Dear one,
Who are we, or even, what are we? These questions came to mind as I/we began to track the unfolding horror of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Is this horror any worse than the Afghanistan debacle; the genocide of Armenians or Uyghurs of China? However we answer these two questions, surely we’ll make that ages-old observation: something’s terribly wrong.
Given these two questions and the labyrinth of my mind, I recalled—and this truly dates me—a volume written by Karl Menninger, Whatever Became of Sin? His title and theme do reflect the 1973 culture of its publication, particularly given that, in 1972, I’m Okay—You’re Okay, became a New York Times #1 Best Seller. My allusion to these two books is not that they are antithetical to one another, but that I’m of a generation that has truly imbibed: I’m okay; you’re okay; and together we’re okay.
If asked, “How are you, Stan?” typically I respond, “Okay.” Essentially that response means: life today is unfolding well—no great glitches or traumas—but the real meaning of my response will be found in my tone of voice and volume—the energy I give to the word “okay.” But this noted, even when I enthusiastically declare, “Okay!”, nonetheless I know that not everything about my life, particularly within the inner depths of my heart and mind, is okay. Thus, sympathetically I hear Menninger’s question: What became of sin? And it is at this moment, when I consider the darkness and its potential within me, that I then turn to Mr. Putin, and ponder his motivations for invading Ukraine. Are they anger or jealousy or envy or pride or fear or vengeance or conceit? Or all of these and more? Of course I don’t know the answer to these questions, but I do know those character traits. They are not foreign to me, and they are not okay.
And so, when I consider our world—particularly the twentieth century, the bloodiest in human history, although some are now labeling the twenty-first century as “the dark century”—I wonder if we might do well to imbibe hefty doses from the nineteenth century: The Heart of Darkness, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, or even Withering Heights. Ah, but then I hear and see the great humanitarian responses to Putin’s destructive, sinful, and evil lusts and I recognize the wisdom of Robert Louis Stevenson: it’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Not one or the other, but both. Moreover, as I learn of those humanitarian responses—among them those of many Romanian churches, a few of whom I’ve been privileged to encourage, if only in a small way—I take heart. Not all is dark.
Who are we? What are we? Given our present circumstances, however we answer these questions, I take solace in Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s words:
“Am I then really that which other men tell of?
Or am I only what I myself know of myself? …
Whoever I am, Thou knowest, O God, I am thine!”[1]
Jekyll and Hyde,
Stan
[1] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison, (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1967), p. 189.