If you tell this to anyone they will immediately say, 'What a piece of
nonsense! If you don't praise your child he won't be able to do his
schoolwork or anything...' But that happens because that's what we're
like, and we have made our children the same. In other words, we have
strayed from the truth. Egotism evicted man from Paradise; it is a
great evil. Adam and Eve were simple and humble; that's why they lived
in Paradise. They didn't have egotism. They did, however, have the
'primal nature,' as we call it in theological language. When we say
'primal nature' we mean the gifts of grace that God bestowed on man in
the beginning when He created him, namely, life, immortality,
consciousness, freedom of will, love, humility, etc. Through flattery,
however, the devil managed to delude them. They became filled with
egotism. The natural state of man as created by God, however, is
humility. Egotism, on the contrary, is something unnatural, an illness
and contrary to nature.

When we, with our laudations, create this 'superego' in the child, we
inflate its egotism and we do it great harm. We make the child more
susceptible to demonic influence. And so, as we bring it up, we
steadily distance it from the values of life. Don't you believe that
this is the reason why children go astray and people rebel? It is the
egotism that their parents have implanted in them from an early age.
The devil is the great egotist, the great Lucifer. In other words, we
live with Lucifer inside us, with the devil. We don't live with
humility. Humility is from God; it is something essential for the
human soul. It is something organic. And if it is missing, it is as if
the heart were missing from the human organism. The heart gives life
to the body and humility gives life to the soul. With egotism a person
is given over to the part of the evil spirit, that is, he develops
with the evil spirit and not with the good spirit.

This is what the devil has succeeded in achieving. He has turned the
earth into a labyrinth so that we are unable to come to an
understanding with one another. What has happened to us without our
realizing it? Do you see how we have been led astray? We have turned
our world and our age into one large psychiatric hospital! And we
don't understand what's gone wrong. We all ask, 'What's become of us,
where are we going, why have our children taken off, why have they
left their homes, why have they resigned from life, why have they
given up their studies? Why is all this happening?' The devil has
succeeded in concealing himself and in making people use other names.
Doctors and psychologists often say when someone is tormented, 'Ah,
this person has a neurosis or is suffering from anxiety.' They don't
accept that the devil is inciting and arousing egotism in the person.
But yet the devil exists and is the spirit of evil. If we say he
doesn't exist, it is as if we are rejecting the Gospel that speaks of
him. He is our enemy, our adversary in life, the contrary of Christ,
which is why he is called the Anti-Christ. Christ came to earth to
release us from the devil and to grant us salvation.


Wounded by love.

By Elder Porphyrios (Greek Orthodox).

Published by Denise Harvey (email: denise@teledomenet.gr)

ISBN 960-7201-19-1