Answered by Vitaly Kolesnik, 11/23/2011
Oleg asks: "Hello! I'm interested in the question: is a baby born sinful?"
Hello Oleg!
Yes, sin as a disease is inherited. In Scripture, we read the inspired words of David: “Behold, I was conceived in iniquity, and my mother bore me in sin” (), it is also said “we were by nature children of wrath” (). David's mother is not said to have been a harlot. David's parents were pious Jews. Therefore, there is no question here that David was conceived and born of adultery. He is trying to convey here the idea that a person is already born with an internal predisposition to sin, which is also what the apostle Paul says in the above verse.
The only exception to this rule was Christ, we read about His birth: "Jacob begat Joseph, the husband of Mary, from whom Jesus, called Christ, was born" (). Note that Jacob begat (active voice) Joseph, but it is not said that Joseph begat Jesus. Jesus is said to have been born (medio-passive) of Mary. And it is also said to Joseph about Jesus: "But when he thought this, - behold, the Angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said: Joseph, son of David! Do not be afraid to take Mary your wife, for what was born in her is from the Holy Spirit" ( ).
Therefore, Jesus had no inward disposition to sin, but was tempted by Satan from outside. Of Jesus it is said: "For we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with us in our infirmities, but who, like us, tempted in everything but sin" ().
And Scripture says that with the help of Jesus, we can overcome our inner inclination to sin: "For, as He Himself endured, being tempted, He is able to help those who are tempted" (), and as a result become "children of God" (), and not anger.
Sincerely,
Vitaly
Read more on the topic "Law, sin":
| 02 Nov |
Baptism is the beginning of the spiritual path, the entrance to the society of believers. This rite signifies a willingness to follow Christ and follow the teachings of the gospel. The church of all children whose parents agreed to conduct the sacrament and turned to the temple.
Why can a clergyman refuse to baptize a child born out of wedlock?
In some churches, clergy refuse to baptize children born out of wedlock. They explain this by saying that being born out of wedlock is a sin. However, officially the church does not have the right to refuse the sacrament of baptism, because everyone is equal before God.
Priest Vasily Yunak also does not give a specific answer to this question, but tells why in some churches the clergy refuse to baptize children born out of wedlock. God and the Church equally see all events, but if the Lord feels with his heart and understands the true meaning, then people rely on external factors. Being born out of wedlock is a sin, the church cannot tolerate it. Even if the clergyman is ready, he must condemn the offense.
If the priest refused to perform the sacrament, the Lord will accept the child, because the baby should not be responsible for the actions of his parents. Having matured, he himself will decide on baptism. Is it necessary to pay attention to people who condemn the birth of children out of wedlock, and listen to priests who refuse the sacrament? Only you can decide.
What to do if the church refused to baptize the child?
If in one church you were denied the baptism of a child, it is not that all the clergy are against holding the sacrament with children born out of wedlock. If the priest does not agree to baptize, go to another church. Some mothers in such cases do not dare to be baptized in infancy, they give the child the opportunity to perform the sacrament after the age of majority.
“God pleases everyone” - this is how many clergymen answer. That is why most of them are rarely interested in whether a child was born in marriage or not, with the help of IVF or a surrogate mother. If a child is born, then this is the will of God. Can the church refuse to baptize a child born out of wedlock? Yes, but it largely depends on the opinion of the priest. If one parish was refused, then the second may not even be interested in whether the child was born in an official marriage.
About 20 years ago, when I was still at school, there was no need for young boys and girls to prove that marriage, the birth of children is good and right. No one (or almost no one) could imagine that he would never create a family, would not see children, grandchildren. A person who did not create a family was considered either sick or a failure. Now the situation is different. Not without the help of the media, people began to fear marriage. Youth magazines educate teenagers so that they, in principle, will never be able to create a strong family. A model of behavior is proposed that is not compatible with marriage at all. A young man should be irresponsible, rude, independent, cynical, enter adulthood as late as possible. Girls are brought up as future "bitches" who know how to get along well, manipulate men, and fight back. And, of course, the most important slogans are the notorious “Take everything from life!” and "You deserve it." Any sane person understands that, following these "advice", it is impossible to find family happiness.Let's talk a little about why people get married. The answer to this question is very simple. Let us turn to the book of Genesis: “It is not good for the man to be alone” (Gen. 2:18). What does it mean? God creates two very different beings: a man and a woman. It would not cost anything to God to create a hermaphrodite, combining two principles - male and female. It is known that the same-sex method of reproduction is the simplest, most effective and productive. Same-sex creatures are the most viable. Biologists in the 60s of the XX century thought hard: “Why did nature choose such an inconvenient and unproductive way of reproduction for a person? Why are there two different sexes? And the answer was never found. And there is only one answer: "God created man and woman for love." For people to complement and love each other. Without love, a person cannot be happy.
