Talk 73: On the Upbringing of Children According to Saints Paisios and Porphyrios - Part 4

Orthodox Talks by Priestmonk Kosmas, Sydney, Australia
www.OrthodoxTalks.com

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It is becoming increasingly common for Orthodox clergymen to send believers with mental health issues, including children, to psychiatrists and psychologists for treatment. Moreover, many clergymen study and use psychology to help those with spiritual or mental health problems. As a result, many are left without healing because Divine Grace has been replaced by the human art of psychology.

In this talk Father Kosmas uses the teachings of the contemporary elders Saints Paisios and Porphyrios to explain how children are not only influenced by seeing the good and bad examples of their parents (something psychology agrees with), but also by the spiritual state of their parents (something psychology cannot comprehend and rejects). Father Kosmas emphasizes that parents can spiritually transmit to their children either their passions and sins or their good habits and virtues.

The following questions are also discussed: what was Saint Paisios’s attitude towards psychiatrists and psychologists? Are Christians allowed to take psychiatric medications? What is meant by “The best inheritance parents can give their children is their own spiritual life”? How do parents spiritually transmit either passions or virtues to their children? Can children be affected by their parents’ viewing of pornography and flirting on social media? Can parents harm their own children by the evil eye? Are children punished for the sins of their parents? How does a parent’s sin of abortion affect his or her other children?

Other points covered in this talk include: an example of how a daughter tormented her parents because of a secret sin they committed; how one’s good or evil thoughts can affect people and even physical objects; how a mother can transmit stress, anxiety and fear to her child without showing what she feels; an explanation of Saint Porphyrios’s teaching that “the sanctity of the parents saves the child”; and four circumstances in which Orthodox Christians are permitted to seek the help of psychiatrists and psychologists.