Just as bullets on the battlefield can fly by, hit, injure, and even kill, so can a lie – the devil’s most dangerous weapon. The first liar was the devil, who at the beginning of human history deceived Adam and Eve about the harmlessness of the forbidden fruit.
The Primate of the OCU wrote about this on his Facebook page.
According to him, the original source of lies is the devil. The Gospel also testifies to this: “He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies.” (John 8: 44). Lying is probably the most widespread sin of humanity and, unfortunately, very deeply rooted. There is neither a people nor a country on earth where untruths are not abused. A huge number of lies happen in the world every minute – and this is what entails a lot of trouble and suffering. And the current war is also a direct consequence of lies and untruths, deception and manipulation, wrongdoing and falsehood.
You and I see the result of frank, cynical, and deliberate lies with which the bloody Kremlin flooded its country, as well as our Ukraine, and is now trying to drown the whole world in it. The Kremlin’s newest hero gives rise to new manifestations of rage, cruelty, ruthlessness, treachery, and hypocrisy. With the virus of malicious lies and hatred, he poisoned and misled many human souls, turning them into blind people, callous haters, and his servants.
Many of them cannot even explain the reason for their hatred of our people, our language, our Church. It is a shame that some of these haters cover themselves with holy things like faith or the Church. True, their religion is distorted – distorted by lies. They believe that they have “privatized” Ukrainian shrines, they are disposing of the heritage of our people, they are spreading lies in our churches in a foreign language, the language of the occupiers, invaders, murderers of our people – the language of lies and deceit.
How do they fulfill God’s commandments? In what spirit do they speak when they curse others? How do they honor their parents, how do their put into practice Christian values and virtues, in particular, love for their neighbors, for the Motherland? How do they share the pain of our people? How do they commemorate our dead, killed, and tortured by famine, repression, and persecution? How are the fallen modern-day heroes who sacrificed their lives defending our Motherland bid farewell on their last journey? Against what enemy and on whose side are they fighting?
Untruth is incompatible with the Church, with true faith and true service! It is enough to serve untruth, it is time to free yourself from the spiritual occupation and shackles of lies. The Russian Church has long been insidiously replaced by civil religion, it is alien to the spirit of the Gospel and the content of the Orthodox faith. That “pseudo-belief of the Russian world” is eloquently characterized by their actions, which testify to the loss of Christian values, peace, love, and a living connection with Christ and His Church.
It is worth remembering that untruth, like any evil, does not have a self-sufficient essence, it is only a denial of good, a denial of virtues, a denial of life, and therefore, instead of creation, it is only capable of destruction, exactly what the devil seeks. We, Christians, must be on the side of good and light. By its very nature, truth is light, and lies are only its shadow. A good harvest will not ripen in the shade… Therefore, the Holy Scripture calls: “Do not be deceived: God cannot mocked. A man reaps what he sows (Gal. 6:7),” writes Metropolitan Epifaniy.