Love is not genetically transmitted from ancestors, like beauty, eye color, physical strength, talents. It cannot be inherited like the capital of a wealthy uncle. It cannot be purchased with money. On the contrary, wealth greatly interferes with love. After all, a rich man is often loved not sincerely, but because of his wealth and influence. For money, for material goods, no one will love anyone . Love is acquired only by our personal labor and feat. It can, of course, be given as a gift. But even here, if we do not appreciate this gift, do not keep and support it, it will be taken away from us very soon. Love is the only real value, everything else is transient, has its own time. "Love for all ages". Indeed, children, and mature people, and old people love, and love gives them all real happiness. Both faith and hope are manifestations of love. We believe God because we love Him; we trust the person we love and hope that he loves us too.
Without love, even the richest person on earth will not be happy. Even if at some point he is very comfortable, he is satisfied and thinks that he will live without love, anyway, sooner or later there comes a moment when he realizes that he is miserable and unhappy, no one loves him. He will not take money, factories, etc. with him into eternity, but love always remains with a person.
The English writer, veterinarian James Harriot describes a poor farmer who sits in his small kitchen surrounded by loving children and his wife and says: "You know, I'm happier than any king now." This is real happiness: to love and be loved.
Love, real feelings between a man and a woman are possible only in marriage. And that's why. Neither simple sexual relations, nor even cohabitation with one permanent partner in the so-called civil marriage does not imply true love and responsibility for a loved one, for children. What kind of love is it if people seem to initially agree: “Today we are together, and tomorrow we fled.” Or: “We are “spouses” without a stamp in the passport, but are not connected in any way, the door is open for each of us.” At the heart of such relationships is always distrust. Either one or both partners seem to say: "I'm not sure (a) that I can live with you all my life."
“The former functions of marriage are now devalued. Status, money, sex and even children - all this happens in modern society and outside of marriage. And that is why young people often say: “Why is it needed, this marriage? It is quite possible without it. Even better". And not better, because the world has changed not only in terms of the devaluation of marriage, but also in the fact that people in general have become more indifferent to each other, do not have time to build deep relationships. They are now, as a rule, connected by business, not relationships. We are entering a world where psychological loneliness will become a real epidemic. AND only in marriage there is an opportunity to find that spiritual intimacy that will not allow us to feel alone. That's what you need to remember." These words belong not to a priest, not to an Orthodox family man, for whom concepts family And marriage consecrated by God Himself, and to a person who is very far from issues of faith and spirituality, the well-known psychotherapist A.V. Kurpatov. Even secular psychologists are aware that the denial of marriage is a path of selfishness and a dead end. On this path, a person will never find true love and happiness.
The most regrettable thing is that young people, neither on TV, nor in films, nor on the example of the families of their parents or friends, do not see that there are happy, friendly families. And, thank God, they exist, but it is unfashionable and unpopular to talk about it now. The propaganda of a free, cheerful life without marriage is aimed primarily at young people, and this is scary. After all, it is in youth that a person must lay the foundation for his future life. At first it seems that life is good: good job, money, career, friends. And in the second half of life, a person sees that his school friends already have grandchildren, and he is all alone. This is especially hard for women. I can testify as a priest that people who have not married or have not been able to embody their love in any other way suffer greatly from this. After all, we were created to love.
You can often hear even from Orthodox people that the purpose of marriage is the birth and upbringing of children. If the spouses set themselves only this goal, I think that they should not start a family at all. The purpose of marriage is exactly the same as the purpose of the Christian life in general. That is, the fulfillment of the two main commandments: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul and with all thy mind” and “Love thy neighbor as thyself” (Matthew 22:37, 39). And spouses are given the opportunity to fully fulfill this commandment of love. For my neighbor is sometimes with me 24 hours a day, and I can love and pity him all this time. And through love for the image of God, that is, for man, we learn to love for the Invisible God Himself.
Why family is happiness? Because the family helps us constantly, daily feel that there is someone we love more than ourselves. It is known, for example, that parents, as a rule, love their children more than the children of their parents. But that doesn't make parents any less happy. For children are able to give them much more joy, good mood than we give them.
And happiness also depends on how we value what God gives us. In our case, it is love, family.
Maybe it will sound a little pathetic, but I will say that the balance of the forces of good and evil in the world depends on whether there is peace in each particular family or whether sin and evil reign there. It's easier than ever to scold the government, reformers, oligarchs, and cheat on your wives, have abortions or abandon children in maternity hospitals. Or even with constant quarrels and conflicts, poison the life of yourself and your loved ones. How can Russia become a great and prosperous country if we have 3 million official and another 1 million clandestine abortions a year, if 100,000 children are left by their mothers in the Orphanage? Do we deserve a good life after this? It's amazing how we're still alive! The family is an indicator, a litmus test of the state of society as a whole: whether it is healthy or in a state of serious illness. That is why the issue of peace and love in the family is the most important issue facing society and each of us.
