At the time we met, my husband was a successful man. With three friends, they organized a company and worked in the field of IT technologies. They ran their business rationally: they didn’t make a splash, and the profits were invested in the purchase of real estate and land.
We got an apartment for our wedding and planned to build a cottage on the plot. Living in my own home has always been my dream! There were no prerequisites for trouble. My husband always read a lot and had a wide range of interests, including religion, philosophy, and esotericism. We have a son. Around this time, the senior founder involved him in the Scientology sect.
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15 Great Books on How to Create Intimate RelationshipsRecruitment of friends was active - Hubbard's books, invitations to meetings, discussion and condemnation of those who were not in the community. People lost everything - themselves, family, property went to the “church”.
Only one managed to escape. Using his example, I realized that the only working way is to physically protect the sectarian from influence: take him to another region, change all the numbers, turn off the Internet and then brainwash him. Unfortunately, I did not have such an opportunity. But other methods did not help.
They convinced my husband that my loved ones needed to be “reasoned” - to bring me, my daughter from my first marriage, and my young son, whom they promised to help (he is a special child), to them.
It was a very difficult period: both physically and mentally. I suffered a mini-stroke, barely regained the mobility of my arms and legs, the stitch after a cesarean section (my son was born very large, in the first days he ended up in intensive care) took 4 months to heal. The husband donated all the property to the “church”. Things were going downhill at the company, and I took on any job.
I fought for my marriage for several years. And when she realized that everything was in vain, she took the most precious thing - the children - and left. We have already divorced remotely. The exact place of residence of the former is unknown. He settled in some closed camp of sectarians; they are very interested in IT specialists. He does not maintain contact with us or with his parents.
I learned a lesson for myself: it’s not worth holding on to a marriage with a sectarian. These people are weak. They leave as if in a pool with their heads, and are convinced that only in the “church” they will be happy. They don't care about those outside the community. I won’t step on such a rake a second time. I look at men very carefully and am cautious. And if among his interests there is something like palmistry, it’s easier for me to pass by. Such life experiences make men wary.
IN adolescence my ex-husband became a drug addict. After an overdose with hard drugs, I was able to “come off it.” But, like most of those who got off the needle, he began to suppress the withdrawal symptoms with alcohol. Traded one high for another.
When we met, he didn’t look like an addict: 24 years old, very wise, kind, harmless, but weak-willed and phlegmatic. He denied his addiction to alcohol for a long time. While intoxicated, he did not harm others (which is rare), but his binges exhausted me emotionally, and a year later I was about to leave.
The prospect of losing my family encouraged my husband to “sew up”, but my joy was in vain. For 2.5 years without alcohol, he searched for himself, because he did not know what it was like to live sober. It turned out that it was difficult, the state when the sea was knee-deep was replaced by a lack of understanding of one’s place in the world, depression, spiritual emptiness, and health problems. My husband implanted a pancreas and lost weight from 94 kg to 74 kg, with a height of 185. A sad sight.
I do not agree with doctors that alcoholism is a disease. This habit is like a beautiful apple that is rotten inside. Sweet dope was invented by people as a means of escaping reality. And I understand that only the desire to live and find oneself in this life can help a person get out of this hole.
Many women get used to the role of mommy, trying to pull, protect, and guide them on the right path, forgetting that in front of them is not a child, but an adult man. And they are not ready to part with their codependent position! While you are an eyesore for an alcoholic, they will use you: harshly, consumeristly disguising it as an illness, problems and other fairy tales that drunks tell so sweetly.
My opinion: you can and should lend a helping hand, but if that hand is “bitten”, no matter how much you love it, you need to turn around and leave. That's what I did.
About a year later, at one of these moments, I noticed my husband’s “glassy” look. He began to behave in an unusual way, began to lie, did not want to eat, and drank a lot of water. Ignoring the internal anxiety, I attributed this condition to fatigue or illness.
About three months later the situation repeated itself. I realized that the addiction was back. In the morning we talked calmly. But when asked directly whether the husband used drugs, he answered in the negative. I was in a fog, looking for the reasons for what happened within myself. After some time, my husband confessed and asked for forgiveness, I saw how ashamed he was.
