an emerging view of sin
"The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between political parties either - but right through every human heart."
~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Gulag Archipelago
posted by Mike Clawson at 3:38 PM
CGGC in an Emerging World
The world is changing rapidly. Postmodern thinking is increasing in the west and the East is becoming part of the Global community. Many in the Churches of God General Conference are interested in what church will look like as fresh expressions in the 21st century. This blog has been encouraged by the CGGC but in no way reflects the official thinking of the denomination. It is a place for free flow of thought and conversation.
Friday, October 06, 2006
~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Gulag Archipelago
7 Comments:
Wow, so quick to jump to the worst possible interpretation...
All I meant was that we shouldn't be so quick to assign labels like "sacred" and "secular", "Christian" and "non-Christian", "us" vs. "them" to people and things around us. My experience growing up was that the whole world was divided up into the good guys, i.e. us Bible-believing Christians, and everyone else, the non-believers, the "bad guys".
Now I'm ashamed of my former arrogance. I failed to see the evil that lived within my own heart. I failed to see none of us are perfect, and none of us are wholly evil either. We are all of us mixtures of both good and evil.
I also thought this quote was especially relevant given the recent Mark Foly/Dennis Hastert scandal. Rather than labeling one political party as the defenders of "morality" and "family values", perhaps this scandal will wake us up to the fact that no group has a corner on those kinds of things.
-Mike
"My reading of Solzhenitsyn is limited to "One Day In The Life of Ivan Denisovich" and I'm not familiar with this work or the context of the quote."
Neither am I. I just liked the quote
"I agree it is not good to ascribe automatic labels to groups or people, but I don't believe that truth or goodness are relative, either."
Well good. Like I said, my purpose for the quote had nothing to do with relativity at all anyway, so it's really a moot point.
Honestly, I'm a little confused as to how that meaning could be read into it in the first place. I don't see it in there at all. Maybe I'm missing something.
Sorry for the confusion,
-Mike
It means essentially the same thing Paul says in Romans 7 - that we all struggle with sin and goodness within our own souls.
The application then is that we shouldn't be so quick to label whole groups of people as "good" or "evil" depending merely on whether or not we happen to agree with their beliefs or their politics.
In my earlier life the message I received from conservative evangelicalism was that there was good people, i.e. Christians, and sinners, i.e. the World. Sometimes the categories changed (e.g. conservatives vs. liberals, Americans vs. Communists, Republicans vs. Democrats, Protestants vs. Catholics, etc.) but the assumption was always the same: there is "us" and there is "them", and we are "good" while they are "bad" (or we are "right" while they are "wrong").
But as I started to shed these kind of interpretive filters and open my eyes to reality, I noticed that very often the people that belonged to "us" were not exceptionally good, nor were they always right. And I also noticed that the people who belonged to "them" were sometimes good and were sometimes right. And then I noticed that I myself am not always good or right. There seems to be a pretty even mixture of good and evil, right and wrong, in all of us.
So I guess the point of the quote is that none of us should be so quick to label and categorize and judge. Let's worry about the plank in our own eyes first.
I don't think I am especially bright, though my parents did call me son, but I don't see how Solzhenitsyn's quote could be so difficult to understand. It is a restatement of Rom. 3 "All have sinned...".
I recommend anything by Solzhenitsyn. Though the specific system he lived in has now ended another one will arise that will look and act just the same.
The Gulag was the Soviet prison system in which A.S. spent many years. This book tells of his experience navigating the waters between cells.
Pardon me if I spoke in a way that seemed depreciatory in my comment of yesterday. I guess it is the nature of language that it is often interpreted in different ways by different people.
But I agree with Mike that the worst possible interpretation was given to this statement.
"If the statement means what we suspect...."
Is it possible that our interpretation of words is colored by who spoke them or, in this case, by our view of the one who quoted them?
Good question viexloup... as a friend of mine recently asked me in reference to the reaction here to the quote: "If somebody not identified with emergent used that quote, would it have caused the same reaction?"
Yeah, it's no problem Amy. Don't worry so much about it. Feel free to contineu to ask for clarification on stuff like this.
George, if you seem to sense some guardedness from me towards you, then you're right on the money. This is not the first time that you've read into my words negative assumptions that were not there (for instance, your response to my earlier comments comparing Emergent to denominations like the CGGC). Frankly, if you'd like me to give you the benefit of the doubt then I'd suggest that you begin by returning the favor.
Really, what did you expect? You showed up at the blog with an overt agenda to speak out against my viewpoints and those of people like me. By your own admission, your reason for being here has been oppositional from the start. As they say, we reap what we sow...
Just being honest,
-Mike
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