do not see how he repents. Perhaps the fall that happened to him will turn his whole life upside down and until the end of his days he will cry about his sin and atone for it with good deeds. There are plenty of such cases.

Now let us remember the car accidents, the culprits of which were Abbot Timothy and Hieromonk Elijah. First of all, I would not combine these two cases, because in the last one people died. Yes, there is nothing good about a priest causing an accident in an expensive car. But in the case of Father Timothy, no one was killed or seriously injured. Thank God there were no serious injuries. Yes, the iron is badly dented, but not people. It’s sad that he was the culprit of the collision, it’s good that everything worked out. In addition, he suffered a well-deserved punishment from both the state and the clergy. But here in Moscow, accidents happen every day, and no one knows anything about them.

I think that the journalists were very interested not in the accident itself, but in the car of the abbot’s father. But this car - a BMW with embassy license plates - is not his at all! Well, they gave a man a ride in an expensive car: is this such a terrible sin? Moreover, he is not just a monk, but the rector of a Moscow church, and he simply needs a car. No, the dog is buried here somewhere else. Almost all reports reported that the culprit of the accident was the same Father Timofey, who publicly condemned the scandalous prank of “Pussy Right.” Of course, journalists seized on this opportunity to throw mud at the Church and the accuser of their beloved “Puseks”. Here every bast goes into a line. Of course, it was also mentioned that the abbot baptized the daughter of F. Kirkorov. By the way, all the reports and summaries were compiled in a surprisingly biased and tendentious manner. All the facts were distorted, journalists constantly distorted them, supplemented the text with their own conjectures. Yes, it seems to me that Father Timofey hastened to baptize Kirkorov’s daughter; he had to foresee how this could end and turn to the hierarchy for advice and clarification. But I’m just wondering what would have happened if the abbot’s father had not baptized the child, but, on the contrary, had pushed out Kirkorov along with his godfather Malakhov. Can you imagine how high the media would get? The fact is that a priest, especially a priest in the capital, has to come into contact with a huge number of people. Among these people are not only pensioners, mechanics and supermarket clerks. There are also quite famous people, artists, politicians. The church is open to everyone. We cannot refuse communication and confession to a person just because he is a showman and not a plumber.

Communication with media persons, believe me, does not cause any particular joy for most priests - this is part of our ministry. For us they are the same people as everyone else. I remember one old archpriest, a very simple, kind priest. I served with him in the Church of St. Nicholas on Rogozhka. He baptized the famous producer Joseph Prigozhin. So, when the priest came out of the baptismal room, our women surrounded him and began vying with each other to tell him: “Do you know who it was? After all, this is the husband of the singer Valeria herself!” To which the priest answered in bewilderment: “Valeria? And who is it?" By the way, they thanked him very modestly for the christening.

My opinion: a priest should not make friends with stars and participate in all sorts of talk shows. This is almost always not to the benefit of the Church. I was repeatedly invited to such programs, for example, to Andrei Malakhov, but I declined under various pretexts. I studied with Father Timofey in the same course at the seminary, then at the academy, and I can only say good things about him. True, after graduation we did not communicate. A person, of course, can change.

I don’t want to justify either one or the other. But I urge you to look into it objectively, without speculation. No one has proven the presence of alcohol in their blood. There was no alcohol analysis done, and there was not even a simple breathalyzer test. Father Timofey refused, and Father Elijah also did not undergo an alcohol test. But more on that later. Why Father Superior refused, I cannot know. Maybe he was scared. After all, even if a person drank in the evening, alcohol in his blood may be found to be higher than normal - everyone has a different metabolism. In addition, if a priest served without a deacon, he must consume the Holy Gifts himself. And he will have alcohol in his blood. Perhaps this was exactly the case here. Of course, you can’t drive after consumption. His Holiness Patriarch Kirill spoke about this later. But the priest does not consume the Gifts for the sake of drunkenness. This is a business need. Perhaps there were some other reasons, I don’t know. It is the driver’s right to refuse the test. But after that they will ask you to the fullest extent. This is an aggravating circumstance. It is almost inevitable that the rights will be taken away.

