Mopac

The correct understanding is with The Orthodox Church. Any interpretationthat contradicts the teaching of the church is heretical and not even Christian.

I am sure you have no problem admitting that you are not a Christian. 

That is your answer. Believe it or not, that is the case.

The western "Christian" world has long since slid into apostasy, that is, has long since abandoned true Christianity. The Christianity that most people are exposed to bears little resemblence to the ancient faith that was passed down from the apostles, through the church fathers, and even preserved today in The Orthodox Catholic Church, which is the living church of Christ.

Most people and even Christians in the west know little to nothing about Christianity as it has been historically practiced and understood. If they have any idea at all, they are taught that Roman Catholicism was the original form of Christianity. They are taught that a thousand years ago, the four patriarchs of the Eastern churches rebelled against the one supreme patriarch of Rome. What they don't know is that the present day Roman Catholic Church cut off from The Orthodox Catholic Church precisely because their church slid into heresy.

Nearly half a millenium later, the Roman Catholic Church's deviation from the faith sparked the reformation which splintered western Christianity into thousands of competing sects that would often time even war against eachother.

That very same deviation from the faith which corrupted Roman Catholicism and spawned protestantism eventually lead to the modern age which has taken the over reliance on rationalism and romanticism that corrupted western Christianity and ran away free with it, ditching Christianity all together. Eventually even abandoning the belief in God, The Truth. What results is an age of nihilism, where every man is their own god. Where supermen like Stalin, Hitler, Mao Zedong, Pol Pot, and others are able to rise up and cause untold destruction, because having lost God, people no longer are able to discern good from evil, what is real from unreality. The hodge podge has become noise that drowns out truth, and people as a result willingly subject themselves to demons.

Today we live in an age where each individual is their own god, able to reject reality and substitute it with their own fantasy. Because there is no longer a belief in absolute truth or ultimate reality, the masses have been plagued with various psychological maladaptions and emotional instabilities. They have been cursed, and this curse will ultimately lead to their destruction and the destruction of their society. It will be the kind of downfall that will have them all weeping, cursing, and crying in despondancy. Having no discernment, they will consent to the very thing that destroys them. Drunk with their delusion, they will drink to their death, and lament spinelessly as they do so. They will destroy themselves, and curse God while doing so.

According to Abbot Damascene, the book "Orthodox Survival Course" which has gone into this matter with great detail and references should be released hopefully within a year out of St Herman's press. Until then, you can listen to it here...

But while this work chronicles the apostasy of the west, and is eye opening to the things going on today both in the false Christian world and the secular world, recognizing the apostasy is not alone sufficient. Only Christ can save you, and not the Christ of heretics. Orthodox Christianity is True Religion.

   “The world is the general name for all the passions. When we wish to call the passions by a common name, we call them the world. But when we wish to distinguish them by their special names, we call them the passions. The passions are the following: love of riches, desire for possessions, bodily pleasure from which comes sexual passion, love of honour which gives rise to envy, lust for power, arrogance and pride of position, the craving to adorn oneself with luxurious clothes and vain ornaments, the itch for human glory which is a source of rancour and resentment, and physical fear. Where these passions cease to be active, there the world is dead; for though living in the flesh, they did not live for the flesh. See for which of these passions you are alive. Then you will know how far you are alive to the world, and how far you are dead to it”

     ‑ St. Isaac the Syrian

"To deny oneself means to give up one’s bad habits; to root out of the heart all that ties us to the world; not to cherish bad thoughts or desires; to suppress every evil thought; not to desire to do anything out of self love, but to do everything out of love for God." ~ St. Innocent of Alaska

“Firmly purpose in your soul to hate every sin of thought, word, and deed, and when you are tempted to sin resist it valiantly and with a feeling of hatred for it; only beware lest your hatred should turn against the person of your brother who gave occasion for the sin.  Hate the sin with all your heart, but pity your brother; instruct him, and pray for him to the Almighty, Who sees all of us and tries our hearts and innermost parts. ‘Ye have not yet resisted unto blood, striving against sin.’ (Hebrews 12:4)  It is impossible not to often fall into sin unless you have a hatred of it implanted in your heart.  Self-love must be eradicated.  Every sin comes from the love of self.  Sin always appears, or feigns to be, to wish us well, promising us plenteousness and ease.  ‘The tree was good for food, and it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise.’ (Genesis 3:6)  This is how sin always appears to us.”Book St John Kronstadt My Life in Christ" ~ St. John of Kronstadt

“If [the disease of sin] is natural, then it cannot be cured. Thus it would remain always, no matter how hard you worked to rid yourself of it. If you accept this thought, you will lose heart, and say to yourself: this is how it is. For this is that woeful despair, which, once it has been introduced into people, they have given themselves over to lasciviousness, to work all uncleanness (Ephesians 4: 19).

