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[Alexandr Korol]

and thoughts from the devil creep in, making you doubt whether it’s even worth doing anymore because no one is buying your work or talking about it. That is pride. It’s the evaluation of who you are and the value of your work. A prideful person wants to be recognized, admired, talked about — they want results. And those who begin to look at their lives and feel discouraged because they have nothing, and want to prove something to someone — that is the temptation of pride. Keep that in mind, because this is one of the most common temptations today. It enslaves people daily and throws them off the path of light.
Next, the final and third temptation of Jesus by the devil — the temptation of faith. The account describes this example: “In the final attempt to tempt Jesus, the Devil showed him all the kingdoms of the world, over which he claimed power, and offered them to him, hoping to disturb his human spirit and sow doubt in his ability to fulfill the mission of saving humanity. By refusing, Jesus shows that he does not acknowledge Satan’s authority over the world, which belongs to God alone and to whom worship is due.” On the question of how all the kingdoms of the world were shown to Christ, Theophylact of Bulgaria writes: “I believe they were not shown in thought, but in a sensory way — placed before his eyes in a phantom, not in the imagination of the Lord.” It’s difficult, of course.
So let’s put it this way — the temptation of faith, if we decode it into our modern language, I think it’s exactly this: when throughout life I see people who live without God — atheists or even Satanists, but mostly atheists — who don’t believe in God, don’t fear God, and have no doubts, no sense of morality or ethics. They boldly — shamelessly — live by arrogance and vanity, and by these means they make money, do whatever they want, completely ignoring the voice of the heart. They trample others, not even stopping to think if they’re causing discomfort or harm. These are greedy, cold, stone-hearted people. And when you look at that, you might start to wonder — well, I could do that too. I could open an online school and disguise it as something legitimate — like IT, for example, as many so-called IT projects are doing today. That’s temptation — that’s greed for money. You might even think, “Why love your homeland? You can move anywhere and speak badly about your own country.” I feel this is directly tied to faith. Why is this a temptation of faith? Who is Satan? What does he offer? He offers you the path of jumping around social media like everyone else, going to trendy resorts, dressing like everyone else, gossiping, being deceitful, indulgent, a sinful person — because that’s what society accepts.