After the crash

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The incident with Father Elijah is, of course, a great tragedy. As a result of the accident, two people died, leaving behind families and possibly children. But here too I call for objectivity and impartiality. Judging by how carelessly, biasedly and contradictorily the gentlemen journalists described this crime, they were primarily interested not in the truth, not in the death of people, but in the cost of Hieromonk Elijah’s jeep. I recently attended a prison chaplain course. Archpriest John Kaleda, the son of Father Gleb Kaleda, also studied with us. He is the senior priest of the Krasnopresnensky pre-trial detention center, where Father Elijah is serving his sentence, working there in the economic unit. He talked a lot with Father Elijah, including about this tragedy. I don’t think that a person already convicted, serving a sentence and defrocked will deceive the priest who cares for him. What's the point of this?! What Father John tells, as well as the facts that I managed to learn, allow me to look at this whole story from a different perspective. The Mercedes Gelendvagen car that haunted journalists for a year, in which the accident occurred, is far from a new car, it is already 13 years old. It was given to Elijah's father by his parents. They are very wealthy people and, apparently, having driven the car, they did not sell it, but gave it to their son. One of my acquaintances, a deacon with many children, had his father, a very wealthy man, give away his cars every time, after driving them for several years. By the way, the cars were also quite good for those times. So should he refuse the gift? Father will be offended.

Should Father Elijah have accepted such a gift? Can a monk have such a car? I think now he considers the day he accepted this gift from his parents to be the most unhappy day of his life.

We know that at the beginning the media voiced a completely unambiguous version: supposedly a Mercedes at high speed, at direct fire, crashed into the plastic blocks of the fence and knocked people to death. And then, flying away, he hit the Skoda car in front. There is no video footage of this accident. Apparently, there are no cameras in this part of the road, so it is very difficult to accurately restore the picture.

But during the investigation, a different version began to emerge. The Gelendvagen first crashed into the Skoda, and then, bouncing off it, hit the road workers. He also hit a Gazelle car. There is also a version that Father Elijah crashed into the Skoda because he changed his trajectory: he was cut off by a passing car. It is, of course, impossible to find her now.

In any case, after a collision with a foreign car, the hieromonk lost control and could no longer straighten the car so that it would not crash into people. According to him, at that moment he lost consciousness. And he didn’t see how he hit anyone, he doesn’t remember how it happened. As a result of the accident, his jeep overturned. They helped him get out. And they took him away because he needed help. Why didn’t he call an ambulance, why didn’t he rush to help the downed people? Anyone who has seen the photo of the jeep will understand. The roof of the car was almost blown off, the entire rear part was dented inwards, the car was completely mangled. It cannot be restored. It’s very strange how the driver survived at all. So after the accident, he would hardly have been able to call an ambulance or his friend, who, according to journalists, took him away from the scene of the accident. They took him away very quickly, and after such an accident a person should be in severe shock. I think that at that moment he was very poor at understanding anything and might not even have realized that he had killed people. Father Elijah himself says that the man who took him was simply driving by. There was, however, some witness who claims: he allegedly saw that the driver of the jeep was drunk. How he determined this is unknown. The next day, Father Elijah himself came to the police.

He was found guilty of the incident, and he considers himself completely guilty: he exceeded the speed limit, did not keep his distance, and then fled the scene of the crime. Again, I’m not going to justify it, I just want people to know the situation not only from distorted news reports.

Secular people do not understand that the worst punishment for a priest is defrocking, the inability to stand at the Throne of God

The court sentenced him to three years in prison. But the worst punishment for him is that he, once a priest, became an unwitting murderer and was defrocked. A person who has stood before the Throne of God and served the Liturgy knows what a great happiness this is and how terrible it is to lose it.

Only God, the secular court and ours, the church court, and certainly not some “sharks of the pen” can judge a priest who has broken the law. Why could they even care about the internal life of the Church and the moral character of its servants? They do not consider themselves to be members of the Church, they mock it, which means that the internal life of the Church should not worry them. Gleb Egorovich Zheglov said this best in a famous film, when talking about the unworthy act of one priest: “Let their Synod sort out their moral character. We have a different task, Sharapov.”

Our clergy have very different incomes. In the outback, where four people go to church on Sundays in the winter, and a little more in the summer, the priests are generally in poverty. Only personal plot farming saves. So these priests still manage to restore the churches destroyed by the Bolsheviks! Yes, they and their wives simply need to erect monuments during their lifetime. In Moscow, of course, the situation is different. But here, too, there is no need to talk about any large incomes. In the residential areas, of course, the income of the priests is greater than in the center, where there are few people and many churches, but in a densely populated area you need to run around. There are a lot of needs at home, and there are much more services in such churches, the workload is higher.

Where do expensive cars come from? As a rule, they give it as a gift. Many people don't sell their car, but give it to a priest

Where do expensive cars come from? As a rule, they give it as a gift. Many richer people do not sell their car, but give it to a priest. Some people, of course, buy it themselves. Nowadays the car loan system works quite normally. If a priest has a stable income, he can take a used or new car and pay for it for several years. But my opinion is that a priest should stick to the middle path. Personally, the expensive cars of my brothers do not tempt me at all, but for some they can cause envy and grumbling.

