This year is the 50th anniversary of Alexander Solzhenitsyn\u2019s The Gulag Archipelago<\/a>, the book documenting Communist atrocities that woke up even many left-leaning Western intellectuals to the evils of the Soviet Union.<\/p>\n Gary Saul Morson has written a brilliant account of the book and its impact for the Wall Street Journal<\/em> entitled \u2018The Gulag Archipelago\u2019: An Epic of True Evil<\/a>\u00a0with the deck \u201cPublished 50 years ago, Alexander Solzhenitsyn\u2019s account of the Soviet Union\u2019s barbaric system of forced labor camps is arguably the 20th century\u2019s greatest work of nonfiction.\u201d<\/p>\n Read it if you have the chance, though it\u2019s unfortunately behind a paywall.\u00a0 But that article and the great book it discusses are not the main subject of this post.\u00a0 I was struck by a quotation that Morson gives from this sublime Christian author (my bolds):<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Shakespeare and Schiller clearly did not grasp evil, Solzhenitsyn instructs, because their villains \u201crecognize themselves as evildoers, and they know their souls are black,\u201d but those who commit the greatest harm think of themselves as good. Before interrogators could torture prisoners they knew were innocent, they had to discover a justification for their actions. Shakespeare\u2019s villains stopped at a few corpses \u201cbecause they had no\u00a0ideology<\/em>,\u201d nothing to compare with Marxism-Leninism\u2019s \u201cscientific\u201d and infallible explanations of life and ethics. \u201cIdeology\u2014that is what . . . gives the evil-doer the necessary steadfastness and determination . . . the social theory which helps to make his acts seem good . . . in his own and others\u2019 eyes.\u201d<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Read that again.\u00a0 Think about it.<\/p>\n The insight about the moral inversion of considering evil to be a positive good is\u00a0 an echo of Scripture:<\/p>\n Woe to\u00a0those who call evil good<\/span> The prophet cites the converse problem as well:\u00a0 considering what is good to be evil.<\/p>\n Similarly, after St. Paul lists a catalogue of evildoing, he notes a further overarching perversion:<\/p>\n And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God,\u00a0God gave them up to\u00a0a debased mind to do\u00a0what ought not to be done.<\/span> \u00a0<\/sup>They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips,<\/span> \u00a0<\/sup>slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents,<\/span> \u00a0<\/sup>foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless.<\/span> \u00a0<\/sup>Though they know God\u2019s righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them.\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong>(Romans 1:28-32)<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n It is one thing to do them, but it is an even greater sign of a \u201cdebased mind\u201d to \u201cgive approval\u201d to those who do them!\u00a0 It is bad\u00a0 to be disobedient to parents, but it is monstrous to approve of being disobedient to parents, to think that authority in the family is a bad thing.<\/p>\n This moral inversion is why self-righteousness\u2013a spirit of legalism and self-justification\u2013so often bears fruit in sin, as in the scribes and Pharisees who \u201care like whitewashed tombs,\u201d who, though they think of themselves as righteous, \u201cdevour widows\u2019 houses\u201d (Mark 12:40) and within \u201care full of hypocrisy and lawlessness\u201d (Matthew 23:27-28).<\/p>\n Solzhenitsyn names the enabling mindset that creates this moral version on a vast scale:\u00a0 ideology<\/a>.\u00a0 The term means \u201cthe science of ideas.\u201d\u00a0 Human beings develop abstract ideas and then turn them into a system that they impose on all of life.\u00a0 Marx put forward his economic theories, which the Communists applied with rigor to actual human beings in the nation they ruled, resulting in the Gulags.\u00a0 Some of the Nazis were reportedly nice people, but the force of their ideology led them to commit unspeakable atrocities.<\/p>\n A major evil today that ideology defines as good is abortion, the killing of unborn children.\u00a0 The ideology of\u00a0 feminism turns that into a good thing to do.\u00a0 So does the ideology of moral libertarianism, the view that defines morality as whatever I \u201cchoose.\u201d<\/p>\n But hasn\u2019t religion, including Christianity, been used in this way?\u00a0 Certainly inquisitions, holy wars, heretic-burning, and other cruelties are common throughout the history of the church.\u00a0 I think the problem is that we are always tempted to turn Christianity into an ideology<\/em>.\u00a0 Whereupon we can use it as a cover and a rationalization for our sins.<\/p>\n Christian nationalism, liberation theology, Catholic integralism, Reformed theonomy, Pentecostal<\/a> dominionism, and the social gospel of mainline Protestantism are all Christian ideologies, and they can all be misused as pretexts to justify evil.<\/p>\n But Christianity is not a set of abstract ideas that we can turn into a system to serve our own ends.\u00a0 Yes, it contains ideas, but it deals not with abstractions but with mighty realities that hold us to account.\u00a0 Properly, in Solzhenitsyn\u2019s terms, Christianity causes its adherents to \u201crecognize themselves as evildoers, and they know their souls are black.\u201d\u00a0 At that point, Christianity offers the atonement accomplished by God Incarnate.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/305\/2023\/05\/Gulag-prisoners-scaled.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>and good evil,<\/span><\/span>
\nwho put darkness for light<\/span>
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>and light for darkness,<\/span><\/span>
\nwho put bitter for sweet<\/span>
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>and sweet for bitter!\u00a0 (Isaiah 5:20)<\/span><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n