According to orthodox teaching, the customs offices are spiritual trials that the soul undergoes after death, not in the form of "tax collectors," but as examinations of the passions and sins committed in life.
🔹 The Holy Fathers of the Church, such as St. John of Damascus, Saint Macarius of Egypt, Saint Ignatius Brianchaninov and others, refer to the tolls as a universal experience of every soul.
That is, all people go through them, regardless of their religion, because everyone will stand before God.
🔹 However, there is one difference that should be noted:
Orthodox believers pass through the tollgate under the protection of the Angels, the Saints, and the Grace of the Holy Mysteries, while those of other peoples and religions, who have not participated in Orthodox grace, are judged according to their conscience, as the Apostle Paul writes:
"When Gentiles, who do not have the Law, do by nature what the Law requires, they are a law to themselves..."
(Romans 2:14)
📜 In other words: – Orthodox Christians are judged according to the light they received – the Truth of Christ. – Non-Orthodox Christians are judged according to their conscience and the degree to which they lived with justice and love, according to what they knew.
Nevertheless, the spiritual experience of death—the separation of the soul and its encounter with spiritual beings—is
global.
Thus, customs are better understood as a symbolic way of describing this spiritual examination, rather than as an exclusive "ritual" of the Orthodox Church alone.
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