An inexpensive, budget foreign car is now no worse than an expensive one. But I also believe that the priest should not drive some kind of junk. After all, he has a great responsibility. Imagine: a priest is driving to give communion to a dying man in an old Zhiguli car. The Zhiguli stalls. A man dies - and dad, rolling up his sleeves, begins to delve into the engine. And he has the Holy Gifts on his chest. A bad car can make you late for work (for example, it won’t start in winter). And who will serve instead of you?

We have several tens of thousands of clergy in our church, and they cannot be judged by a few examples of unworthy behavior of pastors. If some officers and warrant officers sell weapons to bandits or divulge military secrets, can we judge the entire army by them? No. I now communicate a lot with the military and I know for sure: we have the best, most combat-ready and heroic army in the world. And so in any area. If a surgeon drunkenly stabbed a patient to death during an operation, are all the doctors now bad and you can’t go to them? If some mullah went over to the side of the Wahhabis and blesses terrorist attacks, does that mean all Muslim clergy are accomplices of terrorists?..

The same is true for priests. Although, of course, special purity and morality are required from priests. But if we take any class, any social group, we will see that crimes and grave sins are committed thousands of times less among the clergy than in any other environment.

The clergy are living people. As one of my acquaintances, an archdeacon, jokes: “There are different priests, including all kinds.”

I will say a kind of apology for the priesthood. Clergy are modest people; they don’t like to talk about their lives and good deeds. I think I have some right to judge the clergy, since I myself am a priest and come from a priestly family. Over the years spent in the Church, during my studies at the seminary and academy, during almost 20 years of my own priesthood, I became acquainted with a great variety of clergy. I met a huge number of bishops, priests, and deacons. Most of them are wonderful people and clergy. I say this completely sincerely, and not because I follow corporate ethics. Among them there were completely different people, far from ideal, with their own problems and weaknesses, but I never met non-believers. The priest constantly deals with human destinies and therefore constantly feels the presence of God in his life and in the lives of other people. He constantly encounters so many supernatural things in our lives that he simply cannot remain an unbeliever. So all accusations of unbelief by the clergy are complete nonsense. Personal sins are an indicator of weakness of the soul, not unbelief.

The big trouble is that most of the people know almost nothing about the life of their shepherds and draw information about them not from personal experience of communication, but from all sorts of murky sources. But our priests are wonderful people, one might say they are the salt of the earth.

Four children in a priest's family is the norm. And they also adopt other people's children

We all talk a lot about the demographic crisis, about the extinction of the Russian people, but very little is being done to somehow improve this very demographic situation. And the priests don’t say much (although they do too), they just give birth and raise five, nine, twelve children. Most of our Russian clergy are fathers of many children. Four children is the norm. And they not only give birth to their own, but also take strangers from orphanages. And not only the healthy, but also the sick, sometimes hopelessly disabled.

The largest large family in Russia is the family of Archpriest Nikolai Stremsky. Since 1992, they, together with Mother Galina, have adopted 70 adopted children. Of the 70 children, 25 bear the surname Stremsky, the rest are under guardianship.

Bishop Longinus (Zhar) and his adopted children

Another clergyman, already in Western Ukraine, but also belonging to the Russian Orthodox Church, generally adopted an incredible number of children. Father Mikhail Zharauzhe had three children of his own when he and his wife adopted two more. And then another 27. And then his passport simply ran out of pages. He took the next 224 children under his wing. One day he performed a funeral service for a young woman. When everyone left, he saw that four boys remained at the grave. They stand there, frozen, wearing rubber boots on their bare feet and not going anywhere. Frost 20 degrees. “Why don’t you go home?” - asked the priest. “There’s nowhere to go: mom died.” Of course, he took them in with him. Then he adopted an armless boy, then completely hopelessly sick children. His huge family gradually grew into a family orphanage at the monastery. Father Mikhail himself subsequently accepted monasticism with the name Longinus and even became a bishop.

Tell me, please, how many journalists do you know, who are more willing to criticize the priesthood than anyone else, who have adopted at least two children? The question, as they say, is rhetorical.

Why is the priesthood capable of this? Because the priest does not live for himself, he serves God and people, he lives for others, he does not belong to himself at all. The priesthood is not a job, it is a way of life, a lifelong service. A parent with many children cannot live for himself, and even less so a priest. The norm for a priest is to be the rector of several churches, while simultaneously restoring them, to serve almost without days off or holidays, to come home at 11 pm and pull through a few more church obediences. One of my acquaintances, the abbot, mortgaged his own apartment to begin restoring the temple.

