Archpriest Alexander Berezovsky, cleric of the Church of the Annunciation in Petrovsky Park, Moscow:
We need to guide this dialogue in such a way that the atheist steps down from his position and listens to the words of God, which the Lord described as the words of life. The goal is to help him reconsider his principles and values, and turn his face toward God. After all, an atheist is simply someone who has turned his back on God. It does not mean God does not exist. When someone does not want to notice something, he turns away and says, “I see nothing, I hear nothing,” showing that he just isn’t interested. We must try to conduct the conversation so that he develops an interest in eternal life and God’s coming into the world. How to achieve this depends entirely on the person we are speaking with—his worldview and the reasons behind his atheism. It could be due to his upbringing, or perhaps a deep resentment toward God over a past tragedy that he cannot forgive, choosing instead to express his disagreement with the Creator this way.
Archpriest Alexander Berezovsky Changing someone’s mind is incredibly difficult. Instead, we can help him question his materialistic worldview by asking a few simple questions: “What are you planning to do tomorrow? Next month? Next year? In ten years? When you grow old? When you die? And what comes next?” Because if there is nothing after this life, everything loses its meaning. Since people always have goals for the future, the future is an excellent topic to discuss with an atheist. Talk about the future and how a materialistic outlook actually helps him in life. “Do you feel completely omnipotent? Or do you feel your own limitations, your inability to overcome, change, or understand certain things?”
It is always best to build a dialogue around questions rather than assertions. This allows the person to ponder things he has never considered before—things he previously found either boring or obvious—and to look at them from a completely fresh perspective. This way, we can gently guide him to realize that life is not limited to our earthly existence, but continues into eternity. And if it does continue into eternity, we can then talk about what awaits us there and what our eternal state depends on.
This conversation might take more than one session and more than a single day. It is better not to rush everything at once. Sometimes people come to confession because someone else has brought them. Some will even say, “Well, I’m kind of a materialist.” But the fact that he came means he responded to an invitation or advice to go to church, approach a priest, and discuss certain things. It is best to give him just enough food for thought. He won’t absorb much all at once, but if we keep repeating ourselves, he will lose interest. That is why we need to guide him along this path very carefully and in well-measured doses—asking questions and encouraging him to think things over.
Sometimes our interlocutor immediately states that he does not believe in the afterlife. We can try to explain that the afterlife exists if only because people acquire certain qualities and knowledge that cannot fully unfold in this earthly life and clearly demand a continuation. Over the course of life, people grow physically weaker and age, yet they acquire wisdom that can no longer be contained in their sometimes frail bodies—wisdom that goes beyond our earthly existence. We can talk about this wisdom as well, and depending on the answers, many topics can be raised. Any dialogue is unpredictable: what the person will answer, how he will react to a particular question, or whether he will want to continue the conversation. Some say exactly that: “I’ll think about it. May I come again?” And they do come back. Sometimes not right away, sometimes after a long time, but the person returns changed.
It is crucial to give him a chance to look at life events differently than he is used to. People often fall into conventional thinking—they hear something somewhere, accept it as truth, and assume that is just the way it is, never trying to step forward or look at it from another angle. We need to help our interlocutor rise above what he has already gathered, break out of his routine, and see things from a new perspective. But again, this conversation depends entirely on the person’s interests. It helps to ask about him to get to know him a little. What do you live for? What are you interested in? Besides work, what excites you in life? How do you feel about family life? Do you have children? How are things going in your family? What about your parents’ relationship—how much of an authority are they to you? What were your interests back in your youth, when you were in school? Who did you want to become? And who did you actually become? What stopped you from achieving your dream?
We need to talk with him a little bit about his life path. And into this conversation we can weave some thoughts about God and His work in the life of every person. After all, God works in subtle ways. A person needs to mature and grow before he can begin to see God’s hand in his life. But for now, he can just look back at those moments in life that feel like a miracle—things that cannot be explained from a materialist point of view.
In reality, even those who claim to be materialists experience miracles. In public, a person might act one way—loudly declaring that he rejects, disbelieves, doesn’t know, and doesn’t want it. Yet, in a private conversation, his response to these very things can be entirely different. Publicly defending a stance is one thing; the soul is another. Every human soul seeks God, because it was created by God, and because without Him it is incomplete and suffers. Feelings of depression, despondency, and despair are simply the state of a soul searching for God. Joy and peace, however, fill the soul the moment it finds Him.
What I am getting at is that this conversation cannot be scripted. It is not an instructor’s manual where you just sit down with someone for an hour or an hour and a half, explain everything, and your listener takes it all in and leaves a changed person. Faith is a very subtle and delicate matter. You cannot force it. For instance, we should not just start shaming someone for his ignorance, saying things like, “You’ve read so many books, but you’ve never even picked up the Gospel...” He will just leave offended and will never want to meet again. We need to talk to him in a way that sparks an interest in a relationship with God. There are still many things he doesn’t understand or accept, and much might sound strange to him. But at least he is developing some interest in this subject.
I would put it this way: first, we need to spark an interest in God and human purpose in this life. Many aspects of ourselves lie dormant, and that curiosity needs to be awakened. After that, we have to assess how ready the person is to respond.
