Solzhenitsyn’s Oak and the Calf, 2010:
Putin the oak, Khordorkovsky the calf, this time around
I’m reading in our media that 8 rival religions run the world??? Does this leave us with a single hope in hell that the endless war that holds our globe in thrall might ever, ever issue in peace? Or is religion supposed to be indifferent or even antagonistic to peace?
Horror-stricken, I felt myself utterly *hornswoggled when, on a site I visit often, I saw this claim, an excerpt from which follows – and I wondered how my close friends and laborers in the vineyard could have been so hornswoggled themselves:
*Hornswoggle is a legitimate word – and very onomatopoetic, don’t you agree? Cf.: horn·swog·gle vt: to cheat, trick, or deceive somebody (informal). Encarta® World English Dictionary © 1999 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Developed for Microsoft by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc.
“God Is Not One: The Eight Rival Religions That Run the World--and Why Their Differences Matter by Stephen Prothero - Harper Collins Publishers
“… We accept as self-evident that competing economic systems (capitalist or communist) or clashing political parties (Republican or Democratic) propose very different solutions to our planet's problems. So why do we pretend that the world's religious traditions are different paths to the same God? [I mean, begging your pardon, but is religion really on a par with economic systems and/or political parties??? Isn’t God - Who created the creatures who in turn create such created systems - of another order altogether? I just raise the issue for your consideration.] We blur the sharp distinctions between religions at our own peril, argues religion scholar Stephen Prothero, and it is time to replace naïve hopes of interreligious unity with deeper knowledge of religious differences.
“… In God Is Not One, Prothero provides readers with this much-needed content about each of the eight great religions. To claim that all religions are the same is to misunderstand that each attempts to solve a different human problem. For example:
1) –Islam: the problem is pride / the solution is submission
2) –Christianity: the problem is sin / the solution is salvation
3) –Confucianism: the problem is chaos / the solution is social order
4) –Buddhism: the problem is suffering / the solution is awakening
5) –Judaism: the problem is exile / the solution is to return to God”
Friends and fellow believers, I don’t know about you, but in my own religious lexicon, pride = sin = chaos = suffering = exile - from God, exile from others, and ultimately exile from oneself; the devil is he who said he would rather rule in hell than serve in heaven. (I don’t, incidentally, in this Harper Collins Publishers advertisement, see data on the other 3 religions which would make up Mr. Prothero’s 8 “rival” religions.)
I believe, concomitantly, that most religious persons would also agree that: submission [to God] = salvation = social order = awakening = return [to God, and to others, as also to inner peace with oneself].
I am able to proffer, however, a testimony which I believe will be much more convincing than my own, coming as it does from one whose beliefs derive from his personal formation within the USSR, where the above-mentioned religions were all persecuted indiscriminately by the atheistic Soviet regime – a “contest” in which there was no competition.
This testimony is that of the jailed Russian oligarch, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the oligarch who dared to defy Russian President Putin - and continues to pay the price. Convicted of tax evasion and fraud, stripped of his billions, incarcerated and separated from his family, he faces a daily struggle for survival.
From a published interview with this famous dissident:
On 25 October, 2003, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Russia's richest man - a man who was on first-name terms with heads of state; a man with a personal fortune of $8bn; a man whose company, Yukos, controlled more barrels of oil than the state of Kuwait - was placed under arrest. So seismic were the implications of his detention, that as armed guards surrounded his private plane on the runway at Novisibirsk airport, Siberia, trading on the Russian stock exchange was halted for the first time in its history.
After a two-year legal battle, during which Khodorkovsky's lawyers fought tooth and nail to clear their client's name - claiming that he was the subject of a political attack by President Putin - he was sentenced to eight years in prison, and not just any prison: IK-10, in Krasnokamensk. Almost 5,000km east of Moscow, and 660km south-east of the nearest city, Chita, already notorious in Russian history as a horrendously remote place of exile.
Cf.:http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/the-visit-mikhail-khodorkovskys-life-inside-416126.html
This item motivated me to search further for fresh news of Mr. Khodorkovsky. When I did so, I discovered the perfect confutation of the piece of venal mendacity about “8 rival religions” that had me feeling so miserably hornswoggled. Not that I wish to accuse Mr. Prothero or Harper Collins Publishers, much less my dear hornswoggled friends who posted such venal mendacity, of being themselves venally mendacious – not at all. Satan is the Hornswoggler-in-Chief, and anyone can become his prey. Which is precisely the reason why we who have influence within the Church have the most solemn obligation to make prudent use of this influence.