But it depends only on us what the "weather" will be in our house, in our family.
About the benefits of documents
For better or worse, in our life we cannot do without documents. Documents guarantee compliance with laws, regulate the rights and obligations of citizens.
For example, a traffic police inspector stops the driver, and the driver shows him the driver's license and documents for the car. Otherwise, how will he prove that this is his car and he has the right to drive it?
If, for example, we do not have documents for land, anyone can rearrange the fence at night and say that it was so, or even take away the land from us. We get a job - we show a diploma about our specialty, it indicates that we have received the appropriate education.
For lovers of free relationships without registration, I would suggest living without any documents for at least six months. It would be hard for them.
Few normal people are ready to burn their documents and go to live in the forests. (Unless some sectarians!)
So, every sane person recognizes that documents are a necessary and necessary thing. But for some reason, when it comes to registering a marriage, for some, this act causes simply superstitious horror. They look for any excuse not to do it. The point here, of course, is not in the documents, but in the fact that people are afraid of responsibility, they are not completely confident either in themselves or in another person, they are afraid of losing their freedom and independence.
But registering a marriage is not “document staining”, not “a beater in the passport”, as some advocates of “civil marriage” say, but a very serious thing.
Of course, for an Orthodox person, the main event of married life is a wedding, but the registration of marriage is far from an empty affair. Husband and wife testify that they are going to live as one family and bear mutual responsibility not only before God and each other, but also before society and the state.
You can often hear that in ancient times people got married without any registration, and the sacrament of the wedding was finally formed in the form in which it is performed now, only by the 17th century, and that everything seemed to be somehow simpler before.
Let's turn to the history of marriage. In the Roman Empire, which was a highly legal state (civil status was monitored, let us recall at least the census, when the Virgin Mary and Joseph the Betrothed went to their hometown of Bethlehem to register), there was a marriage contract. This document protected the rights and defined the duties of the spouses. He signed them in the presence of witnesses. Only a legally sealed union was considered legal marriage.
Of course, there were other forms of cohabitation, but they had no legal force and were not considered marriage. For example, there was a so-called concubinage. This word speaks for itself, translated from Latin means I lie together. Concubinage spread after the introduction of new, stricter marriage laws. It was not considered marriage, it was just cohabitation. So, a woman in concubinage could not receive class and property privileges. Concubinage was condemned by the holy fathers, for example, Basil the Great - and in Byzantium such cohabitation occurred.
Among other peoples, for example among the ancient Jews, the marriage ceremony was preceded by the drawing up of a marriage contract. It also determined the mutual obligations of husband and wife.
The Christian wedding was preceded by betrothal. In the early centuries of Christianity, betrothal was separated from marriage. It was a civil act and was performed in accordance with local customs and regulations, as far as, of course, this was possible for Christians.
The betrothal was performed solemnly, in the presence of many witnesses, who sealed the marriage contract. The latter was an official document defining the property and legal relations of the spouses. The bride and groom exchanged rings.
Already in the Russian Empire, before the revolution, it was possible to get married only by getting married or performing another religious ceremony according to the confession of the spouses. People of different faiths were not married. The wedding also had legal force. The Church generally then kept records of acts of civil status, which are now recorded in the registry offices. When a person was born, he was baptized and recorded in the register of births; when he got married, they issued a marriage certificate.
Children born out of wedlock were considered illegitimate. They could not bear the surname of their father, inherit class privileges and property of their parents.
Signing without a wedding and getting married without a painting was simply impossible according to the law.
This should be known to those people who in every possible way strive to get married without registration. By hook or by crook they persuade the priest to marry them, but they are in no hurry to formalize their relationship. His Holiness the Patriarch has repeatedly said at annual diocesan meetings that couples can be married only if they have a marriage registration.
Unfortunately, we see that married marriages are also breaking up, and for many, marriage is not an obstacle to divorce.
In the spiritual life, periods of cooling of faith may come, then the wedding will no longer bind the husband and wife, and nothing will prevent them from “running away”. Human feelings are also a very changeable thing.
Marriage, family must be protected. It's good if you completely trust each other, but something beyond your control can happen. Here is an example. A man and a woman have been living without registration for a long time, they have children. And suddenly the husband dies in a car accident. There are heirs by law, for example, children from a first marriage or next of kin, and a woman and her children can literally end up on the street, without a livelihood. And all because people themselves did not want to take care of people close to them in time.
