There is nothing new under the sun, only things new to me.
The decline of my faith occurred in the way in which it has always happened, and still happens, among those from our kind of background. It seems to me that in the majority of instances it happens like this: people live as everyone lives, but on the basis of principles that not only have nothing in common with religious doctrines but are, on the whole, contrary to them; religious doctrine plays no part in life, or in relations between people, neither are we confronted with it in our personal lives. Religious doctrine is professed in some other realm, at a distance from life and independent of it. If we encounter it, it is only as an external phenomenon, disconnected from life.
Now, just as then, it is impossible to judge from a person’s life, or behavior, whether or not he is a believer. If there is a difference between those who openly profess Orthodoxy and those who deny it, then it is not to the advantage of the former. Nowadays, as before, the public declaration and confession of Orthodoxy is usually encountered among dull-witted, cruel, and immoral people who trend to consider themselves very important. Whereas intelligence, honesty, strightforwardness, good-naturedness and morality are qualities usually found among people who claim to be non-believers.
For something written over one hundered years ago, it is remarkable at how accurately it describes society today. In particular, the last part hits the nail on the head. The owners of the company I work for fit the first part of this description perfectly while the other developers I work with fit the second part equally well. This is something I have pondered for a while. My most recent new friends of the last 5 years are stacked high with non-believers. Have you every heard someone ponder this in a Christian gathering? Chances are you haven’t.
If you browse the Christian bookstore, you get a whole lot of books on self improvement, the book from some pastor who is doing something different and is writing about it, or the books that try to answer the basic questions of Christianity. There is also a section of people who just write about stuff with a christian bent. Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller is such an example. I like these the best. The others have passing interest and I generally hold in low regard. They just lack something … something.
I was walking around the French Quarter in New Orleans when I decided to walk into a shabby bookstore. You know, those hole in the wall places where you wonder if there are more books on the floor than on the dusty shelves. They also have a nice smell, not like the sanitary Barns and Noble. I like to smell my bookstore. The biggest reason I like these stores is that they always have books you just can’t find anywhere else. I found a biography on Leo Tolstoy in this particular joint. I don’t think I was looking for it in particular, but I wonder if it was looking for me. I had already read Tolstoy’s War and Peace, and I knew he had some religious writing that I was interested in reading. Little did I know that reading his biography would introduce me to a man who would be a significant influence my thoughts on things political, spiritual, and personal. His writings are whats missing from the shelf on the typical Christian bookstore. How strange that I would feel at home in the writings of a Russian who lived in another century and who ended up getting kicked out of the Russian Orthodox Church.
At the church service last week, the leader guy mentioned that some unnamed people were calling the Generation X / Generation Y the ‘black hole’ due to the number of people who ditch the church. I myself ditched for a few years, and I am only back at the moment due to the very real reality that something is better than nothing, if only marginally so. I can hardly speak for anyone besides myself, but I wonder if me, the black hole, and the issues agonized over by Tolstoy have something in common.
I’ve been pondering things in the void of my head for a while, and now I think I’ll see about putting some of these musing down on ‘paper.’ I’ll start with Tolstoys ‘Confession.’