I couldn’t work normally, I didn’t go anywhere with friends and colleagues. The husband became the center of life. All thoughts were aimed at controlling his life: I checked the phone when he left for work, called to hear that his voice was “normal” and wrote every 30-40 minutes, asking where he was.
Seeing that he himself was unable to cope with drug addiction, I turned to a specialist. Afterwards I talked to my husband, and he went to the recommended rehabilitation center. I attended a course for codependents, this is an integral part of the drug addict recovery program, which teaches loved ones how to build healthy relationships.
I learned a lesson about how I don't want to live my life. My husband went to rehab and remains sober. . I have a wonderful job, friends and hobbies.
My conclusion: If a person is willing to undergo treatment and make the decision to stay sober, addiction can be overcome. But for this it is necessary great job over oneself - both the addict himself and his loved ones.
He was always interested in various esotericism, spiritual practices, teachings and philosophies. Some brochures about search and faith were scattered around the house, and phrases from esoteric audiobooks that were already familiar to her were playing in his headphones. Periodically, he disappeared at meetings of either seekers, or meditators, or some other people incomprehensible to her. She didn’t even tell her friends about his interests right away; she stuttered once and immediately received a puzzled look in response and a diagnosis: “He’s a real sectarian!”
“Why a sectarian right away? – she defended him mentally. “They showed a report on TV about these people, they are quite strange there, they give away apartments, they go to live in their sects. No, he's not like that."
When they met, he immediately told her: “My faith will always come first, and you will come second. Do you accept this? She nodded her head approvingly, because his hobbies seemed interesting and unusual: this is not some kind of football or fishing! He said that what he liked most about her was her quiet and soft voice. This also seemed unusual and mysterious to her.
He always spoke so enthusiastically about some newly found idea that she herself involuntarily began to believe in his words. Sometimes for some reason it even became a little scary and creepy, but he spoke so confidently about the structure of the world, the matrix, God, illusions and other things that were not entirely clear to her, that she felt as if he knew and understood everything - and fear gave way to trust peace.
However, such inspiration never lasted long for him. After some time, he abandoned the idea he found, somehow closed himself off and disappeared whole nights online. In the morning he barely woke up for work, wandered absentmindedly around the apartment, trying to find his keys, his cigarettes, his phone. After he left, she found a cup of unfinished coffee and an open package of headache pills on the table. When she tried to take him somewhere to unwind, he said that he didn’t want anything and that it was a waste of time.
At such moments, she did not understand him at all: well, he was tired of yet another company of believers, so now – is life over? They even quarreled over it. She was indignant that he completely stopped paying attention to her, and he brushed it off that she didn’t understand anything and left in an unknown direction, taking his favorite headphones with him.
She began to seriously worry after he refused a new, higher-paying position. He explained his refusal by saying that he would have to devote too much time to work and would not have time left to engage in his spiritual practices. He didn't even think about her!
She had already forgotten when they last time spent time together. All her attempts to arrange romantic dinner and they failed to impress her husband with new underwear: he either did not notice her at all, or started talking about the meaninglessness of life. She no longer found anything interesting in his conversations. He began to seem more and more alien and distant, she no longer knew whether he loved her. It seems like he’s sitting very close, but it’s as if he’s not here at all.
Recently he has changed a lot: he almost stopped eating, began to smoke more, and did not communicate with friends. He snapped back irritably at any attempts to talk. She even got into his computer and looked at what he was doing on the Internet at night. In her browsing history, she found dozens of different sites about the meaning of life, knowledge of the soul, and other, as it seemed to her, nonsense. She suffered from the lack of his attention and did not understand why he could not live normally. All this only caused anger, and the thought that her husband was really some kind of sectarian haunted her. Is there really no solution to this problem?
No matter how hopeless this situation may seem, there is actually a way out. First you need to understand what pushes a person out of social life into various teachings, esotericism and sects. System-vector psychology of Yuri Burlan explains that everything we do depends on our desires, and identifies 8 groups of innate properties and desires - vectors. Each person is endowed with certain properties that set the direction of his entire life. Depending on this, we develop life values and various aspirations.
It is important for some people to build a career, for others it is important to have strong family, third – find true love. There are also people for whom the most important thing is to understand the meaning of their life. This desire is due to their nature. System-vector psychology says that such a person has a sound vector.