I have already compared the relationship of husband and wife with the relationship of parents and children. I would like to develop this analogy. Suppose a mother has given birth to a child, but does not want to enter it in her passport (does not want to “dirty documents”), does not want her name to be mentioned in the birth certificate. But still she wants the child to live with her, so that she would be engaged in his upbringing. Such a situation is impossible. The rights of the child must be protected. The child must be registered with the mother, she undertakes to take care of him. And this is documented.
But spouses are people even closer than parents and children. Mother and child are the first degree of relationship, and spouses are zero. Even according to secular civil laws, spouses are closer people than children and parents. This is reflected, for example, in the legislation on the order of succession. Spouses inherit first, then children.
Psychologist A.V. A girl living in a “civil marriage” wrote a letter to Kurpatov: “My boyfriend never takes me to corporate parties. Although I know that there are wives of employees. We have been living in a “civil marriage” for more than a year, and our relationship is good. Veronica".
Here is what he answered her: “Generally speaking, the concept of “civil marriage” very deceiving. Do you consider your young man a husband, but does he think of you as a spouse? If he does not take to corporate parties, most likely he does not think. Why is your marriage still "civil"? This, in fact, is the question. Try to answer it for yourself.
The same psychologist testifies: “Someone can say: they say, such stress can be avoided if you move in gradually, first live a little in a “civil marriage”. But here we are waiting for the data of inexorable statistics, which, with all its inexorability, inexorably testifies: in couples in which there is a period of cohabitation before marriage, the risk of divorce is higher than in couples who did not live together before marriage.
A well-known journalist who recently died in a car accident, Gennady Bachinsky, once said in an interview: “I went through a lot - there is something to compare with. And now it’s obvious to me: you can’t think of anything better than a normal family. When there is no family, there is an inner feeling that you are free. Live together, and you are free. You can always leave. A person who knows he cannot leave behaves differently.
It's the same with parents and children: you can't change your mom and dad and you have to build relationships. You also need to treat your wife.”
I deliberately cited here the statements of not Orthodox theologians, but completely secular people, so that it is clear that any honest and sincere person sooner or later understands that “civil marriage” is a false, meaningless state.
If people are confident in their feelings, they, on the contrary, tend to quickly fix their relationship, to fix it in some visible way. And if they don't, it says one thing: consciously or subconsciously, they are not sure of their feelings.
I don’t know why we began to use the expression “civil marriage” to denote cohabitation, because this contains a gross semantic error. "Civil marriage" is called cohabitation without registration in the registry office; The registry office is engaged in the recording of acts civil states. That is, this body fixes the state of the citizens of the country. Whether they were born, married or already dead. And those who are in the so-called civil marriage just don’t want to citizens testify to your condition!
A little about whether future spouses should try to live a carnal life before marriage. The fact that marriages with the experience of cohabitation break up much more often was discussed above. This happens for several reasons.
First, people try to build family happiness by violating God's commandment. Secondly, the passion that often binds people in such an alliance tends to pass quickly. And people who are connected by intimate relationships should ask themselves what will remain between them when these relationships stop at least for a while. Due to illness, pregnancy or temporary separation. After all, the bride and groom are given the opportunity to get to know each other, not sharing a common bed, apartment and life, but on the other, more pure, spiritual, human side. Everything else is given later, as a reward for abstinence. With cohabitation, it turns out that people already have all the rights, but do not have duties, but this should not be the case.
One more moment. If it's as easy for a guy to sleep with a girl before marriage as taking her to the movies, will his behavior in marriage change? It is unlikely that a miracle will happen, and he will suddenly become an exemplary family man. If a person is not used to denying himself anything, he can also easily afford to cheat on his wife.
Once I was reproached for refusing the grace of communion to a woman living in a “civil marriage”. In who is allowed to receive communion, the priest must be guided by church canons. The canonical rule of St. Basil the Great says: "Fornication is not marriage, and not even the beginning of marriage." (This is not about ordinary fornication, but about fornication cohabitation outside of marriage). And to people in such a state, St. Basil gives penance as if they had fallen into fornication. (26th canon of St. Basil the Great).
Some say the word marriage carries the load of the second semantic meaning - negative. Indeed, the word marriage, like many other words, has two meanings: marriage as a marital union and marriage as a defect, flaw, mistake.
Words marriage, marriage very often used in Holy Scripture. For example: “On the third day there was a marriage in Cana of Galilee… Jesus and His disciples were also called to the marriage” (John 2:1,2).
Slavic word marriage in meaning matrimony comes from the verb take(to take a wife). By the way marriage in meaning error it has nothing to do: this word comes from the Dutch word brakk, which translates as error. It came into use under Peter I.
I think that the expression: “They won’t call a good thing a marriage” was invented by people who never knew what joy and happiness two loving people can get in a marriage union.