It seems Khodorkovsky wrote an essay/thesis with the subheading "Global Perestroika" (which is precisely what we wish to accomplish within the Church: global perestroika, global re-building) which was published in Vedomosti on November 7, 2008, in which he stated:
"Barack Obama’s victory in the US presidential elections is not simply the latest change of power in one individual country, albeit a superpower. We are standing on the threshold of a change in the paradigm of world development. The era whose foundations were laid by Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher three decades ago is ending. Unconditionally including myself in that part of society that has liberal views, I see: ahead – a Turn to the Left."
While I myself shudder at the mention of “liberal views”, it must be understood that such clichés are unfortunately generated by our partisan political contests. We must not, therefore, feel too hornswoggled by this phenomenon, as it will meet its demise along with that of the partisan politics which generate such clichés, i.e., “phrases or words that have lost their original effectiveness or power from overuse” – this being the “Encarta® World English Dictionary ©” definition of a cliché.
Perhaps Oligarch Khodorkovsky still sees himself as a Soviet dissident, unconditionally included in that part of society that has liberal views. My hunch is that he is no longer such, nor is Putin any longer a Soviet functionary. I wonder to what extent Putin is consciously far-sighted enough to realize that, with Khodorkovsky, the Oak and the Calf confrontation would transform the former dissident into a prophet.
This is Khodorkovsky’s story as I found it online in the Russian version of Esquire magazine which published this conversation between Mikhail Khodorkovsky and the writer Grigory Chkhartishvili - who is better known by his pen name Boris Akunin. Posted by Robert Amsterdam on October 6, 2008:
Khodorkovsky says of himself: “Ever since I was a child, I wanted to become the director of a plant. Not a cosmonaut, not a military man, but a director. And this dream stayed with me all through school, college, with this dream I entered the “big world”. Very little time passed by and the dream was realized. The …. Scientific-Technical Center,… brief work in the government, and then – privatization. Privatization for me signified not money, but the opportunity to fulfill a dream. … And then – there was YUKOS. A gigantic enterprise, for the encounter with which I had been preparing all my life until that point. It demanded all my education, all the experience [I had] accumulated. I worked like a madman, 14 hours a day, I was perpetually on the go … “
Khodorkovsky’s valorizing his dream over the pursuit of money is what begins to set him apart from his typical corporate counterparts in the west. Putin’s manner of dealing with him likewise differs markedly from the expected western response, as does also the outcome of their confrontation – and therein lies the moral of this tale as also its relevance for us at this time.
That Khodorkovsky, as did so many of Russia’s oligarchs, turned his wealth to the acquisition of political clout is in line with western practice – but with a salient difference.
“I supported SPS and Yabloko not ‘on the sly’, but publicly, and not from the company’s money, but from my own, personal, having previously paid taxes. Moreover, some others of my colleagues just as openly supported those who to them were politically closer. This is a completely civilized practice, and at first many officials deemed it correct. However, after February of 2003 another interpretation was given – ‘preparation for a seizure of power’.”
By the time Khodorkovsky made the definitive decision to stay in Russia and deal with whatever should be meted out to him, his supporters – significantly comprising, to begin with, his own family - were legion, and one has the sense, reading the part of the interview that addresses this period, of an implacable commitment to ---- what?
The Esquire interviewer broaches the question – but gingerly: “Now I’d like to touch upon another thing you’ve said that raised a lot of questions. ‘Now only Faith’, you wrote, discussing the topic of morality and justice. ‘The problem of today’s Russian liberal society is that the main argument for liberal values lies on the plane of Faith: “a person is born with a striving for freedom and happiness”, while Russian liberals – nonbelievers for historical reasons, do not take the argument of Faith seriously’. What did you mean by that? This is too substantial a declaration to remain insufficiently intelligible.”
And it is here that Mikhail Borisov Khodorkovsky the political prisoner, is metamorphosed into what looks very much like THE prophet of these times:
“Why is democracy better than dictatorship? Because freedom is better than un-freedom? Why is it bad to lie and to do bad things? Because you need to love thy neighbor? Why do you have to defend the Motherland, save another person, sacrificing your own life? After all, there won’t be anything ‘afterwards’! Or, maybe, there will?
“What is morality? Where does it come from? There’s no logic in it. You can think up a logic to fit this kind of morality, or one to fit another kind. Scoundrels are often more successful than decent people, but are they happier? – that’s the question. If they were happier, then we’d be living among nothing but scoundrels. In the world would triumph strength and meanness. But it’s not at all like that, after all. Strength loses out to courage, meanness – to honesty, hatred – to love. Not at first, but always in the end.
“And the world becomes a better place. Why?
