Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was a famous Russian writer and dissident. He was an outspoken critic of communism and political oppression in the Soviet Union. In 1945 he was arrested and sent into exile. He was in prison for eleven years.
During that time, he was diagnosed with cancer. But in the middle of this dark time in his life, he found light. In the middle of such hopelessness, he found hope. In what seemed to be a godless prison, he found God. In the years to come, his writings earned a Nobel Prize.
For over fifty years, he studied the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the calamity that came after it.
Here is his conclusion: “I have read hundreds of books, collected hundreds of personal testimonies, and have already contributed eight volumes of my own toward the effort of clearing away the ruble left by that upheaval.
“But if I were asked to formulate as concisely as possible the main cause of the ruinous revolution that swallowed up some 60 million of our people, I could not put it more accurately than to repeat: ‘Men have forgotten God; that is why this has happened.’”
(Templeton Address, 1983)
I sometimes wonder about our day and time, and the many struggles and problems that we are facing in our country and all around the world. I can’t help but ask the all-important question: Have we forgotten God?