A Puzzle

What does this wise fellow mean?

1-1-23

Long ago, during the years when I was mighty puzzled about what being a Christian meant to me, I came across this quote.

“If someone proved to me that Christ is outside the truth and that in reality the truth were outside of Christ, then I should prefer to remain with Christ rather than with the truth.” ― Fyodor Dostoevsky, Complete Letters, 1868-1871

I may not be smart, but I am persistent, and I realized from way back that someday I would need to make sense of that attitude and maybe decide whether to agree or disagree.

Today, and perhaps over the next several messages, I'm going to approach the attitude that it's acceptable to believe in Christ whether he is God or a myth and see where it takes us.

Here's a story I could give as the answer should someone ask why someone like myself who pretends to be a moderately reasonable fellow can consider himself a Christian.

I was an only child. When I was fifteen, my father died. When I was sixteen, my mother got hospitilized. Once it appeared she wouldn't come home for some months, Eric Curtis moved in with me. His father had died long before and his mother was crazy.

Among other pursuits more common among teenaged boys, we loved to read. I think it was Eric who introduced me to Friedrich Nietzsche. We both embraced Nietzsche's vision of becoming what is often called the Superman, the meaning of which included that we should cast off everything our parents and culture taught us and live without any moral compass except one we created.

My mom came home. Some months passed. Over Christmas season, Eric became obsessed with Handel's Messiah.

Another month passed.

Eric died in February.

In June, I discovered Feodor Dostoyevski's Crime and Punishment. I can't recall who or what alerted me to the book, but I considered it a direct rebuttal to Nietzsche and his promotion of the Superman ideal. Later I would learn that Nietzsche's was only one expression of the attitude, prevalent during the 19th century and still in fashion, that  people, or at least the more intelligent among us, will only be mislead and stifled by the guidance offered by any creed or religion.  

The protagonist, Raskolnikov, a very bright fellow given to severe depression, a university drop-out living in poverty, decides that because he could offer society plenty of good works and insights if he could afford to live while doing so, decides to murder a truly loathsome pawnbroker and steal the cache of rubles he knows she hoards in her lodging. The novel dramatically explores the question: should we live according to traditional morality or by attempting to be Supermen, governed only by our own intelligence and natural will.  

It's a long book which, for at least a week, occupied every waking hour I wasn't at my summer job washing dishes and pots at a diner. Since I was a self-absorbed wretch, though my mom was still recovering, I treated her like Raskolnikov treated his landlady, demanding that she leave me alone, not even offer food or drink. I was too busy to be kind or even civil. I was Raskolnikov in his St. Petersburg garret, learning how miserable my life could be if I were left to my own intelligence and will.

That was when I began to recognize how badly I needed guidance.

Here's a recommendation, or you could call it an ad: