The Brothers Karamazov for Lent

I’m going to step outside of my little domestic church box for a moment. You see, I teach High School Literature at our protestant co-op. Two weeks ago, we began Dostoevsky’s BK. I love reading that book. I love Alyosha, his innocence and his tenderness. Teaching this work of art to a group of protestant teenagers? I’m falling in love with it on an even deeper level.

This afternoon, I led my class in a discussion ultimately with Dostoevsky, through Ivan Fyodorovich and Father Zosima, about the relationship of church and state. Imagine! A group of American Protestants, with nothing more than the text and a question they came up with themselves, discussing whether one should subsume the other, which one, if either, or if they can ever be functionally separate. Or, as they asked - they asked! - if the state was to be subject to “the church,” which church? And if the state is not subject to any church (or “church”), does the state put itself in the place of God?

I could spend months unpacking this with them, and if we could meet daily, we would at least spend a week on just these two pages. We didn’t even get to the aspect of conscience and how criminals would be handled differently in these different systems. This is why we won’t finish the book this year. I don’t even know if we’ll finish it next year. But there is one lesson I hope to lead these students to more than any other, and that is that “beauty will save the world.” We are told to turn our eyes to that which is true, honorable, just, pure, lovely, commendable, excellent - to think about these things (Phil. 4:8). Why? So that the God of peace will be with us. If God is with us, then we are on the path to salvation. Beauty will indeed save the world. Beauty is saving the world, despite the firestorm surrounding us.

Oh, and if Jim Jatras ever happens to find my humble little micro blog - Vlad the Impaler even made an appearance in our discussion today (but I don’t remember the connection now).

Lord, have mercy on all of us as we trudge, trek, drag our feet, and otherwise, hopefully sometimes joyfully, journey through this Lenten season.