Oamenii l-au uitat pe
Dumnezeu;
astfel s-a instaurat,
acum 100 de ani, comunismul în Est şi e pe cale să ia puterea în Vest!
Alexander Soljeniţin
Aveţi în
continuare, ocazionat de opţiunea declarată a elitelor europene pentru
comunism, un scurt fragment dintr-un cuvânt al scritorului Soljeniţin,
intitulat „Necredinţa: primul pas către Gulag”, prezentat cu ocazia
primirii, în 10 mai 1983 la Londra, a
premiului Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion , şi pe care vă îndemn să-l
citiţi cu mare luare aminte, rar, încercînd să faceţi tot timpul conexiunea
dintre cuvintele lui Soljeniţin şi diversele aspecte ale actualei stări a
Vestului. Soljeniţin explică, până la acest fragment, cum au fost facilitate
revoluţia bolşevică şi preluarea puterii de către comunişti de mentalitatea
ateistă şi de un lung proces de secularizare, care a îndepărtat pe oameni de
Dumnezeu şi de morala şi credinţele creştine tradiţionale, iar concluzia lui
este că: Oamenii l-au uitat pe Dumnezeu; din cauza asta s-au întâmplat toate.
Fragmentul
extras analizează, din aceeaşi perspectivă a relaţiei oamenilor cu Dumnezeu,
Vestul, iar stadiul în care ne găsim, la numai 35 de ani de la ţinerea
discursului, îndreptăţeşte calificarea acestuia ca deplin previzionar şi, din
păcate, nu lasă nicio speranţă că ceva ar putea opri acest proces înainte ca
să-şi epuizeze toate rezervele de energie pornite, după cum spune autorul,
dintr-o imensă şi iraţională ură.
Vestul
trebuie să treacă prin experienţa invaziei comuniste; religia a rămas aici
liberă, dar evoluţia istorică a Vestului a fost astfel încât astăzi şi el trece
prin experienţa secătuirii conştiinţei religioase. Şi el a fost martorul
sfâşietoarelor schisme, războaielor religioasee sângeroase şi răutăţii, ca să
nu mai vorbim de valul secularismului care, dinspre sfârşitul Evului Mediu
încoace, a inundat progresiv Vestul. Această epuizare a puterii dinspre
interior este o ameninţare a credinţei, care este, poate, chiar mai periculoasă
decât orice încercare de atac reigios violent din afară.
Imperceptibil,
de-a lungul a multor zeci de ani de eroziune, înţelesul vieţii în Vest a
încetat de a fi văzut ca ceva mai măreţ decât „căutarea fericirii”, un ideal
care a fost garantat solemn prin intermediul constituţiilor. Conceptele de bine
şi rău au fost ridiculizate timp de cîteva secole; interzise utilizării
zilnice, ele au fost înlocuite prin judecăţi politice sau de clasă cu perioadă
de folosinţă scurtă. A devenit stînjenitor să afirmi că răul îşi află locaş în
inima fiinţei omeneşti înainte ca aceasta să intre într-un sistem politic. În
acelaşi timp, nu este considerat ruşinos să faci concesii zilnice unui rău
deplin. Judecând după continua avalanşă a concesiilor făcute chiar numai în
faţa propriei noastre generaţii, Vestul alunecă ineluctabil înspre abis.
Societăţile vestice îşi pierd tot mai mult esenţa religioasă pe măsură ce, în
mod nechibzuit, îşi lasă pradă ateismului generaţia mai tânără. Dacă un film
balsfemator despre Iisus este prezentat peste tot în Statele UNite, considerate
una dintre cele mai religioase ţări din lume, sau dacă un ziar de mare tiraj
publică o caricatură neruşinată a Fecioarei Maria, de ce altă dovadă de
necredinţă mai este nevoie?
Sau, de ce ar mai trebui cineva să se reţină
de la ura arzătoare, indiferent dacă baza acesteia este rasa, clasa sau
ideologia? O astfel de ură dezintegrează multe inimi astăzi. Profesorii atei
din Vest ridică o tînără generaţie în spiritul urii propriei lor societăţi.
Prinşi în vîltoarea condamnării, uităm
că defectele capitalismului reprezintă defectele de bază ale naturii umane,
permiţând o libertate neîngrădită împreună cu diverse drepturi ale omului;
uităm că sub comunism (iar comunismul stă ascuns în orice formă de socialism
moderat, care este instabil) aceleaşi defecte se dezlănţuie în orice persoană
posedând cel mai mic grad de autoritate; în timp ce toţi ceilalţi din acel
sistem obţin cu adevărat „egalitatea” – egalitatea sclavilor în mizerie.
Această exuberantă dezlănţuire a urii devine semnul lumii libere a zilelor
noastre. Cu adevărat, în mod paradoxal, cu cât libertăţile personale sunt mai
mari, cu cât mai ridicat este nivelul de prosperitate sau chiar de abundenţă –
cu atât mai vehementă devine această ură oarbă. Vestul dezvoltat contemporan
demonstrează astfel, prin propriul exemplu, că salvarea omului nu poate fi
găsită nici în mulţimea bunurilor materiale, nici numai în a face bani.
Această ură alimentată deliberat se împrăştie
peste tot ceea ce este viu, în viaţa însăşi, în lumea cu culorile, sunetele şi
formele sale, în corpul omenesc. Posaca artă a secolului 20 moare ca rezultat
al acestei uri monstruoase, căci arta fără iubire este stearpă. În Est, arta
s-a prăbuşit din cauza faptului că a fost pusă jos şi călcată în picioare, dar
în Vest căderea fost voluntară, o prăbuşire într-o căutare nenaturală şi
pretenţioasă. în care artistul, în loc să încerce să releve planul divin,
încearcă să se pună pe sine în locul lui Dumnezeu.
Întâlnim
deci din nou acelaşi produs al unui proces la scara întregii omeniri, Estul şi
Vestul ajungând la aceleaşi rezultate, din, o spun din nou, aceeaşi cauză:
Oamenii l-au uitat pe Dumnezeu!
Men Have Forgotten God
– Alexander Solzhenitsyn
July 5, 2011 by Chris
Banescu
As a
survivor of the Communist Holocaust I am horrified to witness how my beloved
America, my adopted country, is gradually being transformed into a secularist
and atheistic utopia, where communist ideals are glorified and promoted, while
Judeo-Christian values and morality are ridiculed and increasingly eradicated
from the public and social consciousness of our nation. Under the decades-long
assault and militant radicalism of many so-called “liberal” and “progressive”
elites, God has been progressively erased from our public and educational
institutions, to be replaced with all manner of delusion, perversion,
corruption, violence, decadence, and insanity.
It is no
coincidence that as Marxist ideologies and secularist principles engulf the
culture and pervert mainstream thinking, individual freedoms and liberties are
rapidly disappearing. As a consequence, Americans feel increasingly more
powerless and subjugated by some of the most radical and hypocritical, least
democratic, and characterless individuals our society has ever produced.
Those of us
who have experienced and witnesses first-hand the atrocities and terror of
communism understand fully why such evil takes root, how it grows and deceives,
and the kind of hell it will ultimately unleash on the innocent and the
faithful. Godlessness is always the first step towards tyranny and oppression!
Nobel
laureate, Orthodox Christian author, and Russian dissident, Alexander
Solzhenitsyn, in his “Godlessness: the First Step to the Gulag” address, given
when he received the Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion on May of 1983,
explained how the Russian revolution and the communist takeover were
facilitated by an atheistic mentality and a long process of secularization
which alienated the people from God and traditional Christian morality and
beliefs. He rightly concluded: “Men have forgotten God; that’s why all this has
happened.”
The text of
his Templeton Address is provided below. The parallels with the current crisis
and moral decay in American society are striking and frightening. Those who
have ears to hear, let them hear!
“Men Have Forgotten
God” – The Templeton Address
by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
More than
half a century ago, while I was still a child, I recall hearing a number of
older people offer the following explanation for the great disasters that had
befallen Russia: Men have forgotten God; that’s why all this has happened.
Since then I
have spent well-nigh fifty years working on the history of our Revolution; in
the process I have read hundreds of books, collected hundreds of personal
testimonies, and have already contributed eight volumes of my own toward the
effort of clearing away the rubble left by that upheaval. But if I were asked
today to formulate as concisely as possible the main cause of the ruinous
Revolution that swallowed up some sixty million of our people, I could not put
it more accurately than to repeat: Men have forgotten God; that’s why all this
has happened.
What is
more, the events of the Russian Revolution can only be understood now, at the
end of the century, against the background of what has since occurred in the
rest of the world. What emerges here is a process of universal significance.
And if I were called upon to identify briefly the principal trait of the entire
twentieth century, here too, I would be unable to find anything more precise
and pithy than to repeat once again: Men have forgotten God.
The failings
of human consciousness, deprived of its divine dimension, have been a
determining factor in all the major crimes of this century.
The failings
of human consciousness, deprived of its divine dimension, have been a
determining factor in all the major crimes of this century. The first of these
was World War I, and much of our present predicament can be traced back to it.
It was a war (the memory of which seems to be fading) when Europe, bursting
with health and abundance, fell into a rage of self-mutilation which could not
but sap its strength for a century or more, and perhaps forever. The only
possible explanation for this war is a mental eclipse among the leaders of
Europe due to their lost awareness of a Supreme Power above them. Only a
godless embitterment could have moved ostensibly Christian states to employ
poison gas, a weapon so obviously beyond the limits of humanity.
The same
kind of defect, the flaw of a consciousness lacking all divine dimension, was
manifested after World War II when the West yielded to the satanic temptation
of the “nuclear umbrella.” It was equivalent to saying: Let’s cast off worries,
let’s free the younger generation from their duties and obligations, let’s make
no effort to defend ourselves, to say nothing of defending others-let’s stop
our ears to the groans emanating from the East, and let us live instead in the
pursuit of happiness. If danger should threaten us, we shall be protected by
the nuclear bomb; if not, then let the world burn in Hell for all we care. The
pitifully helpless state to which the contemporary West has sunk is in large
measure due to this fatal error: the belief that the defense of peace depends
not on stout hearts and steadfast men, but solely on the nuclear bomb…
Today’ s
world has reached a stage which, if it had been described to preceding
centuries, would have called forth the cry: “This is the Apocalypse!”
Yet we have
grown used to this kind of world; we even feel at home in it.
Dostoevsky
warned that “great events could come upon us and catch us intellectually
unprepared.” This is precisely what has happened. And he predicted that “the
world will be saved only after it has been possessed by the demon of evil.”
Whether it really will be saved we shall have to wait and see: this will depend
on our conscience, on our spiritual lucidity, on our individual and combined
efforts in the face of catastrophic circumstances. But it has already come to
pass that the demon of evil, like a whirlwind, triumphantly circles all five
continents of the earth…
By the time
of the Revolution, faith had virtually disappeared in Russian educated circles;
and amongst the uneducated, its health was threatened.
In its past,
Russia did know a time when the social ideal was not fame, or riches, or
material success, but a pious way of life. Russia was then steeped in an
Orthodox Christianity which remained true to the Church of the first centuries.
The Orthodoxy of that time knew how to safeguard its people under the yoke of a
foreign occupation that lasted more than two centuries, while at the same time
fending off iniquitous blows from the swords of Western crusaders. During those
centuries the Orthodox faith in our country became part of the very pattern of
thought and the personality of our people, the forms of daily life, the work
calendar, the priorities in every undertaking, the organization of the week and
of the year. Faith was the shaping and unifying force of the nation.
But in the
17th century Russian Orthodoxy was gravely weakened by an internal schism. In
the 18th, the country was shaken by Peter’s forcibly imposed transformations,
which favored the economy, the state, and the military at the expense of the
religious spirit and national life. And along with this lopsided Petrine
enlightenment, Russia felt the first whiff of secularism; its subtle poisons
permeated the educated classes in the course of the 19th century and opened the
path to Marxism. By the time of the Revolution, faith had virtually disappeared
in Russian educated circles; and amongst the uneducated, its health was
threatened.
Within the
philosophical system of Marx and Lenin, and at the heart of their psychology,
hatred of God is the principal driving force, more fundamental than all their
political and economic pretensions.
It was
Dostoevsky, once again, who drew from the French Revolution and its seeming
hatred of the Church the lesson that “revolution must necessarily begin with
atheism.” That is absolutely true. But the world had never before known a
godlessness as organized, militarized, and tenaciously malevolent as that
practiced by Marxism. Within the philosophical system of Marx and Lenin, and at
the heart of their psychology, hatred of God is the principal driving force,
more fundamental than all their political and economic pretensions. Militant
atheism is not merely incidental or marginal to Communist policy; it is not a
side effect, but the central pivot.
The 1920’s
in the USSR witnessed an uninterrupted procession of victims and martyrs
amongst the Orthodox clergy. Two metropolitans were shot, one of whom, Veniamin
of Petrograd, had been elected by the popular vote of his diocese. Patriarch
Tikhon himself passed through the hands of the Cheka-GPU and then died under
suspicious circumstances. Scores of archbishops and bishops perished. Tens of
thousands of priests, monks, and nuns, pressured by the Chekists to renounce
the Word of God, were tortured, shot in cellars, sent to camps, exiled to the
desolate tundra of the far North, or turned out into the streets in their old
age without food or shelter. All these Christian martyrs went unswervingly to
their deaths for the faith; instances of apostasy were few and far between. For
tens of millions of laymen access to the Church was blocked, and they were
forbidden to bring up their children in the Faith: religious parents were
wrenched from their children and thrown into prison, while the children were
turned from the faith by threats and lies…
For a short
period of time, when he needed to gather strength for the struggle against
Hitler, Stalin cynically adopted a friendly posture toward the Church. This
deceptive game, continued in later years by Brezhnev with the help of showcase
publications and other window dressing, has unfortunately tended to be taken at
its face value in the West. Yet the tenacity with which hatred of religion is
rooted in Communism may be judged by the example of their most liberal leader,
Krushchev: for though he undertook a number of significant steps to extend
freedom, Krushchev simultaneously rekindled the frenzied Leninist obsession
with destroying religion.
as is always
the case in times of persecution and suffering, the awareness of God in my
country has attained great acuteness and profundity.
But there is
something they did not expect: that in a land where churches have been leveled,
where a triumphant atheism has rampaged uncontrolled for two-thirds of a
century, where the clergy is utterly humiliated and deprived of all
independence, where what remains of the Church as an institution is tolerated
only for the sake of propaganda directed at the West, where even today people
are sent to the labor camps for their faith, and where, within the camps
themselves, those who gather to pray at Easter are clapped in punishment
cells–they could not suppose that beneath this Communist steamroller the
Christian tradition would survive in Russia. It is true that millions of our
countrymen have been corrupted and spiritually devastated by an officially
imposed atheism, yet there remain many millions of believers: it is only external
pressures that keep them from speaking out, but, as is always the case in times
of persecution and suffering, the awareness of God in my country has attained
great acuteness and profundity.
It is here
that we see the dawn of hope: for no matter how formidably Communism bristles
with tanks and rockets, no matter what successes it attains in seizing the
planet, it is doomed never to vanquish Christianity.
the West’s
own historical evolution has been such that today it too is experiencing a
drying up of religious consciousness.
The West has
yet to experience a Communist invasion; religion here remains free. But the
West’s own historical evolution has been such that today it too is experiencing
a drying up of religious consciousness. It too has witnessed racking schisms,
bloody religious wars, and rancor, to say nothing of the tide of secularism
that, from the late Middle Ages onward, has progressively inundated the West.
This gradual sapping of strength from within is a threat to faith that is
perhaps even more dangerous than any attempt to assault religion violently from
without.
Imperceptibly,
through decades of gradual erosion, the meaning of life in the West has ceased
to be seen as anything more lofty than the “pursuit of happiness, “a goal that
has even been solemnly guaranteed by constitutions. The concepts of good and
evil have been ridiculed for several centuries; banished from common use, they
have been replaced by political or class considerations of short lived value.
It has become embarrassing to state that evil makes its home in the individual
human heart before it enters a political system. Yet it is not considered
shameful to make dally concessions to an integral evil. Judging by the
continuing landslide of concessions made before the eyes of our very own
generation, the West is ineluctably slipping toward the abyss. Western
societies are losing more and more of their religious essence as they
thoughtlessly yield up their younger generation to atheism. If a blasphemous
film about Jesus is shown throughout the United States, reputedly one of the
most religious countries in the world, or a major newspaper publishes a
shameless caricature of the Virgin Mary, what further evidence of godlessness
does one need? When external rights are completely unrestricted, why should one
make an inner effort to restrain oneself from ignoble acts?
The concepts
of good and evil have been ridiculed for several centuries; banished from
common use, they have been replaced by political or class considerations of short
lived value.
