“Foma.ru” spoke with the rector of the church dedicated to the Descent of the Holy Spirit in Kazan and the director of the Orthodox gymnasium in honor of St. Guriy of Kazan, Archpriest Alexei Chubakov, about the tragedy in his hometown. They asked him to answer the question that now worries almost everyone: “Why did God allow this?”
Archpriest Alexei Chubakov
“The terrible tragedy that took place in gymnasium No. 175 is the price of human freedom. Having created man free, the Lord, to some extent, limited His Omnipotence. It defies human logic and understanding, but when a person chooses life without God, such tragedies occur. This is not what God allows – it is what man himself chooses. Until we explain to children that there is God, that there is the Cause of the world, children will invent gods for themselves, and someone may even think of himself as a god who controls the lives of people. This is exactly what happened at the gymnasium.
Today’s grief is a direct reference to what happened during the Fall. Then the devil in the form of a serpent offered Eve to eat fruits from the Tree of Knowledge of good and evil, so that she and Adam themselves would become “like gods.”
In my opinion, a person is a collection of images that he absorbs into himself. Now the main source of these images is the Internet. We see how the evil one enters the person under some pretexts – the young man himself said that a monster entered him. In fact, this is a certain degree of demonic possession, in my opinion, an obsession.
I don’t know how much more and what needs to happen in order for us to understand that there must be some kind of hygiene in the Internet space.
Sincerely and in a Christian way, I would like to wish parents who have lost their children strength to survive. And you can survive this only when you understand that everyone is alive with God. This terrible tragedy took place on the day of Radonitsa, when Orthodox Christians, for the first time after Pascha, pray for their departed relatives, testifying of the Risen Christ. Everything that happened can be rethought and understood – of course, not immediately – only if you understand that Christ is Risen. This means that the death of the children and teachers is not the end of their existence. The Savior resurrects everyone with Himself – he has no dead, only the living.
You should communicate with your children more. You need to understand that parental attention and the time they spend with their children is very important to them. When we think that they will be raised by the school or we are giving them a smartphone hoping that they will occupy themselves, we are deeply mistaken. Children need to be blessed. They need their fathers’ and mothers’ kisses and blessing. And we should tell them we love them more often. It is crucially important.”
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