Tuesday, March 1, 2022

I know enough about Eastern European affairs

To know I know little about Eastern European affairs.  And that includes the tangled mess that is Russian History.  One could spend a lifetime studying that monster and you'd still only scratch the surface. 

My chief problem is the divisiveness that tends to dumb down discourse.  You get a million experts running around and calling down hellfire on this or that topic.   Naturally I defer to those who are in Russia, or Ukraine.  But even then, only with caution.  It's not like going east will suddenly make you honest or always right.  Still, I've had the chance to befriend several over the years who call east of the Danube their home, and it's been a revelation to be sure. 

When I was in graduate school, one of our best friends was a fellow named Alexander and his wife, Luba.  He was from Russia, she was from Ukraine.  It was then I learned the most important of all lessons: never say a Ukrainian is Russian.  Their perspectives on life in the USSR, even in its waning days, was an education to be sure. 

Likewise, in my years with the Orthodox Church I had the chance to meet and talk to many from those regions: Bulgaria, Serbia, Russia, Ukraine, and Romania.  Again, it was an eye opener.  My favorite was a Romanian professor who often spoke about his life in the Soviet and post-Soviet system.  He eventually immigrated to the US in the late 1990s.  He also had perspectives about the increase of Muslim immigration and the designs of the Russian government in these post-Cold War years. 

In any event, like those from the Middle East we became friends with during those years, I learned the stories we are told in America are seriously deficient when it comes to what people in other parts of the world see.  That may always be the case.  It's likely they don't get being American.  But it's enough to know most of the punditry and talking points is likely missing big pieces of the puzzle. 

Hence this:


Well, if you have any knowledge at all of the Russian Orthodox Church, you wouldn't be shocked in the least.  Much less disappointed.  It would make perfect sense, as many Orthodox Christians outside the dominant circle of Russian Orthodoxy often lament. Even those Russian Orthodox struggle with the church's allegiance with the State in light of the need to protect the Church against those modernist forces that would happily see the Church put back in the chains  it wore during the Soviet era.  It isn't simple, and likely shouldn't be commented on as quickly as I believe the stories were wanting us to. 

In fact, I can't help but think part of what Deacon Greydanus sees is based on that modern progressive narrative that assumes the very best in anyone except those in my own circle of neighbors.  That is, 'the East' isn't us, therefore he sees it through those modern, progressive rose color lenses.  Which is why it's shocking that things may be as complex anywhere else in the world as we should admit they really are here.  But that's for another post.  For now, I'm shocked that he's so disappointed if he knows enough about the history of the Russian Orthodox Church to think he should be disappointed.

Therefore, during this time I'll keep trying to focus on the prayers for peace, and those who are clearly trying to find ways to mitigate the suffering and seek paths toward realistic ends to the conflict.  I will ignore those who talk like experts when their talking makes it clear they're anything but experts.

6 comments:

  1. In fact, I can't help but think part of what Deacon Greydanus sees is based on that modern progressive narrative that assumes the very best in anyone except those in my own circle of neighbors. That is, 'the East' isn't us, therefore he sees it through those modern, progressive rose color lenses. Which is why it's shocking that things may be as complex anywhere else in the world as we should admit they really are here. But that's for another post. For now, I'm shocked that he's so disappointed if he knows enough about the history of the Russian Orthodox Church to think he should be disappointed.

    Very much this. It's hard not to notice that people tend to think those they have the least exposure of as saints.

    When the truth is that we're human. All of us. For the best that implies, and the worst.

    Theodore Dalrymple wrote about this years ago in The Rush from Judgement.

    Apologists for nonjudgmentalism point, above all, to its supposed quality of compassion. A man who judges others will sometimes condemn them and therefore deny them aid and assistance: whereas the man who refuses to judge excludes no one from his all-embracing compassion. He never asks where his fellowman's suffering comes from, whether it be self-inflicted or no: for whatever its source, he sympathizes with it and succors the sufferer.
    . . .
    But medicine is not just the passive contemplation of suffering: it is the attempt, by no means always successful, to alleviate it. And it cannot have escaped the attention of doctors that much modern suffering has a distinct flavor of self-infliction. I am not talking now of the physical illnesses that derive from habits such as smoking, but rather of the chronic suffering caused by not knowing how to live, or rather by imagining that life can be lived as an entertainment, as an extended video, as nothing but a series of pleasures of the moment. The whirligig of time brings in its revenges—at least in a cold climate such as ours.

    If the doctor has a duty to relieve the suffering of his patients, he must have some idea where that suffering comes from, and this involves the retention of judgment, including moral judgment. And if, as far as he can tell in good faith, the misery of his patients derives from the way they live, he has a duty to tell them so—which often involves a more or less explicit condemnation of their way of life as completely incompatible with a satisfying existence. By avoiding the issue, the doctor is not being kind to his patients; he is being cowardly. Moreover, by refusing to place the onus on the patients to improve their lot, he is likely to mislead them into supposing that he has some purely technical or pharmacological answer to their problems, thus helping to perpetuate them.

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    1. That's the multi-cultural education influencing our take on things. The idea that we should take at face value the goodness of anyone in the world except our own, or take their own versions of themselves as truth without considering their potential bias. It's so engrained that you see things like Deacon Greydanus saying he knows enough to admire them, and yet stunned by something he should know if he knows enough to admire them.

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  2. The Russian Orthodox are repeating the same mistakes they did in Pre-Revolutionary Russia. By siding with the Czar on everything, good & bad, the people were willing to side with atheistic revolutionaries to rid themselves of the despotic Russian Orthodox Church.

    History repeating itself.

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    1. That's what I thought when I read his comment. I didn't have to hang with Orthodox Christians to know the basics of the Russian Church's history. That he acted so surprised was what shocked me.

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  3. As somebody who has read George Weigel's biography of John Paul II, I would have thought Deacon Steven was well aware that the Russian Orthodox Leadership was notorious for collaborating with the post-Stalin Soviet Government. It's been the better part of a decade since I read it and even I remember that being mentioned, though I don't recall details

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    1. Not just the Soviets and not just the Russians. The same was true for the Orthodox under Ottoman rule. That was my point. Deacon Greydanus seems stunned when he says he's such an admirer, yet to be an admirer he would have to know the gritty details. Unless, as I said, he subscribes to the progressive insistence on seeing everyone else in the world in the most positive light possible.

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