Or why
should one refrain from burning hatred, whatever its basis–race, class, or
ideology? Such hatred is in fact corroding many hearts today. Atheist teachers
in the West are bringing up a younger generation in a spirit of hatred of their
own society. Amid all the vituperation we forget that the defects of capitalism
represent the basic flaws of human nature, allowed unlimited freedom together
with the various human rights; we forget that under Communism (and Communism is
breathing down the neck of all moderate forms of socialism, which are unstable)
the identical flaws run riot in any person with the least degree of authority;
while everyone else under that system does indeed attain “equality”–the
equality of destitute slaves. This eager fanning of the flames of hatred is
becoming the mark of today’s free world. Indeed, the broader the personal
freedoms are, the higher the level of prosperity or even of abundance–the more
vehement, paradoxically, does this blind hatred become. The contemporary
developed West thus demonstrates by its own example that human salvation can be
found neither in the profusion of material goods nor in merely making money.
This
deliberately nurtured hatred then spreads to all that is alive, to life itself,
to the world with its colors, sounds, and shapes, to the human body. The
embittered art of the twentieth century is perishing as a result of this ugly
hate, for art is fruitless without love. In the East art has collapsed because
it has been knocked down and trampled upon, but in the West the fall has been
voluntary, a decline into a contrived and pretentious quest where the artist,
instead of attempting to reveal the divine plan, tries to put himself in the
place of God.
Here again
we witness the single outcome of a worldwide process, with East and West
yielding the same results, and once again for the same reason: Men have
forgotten God.
All attempts
to find a way out of the plight of today’s world are fruitless unless we
redirect our consciousness, in repentance, to the Creator of all: without this,
no exit will be illumined, and we shall seek it in vain.
With such
global events looming over us like mountains, nay, like entire mountain ranges,
it may seem incongruous and inappropriate to recall that the primary key to our
being or non-being resides in each individual human heart, in the heart’s
preference for specific good or evil. Yet this remains true even today, and it
is, in fact, the most reliable key we have. The social theories that promised
so much have demonstrated their bankruptcy, leaving us at a dead end. The free
people of the West could reasonably have been expected to realize that they are
beset · by numerous freely nurtured falsehoods, and not to allow lies to be
foisted upon them so easily. All attempts to find a way out of the plight of
today’s world are fruitless unless we redirect our consciousness, in
repentance, to the Creator of all: without this, no exit will be illumined, and
we shall seek it in vain. The resources we have set aside for ourselves are too
impoverished for the task. We must first recognize the horror perpetrated not
by some outside force, not by class or national enemies, but within each of us
individually, and within every society. This is especially true of a free and
highly developed society, for here in particular we have surely brought
everything upon ourselves, of our own free will. We ourselves, in our daily
unthinking selfishness, are pulling tight that noose…
Our life
consists not in the pursuit of material success but in the quest for worthy
spiritual growth. Our entire earthly existence is but a transitional stage in
the movement toward something higher, and we must not stumble and fall, nor
must we linger fruitlessly on one rung of the ladder. Material laws alone do
not explain our life or give it direction. The laws of physics and physiology
will never reveal the indisputable manner in which the Creator constantly, day
in and day out, participates in the life of each of us, unfailingly granting us
the energy of existence; when this assistance leaves us, we die. And in the
life of our entire planet, the Divine Spirit surely moves with no less force:
this we must grasp in our dark and terrible hour.
To the
ill-considered hopes of the last two centuries, which have reduced us to
insignificance and brought us to the brink of nuclear and non-nuclear death, we
can propose only a determined quest for the warm hand of God, which we have so
rashly and self-confidently spurned. Only in this way can our eyes be opened to
the errors of this unfortunate twentieth century and our bands be directed to
setting them right. There is nothing else to cling to in the landslide: the
combined vision of all the thinkers of the Enlightenment amounts to nothing.
Our five
continents are caught in a whirlwind. But it is during trials such as these
that the highest gifts of the human spirit are manifested. If we perish and
lose this world, the fault will be ours alone.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, “Godlessness:
the First Step to the Gulag”. Templeton Prize Lecture, 10 May 1983 (London).
http://orthodoxnet.com/blog/2011/07/men-have-forgotten-god-alexander-solzhenitsyn/#more-436
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