Contents
Sin, passion, affect — is there a difference between them and who to turn to for help if we cannot cope with our strong emotions? These questions are answered by a priest and a psychologist.
Sin, according to the teachings of the church, is a mistake or a mistake, and not a crime at all, as some people think. It is not sin itself that leads to the death of a person, but the disease of the soul, its damage, which is the source of all sins. In Orthodox terminology, these deadly diseases are called destructive passions.
Stages of emergence of passions
1. Attachment
Passions do not appear immediately, but gradually. In the beginning, a certain sinful thought appears, an offer of sin with a hint of some sweetness, a promise of pleasure. The Holy Fathers call this “attachment”, that is, that which wishes to join us, to enter our life.
It can be said that a person has no power over the appearance of adjunction, and therefore the stage of the emergence of temptation in itself is still sinless. Likewise, strong emotions that suddenly take possession of a person have every right to arise.
“We cannot forbid birds to fly over our heads, but it is in our full power to forbid them to build a nest on our head, and even more so to hatch chicks there,” wrote one of the church teachers.
2. Fight against thought
Much more important is what a person will do with these emotions and how he will act under their influence. We begin to figure out whether this is definitely a good proposal or whether it is still an invitation to sin, and we argue with it and condemn it — that is, we enter the second stage, the struggle with the thought, and can still end in victory over the thought.
3. Temptation
This stage is a turning point. Carried away by a controversy with a thought, one can imagine oneself as an actor who overcomes this sin, and not notice how this thought will be carried away, a sweet dream of a forbidden situation, savoring possible details …
4. Captivity
Then the last stage will follow — captivity — a strong attraction to attachment, which becomes a passion for a person when he loses control of it. This leads to the final dependence of a person, to the loss of control over his actions, to obsession, when sin itself rules over a person and over his life.
The one who is already at the first stage attentive to temptation acts wiser, because with each subsequent stage the struggle with passion becomes more and more difficult. A modern person usually skips the first stages at lightning speed, finding himself already deeply mired in bad dreams and desires, or doing ugly things that he really does not want to do at all.
How to deal with passions?
The fight against passions must begin with the beloved, that is, the greatest, but it often happens that the awareness of sin and condemnation of it is still not enough to overcome sins. The fact is that each passion, taking root in a person, is associated with many other things that are vital for a person.
A psychologist is able to unravel this tangle. The grace of God supplants passion, and psychological help finds those injuries that this passion served. Often, our addictions are nothing more than a kind of anesthesia, an analgesic that muffles mental pain, never curing it. This pain is sometimes repressed and is commonly referred to as «psychological trauma.»
Especially often a person receives such injuries in childhood, and their consequences are felt in adulthood. The roots of alcohol or drug addiction lie not in bad character or in genes, but in unhealed traumas. With the help of a psychologist, a person can discover in himself those weak points to which the passion that has seized him clings. So, without replacing each other, a priest and a psychologist help a person to embark on the path of spiritual health.