A sign of the Mind of Christ

Three men are standing on a street corner. Before their eyes, a child is run over and killed by a car. The first man curses and bitterly complains, “How could a just God allow such a thing to happen? There is no God!” This man possesses the lowest kind of knowledge: he measures all things according to his own limited understanding and emotions, outside of which he accepts no authority.

The second man, less anguished perhaps, grumbles, “I don't understand how God can allow such things to happen; it makes no sense. It's not fair!” This man's reasoning already shows signs of change in that he can at least admit that he does not understand God's ways. He accepts that God somehow allowed this to happen, but he still judges what he has seen by his own values.

The third man crosses himself and, while experiencing a natural human sorrow, he is at peace within himself. His faith allows him to accept the providence of God as did the Righteous Job when he confessed, “The Lord gives and the Lord takes away, blessed be the Name of the Lord.” This man expresses a “believing thought,” for his understanding has ascended to the level where it is possible to see that all things happen according to God's will, even though we do not understand His will.

This third man will be thought stupid and insensitive, full of “blind faith.” The other two will not understand him and will taunt him. However, he can understand them and why they react to him negatively. This is one of the signs of an Orthodox philosophy: the greater understanding can contain that which is lower, but the lesser knowledge is incapable of comprehending the greater. The first two men will not have compassion on the third for his supposed insensitivity, but he will have compassion on them because he realizes that they are locked into a world of limited understanding. He can also see how much their blindness causes them to suffer.

— Fr Ambrose Young,

A Man Is His Faith: Ivan Kireyevsky and Orthodox Christianity