UOC Chancellor advises Church fighters not to burn bridges behind them
A person can renounce the Church, but the Church will never renounce this person, reminded Metropolitan Anthony (Pakanich).
Those fighting against the Church should not burn the bridges by which they can return home. Metropolitan Anthony of Boryspil and Brovary, Chancellor of the UOC, said this on the air of the YouTube channel "Stained-Glass Windows: About Faith in Paints".
The hierarch noted that more and more people today are involved in a dangerous game called "hatred of the Church", but if a person asks himself why he hates the Church, he really won’t be able to make the case for this hatred.
"As such, there is no reason for hatred, all protests are just a reason to find an outlet for the negative," he explained. “Having everything sorted out, finding logical arguments, people who rebel against the Church inevitably come to understanding that their reproaches against Her are futile and insolvet. What they usually encounter in the process of digging up their souls is their deep, long-standing grievances against the world and people and the desire to find a ‘scapegoat’ guilty of all their problems and troubles. In this case the Church is an excellent target for them: long-suffering and merciful, the Church, they say, imposes its vision, attitude to certain phenomena, events that happen in the world. It is outdated, it falls behind the times."
Metropolitan Anthony reminded that no one in the Church forces anyone, and this is the basis of Christian doctrine.
"God respects human freedom so much that He does not want to violate it," he added. “He allows a person to blaspheme, to slander Him. Only think about it: the creation slanders the Creator! Yet, He is crucified for even the most ungrateful child.”
According to the hierarch, those who throw stones at the Church because of their delusions see it as distorted, but "the voice of the Church has been heard for two thousand years and will be heard until the end of the century," and it is everyone's choice whether to listen to it or not.
"A person may renounce the Church, but the Church never renounces anyone," added Metropolitan Anthony. "When someone is overtaken by misfortune, he goes to where his mother took him in his early childhood – to the temple of God. When the whole world refuses us, all relatives and friends retreat, betray us – only the Church accepts and comforts us without condemning, without rejecting, as if were children.
According to the bishop, the struggle against the Church resembles the situation with an unreasonable child who throws away the caring hand of a parent and says "I’ll do it myself", immediately falling into a puddle or a pit.
"So I advise all those who play against the Church not to burn the bridges behind them – these bridges might bring them back home. "For the wisdom of this world is foolishness in God’s sight" (1 Cor. 3: 19); God cannot be mocked, and His Church will abide forever," summed up Metropolitan Anthony of Boryspil and Brovary.
Earlier, the UOC Chancellor told what to repent of when "you did nothing wrong."
