INTERVIEW WITH PROFESSOR ALEXEI OSIPOV

According to INTERFAX Agency, 407 people have been killed in Moscow in the past several years as a result of terrorist acts. The tragedy in Beslan took away between 338 and 450 lives, including children’s, casualties in Northern Osetia total 1221 people. Not to mention the number of lives wrecked by the tragedies , tears shed and hopes lost. One cannot measure all the pain in the souls of those who have lost their family and friends forever.

Witnessing the events and meeting the participants we often hear: ‘Why?’ or ‘What did my nine-year-old do to deserve it? Why did I have to collect her body in pieces after the explosion of the metro car? I have never been interested in dirty political games, black market or oil wars. I love my job. I worshipped my wife and daughter who I have lost…Why?’

Today we talk to Alexei Osipov, the Professor of Moscow Theological Academy, a famous scientist, theologian and public commentator.

- Professor, the first question is in the air today, the question of those who probably have more faith than cynicism. One rural school teacher voiced it after the capture of hostage and death of children in Beslan. What is happening?

- The question is simple and original. But similar events happen throughout human history, even when you could count existing people on one hand. Even back then, Cain killed Abel.

Christians among us can clearly see that the state of the soul of modern man and the state of the society is deeply unhealthy, otherwise there would be no war. If you think of it, what does mankind strive for throughout its history? For happiness, peace, justice, harmony and love…What is our history filled with? Wars, violence, slavery and cruelty.

Admittedly, once people used to think that human imperfection is to blame, and that humans would grow and get better and better, and that time would come—18th, 19th, 20th century at the latest—when mankind would reach the peak of its development. But the amount of violence and blood shed in the 20th century exceeded the cruelty of all the preceding ages. Christianity alerts us to this fact, this reality, but it also reminds us that each of us has good and evil within us; i.e. a healthy and unhealthy nature. Which of them we grow and nourish depends only on us. The sum of individual personalities make up the spiritual heart of a nation, country and all humankind. There is an immutable law—spirit creates a form for itself.

It is just amazing, how in our contemporary world things are actively put, planted, forced into human souls. Have you ever thought about why, figuratively speaking, 99 percent everything on television is filth while only one percent is good? What is the reason for this? Who wants it? Don’t we understand what the spread of immorality, violence and cruelty leads to? Nonetheless, this is the reality of life not only in Russia, but in the rest of the civilized world.

- Is it because of the character of human desires and values?

- Well yes; but if, for example, a referendum was held, then I am sure more than two thirds of any country's population would speak against the predominance of the evil in any mass media. By the way, that would be a democratic principle and the voice of the majority. Nevertheless, all this filth is in somebody’s interest.

- Certain individuals’ interest? Many talk and write about secret societies, about how they ‘‘play chess’’ with entire nations on their world chess-board.

- Perhaps such people exist. They came together and created secret societies. But what for? What would they gain?

- Maybe they are fighting for the general principle of power, which goes together with the crown jewels and all the paraphernalia of world dominion?

- The thing is that throughout human history, two natures have been fighting. I would call them religious and antireligious, or satanic.

Christianity gave the world a standard of life not known by the ancients. A god of the ancient world was fair at best and a personification of cruelty and immorality at worst. Christianity announced that God—that is the Absolute Law of Being—is Love. Humankind hadn’t known that. Christianity revealed the essence of our nature. But also through that, it revealed the opposite in its fullness and brightness as well, the opposite that destroys a man. So throughout our history we witness the struggle of religion and its opposite—anti-religion or Satanism, and this fight is getting more and more severe. The way a society develops depends on the extent of its subordination to one of these directions.