“I shall repeat again: Maintain the conviction that our disorderliness is not natural to us, and do not listen to those who say, ‘It is no use talking about it, because that is just how we are made, and you cannot do anything about it.’ That is not how we are made, and if we undertake to cure ourselves, then we will be able to do something about it.” ~ St. Theophan the Recluse

“Men are often called intelligent wrongly. Intelligent men are not those who are erudite in the sayings and books of the wise men of old, but those who have an intelligent soul and can discriminate between good and evil. They avoid what is sinful and harms the soul; and with deep gratitude to God they resolutely adhere by dint of practice to what is good and benefits the soul. These men alone should truly be called intelligent.” ~ St. Anthony the Great

“Never has there been such an age of false teachers as this pitiful twentieth century, so rich in material gadgets and so poor in mind and soul. Every conceivable opinion, even the most absurd, even those hitherto rejected by the universal consent of all civilized peoples — now has its platform and its own ‘teacher.’ A few of these teachers come with demonstration or promise of ‘spiritual power’ and false miracles, as do some occultists and ‘charismatics’; but most of the contemporary teachers offer no more than a weak concoction of undigested ideas which they receive ‘out of the air,’ as it were, or from some modern self-appointed ‘wise man’ (Or woman) who knows more than all the ancients merely by living in our ‘enlightened’ modern times. As a result, philosophy has a thousand schools, and ‘Christianity’ a thousand sects. Where is the truth to be found in all this, if indeed it is to found at all in our most misguided times?

In only one place is there to be found the fount of true teaching, coming from God Himself, not diminished over the centuries but ever fresh, being one and the same in all those who truly teach it, leading those who follow it to eternal salvation. This place is the Orthodox Church of Christ, the fount is the grace of the All-Holy Spirit, and the true teachers of the Divine doctrine that issues from this fount are the Holy Fathers of the Orthodox Church.”

“Let not us, who would be Christians, expect anything else from it than to be crucified. For to be Christian is to be crucified, in this time and in any time since Christ came for the first time. His life is the example — and warning — to us all. We must be crucified personally, mystically; for through crucifixion is the only path to resurrection. If we would rise with Christ, we must first be humbled with Him — even to the ultimate humiliation, being devoured and spit forth by the uncomprehending world. And we must be crucified outwardly, in the eyes of the world; for Christ’s Kingdom is not of this world, and the world cannot bear it, even a single representative of it, even for a single moment. The world can only accept Antichrist, now or at any time. No wonder then, that it is hard to be a Christian — it is not hard, it is impossible. No one can knowingly accept a way of life which, the more truly it is lived, lead the more surely to one’s own destruction. And that is why we constantly rebel, try to make life easier, try to be half-Christian, try to make the best of both worlds We must ultimately choose — our felicity lies in one world or the other, not in both. God give us the strength to pursue the path to crucifixion; there is no other way to be Christian.”

“Prayer is a request for what is good, offered by the devout of God.  But we do not restrict this request simply to what is stated in words…  We should not express our prayer merely in syllables, but the power of prayer should be expressed in the moral attitude of our soul and in the virtuous actions that extend throughout our life…  This is how you pray continually — not by offering prayer in words, but by joining yourself to God through your whole way of life, so that your life becomes one continuous and uninterrupted prayer.”

—St. Basil the Great

“Those of whom I speak and whom I call heretics are those who say that there is no one in our times and in our midst who is able to keep the Gospel commandments and become like the holy Fathers…Now those who say that this is impossible have not fallen into one particular heresy, but rather into all of them, if I may say so, since this one surpasses and covers them all in impiety and abundance of blasphemy. One who makes this claim subverts all the divine Scriptures. I think (that by making this claim) such a person states that the Holy Gospel is now recited in vain, that the writings of Basil the Great and of our other priests and holy Fathers are irrelevant or have even been frivolously written. If, then, it is impossible for us to carry out in action and observe without fail all the things that God says, and all that the saints, after first practicing them have left in writing for our instruction, why did they at that time trouble to write them down and why do we read them in Church? Those who make these claims shut up the heaven that Christ opened for us, and cut off the way to it that he inaugurated for us. God who is above all, stands, as it were, at the gate of heaven and peers out of it so that the faithful see him, and through his Holy Gospel cries out and says, ‘Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest’ (Mt. 11:28). But these opponents of God or, rather, antichrists say, ‘It is impossible, impossible.’”