A priest is a soldier, an officer of Christ's army. For him, as a soldier, it is normal to get up at half past four and go before the early service to give communion to a dying person, and while on vacation, hear a call from the dean that tomorrow he needs to go to a bishop’s service or some church event, and return.

We were discussing monks in connection with road accidents, and now I’ll tell you about a monk (we studied at the seminary, but on different courses) who committed a truly evangelical act. He collected money for an operation for a friend, but there wasn’t enough money, so he sold all his property: books, things - literally everything. The cell was empty, he even slept, it seems, on the floor...

About five years ago, at the Moscow diocesan meeting, we were given rather thick orange reference books on the social work of the diocese. So, all the information about social service in Moscow was collected there. There is almost no social institution where the Church does not work. Almost all Moscow hospitals, almshouses, social centers, prisons, orphanages, and most military units were covered. It talked about shelters, about buses that travel through the streets at night and save the homeless, about feeding the poor at train stations... it’s simply impossible to list everything. Who is doing all this, who organized it? The priesthood, with the help of the people of God - the laity. Tell me, what non-governmental organization is still engaged in such broad service? But almost every clergyman also personally helps his needy parishioners and acquaintances. Recently, one bishop (by the way, he was also actively slandered in the press at one time) told me that every month he helps from his personal funds the large family of a priest who is now under a ban and cannot serve - this priest once upon a time started serve in his diocese.

Today we talked a lot about priests who committed all sorts of unseemly acts. But what we see is the external side, some kind of episode. And I am sure that if we ask their parishioners about these stumbles in detail, we will find out that these priests also helped a lot. Someone was saved from divorce, someone was given money, someone was pulled out of despair and drunkenness, or, perhaps, they simply abandoned all personal affairs and went and gave Holy Communion to someone’s mother or grandmother in the hospital.

Moreover, each of the priests does not consider what he does to be some kind of feat or even a good deed. This is our daily work. We are soldiers, we serve. It is not for nothing that the clergy is so respected by the military and police. Our ministries have a lot in common.

I recently learned how in the town of Poshekhonye, ​​Yaroslavl Region, father Evgeny Mozyakov saved a 9-year-old boy who fell into a well. It was in September, a child, while playing, fell into cold water. A priest was driving by. While children and adults tried to pull the child out by lowering the hose into the well, the priest jumped into the water, put the child on his head, finding himself under water, and thus helped him get out. Several years ago, two priests in Sergiev Posad rescued a child from a pond who had been thrown there by his crazy mother.

Entire volumes can be written about the exploits of priests. A priest, if necessary, will give his life

In August 2015, a major car accident occurred in the Khabarovsk Territory. 12 people died and many were wounded. So, at the scene of the accident there was a priest, Abbot Tikhon, rector of the temple of Komsomolsk-on-Amur. He was also badly injured (broken ribs, a damaged eye, many abrasions and bruises), but at the same time he helped pull people out of crumpled buses. My brother, priest Alexander, when an explosive device went off on a Moscow metro train at the Park Kultury station, he found himself in the next carriage and also rushed to save the victims, pulling out the wounded before the rescuers arrived.

Yes, whole volumes can be written about the exploits of priests. A priest, if necessary, will give his life. We all remember the death of Father Daniil Sysoev or the priests in Chechnya. We know that before the revolution, the morals of the clergy were also not at their best, but how many of them later gave their lives for Christ! During the years of Soviet power, more than 115 thousand clergy were killed! And I firmly believe: if there are persecutions again, our modern priests will repeat the feat of the new martyrs of the 20th century.

https://www.pravoslavie.ru/88575.html

Text of the book “Family Conflicts. Prevention and treatment. The Priest's View"

Archpriest Pavel Gumerov Family conflicts: Prevention and treatment. The Priest's Look

About conflicts in the family Introduction

Our
family life, unfortunately, does not always go smoothly. Anything can happen in it. Almost no family escapes conflicts, crises and other shocks. There are no roses without thorns.

The topic of family conflicts usually arouses increased interest among anyone who is even slightly interested in issues related to family and marriage.

When I have to give lectures and talks and during the speech it comes to family conflicts, the audience immediately perks up, the listeners come out of their state of dormancy and begin to ask questions. Why are people so keenly interested in this not very pleasant topic? There are two reasons.

Firstly, it is common for our weak human nature to be more curious not about virtues, but about human weaknesses. And secondly, a conflict situation, a clash, a disagreement is something that we all face in our lives. Some more often, some less often. All this is quite natural. This means that this topic is directly relevant to each of us. And of course, everyone wants to know how to prevent conflicts in our family life, how to resolve conflict situations, how to achieve peace and mutual understanding in the family.

