So, I’m listening to “It’s Fun to Smoke Marijuana” on Freakonomics, a podcast from National Public Radio and I really needed to co to confession. Not in a little way, mind you, but a big way. The episode was all about Evil Imaginations. I’ve no idea what it is in Slavonic or Greek, in Russian it’s злые фантазии and it something like злые фантазии that Father Victor (Memory Eternal!) said to me when I confessed that: I imainge I know what you’re thinking and then I judge for that imagination. “We have a prayer about that. It’s called “злые фантазии, evil imaginations.”
Every vespers we pray that God will protect us form “Evil Imaginations”.
I’m amazed how often I fall into this: the assumption that I know what you’re thinking, the assumption that I won’t like what you’re thinking. The NPR story calls bullshit on my pretensions: they are based solely on pride. I assume I’m more important than I really am and there we find the evil one’s intervention. Our human pride allows us to be tricked into thinking we’re the center of the universe and, as that progresses, the anyone in the second or third person is a threat.
Doxos 