A person with a sound vector is noticeably different from all others. Usually those around them note that such people are the least sociable; they prefer silence and loneliness to any noisy companies. They are a little absent-minded; it seems that, being in their thoughts, they do not notice anything around them. In fact, this is true.
The sound guy is an absolute introvert. Immersed in his thoughts and states, he does not show it at all on the outside. It may seem that he is simply looking at one point, as if he is sleeping with his eyes open. However, at this time, inside him there is a real boiling of experiences that are completely unrelated to the physical world. He is interested in the inner component of the human soul.
The article was written based on training materials “ System-vector psychology»I’ll share my story: I, being married, unexpectedly, unexpectedly fell in love with a sectarian, at first I didn’t know about this hobby of his. It’s not at all common for me to fall in love without memory, I’m a practical person, I’ve always been interested in the material side from a man and on handsome men I reacted calmly without any great sympathy. But then something out of the ordinary happened to me, I rushed to meet him at least at 6 in the morning, at least at 12 at night, while the financial side did not worry me, and he was a beggar, rented a bed in a dorm, I did odd jobs, bought me coffee and chocolates, and 1 flower on March 8th. At first it was funny, for me he was like an unknown animal, some kind of caveman. He joked differently than others, he spoke in literary phrases, it was clear that he was a very well-read person, tall, handsome, did not drink, did not smoke, despite the fact that he lived in a hostel and worked as an electrician, he looked clean and tidy. It didn’t fit in my head that a man of normal appearance, hard-working, without bad habits lonely I tried to get to know him better, asked questions. He said that he lived with his wife for 7 years and she abandoned him, that her mother was more important to her than him, she wanted to have a child with him, but he didn’t give it to her, he said that the relationship was already bad and he didn’t want her She went to stay with her mother and the child, and he paid child support for the rest of his life. It sounded strange to me. Then he lived with a girl with a child, the relationship ended there because of her mother, the mother said it was either him or us. In general, even though he asked me to divorce my husband and live with him, for some reason I couldn’t, it was as if something wouldn’t let me in, he and I often quarreled and didn’t understand each other, when we quarreled, I would shake at night, I would burn out from the inside, I often cried and told myself, if this is my destiny, my person and we love each other, then why am I nervous and constantly crying, because love should be warm and my soul should be good and I shouldn’t cry, I should trust him. And I constantly had doubts about his faith in God, about his love for me, it seemed to me that he would leave me at any moment. I didn’t understand why you couldn’t believe in God and still earn money, I didn’t understand why you had to wander and hitchhike, at someone else’s expense, live in a tent, and not with your own earnings, at least in a three-star hotel. I didn’t understand why he wrote on his blog what had already been written in books by others. I didn’t understand why live in a community when you can live in your own home with your family, I didn’t understand why you need to do something for people, help them, but not visit your mother and not want to maintain family ties. I didn’t understand his mission to save people when there was war. He wanted to build a community in the mountains, he believed that this the only way survival in conditions of devastation and hunger. But at the same time, he does not have money to build a community and this money should be given to him by people who want to be saved. I didn’t understand why live in a community, work hard there for the common good, when I can sit perfectly in my dacha and grow beds in conditions of hunger, and not work hard in the field. I didn’t understand his religion, his passion for meditation, why he needed to go to the astral plane. He told me how you fly somewhere at great speed, I didn’t understand why you should fly somewhere when you still couldn’t fly far beyond your body. When we die, then we will fly. To my questions, I received strange answers that were not logical to me. He said that he was following a difficult path so as not to be reborn in the next life. I didn’t understand where there was a guarantee that if I followed the difficult, beggarly path with him, I would not be born in the next life. In general, during the year of our communication, I began to go crazy, I began to tell my friends, mother, sister about karma, about the harmfulness of meat-eating, about the fact that material assets you don’t need them, you can’t take them with you to another world. Everyone told me that I was talking nonsense. My thoughts were confused, I thought one thing today, and another the next day. Nobody understood me, and I understood that I did not have a definite position. Probably, if I had not been married, I would now be in a sect and would be building a community. But my husband is an atheist, doesn’t believe in anything, eats meat and drinks beer, so I didn’t have the opportunity to completely give up meat and alcohol, too, and I noticed