A family

The family is a biblical phenomenon, its origin was laid in paradise. The family arose when there was still no state, no science, no culture, no art, no stone buildings. And as if continuing this thought, the Monk Paisios Svyatorets says: when the family disappears, everything will disappear - monasticism, priesthood, culture, and science.

The family is an absolutely undemocratic phenomenon. There is no equality within the family. Just as the organs in the body are not equal, so the members of the family are not equivalent to each other. If the sailors organized a meeting and a vote before each washing of the deck, the ship would have sunk without leaving the port. Neither the army, nor the state, nor the ship, nor the enterprise can live in a regime of equality. It is necessary to give commands, it is necessary that they be executed. The family is like that: "To every husband is the head of Christ, to every wife is the head to the husband" (1 Cor. 11: 3).

The family is originally a system of harmonious inequality. And in principle, equality is a damn idea. Saint Nicholas of Serbia writes: people talk about equality when their love disappears. And when there is love, inequality is not noticed. If you are on two legs and help a cripple, he feels good and your heart is warm.

Therefore, the first thing I want to say is that the family is a hierarchical structure, like the whole world. And a man should be the first person in the family. If this is not the case, children turn into domestic idols. The child commands the mother, the mother commands the father, and the man leaves for another woman in a couple of years, when he gets tired of all this.

Archpriest Andrei Tkachev.