We know, for example, that when the apostles entered the pagan environment, they gained followers from their very first sermon. Some believed in Christ from the very first words, but many resisted, and the apostles had to return to confirm them and strengthen them in the faith. For even accepting Christ with the mind does not yet mean beginning to live by His commandments. Many accept Him intellectually but continue their old way of life. And if a person is not strengthened in the faith and does not begin to change his life, that old life pulls him back to his former way of thinking. Therefore, it is crucial that the process of communication with a materialist is not interrupted. However, it must be very delicate and cautious: not to harm, not to spoil things, not to frighten, not to push away, and by no means to cause offense.
Sometimes a believer finds statements from non-believers hurtful; they attack the faith, Christ, or the Church, and start criticizing them—usually with stock phrases. They vent all their negativity, and it’s very superficial: “The Church is a business,” “Religion is a way to trick people,” and so on. But then again, we have to start a conversation: “You’re attacking God—how has He hurt you? When did He deceive you? When did He rob you? When did He harm you? What is God guilty of? Let’s look at your life specifically. Were you sick? Yes, you were. And then you got better? You got better. Do you think that was just the effect of medicine? You can see that for the exact same illness, the exact same medicine works differently. If medicine were a panacea for disease, then every time we took it, we should be guaranteed to recover. Yet sometimes you take medicine and it helps; the next time it doesn’t help. That means the medicine, the doctor, or the procedure alone isn’t enough. It means something else is needed on top of that…” This is a vast subject, and we have to draw our interlocutor into it by inviting him to think.
And there is no need to speak to young people during their period of negativity toward faith and the Church. We must pray for them earnestly, because a certain choice has already been made for them, but not by them. The devil has lured them away with the material values of this life, and they have switched their focus to this purely external, bodily, and material sphere. Divine intervention is needed here. Arguments and exhortations are not enough, because such people, as a rule, run away from that conversation.
The most receptive listener is the one who comes to us on his own. He may know nothing, and he might have his own arguments; but since he has already come, we can engage in a dialogue with him. Running after someone, grabbing him by the arm, and trying to force something on him is completely useless. We will only encounter rudeness or outright blasphemy. Why provoke someone into blasphemy? Sometimes the Lord leaves a person to his own devices so that he can taste all the “delights” of such a life.
As you may recall, in the Parable of the Prodigal Son, the younger son’s desire to leave his father’s house did not develop without reason; it was based on something. Although the parable does not explicitly say so, there was clearly a sense of dissatisfaction with his parents, the rules in his father’s house, and his inability to satisfy his own desires. Indeed, what did the younger son do once he received his inheritance and left home? He squandered his wealth in wild living. This was what he wanted, but it was impossible in his father’s house. Yet his father did not try to persuade him otherwise or explain anything. He had to wait until the son, as the parable puts it, came to himself (Lk. 15:17). Having become destitute, starving, and reduced to feeding pigs, he finally came to his senses and decided to return. Only then did the opportunity for a relationship with his father arise. The father did not go after him to that distant country, even though he knew where his son was. He waited for the moment when this reunion would become possible.
The Parable of the Prodigal Son
The Lord waits, but He acts. He is not merely waiting; He is always acting. God always works, because without God’s work, this world cannot exist. He acts through conscience, through life circumstances, through encounters, and reflections; there are so many different actions of God. And so, step by step, a person comes to his senses. Sometimes many years pass before he comes to his senses and once again longs for communion with the Heavenly Father. This return will be fraught with doubts, hesitations, and perhaps shame for what has been done. At this point, we must support the person, help him, not turn him away, and extend a helping hand so that he can pull himself out of the state he has fallen into.
There are no better words than those of the Gospel. Therefore, a priest must naturally speak from the Gospel, for the Lord Himself gave us these Divine words that bring a person from death to life. And we must be patient with human weakness. I always try to meet people inside the church. Why? So that they can cross the threshold of the church, so that they can step inside. Of course, we can meet on the street, sit on a bench, or talk in a park. But one should speak of God in the house of God. I realized this long ago—it is best for a person to come to the church, cross its threshold, step inside, breathe in the air that fills it, and there, surrounded by holy icons, share his troubles and whatever brought him there.
The main argument in such a conversation is hard to single out, because everything depends on how someone hears, on his ability to listen. Remember what the Lord says: He that hath ears to hear, let him hear (Mt. 11:15). And we know that among the multitude of people surrounding Christ, few actually heard, and even fewer understood what they heard. Even the disciples would sometimes ask the Lord about seemingly simple things, “Lord, explain the parable to us.” Here, everything is deeply individual. It is like a campfire—sometimes it is barely smoldering, and it is important to blow on it gently and add a couple of dry blades of grass so that it doesn’t go out. And later, once that little spark of faith becomes noticeable, we can start throwing in twigs and branches to make the fire grow.
The main focus, of course, is the theme of God’s love for humanity. Because, as a result of our conversation, we should ultimately transition to this topic: that God is not the cause of human suffering, but, on the contrary, the Source of life itself, as well as happiness, goodness, peace, and everything that brings the greatest joy to people. God is the Source of all of this. And without Him, attaining any of this is impossible. What we sometimes perceive as joy in life is very fleeting and unstable. It is merely a surrogate for joy, not the real thing. It is something that exists on the surface of our lives but does not penetrate the depths. But God, Who penetrates the depths of our hearts, brings true joy into them, teaching us what real human life truly means.
