How difficult is our approach to God, especially in the case of some of us, when everything - even nature, heredity, and the entire composition of man - builds up a wall between him and God.
The kind of man we most often encounter presents a combination of three traits: (1) pride - faith in his own strength, delight in his own creation; (2) a passionate love of earthly life; and (3) the absence of any sense of sin. How can such men approach God? As they now are, they are hopelessly isolated from God; they do not even feel the need of Him. And this is precisely the kind of personality that is developed in the conditions of modern life, through education, literature and so on. The idea of God is erased from the soul What catastrophes are required, before such a man can be reborn!
+Father Alexander Elchaninov, from The Diary of a Russian Priest, Fragments of a Diary.