By its very nature, the spirit of man turns towards God, Who is his origin and his last and final goal. Between man and God there exists a strong mystical bond, in just the way a bond exists between a child and his father or his mother. God loves man constantly, always and forever, and man in his natural state seeks God's love and offers to Him his obedience. Man wants to do God's will.

This is the natural state of things. And this is the way things were before the disobedience and fall of man. After that disobedience and fall this relationship of man to God weakened. Now a special kind of warmth and cultivation is needed from the side of God. And so faith, which is natural to man, requires cultivation--cultivation by God, because it is God Who knows how to and is able to perform this cultivation correctly--in order to bring fallen man back to the high position he formerly held and the level that is properly his. Unfortunately, man frequently puts himself and his own actions in the way and becomes an obstacle to God's work.

Man must have good will and be receptive to the actions and gifts of God. When man puts himself in the way with his ego and pride, he spoils things. The natural tendency of man to love God and to accept His gifts is suppressed and almost erased. He himself becomes the creator of a distorted religion in which truth is mixed with deception. And so we have the phenomenon of there being so many religions, religions made by man and, because they are man-made, not perfect.

This is the major difference between the Christian Faith and other religions. The other religions begin from man and go towards God. The Christian Faith begins from God and descends to man. In the other religions man tries to find God. In Christianity, God becomes God-man Jesus Christ and reveals Himself to man. Since no one can know God as well as God knows Himself, when God reveals Himself we have the real truth and not deception. What we should do, then, is to accept the truth that God offers us. This truth is called Divine Revelation and includes all that which the Holy Trinity revealed to the Holy Prophets and the Holy Apostles through the two divine covenants or testaments.

But even in this respect, unfortunately, man frequently puts himself in the way. He is taught and he teaches things that are not divinely revealed. Rather than listening to the Divine "echo" we spoke about in the last lesson--rather than listening to and learning and submitting to the Divine Revelation given to the Holy Prophets and Apostles, he interjects his own opinion, his own fallen logic and ends up distorting the Truth. He thus creates distorted teachings and practices which in Greek are called 'air-e-seis' or heresies, and themselves become heretics. This designation belongs to those who either create doctrines and teachings that are not found in divine revelation or who reject the doctrines and teachings that are found in it.

For example, in the first case we have the Roman Catholics with their doctrines of the infallibility of the Pope, the filioque, the development of doctrine, indulgences etc. In the second case we have the Protestants, who teach among other things sola scriptura, sola fide, and reject the ancient doctrine concerning Holy Communion by claiming Holy Communion is not the real Body and Blood of Christ but symbolizes the Body and Blood of Christ even though Christ Himself said, "This is my Body" and "This is my Blood."

We said above that religion is natural to man. We may say that it is a universal phenomenon. Plutarch, a first century historian, says, "When you travel you find cities without walls, or others without cultivation, or without a King, or without palaces, or without money, or ones without even a need for currency, or without a number of theatres or athletic stadiums. But no one sees a town or a city without a Holy Temple or without God (or a god)." The is true today almost everywhere.

It is possible, however, for someone to observe that what Plutarch is saying does not apply to us today; until very recently, if you went to Albania you saw neither churches nor God. And whoever said that was correct, but only superficially so. No one knew what the Albanians actually believed inside. They could not express themselves. Everything was overshadowed with fear and oppressed with slavery. Religion had been abolished by law. This also happened in China between 1966 and 1979, and of course in Russia to almost a complete degree after the Revolution. Things have changed there. They are changing in Albania. In spite of this, the Marxist preaching of atheism suppresses the natural religious tendency and destroys the natural state of man; without doubt it hurts religion and man because it removes man from his natural environment. Fr. Chrysostom, a Yugoslavian monk, was asked, "Fr. Chrysostom, does religion have freedom in Yugoslavia?" and he replied to me, "It has limited freedom, but what good does that do? Through atheism the Communists have ruined and perverted the people and someone will have to start from zero."

Prayer:
Lord Jesus Christ, Who became man and revealed Yourself as God and Who revealed Your Father and Your Holy Spirit to us sinners, remember not our sins nor those of any man. Send Your Holy Spirit as a life-creating dew to touch and to open all of our hearts for us to accept Your Divine Revelation and to live the natural life of faith. Help us to worship You correctly, help our soul to seek You, our heart to beat for You, our breath to praise You. Correct and make good those who are bad. Teach the truth to those who are lost or who have distorted the faith. The proud and egotistical, make humble and sensible so that they too may accept Your Divine Revelation.