At the beginning of the 20th century, the United States released a book called “In His Steps. What would Jesus do?” The author of the book was a protestant pastor Charles Sheldon. As a fiction, the book is rather weak, the plot is simple, the characters are too “conditional”. It’s actually not a novel but a collection of sermons. But as a sermon, it is quite interesting. The idea is that the community church members decided to follow the Lord, in a literal sense, prior to doing a step in your life ask yourself what Jesus would do in my place. Setting such a high standard for your own conduct, people are making the life in their city cleaner and truthful, and not deviating particularly from the rules of the games of the American reality, they achieve major social outcomes.
As with any other sermon, this “plan” of course, includes elements of utopia. But there is also a rational element: prior to making a decision on any major issue, wait and think at least for 10 minutes. Think over during these 10 minutes to what extent the fulfillment of your desires would be “ecologically pure”, in the broadest sense of this word. While, in the lower levels of thinking, the so-called “decisiveness” and “success” are highly appreciated. 10 minutes is sometimes enough to understand their value and, by and large, their necessity.
Armenian Apostolic Church (at least, in Armenia) should, in my opinion, deal with such matters instead of gratifying the ambition of the rich to “build churches”. Our official church is too “official”, so to speak, adjacent to the government of the day. The religious sects spread out their false and sometimes dangerous ideas in “unofficial” and more creative methods, often more effectively than our priests, entering into the hidden folds of the human psychology. Indeed, purely social bribe also plays a role here, but they would not go so far ahead only with this. This is possible only on the background of the cynicism and lack of faithfulness of the “elite” (including, the religious). When some people from this “elite” are saying, “close up, prohibit,” it is only a sign of powerlessness.
Naturally, it is not only the task of the church. The “elite” by its conduct should set up some standards of conduct that would be acceptable to the majority of the society. It might not be as high a standard as described in Sheldon’s book. The “standard bearer” might be a mortal or a group of mortals. But not the group that has reached the so-called “success” thanks to the so-called “decisiveness”. The subconscious desire to resemble them is associated with jealousy and hatred.
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Thus, when we ask a question what would do in my place… Each of us should decide on the name.
Aram ABRAHAMYAN
