7. Imaginary Doubts.xi

There are other articles of faith which some people cannot accept without difficulty; it is

impossible to enumerate them all, but we hope that from these four examples a zealous

spiritual father will learn how to struggle with all such doubts experienced by Christians.

It is yet more essential for him to distinguish unbelief, or doubts that really spring

from unbelief, from imaginary or apparent doubts, which often severely oppress

inexperienced Christians and put them in a situation where they are helpless. Many a

faithful and prayerful Christian laments to his spiritual father, “At times I believe in

Communion, at times I believe in God, but at times it is as if I don’t believe at all.” I had

answers to lamentations like this printed in the last, or next to the last number of the

“Parish Bulletin,” published by the Holy Synod in February, 1917, and then in the fourth

supplementary volume of my writings (Kiev, 1918), in the “Letter to a Priest about

Learning to Pray.”xii Such thoughts of unbelief arise in the souls of suspicious people

who love to examine all their thoughts and feelings minutely, and are filled with a

constant futile fear that they will do something wrong or be found to have neglected

something. Then it seems to them that they are ill, or that their child is getting ill, or is

just about to get ill, or something similar. Not infrequently they fall into yet greater woes,

into so-called “blasphemous thoughts,” when abusive words come into their heads,

completely against their will, together with thoughts of the name of Christ or the Mother

of God. And of course, the more they fight against these absurd combinations, the more

persistently they come crowding into their heads. Inexperienced people begin in horror to

think that they are blasphemers, and inexperienced priests start talking to them about the

serious sin of blasphemy, about blasphemy against the Holy Spirit as the greatest of all

sins. After this these poor souls immediately start to experience an influx of abusive

expressions about the Holy Spirit, are tormented, waste away and even consider suicide,

thinking that they have already perished eternally anyhow. And the priest will not be able

to help those tormented by these thoughts until they meet a man more informed about

spiritual life, who will explain to them that the best medicine can be obtained at any

theological book shop and is not expensive; it is another pamphlet by St. Dimitry, entitled

“About Blasphemous Thoughts.” Here it is explained in the words of the great Fathers of

antiquity that such thoughts are not the fruit of hatred towards God and the saints, but

simply combinations of abusive words or sounds in the head of an imaginative person,

and so they do not in any way constitute a sin. One should not pay any attention to them,

but calmly pray and receive Communion, no matter how stupid the words or images that

may be crowding into one’s head.

An apparent lack of faith in Holy Communion, or even in God Himself, that

comes from time to time, has a similar significance. Faith is a very subtle, spiritual,

feeling. However much it may be present in us, if we fumble to find it in ourselves, as if

taking account of all the qualities of our feeling towards God or the Mother of God and

the other saints, then we find that this feeling has, as it were, evaporated for a time from

the realm of our direct awareness, but not, of course, from our soul and heart. But

experiment with one of the crudest feelings in the same way: pinch your hand until it

hurts and then start to analyze how this pain differs from a toothache or a headache —

and you will even stop feeling your pain. One German philosopher, suffering torments

from the onset of a toothache, managed to stop feeling it in just this way. Thus, if he is

not convinced of any definite refutations of the truths of faith, a Christian must not think

that he has no faith, although at times this may seem to be so. He must calmly pray and

approach the Holy Mysteries, not attaching any significance to his imagination, which

only gets stronger if he deliberately fights against it.