Doctor Zhivago Excerpt

MR CHARLES L DEREMER (PAFZ43A@prodigy.com)
Wed, 16 Aug 1995 00:24:47 EDT

-- [ From: Charles L. DeRemer * EMC.Ver #2.10P ] --

As I was saying, one must be true to Christ. I'll explain. What you
don't understand is that it is possible to be an atheist, it is
possible not to know whether God exists, or why, and yet believe that
man does not live in a state of nature but in history, and that history
as we know it now began with Christ, and that Christ's Gospel is its
foundation. Now what is history? It is the centuries of systematic
explorations of the riddle of death, with a view to overcoming death.
That's why people discover mathematical infinity and electromagnetic
waves, that's why they write symphonies. Now, you can't advance in
this direction without a certain faith. You can't make such
discoveries without spiritual equipment. And the basic elements of
this equipment are in the gospels. What are they? To begin with, love
of one's neighbor, which is the supreme form of vital energy. Once it
fills the heart of man it has to overflow and spend itself. And then
the two basic ideals of modern man--without them he is unthinkable--the
idea of free personality and the idea of life as sacrifice. Mind you,
all this is still extraordinarily new. There was no history in this
sense among the ancients. They had blood and beastliness and cruelty
and pockmocked Caligulas who do not suspect how untalented every
enslaver is. They had the boastful dead eternity of bronze monuments
and marble columns. It was not until after the coming of Christ that
time and man could breathe freely. It was not until after Him that men
began to live toward the future. Man does not die in a ditch like a
dog--but at home in history, while the work toward the conquest of
death is in full swing; he dies sharing in this work. Ouf! I got
quite worked up, didn't I? But I might as well be talking to a blank
wall.
--Boris Pasternak (Doctor Zhivago)

Submitted by Charles L. DeRemer PAFZ43A@prodigy.com