From: ali@utrcv1 (ALI BABA)
Subject: MEN HAVE FORGOTTEN GOD.
Organization: United Technologies Research Center
Date: Fri, 28 Aug 1992 22:01:00 GMT

I came across a good article from Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn who is a
Russian novelist which I like to share it with you. By the way he was
awarded the Nobel prize in literature in 1970.

     When I  started going to school in Rostov-on-Don, other children,
egged on by Komsomol members, taunted me for accompanying my mother to the
last remaining church in town, and tore the cross from around my neck. A
few years later, I heard a number of older people offer this 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 50 years working on the history of the
Russian Revolution; in the process I have collected hundreds of personal
testimonies, read hundreds of books, and contributed eight volumes of my own.
But if I were asked today to formulate as concisely as possible the main
cause of the ruinous revolution that swallowed up some 60 million of our
people, I could not put it more accurately than to repeat: 
                  "MAN HAVE FORGOTTEN GOD"
     What is more , if I were called upon to identify the principal trait of
the entire 20th century, I would be  unable to find anything more precise
than to reflect once again on how we have lost touch with our Creator.
The failings of human consciousness, deprived of its divine dimension, have
been determining factor in all the major crimes of this century.
     Dostoyevsky warned that great events could come upon us and catch us
intellectually unprepared. That is precisely what has happened. The 20th
century has been sucked into the vortex of atheism and self-destruction. This
plunge into the abyss is a worldwide process, East and West, and has aspects
that are dependent neither on political system, nor on levels of economic and
cultural development.
     It was Dostoyevsky, once again, who said of the French Revolution and its
seething hatred of the church that "revolution must necessarily begin with
atheism." 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, militant atheism a
central pivot. The degree to which the atheistic world longs to annihilate
religion.
Yet in Russia- where churches and mosques have been leveled , where tens of 
thousands of religious people were tortured, shot in cellars, sent to brutal
camps, where a triumphant atheism has rampaged uncontrolled for two-thirds of
a century, where even today people are sent to labor camps for their faith;
the religion tradition survives.
     It is here that we see the dawn of hope: for no matter how formidably
communism bristles with tanks and rockets, it is never to vanquish religion.
     The West has yet to experience a communist invasion: religion remains
free . But the West, too, is experiencing a drying up of religious
consciousness. Since the late Middle Ages, the tide of secularism 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.
      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 long been
banished from common use. It has become embarrassing to appeal to eternal
concepts, embarrassing to state that evil makes its home in the individual
human heart before it enters a political system.
      When external rights are completely unrestricted, why should one make an 
inner effort to restrain oneself from ignoble acts? Or why should one refrain
from burning hatred,  whatever its basis- race, class or ideology? Such 
hatred is in fact corroding many hearts today, as atheist teachers bring up
a younger generation in a spirit of hatred of their own society. Indeed, the
broader the personal freedoms are, The higher the level of prosperity is, The
more vehement,paradoxically, does this blind hatred become.
      With global events looming over us like mountains, it may seem
incongruous to recall that the primary key to our being or non-being resides
in each human heart, in the heart's preference for specific good or evil. Yet
this is the most reliable key we have. The social theories that promised so
much have demonstrated their bankruptcy, leaving us at a dead end.
      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. 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.
      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 to something higher. 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 participates in the life of each of us. And in the life of our
entire planet the divine spirit surely moves with no less force.
      To the ill-considered hopes of the last two centuries, 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 20th century and our hands be directed to setting
them right.
      Our continents are caught in a whirlwind. But it is during such trials
 that the highest gifts of the human spirit can be manifested.

 ***************************************************************         
 *  What we call the ills of life is due to our own ill-deeds  *
 *  And many of them are forgiven by god. This life is a stage *
 *  of convenience; Live true and resist all wrong, but learn  *
 *  the best way to do it so. On god rely; else no protector   *
 *  will you find. God revelation comes as a guide and mercy:  *
 *  It shows the straight way the way of god all-wise.         *
 *************************************************************** 

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