that when I drink, I come to my senses. My friend told me that, don’t talk nonsense, drink vodka, and she told me how in one film the sectarians were about to jump off a cliff, so they were given vodka to drink so that they would come to their senses. My sectarian wanted me to leave my husband and we got married, and my mother told me: remember my words - you will give him all the money, sell the car and he will take this stuff to another country, and you will be left with nothing, without everything and without a husband. I didn’t really believe my mother, she had never seen him, but doubts were deposited in my head. And then the moment came when the husband found out about his lover and said not to come home anymore. The sectarian and I went to my sister’s apartment, into the bare walls of a new building, we wanted to do renovations and live there, we had very little money saved and he was not going to invest his money in my renovation. I gave him money, went to work, and he used it to buy the cheapest sockets and boards from which he was going to make a bed. I tried to reassure myself and him that this was all temporary, we’d do everything little by little, I’d go to work part-time. And at that moment, he directly shouted: then go get a part-time job. To be honest, I was taken aback. Then he told me that I urgently needed to sell my car and buy it cheaper, otherwise we would be doing repairs for about 5 years. He called my car worth one and a half million a trachoma, my seventh iPhone is a shit phone. I remembered my mother’s words that he would force me to sell everything and leave with the money. He did things that were incomprehensible to me, I didn’t understand why he would knock up a bed when he could buy a ready-made one even for 5,000 rubles. He hung ropes all over the room and dried the washed things, and he washed them laundry soap in a bucket, since there is no bath or washing machine we didn’t have one, he walked on the concrete floor barefoot, and washed his feet in a bucket every five minutes so as not to stain the mattress on which we slept. Then he freaked out that concrete walls were not his, it was India. In general, we lived in concrete walls for three days. I realized that I was not happy with him in poverty, I imagined that I would no longer eat red fish and caviar, that I would not drink a glass of wine, instead of a jeep I would drive an ocean, that I would sleep on boards, and then he he will take me to beggarly India and abandon me in the mountains if I say a word against him. And in general, it turned out that we didn’t have anything in common to talk about, what we would do together, where we should go together, the community is not mine, God is different from me, he didn’t want children. In general, I ran away from him back to my husband. With my husband, I at least know what to do, we have a dacha, there are my beloved neighbors, friends, mother, there are holidays. But with a sectarian I would have nothing. Then I began to be drawn to him again, it was as if he had hypnotized me, I began to think, maybe I just broke down in such conditions, could not stand the difficulties. My husband lost his temper once again, remembered the betrayal, and kicked me out. I again tried to live with a sectarian, I convinced myself that this really meant fate and God wanted me to save people. This time we did not go to the concrete walls, but went to the hotel. I didn’t like that I paid for the hotel; the sectarian said that he would give me the money later. There was a creaky bed in the hotel, a drunken girl was screaming outside the window all night, in general we didn’t get enough sleep, but we had to go to work, I endured all the hardships as best I could, but the sectarian was capricious that everything was not to his taste, the pillow was not right for him, the bed creaked as if he had been sleeping on royal feather beds all his life. And I noticed that as soon as he felt that I was his, and not someone else’s wife, he began to order me, said do what I say and began to freak out, raise his voice. I ran away to my husband again once again. But still, the thought couldn’t leave me that maybe the sectarian didn’t want anything bad, he was just a little crazy. I tried to believe that he could predict something, that he could heal people, that he could be so sensitive, hate lies and feel them. He told me that my husband was cheating on me, that he did not love me, but was simply using my body for supporting me. But the last straw was that he said that I was a slut, when I asked why, he said that I was sleeping with my foreman friend. And I realized that in front of me was a sick person who imagined himself to be clairvoyant. I stopped all communication with him. And my husband cried bitterly that he loved me very much and it was never in his mind to cheat on me. And he tried for me, did not spare anything for me. And at the same time he did not command to do what he said. I read some forums about meditation, people wrote that they picked up some entity in the astral plane and only the church cured it. Even at the beginning of our acquaintance, I had a dream about a beautiful demon. Now I think that the angels tried to save me, they didn’t let me see the sectarian, which made me constantly shake at night and was scary to leave my husband, and even in a situation where my husband didn’t want to accept me again, I prayed to God, Jesus, Holy Mother of God, all the saints. And my husband accepted me. Now I know for sure that God exists.