I tried to answer these questions to the best of my ability on the pages of my book. It is devoted not only to conflicts and crises (so to speak, thorns) of family life, but also, first of all, to the rules of its construction and the prevention of clashes. After all, if spouses build their lives correctly and are able to achieve unity in marriage, conflicts can be minimized. So we will also talk about roses, how to find peace, love and family happiness.

To tell the truth, I don’t really like talking and writing about family scandals and quarrels. It is much more interesting to discuss how to learn to avoid them.

My humble essay is a kind of manual on family conflictology. The first part briefly outlines the basic, basic concepts of the science of conflicts and discusses ways to resolve conflict situations. Subsequent parts are devoted to the prevention and resolution of family conflicts.

I’ll say a little about how to get the maximum benefit from reading this book. You should not read it as fiction (especially since it does not possess any literary merits), that is, to simply enjoy reading.

Let me explain how I usually read such special books. I take a pencil or pen and, while reading, I underline everything in the text that particularly interests me. Opposite the underlined place in the margin I put a tick or an exclamation point if I especially liked the idea. After reading the book, I re-read the marked passages. This method of reading allows you to thoroughly assimilate the necessary information and not later regret the money spent on the book: even a not very smart book is sure to contain quite sensible and useful thoughts.

Improving your family life and solving problems of relationships with loved ones is a very important and necessary thing. And this work is twofold. We must pray to the Lord to send peace and help in family life and, of course, ourselves work to create peace in our family and in our own soul.

I wish God's help, wisdom and patience in overcoming family conflicts!

Part I A bit of conflictology

Chapter 1 Quarrel or conflict?

The beginning of a quarrel is like a burst of water;
leave the quarrel before it flares up. Proverbs 17, 14

TO

Every person knows from childhood: conflicts should be avoided, quarreling is bad, you need to live in peace. Remember, children, clasping their little fingers, say to each other: “Make up, make up, make up and don’t fight anymore”? Man was created by the Lord with the desire for goodness, peace and love. Thank God, there are very few people who enjoy quarrels and strive for conflicts. And if a person behaves in this way, this indicates either some kind of mental abnormality, or very large complexes and experienced mental trauma.

There are also individuals who very often find themselves in conflict situations and often provoke them. But they themselves suffer greatly from their lack of communication, from their inability to get along with their neighbors. They do not consciously go into conflict, but because of their bad manners, narrow-mindedness or bad character.

Is it possible to do without conflicts and clashes in our lives? We must strive for this, we must make every effort to avoid all kinds of friction and tension in relationships. The Apostle Paul says that we should maintain peace with people if possible (see Rom. 12:18). But the same apostle writes: There must also be differences of opinion among you, so that skillful understandings may be revealed among you.

(1 Cor. 11:19). And he warns the Corinthian Christians so that their differences of opinion do not turn into divisions within the church community.

Differences of opinion, discrepancies in points of view, views between people in any social group - family, community, public organization, industrial association, etc. - are inevitable, and there is nothing wrong with that. As they say, as many people as there are so many opinions. And we have been given from God reason, language, and the ability to communicate in order to come to agreement and agree on a variety of issues.

We have come to the most important question of this chapter: what is conflict and how to behave in a conflict situation? It is wrong to think that the words “conflict”, “quarrel”, “scandal”, “dispute”, “squabble” are synonymous. The word "conflict"

is of Latin origin.
In Latin, “conflictus” means “clash.” A textbook on conflictology for higher educational institutions gives the following definition of conflict: “Conflict is a social phenomenon, a way of interaction between people when their incompatible views, positions and interests collide, a confrontation between two or more parties that are interconnected but pursuing their own goals. The basis of any conflict is a situation that includes either contradictory positions of the parties on any issue, or opposing goals or means of achieving them in given circumstances, or a divergence of interests, desires of opponents, etc.” 1
Conflictology: textbook / ed. A. Ya. Kibanova. – M., 2009.

[Close].

I will try to give a more or less detailed explanation of the necessary basic terms with reference to specialized literature.

So, a conflict, first of all, is a disagreement of views, a clash of opposing points of view on some problem, but this does not mean at all that the conflict should become a quarrel, a scandal, or a stormy showdown. We can say this: any quarrel is a conflict, but not every conflict is a quarrel. And our main task is to learn to resolve disagreements without leading to a quarrel.

Chapter 2 Difference of views: everyone has their own bell tower

It's scary to say, but people see only what they want to see and hear only what they want to hear.

Anna Akhmatova

P

Before moving on to the topic of family conflicts, let's briefly talk about what underlies any conflict.

In a conflict situation, two or more people connected with each other have a difference of opinions and views on the same problem; these views collide, and the conflicting parties, as a rule, are confident that they are absolutely right (at least at the beginning).

