Solzhenitsyn & Superficiality
Thinking and acting Christianly requires time and effort. To understand the truth of the Gospel requires us to stop and ponder, to think and not be too quick to jump to conclusions. Unfortunately, the frenzied pace of the modern world and the ubiquity of the media leaves little room for this.
As the late Russian thinker Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn said,
Hastiness and superficiality are the psychic disease of the 20th century and more than anywhere else this disease is reflected in the press. In-depth analysis of a problem is anathema to the press. It stops at sensational formulas.
Amazingly, Solzhenitsyn made this observation some 30 years ago, before the advent of the Internet, the “sound bite” and 24/7 news. Where is there time to think? And think deeply? Meditation, thinking all the way through a subject, is a lost art. Moreover, the absence of biblical thoughtfulness is striking. There are some that “use” the Bible in the analysis of our world, but there are far fewer whose thinking itself has been formed by the Bible. And so, our tendency is to confuse our natural assessment—how we “feel” about something—with biblical assessments. After all we are Christians, and how we feel about a matter must be the Christian way to think about it, right?
But is it?
Something to think about from “The Kingdom Perspective”.
The naive believes everything,
But the sensible man considers his steps.
A wise man is cautious and turns away from evil,
But a fool is arrogant and careless.~Proverbs 14:15-16 NASB