I am 44 years old, I have 2 children (1 year and 5.5 years old) and my husband left a month ago, leaving me without money, with utility debts (for which he has not paid for a year). The excuse for leaving was that he was tired of scandals and it would be better for the children. 4 years ago he became interested in esotericism, sat for hours in meditation and prayer, did not actually sleep at night, went to bed in the morning, stopped eating meat, grew his hair, put on a bunch of bracelets and pendants, supposedly for “protection”, began going to trainings where running on burning coals and glass. And he began to work and earn less and less, citing the crisis. A year ago I sold a practically new car, and within a few months there was no money. Now he insists on selling the apartment that I took out as a mortgage (but it was registered as joint ownership), and my parents helped pay off the loan ahead of schedule, and I, in his opinion, should go with the children 1000 km away to my parents. For a year while I'm in maternity leave, he only bought a minimum of products and gave me a couple of thousand a month, all other expenses were at my expense. Didn’t pay enough attention to me and the children, nothing since pregnancy intimate life(allegedly, even when I sleep, I take away his energy, if I expressed any complaints to him before going to bed), I did not help around the house (it was a coincidence, but some of the household appliances in the house broke down - a vacuum cleaner, the washing machine, the refrigerator are leaking, the taps are running, mice). And in such chaos, I was left alone with two small children, trying to work from home, my parents were far away. Tell me why I gave birth to a second one. It wasn’t all that depressing yet, I hoped that the birth of a second child would mobilize him, but it so happened that with the beginning of his pregnancy, his “Teacher” moved to Moscow from Altai, and he began to communicate with her much more often (nothing personal, I think, to the woman under 60 and she got married). By the way, he was always looking for himself, often changed jobs, went to trainings, but before the birth of his first child, he finally stayed at work, and 7 years after we started living together, we got married and finally decided to have a child. For a long time I behaved like an ostrich with its head in the sand (I saved myself by working until I went on maternity leave, and now working a little from home helps). My feelings for him have died, but I feel sorry for the children, although now he is no longer interested in them, he will come one weekend for a couple of hours, and for a week there is no hearing, no spirit, and no material support. I probably should fight for him for the sake of the children (well, at least in the future, so that he doesn’t lead them astray), because he’s practically in a sect, but I have neither the strength nor the desire. How does it all look from the outside?
Julia, Moscow, 44 years old / 05.24.17
Julia, from the outside it looks like you don’t need a women’s forum or reviews in the “Two Opinions” section, but a divorce lawyer. You need to think about how to recapture the apartment from the encroachments of your husband, who is quietly going crazy, had nothing to do with paying the mortgage, and is now a direct threat to you and the children, since he can do something with his share of the apartment at any time, although I would like to give it to the “Teacher”. In my opinion, you need to go and talk to a lawyer and find out all your weak points in case real divorce. And at the same time figure out how to collect child support from him. As long as you are formally married, he doesn't owe you anything. And may not support children at all. Divorce and alimony will oblige him to both work and pay. As for the struggle for a husband for the sake of the children, I think that not every dad is needed by children. You yourself wrote “he’s practically in a sect,” so think about what will happen if the children continue to communicate with such a dad. But, I repeat, all these are questions for lawyers, and not for women’s circles.
Julia, in my opinion, you should break up as soon as possible. However, first, without wasting time, contact a lawyer, explain the situation and start preparing for a divorce. Collect documents, evidence and everything they tell you to get the most out of the situation for yourself and your children. And no pity. You must take complete control of everything you can. Only then, if the desire arises, can you begin to sympathize ex-husband. As for the fight for the father for the sake of the children, this is complete nonsense. Your husband has already abandoned you, and quite deliberately. And if so, it means he doesn’t need either children or you, and in any case, he will never become a loving, caring dad. Well, what's the point of fighting for such a person? What can he teach? What can you give to kids if you only want to meditate and think about lofty things? Alas, but life together with this person will only bring constant tension, a bunch of damaged nerves and lost finances. So gather your strength, consult with a lawyer and get a divorce before the apartment and children are lost to the sect along with the car.