Conflicts have accompanied humanity throughout the history of its existence. Not only historical chronicles and chronicles are replete with descriptions of various conflicts. A huge amount of research and simply artistic works have been written on this topic. There are many proverbs, sayings, and catchphrases that talk about the clash, the discrepancy of opinions and views: “Everyone looks from his own bell tower,” “His own shirt is closer to the body,” “As many heads as there are minds,” “The well-fed cannot understand the hungry,” “Everyone has their own truth,” etc. Many literary works, not only in their content, but also in the title itself, carry the theme of conflict: for example, “The Tale of How Ivan Ivanovich Quarreled with Ivan Nikiforovich” by N. V. Gogol or the well-known novel by I. S. Turgenev “Fathers and Sons” (the older generation and young people have completely different views on life, and this leads to a generational conflict).

Conflict situations accompany us in everyday life. For some they happen very rarely, for others often, but one way or another we all need to be prepared for them.

Here is a real life case. Once, succumbing to the sweet speeches and generous promises of two natives of sunny Moldova, I hired them to build a timber extension to the house. They asked for a very modest price, and we shook hands. But it’s bad, my friends, we remember the classics. Because everything turned out as in the famous fairy tale of Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin: “You, priest, should not chase after cheapness!” (By the way, the word “priest” acquired a derogatory character only in Soviet times; before the revolution, it was customary to call all priests this way, for example: “cathedral archpriest,” that is, “archpriest serving in the cathedral.”) My workers, however, do their work , they completed it and even on time, but they left a lot of deficiencies that I had to fix myself. But this was far from the most unpleasant thing. The Moldovans, apparently not calculating the local weather conditions, erected the walls of the extension, did not close the roof, but immediately began to work on the floor; They laid the so-called subfloor, laid insulation and nailed floorboards on top. And so, when they began to work on the roof, it began to rain heavily and continued to pour for a whole week. Tired and angry builders finally finished the job, but the floor was hopelessly damaged. Water flowed inside through the cracks and soaked the insulation. The moisture could not escape, since roofing felt and a subfloor were laid underneath. Having discovered this, I reprimanded the Moldovans and told them to lay new insulation to replace the damaged one. The builders were outraged by this, as it seemed to me, legitimate demand; they said that it was not their fault that the rain had been pouring all week and ruined their work: these, they say, were unforeseen circumstances, force majeure, so to speak. And although the workers did not use this fashionable term and were unlikely to know it at all, the insurmountability of the water element was obvious to them. The fact that they had to cover the roof first, and only then work on the floor, apparently did not occur to them. This is understandable: Moldova has been in a drought for several years now and there is almost no rain in the summer. The situation was aggravated by the fact that I paid the builders all the promised money. But, thank God, everything was resolved successfully: after much bickering and persuasion, the Moldovans finally agreed to block the floor, although a lot of nerves and time were spent on overcoming this conflict.

The example of this story shows that a conflict situation arises due to different visions of the problem between the parties. Until a certain time, opponents are confident that they are absolutely right, expressing disagreement with their counterpart. We constantly become, if not participants, then witnesses to situations based on a misunderstanding of the parties, on an unwillingness to delve into the essence of the problem. Such situations very often occur in the market, in a store, and in other service areas. For example, a situation that is familiar to many: a passenger in a minibus hands over money and waits for change from the driver. And the driver was so exhausted during the working day, turning the steering wheel and accepting money, that he counted the bills incorrectly and not only did not give the passenger the required change, but when he reminded him about the money, he accused him of traveling without a ticket, saying that he had not received it from him at all no money. A skirmish ensues and expressions are used that are untranslatable puns. There is an incorrect understanding and vision of the conflict participants about the situation in general and the position in particular. In this case, in order to establish the truth and overcome the incident, it would be useful to intervene from a third party, as they say - an arbitrator. Other minibus passengers could play this role. They would have testified that the unfairly offended passenger was handing over money. Justice would be restored. Sometimes the help of an independent third party is simply necessary to resolve a tense situation, and sometimes it is not desirable. It all depends on the specific situation.

Dissimilarity, divergence of opinions, views and, as a consequence, collisions are generated by the general dissimilarity of people: their life experience, character, gender, age, social status... As A.P. Chekhov said: “Each of us has too many screws, wheels and valves, so that we can judge each other by first impression or by two or three external signs.” Therefore, the main task in a dispute or clash is to try to understand the opponent’s words, take his position, try to understand what he thinks on this issue and how he sees the situation. Although they say that someone else’s soul is in the dark, you can still get down from your bell tower and try to enter into the position of another person, you can understand a little about his psychology. After all, how the conflict situation will be resolved depends on whether we understand it. Aristotle pointed out inequality and the dissimilarity of people as the cause of conflicts in his treatise “Politics”. He saw the source of strife and conflict in the inequality of people in possessing property and receiving honors, as well as in arrogance, fear, neglect, intrigues, dissimilarity of characters, excessive exaltation of some and humiliation of others. Although here he points more to social inequality than to the usual dissimilarity of individuals.