“We – our civilization – are 2 thousand years old; humanity – millions [of years old]. We are what we are. A society that’s closer to what man really is will be happier and more successful. Science is gradually discovering man, but is man knowable, or is he, like the world, infinite? I don’t know. What I do know is that for now – we are a mystery for logic and science. But at the end of the textbook there’s an answer. From where? I don’t know. Experience shows – the answer is correct.
“I believe – man internally strives for freedom, for love, for truth, and only on this path can he be happy. Where’s the evidence? I don’t have it. That is, I could give a discourse on the subject, but that would be demagogy. There are a hundred ‘fors’ and a hundred ‘againsts’.
“So what will this man liberated from outside pressure be like? An avaricious beast or the lord of creation? If a beast, then we need to build cage-states, in order to keep people from destroying themselves. If a lord of creation, then nothing created by man (the state, a corporation, society) will be able to be higher than man-created-by-God.
“I believe in man. That’s what Faith with a capital F is. Forgive me for a certain unclarity of thoughts. The topic is such that I decided simply to lay out my emotions.”
The Esquire interviewer asks: “Faith with a capital F? And also you wrote in one of the articles: ‘I am grateful to God that, unlike my persecutors, I have understood that the earning of big money – is far from the only (and, perhaps, far from the most important) point of human labours.’ Does this signify that in jail you’ve turned to religion?”
Khodorkovsky replies: “In general, I wasn’t exactly an atheist even before jail. God, doom, fate, destiny – nearly everybody believes in something that’s higher than us. And indeed it would be strange not to believe, living in a huge unknown world, not really even knowing ourselves; to consider that everything around us – is the product of a random confluence of circumstances.
“One can believe that there is no God, one can believe he exists. Faith does not demand evidence, as is known. But if there is no God, and all of our life –is but an instant on the way from dust to dust, then what’s the point of everything? What’s the point of our dreams, our aspirations, our sufferings? What’s the point of knowing? What’s the point of loving? When it comes right down to it, what’s the point of living?
“I can’t believe that everything just is and that’s all there is to it. I can’t and I don’t want to. It does make a difference to me what will be after me, because I too will be. Because someone was before me, and someone will be after me. And this is not senseless. This is not simply ‘that’s the way it is.’ We do not live simply to pollute the water and the air. We all exist for something greater. For what – I don’t know, and I will never know. Each of us individually – for happiness. But all together? I believe that there is a Great Goal for humanity, which it has not been given unto me to behold. People have called this goal God. When we serve it – we’re happy, when we stray aside – we’re met by Emptiness. An Emptiness that nothing material can fill. It makes life empty, and death terrifying.”
I, Laura Jones, submit that this is what theosis, deification, divinization is all about. Theosis is not some esoteric theological theorem, cooked up by religious fanatics of whatever persuasion; it is everyone’s life experience, for well if we go with it, for woe if the self-idolatry we are prone to diverts us from our rightful Goal. What divinization means is that we are simply super-saturated with God! Now not I live, but Christ lives in me!
NOTA BENE: I want to add Pope Benedict’s response in the following post on Zenit after I e-mailed him the above:
POPE URGES THEOLOGIANS IN HUMILITY OF “LITTLE ONES"
VATICAN CITY, JULY 7, 2010 (Zenit.org).- The People of God precede theology, thanks to the Holy Spirit's gift that brings them to embrace the faith, and which can leave theologians struggling to explain what the faithful already know. … The Pontiff recounted how Blessed Duns Scotus developed an argument that Pope Pius IX would go on to use in 1854 when he solemnly defined the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, according to which the Immaculate Conception represents the masterpiece of the redemption wrought by Christ, because… Mary is totally redeemed by Christ, but already before her conception." ... "Valuable theologians enriched with their specific thought what the People of God already believed spontaneously about the Blessed Virgin, manifested in acts of piety, in the expressions of art and, in general, in Christian living." He noted how "faith in the Immaculate Conception or in the bodily assumption of the Virgin was already present in the People of God, while theology had not yet found the key to interpret it in the totality of the doctrine of the faith. Thus the People of God precede theologians and all this thanks to that supernatural 'sensus fidei,' namely, that capacity infused by the Holy Spirit, which qualifies us to embrace the reality of the faith, with humility of heart and mind." The Holy Father continued, "In this sense, the People of God is 'magisterium that precedes,' and that later must be deepened and intellectually accepted by theology." And he expressed his hope that theologians will always be able to "listen to this source of faith and have the humility and simplicity of little ones!"
ZE10070710 - 2010-07-07 Permalink: http://www.zenit.org/article-29828?l=english