A resident of the village of Novosadovoye in the Belgorod region, former test pilot Eduard Sergeevich Kuznetsov, his wife became an adherent of the Jehovah's Witnesses Church 15 years ago. At that time, the family lived in Kharkov, where there are a lot of similar organizations. The woman was brought to the Jehovah's Witnesses by her own sister.
Lyudmila Kuznetsova’s sister spoke enthusiastically about the pastors’ sermons and their high moral qualities and very often told her relative that her life had acquired a new meaning. She tried to do all this while her sister’s husband was not at home. Lyudmila, apparently, suffered from a lack of communication with her husband, who spent a lot of time at work, and reached out to her sister and her fellow believers
Having become members of the sect, the sisters spent all their free time walking the streets preaching, disappearing from meetings, and gradually became completely alienated from their families.
The husband of the newly minted Jehovah's Witness at first did not know what she was doing, and when Lyudmila admitted that she attended meetings of the Jehovah's Witness community, he was more or less loyal to his wife's hobby. Well, then, realizing that such a “hobby” would not lead to good, he began to make attempts to protect his wife from communicating with brothers in faith. It was precisely in order to tear the woman out of the circle of old acquaintances that the family moved to Omsk, but even there Lyudmila found fellow believers.
Eduard Kuznetsov in front of the house he now shares with his ex-wife
Now there’s nothing you can do to get your wife out of there. Perhaps I missed it; my wife boasts that she joined the sect five years before I found out about it, and successfully hid her trips to meetings. Most likely, this happened because flying work requires a lot of effort and time, and despite all these worries, I did not immediately notice changes in Lyudmila’s behavior,” says Eduard Sergeevich.
When Eduard Kuznetsov retired, he and his family moved to the village of Novosadovoye near Belgorod. Here it was also not difficult for his wife to find a community of Jehovah's Witnesses.
Sectarians began to periodically visit Eduard Kuznetsov’s house. His wife received dear guests, despite the dissatisfaction of her husband, who was irritated by the constant talk “about the true faith.” Jehovah's Witnesses began to come to their home more often than their closest relatives. No matter what was discussed in conversations with preachers, the conversation always returned to the need to join their organization.
Jehovah's Witness, who often visited us, said that I was not one of those people who could be persuaded. I flew myself and didn’t see anyone in the sky. I am an atheist and was a communist at one time,” says Eduard Sergeevich.
His wife also diligently insisted that Eduard Sergeevich repent and “accept God into his heart” and was indignant after his categorical refusals. She began to devote even less time to her husband, and how could it be otherwise, when twice a week she had to attend meetings, and the rest of the time wander around the courtyards and streets and invite passers-by to the so-called Kingdom Hall.
As a result, unable to withstand the constant scandals, sidelong glances from his wife and pressure from her Jehovah’s guests imposing their beliefs on him, Eduard Sergeevich decided to get a divorce. But after the divorce, his life became completely unbearable.
I am being driven out of the house. ex-wife She constantly quarrels over the division of property, and her co-religionists are constantly milling about in the house. Most of the time I live in a rented apartment in Kharkov. One day I arrived home and saw one of the Jehovah’s Wife and his wife lying on the bed in the bedroom. The guest came out to meet me in his shorts and with an insolent look declared that he would not go anywhere and would live here. It was possible to drive out the “occupiers” only with the help of the police! - Eduard Sergeevich is indignant.
Grapes planted with my own hands
But the main thing is what he’s worried about elderly man, this is not jointly acquired property, which they now share through the court, but their beloved children and grandchildren, whom the Jehovah’s Witness grandmother recruited into the sect.
Now the only way out is to exchange the house and live separately. I won’t be able to save my wife, but I don’t know what to do with my children and grandchildren now,” says the clearly confused former pilot.
Jehovah's Witnesses, in turn, claim that the collapse of the Kuznetsov family has nothing to do with their religious organization. A member of the steering committee for the management of the center of Jehovah's Witnesses of Russia, Yaroslav Sivulsky, said that the situation that happened in the Kuznetsov family is their family problems that are not related to religion, and in general the families of the members of their religious organization are very strong and happy.