Conflict is misunderstanding. If a person is not like us in some way, we don’t really understand him. This may cause clashes and confrontations. The rich understand the poor poorly, as in the famous joke: “Why are you so thin? - Yes, I haven’t eaten anything for a week now. “Well, you have to force yourself.” A healthy person does not understand a sick person well until he himself gets sick. It seems to Tolstoy that the thin one eats very little and only torments himself; a thin person believes that an obese person suffers from gluttony and undermines his health. A very striking example is a believer and an unbeliever. A fairly common situation: one of the spouses believes, goes to church, prays, but the other does not. For a believer, a church is a second home, he is happy to go to services, pray, listen to church hymns, everything is clear and close, it is not difficult to stand for services for two or three hours. It is even difficult for him to communicate with unchurched people; their interests and topics discussed seem boring and mundane. A non-believer, on the contrary, does not understand what these “churchmen” do for several hours in a church, where it is impossible to understand a single word during the service, it is cramped, stuffy and there is nowhere to even sit. After all, the temple, if you do not see its spiritual, inner essence, is generally a very incomprehensible and non-functional building. A lot of money was spent on its construction, but this is not a residential building, nothing is produced in it. It is, of course, beautiful, like an open-air museum (as it was said in one Soviet film). But you can’t go to the museum twice a week for more than two hours if you don’t work there. And also fasting, abstinence, reading the rules! Not life, but voluntary hard labor. That is, an unbeliever does not see what is obvious to a believer, what constitutes the meaning and essence of his life. He sees only the external side and then very distorted, without the internal component. He can only get to know this vast spiritual world through personal experience, by opening his heart to God and trying to study everything that previously seemed absurd and funny to him.

If a conflict of unbelief and faith occurs in a family, as has already been said, between spouses, that is, the closest people, a non-believer should under no circumstances indiscriminately sweep aside and subject to ridicule what is dear and sacred to his half. True love is not only sympathy, compassion, but also understanding. And therefore, when resolving marital and family conflicts, you need to try to understand and study the position and point of view of your loved one. Everyone knows that a woman’s view of any problem can be very different from a man’s, but not everyone knows to what extent a woman’s perception differs from a man’s. And although men and women are created infinitely different not by chance, but for interaction and love (this will be discussed in detail in subsequent chapters), the difference between the male and female sexes sometimes causes very strong misunderstandings in marriage. The task of the spouses is to understand this, to study each other’s characteristics in order to avoid clashes and separation.

So, we have found out that the basis of any conflict is a clash of different opinions, positions of parties who have different (sometimes opposite) views on the same problem. The reasons for this clash are also clear: the difference and dissimilarity of people in so many ways, from gender to age and social status. One Eastern sage said that in addition to the inequality and dissimilarity of people, normal, non-conflict communication is harmed by vices: self-interest, unbridled desire for profit, stubbornness, deceit, eloquence, etc. But, by and large, this can also be attributed to the dissimilarity between people. For example, one party wants to offend the other for selfish gain. A conflict situation is created: one person is the offender, the other is innocently offended. The offender always has an exculpatory version of his behavior and often firmly believes in it. The offended party believes in its innocence. There is a dissimilarity between people, their views and a clash of opinions.

But in order to understand and resolve the conflict, even the unjustly offended party must first understand the true motives of the opponent, because sometimes, due to resentment, we cannot do this and thereby aggravate the conflict. If we understand the enemy, then, even if we do not find the necessary solution to overcome the conflict, we will be able to justify and forgive him. And this is already half the battle.

In psychology, there is a method for analyzing a conflict situation - the principle of a metamirror. Its essence is that the situation is viewed not only from the first person, but from three sides. That is, from our own position, from the position of our opponent and from the position of an outside observer (as if from above). This method allows you to understand a controversial, conflict situation as objectively as possible.

Most people, unfortunately, tend to evaluate the state of things and the behavior of other people only from their own position, considering themselves the measure of all things. We will return to the metamirror principle when considering various situations.

