Self-deception vs. Self-transformation

(posted by John)

Driving home tonight, I was struck by the thought that there exists another (invisible) danger in the modern splintering of the Protestant Church. Of course there is the John 17 unity issue, the lack of theological accountability, and good old-fashioned denominational (now even non-denominational) competition among other such challenges to being the perfect bride Christ calls us to be. But the thornier problem enters as a consequence of having many really good--though not perfect--churches. On my way home I drove by five, with a couple other maybes. So naturally I began contemplating how we, in America, decide which church to attend.

Back in the day (i.e. 500 A.D.), if you were a Christian, finding a good church to attend wasn't tremendously difficult; there was only one denomination--the "one, holy, catholic and apostolic church"--the same one where Peter, James, John and the rest of disciples previously worshipped, and you could generally find it by looking for the large building in the center of the town. (If, by chance, you weren't in a Christian area, you need only to look for the guy in a brown robe who talked about Jesus and whom the rest of the town was trying to kill.)

Today, however, it's a different story. With over 33,000 Protestant denominations and 300 more added each year, there are quite a few large church buildings around town. So how do we pick the right church? For most people, that involves the process of church-shopping; visiting the various churches in one's area and narrowing it down to the one with the best pastor/teaching, music ministry, childcare and perhaps even the best coffee/donuts. But this is where the thought gets scary. How is it that we determine if the teaching and worship are good/bad? Given the status quo 33,000 denominations, there are obviously a lot of Christians with different beliefs as to what constitutes good teaching and/or worship.

In the end, our choice of church will inevitably reflect our existing set of preconceptions as to what a good church should be like. In other words, the church we choose will mirror our existing theological framework. Unfortunately, this can become a vicious circle. We choose the church that reflects our theological understanding, and then this church, through its teaching and worship, in turn strengthens our pre-established set of convictions that will later influence our next decision of where to go to church. Yet, if this is the case, how is it that we will ever truly grow or be challenged in our understanding of God (theology)? If life is a constant uphill battle of trying to become more like our Lord, where our vision and understanding is far from perfect (1Cor 13:12), it seems regrettable that the churches we choose to attend, in simply mirroring our pre-established understanding of God and what it means to live a Christian life, are probably the ones least capable of genuinely challenging us in the next steps of our journey.

A Book Review: Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago

(posted by John)

I have always enjoyed reading the Russian novelists -- e.g. Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, and Solzhenitsyn. However, since their writings often resemble phonebooks instead of novels, perhaps it is simply a disguised form of masochism. :-)

Whatever the case may be, recently I've really gotten into Solzhenitsyn, first reading The First Circle and now am working through The Gulag Archipelago. Both of these novels deal with Stalinist Russia and the islands of forced labor camps littered throughout the former Eastern Bloc. There millions of innocent people were either sent away for decades to perform hard labor and/or were executed.

One of the most shocking aspects of Stalin's terror was the self-propelling nature of the viscious cycle he created. Because of his own policies of massive imprisonment and murder (esp. of the working classes) that inevitably led to food shortages and economic devastation, Stalin blamed these problems on the continuing actions of ever-increasing "enemies of the State," and therefore arrested and sentenced/executed even more innocent people, torturing them until they signed false confessions, in order to prove the government's argument that the continuing economic problems of the Soviet Union were the product of saboteurs and not the result of a tyrannical government.

My interest in these books stems from desiring to understand--at least in part--what Eastern Europeans experienced as a result of living under Stalin's essentially malevolent dictatorship. For me, the difficulty with reading The Gulag Archipelago isn't due to its length, rather it is from the fact that it isn't really a "novel." As Solzhenitsyn notes on the first page,

"In this book there are no fictitious persons, nor fictitious events. People and places are named with their own names... If they are not named at all, it is only because human memory has failed to preserve their names. But it all took place just as it is here described."

And because of the horrible reality of the events described in the book, I've found that I can only take in so many pages before it becomes too much to deal with emotionally.

If you have ever read (or decide to pick up this book and read it sometime!), I would enjoy hearing your thoughts as well.