–St. Symeon the New Theologian

“I write these things not wishing to cause distress to the heretics or to rejoice in their ill-treatment — God forbid; but, rather, rejoicing and being gladdened at their return. For what is more pleasing to the Faithful than to see the scattered children of God gathered again as one? Neither do I exhort you to place harshness above the love of men. May I not be so mad!

I beseech you to do and to carry out good to all men with care and assiduity, becoming all things to all men, as the need of each is shown to you; I want and pray you to be wholly harsh and implacable with the heretics only in regard to cooperating with them or in any way whatever supporting their deranged belief. For I reckon it hatred towards man and a departure from Divine love to lend support to error, so that those previously seized by it might be even more greatly corrupted.” ~ St. Maximus the confessor

“A division within the Church has never occurred, nor indeed can one take place, while apostasy from the Church has and will continue to occur after the manner of those voluntarily fruitless branches which, having withered, fall away from the eternally living theanthropic Vine—the Lord Christ (John 15:1-6). From time to time, heretics and schismatics have cut themselves off and have fallen away from the one and indivisible Church of Christ, whereby they ceased to be members of the Church and parts of her theanthropic body. The first to fall away thus were the gnostics, then the Arians, then the Macedonians, then the Monophysites, then the Iconoclasts, then the Roman Catholics, then the Protestants, then the Uniates, and so on—all the other members of the legion of heretics and schismatics.” ~ St. Justin Popovich

“Let us flee from those who reject patristic interpretations and attempt by themselves to deduce the complete opposite. While pretending to concern themselves with the literal sense of the passage, they reject its godly meaning. We should run away from them more than we would from a snake, for when a snake bites it kills the body temporarily, separating it from the immortal soul, but when these evil men get their teeth into a soul, they separate it from God, which is eternal death for that soul. Let us escape as far as we can from such people, and take refuge with those who teach piety and salvation in accordance with the traditions of the Fathers.” ~ St. Gregory of Palamas

“Implore God with prayers and tears to send you a guide who is dispassionate and holy. But you yourself should also study the divine writings – especially the works of the fathers that deal with the practice of the virtues – so that you can compare the teachings of your master with them; for thus you will see and observe them as in a mirror. Take to heart and keep in mind those of his teachings that agree with the divine writings, but separate out and reject those that are false and incongruent. Otherwise you will be led astray. For in these days there are all too many deceivers and false prophets. ” ~ St. Symeon the new theologian 

I will no longer be bere after this weekend.

“I ask you to try something. If someone grieves you, or dishonors you, or takes something of yours, then pray like this: “Lord, we are all your creatures. Pity your servants, and turn them to repentance,” and then you will perceptibly bear grace in your soul. Induce your heart to love your enemies, and the Lord, seeing your good will, shall help you in all things, and will Himself show you experience. But whoever thinks evil of his enemies does not have love for God and has not known God.” ~ St Silouan the Athonite

Christ Himself said, "He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me: and he that loveth me shall be loved of my Father, and I will love him, and will manifest myself to him."

The faith is revealed in walking it.

Through participation in the divine liturgy.

Through experiencing the mysteries.

People bash religion, even "Christians". It is a dirty word to people.

But religion is very useful for preservation.

What is the church preserving? Knowledge of The Eternal Way of Truth. The Gospel.

It should be appparent to all how Christianity can be corrupted into something meaningless or even superstitious. True Christianity is enlightened. The purpose of the church is not to be a social club, but to preserve the Apostolic faith. The Orthodox Catholic Church is that church.

Those who are against religion, yes, even Christians, do not know what they are saying. What we do through religion and the various cults we preserve is keep intact the very types and shadows that point to and are fulfilled in Christ. If these things were not worth preserving, we wouldn't be doing it. Sure enough, many come to Christ through these things. That is because from the very beginning the church taught through the types and shadows that were present in the faith of ancient Israel that are made complete in the revelation of Jesus Christ.