Yes, he is right, families in which all relatives are sectarians rarely break up, since they have one common main interest in life. Plus, there is the fear of rejection,” says Father Nikolai, rector of the Church of St. Feodor from the city of Stary Oskol, author of a book about the activities of Jehovah’s Witnesses. - If a sectarian husband leaves his wife, then other members of the sect will cease to maintain relations with him, and he remains completely alone, since sectarians communicate mainly only with their own. In the case when only one spouse is a member of the sect, they begin to put pressure on the other, forcing him to attend meetings. If he does not give in to persuasion, then the spouse who is in the sect begins to treat the “atheist” very coolly, considering him a lost sheep.
If one of your loved ones has joined a sect, then there is no need to attack him with shouts and demands that he immediately stop going there or make fun of him and say that he is doing some kind of nonsense, - continues Father Nikolai - The point is that your loved one has experienced a certain experience of religious renewal, experienced feelings that he has never had before. The main mistake of relatives is that they start saying that this is all stupidity, nonsense, you are a zombie, stop talking about religion, your brain is in the wrong place. Like, go back to beer and football. And he responded, “My brains are in the right place, I discovered the truth.” Attempts to return a person to the world from which he ran away will be fruitless; he will only withdraw into himself, seeing that you do not want to understand him.
In these cases, you need to tell your loved one that it is great that he turned to faith and, for example, stopped drinking, smoking, and swearing. But at the same time, it is necessary to talk about the fact that this sect is known for very sad cases, and talk about the negative consequences of visiting such establishments. This must be done extremely calmly, without shouting and not looking at your loved one as if they were crazy. Do not insult under any circumstances by calling him a sectarian or using other offensive words. Start the conversation with the following words: “Perhaps you are mistaken? How can you entrust your soul to people and an organization about which you know almost nothing?”
As for the arguments specifically against Jehovah's Witnesses, here it is necessary to point out obvious inconsistencies in their teaching. Why, for example, do they claim that their teaching is the most correct? Christ lived 2000 years ago and at the same time his apostles created a church that still exists today, and Jehovah's Witnesses claim that their teaching is true, despite the fact that it was created at the end of the 19th century in America, but those apostles who learned the truth 2000 years ago from Christ himself they created the church, you see, they made a mistake.
On the territory of the Belgorod region, there is a law on missionary activity, according to which missionaries can talk with Belgorod residents on religious topics and invite them to meetings only “in religious buildings and in the territories associated with them and in dwellings with the permission of their inhabitants.” But preaching, for example, on the street or in a park must be previously agreed with the authorities. That is, before telling people about your religion, you need to submit an application to the administration and go out to preach only after this application is signed. Otherwise, the preacher faces a fine of five hundred to two thousand rubles.
In the first half of 2013 alone, we drew up 73 reports on representatives of various religious movements illegally preaching in the region,” says Belgorod police officer Valery Fedosov, senior commissioner of the group for countering religious extremism. - Therefore, sectarians are afraid to openly conduct their propaganda on the street. In other areas, it is impossible to prosecute someone for preaching on the streets, well, unless they distribute literature recognized as extremist. Therefore, residents of these regions need to submit a legislative initiative to regional legislative bodies and seek the adoption of a similar law.
The regional law on missionary activity, which allows law enforcement officers to at least somehow influence the “messengers of God,” has borne fruit - extremely intrusive preachers are becoming less and less common on the streets of Belgorod and the region. But it is not possible to completely get rid of the negative influence of sects.
There are several reasons for this. Firstly, large number totalitarian sects in neighboring states, where such organizations are more than loyal. Thus, in the eastern part of Russia there are “saviors of humanity” from Korea and Kazakhstan, and Ukrainian preachers are traveling to the southwest of our country. In Kharkov, neighboring Belgorod, there are several largest training centers for representatives of various religious organizations. Missionaries from American sects, raised on Ukrainian soil, come to us after a course of training and create legal and illegal sectarian communities in Russia. It is quite difficult for Belgorod law enforcement officers to deal with such an influx of foreign religious figures.
Tatiana Grigorieva