Chapter 3 Constructive conflict is better than a good quarrel

Therefore, my beloved brethren, let every man be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to become angry.
Jacob 1, 19

IN

We all know the expression: “A bad peace is better than a good quarrel.” True, some, on the contrary, believe that a good quarrel, a showdown, when opponents say everything they think about each other, give free rein to their emotions, can help mutual understanding and dot the i’s. And that this method of resolving conflicts is much better than shaky reconciliation, when those in conflict with external reconciliation keep a stone in their bosom. I am not close to either point of view. As M. A. Bulgakov’s character Sharikov said: I don’t agree with both. Neither option is constructive and is not a solution to the problem. In sociology and psychology there is a special discipline that studies conflicts and conflict situations. It's called conflictology. So, conflictology studies, of course, conflicts, their origin, types and methods of resolution. With all the variety of methods for resolving conflicts, there are two main ways: constructive and non-constructive. A constructive, or productive, method is not only unable to resolve a conflict situation, but also has a positive effect on the parties to the conflict; they unite, jointly overcome contradictions, and gain experience in communication and problem solving. Naturally, with a constructive method, the parties reach an agreement successfully.

An unconstructive way of behaving in a conflict situation leads either to a quarrel or to an unresolved situation, that is, to that very worst world. The contradictions are not resolved, but the parties are temporarily reconciled and are, as it were, in a state of cold war. Such a conflict is often accompanied by prohibited methods of force: mutual insults, pressure, blackmail, etc. With this method of conducting dialogue, opponents sometimes completely forget what the original subject of the dispute was.

The absence of visible contradictions and clashes in any group of people sometimes does not at all indicate that love and harmony reign here. It is known, for example, that in American communes (hippie settlements) there were very few conflicts, which are inevitable in a community of people living closely in a limited area. The almost complete absence of quarrels and conflicts in hippie colonies is explained by the very easy attitude of hippies to life and to each other. They preached love and freedom, but in reality the fate of their brothers was deeply indifferent to them. The hippie philosophy is this: as long as you are with us, we feel good, have fun, we share food and drugs with you, but you are free to leave, leave us, and no one will really remember about you. If a person from the colony suddenly disappeared, no one looked for him, those who remained were not very worried about what happened to him: he went to prison, was killed, or died from a drug overdose. In the sixties of the last century, a girl from a hippie settlement went crazy after an unsuccessful use of LSD, she was taken to a psychiatric hospital, and no one tried to get her out of there or even visit her. The conflict-free society, governed by practically no one, was based on an indifferent attitude towards each other and indifference towards one’s neighbor.

Often, in couples where a man and a woman have united to cohabit outside of marriage, outwardly very peaceful coexistence is also observed, but as soon as such a couple enters into a legal marriage, conflicts begin. Why? People united by irresponsibility and mutual pleasure do not build real relationships, they are not united by genuine feelings. While we are happy together - we live together, we got tired - we ran away. People, by and large, are indifferent to each other. Their neighbor is not very dear to them, they do not particularly root for him and therefore easily come to terms with his shortcomings. They seem to say: we have gathered not to do a common cause together, to work on ourselves, but to relax together; So let's not interfere with each other in this. In this situation, when people are united by the sin of fornication, and demons do not particularly tempt them: why destroy the union created in the name of sin and lawlessness?

The fact that clashes and differences of opinion arise between spouses does not mean at all that they do not love each other. They, perhaps, on the contrary, want to improve their relationship, root for a loved one, but, unfortunately, they often do not know how to act correctly in a situation of disagreement.

Of course, we should all try to reduce conflicts to a minimum and engage in their prevention and prevention. But if a conflict situation does arise, it is necessary to be able to resolve it constructively and productively for both parties.

The most general, but also the most important rules of behavior in a conflict situation are set out in the epigraph given at the beginning of this chapter. In a conflict or dispute, the worst advisor is anger. Anger and irritation cloud the mind and paralyze a person’s will; in such a state he is simply unable to make the right decisions. A hot-tempered person can do something stupid

(Proverbs 14:17), says the wise Solomon.
There are many proverbs on this topic: “One word leads to a quarrel forever”; “Keep your tongue in conversation and your heart in anger”; “An empty argument is swift before a quarrel,” etc. The Apostle James gives the following instruction: let every person... be slow to speak, slow to anger
(James 1:19), so as not to say anything unnecessary that can only aggravate conflict and offend your neighbor.
A careless, thoughtless word can be very harmful during a serious conversation. Therefore, we need to learn to listen, to listen to our opponent (be quick to listen
) in order to understand what he wants to tell us and what he wants from us, and only then answer him, thinking about your words, and not only about the meaning, but also about the form our answer.
After all, it is known that what is said is not so important ,
but
how
to say it is important. The same thought can be expressed in such a way that a person will be seriously and long-lastingly offended, or it can be expressed in such a way that he will listen to our words.

So, let's move directly to ways to resolve conflicts.