Last summer’s (third) volume of Kontinent, mouthpiece of Eastern European emigration literature, carried a striking article by Mihajlo Mihajlov, 43, a Yugoslav lecturer in Slavonic literature. Mihajlov is now in jail for the third time for his nonconformist publications, serving a seven-year sentence that began in 1974. The article is entitled “The Mystical Experience of Captivity.” In it Mihajlov describes his experience (also to be found in the Russian writers Solzhenitsyn, Panin, and Abram Terz) that “only he who saves his soul, i.e., remains loyal to the truth, his conscience or his inner voice, and is even willing to die for that end, may actually save both, soul and body, whereas those who compromise with lies and materialism usually lose both.”
Mihajlov goes on to speak of some higher power and authority he experienced in prison that will make a person almost invincible if he listens to that inner voice, which he terms the calling of God. Consequently, for him the whole ideological battle and power struggle of today in the last analysis is not a political but a religious battle. The true battle line runs between good and evil. The peak sentence of this part of Mihajlov’s essay runs, “To follow that inner voice, then, means nothing else than to determine our present actions with a view to eternity.” This is the decisive rule for living in captivity—and that includes everybody, even those who enjoy civil liberty but are subject to lack of freedom in other ways, through illness or other adverse conditions.
This is a weighty and much needed challenge for us in the West who are continually tempted to compromise with materialism in its different and sometimes sublime forms. In his prison cell Mihajlov has struck on the “mystery” that used to animate Christians, that is, vivere sub specie aeternitatis, to live under the perspective of eternity.
A search for this almost proverbial phrase in theological encyclopedias and twentieth-century textbooks of dogmatics and ethics is fruitless. The absence reveals a major lack of conviction in present-day official Christendom. “Eschatology and ethics” is supposed to be an important element of New Testament thinking, but recent textbooks of ethics have nothing on eternity as a major motive and steering force of Christian action. Of course, the “theology of hope” has meant a step forward, but it often seems to be a hope geared to goals of social development designed to be attained in the near future. The biblical ideas that “our citizenship is in heaven” (Phil 3:20) and “For here we have no continuing city, but we seek one to come” (Heb. 13:14) do not figure in our teaching.
One has to go back to Calvin’s Institutes, in which he describes the Christian life under but two headings, mortification and meditation of the future life, and warns Christians not to give too much attention to earthly things. As often, Calvin here follows in the steps of St. Augustine of Hippo and his recommendation to seek the heavenly Kingdom and let our lives be formed by our desire for life eternal and the vision of God.
This is a call to reconsider our priorities. Ten years after World War II some of us began to study sociology along with theology. We began to take seriously the ideological challenge of Karl Marx—a task unavoidable at a time when Marxism had a curious idealistic appeal. Moreover, this generation began to shake off the dominance of Bultmann, Barth, and others in a quest for the reality of God. Nevertheless, we have been at fault in helping to replace the other-worldliness of former evangelicals with a thorough this-worldliness! This is wrong. For one thing, a completely this-worldly orientation will never do the job of preparing Christians for a time of persecution.
Again and again, the Bible tells us that we need to break the iron grip of this-worldliness. We are not permanently at home on earth. The biblical statement “our citizenship is in heaven” shows there is a contrast of even higher importance than that of rich and poor, free and slave. It means that we are strangers in the land who may quickly become outsiders. We are like pilgrims, migrant workers on a temporary assignment, ambassadors extraordinary and plenipotentiary, or simply persons in exile. There is something of all these characteristics in the life of a Christian.
But there is also a sense of belonging to a land to which we will return soon, and an expectation of splendor and glory that gives color to all our actions. It creates an eagerness to apply the standards of eternity to our present decision-making. During our life on earth we must be sanctified and remade into God’s image in order to be ready—or at least less unfit—for the heritage of eternity. Cleansed and changed and more and more drawn into his light, we need to become what we are meant to be. That wooden old egocentric heart of ours cannot inherit the Kingdom.
The precious privilege of that higher horizon must bring about soberness and a discernment of earthly things. Living in the light of eternity will always create a certain distance between the Christian and the affairs of this world. He must be found in a constant movement of exodus, in order to be with Christ—and perhaps bear Christ’s humiliations with him. If our reference point is in heaven, we will not be trapped in reactions of bitterness or cynicism, nor be controlled by what events and people do to us.
However, meditation on the future life does not teach us to hide and mourn in a remote corner. This may not be our way of thinking, but the Bible links existence “in exile” with the highest possible responsibility for the welfare of the land of our abode. Jeremiah is to write to those in exile in Babylon, “Seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile” (Jer. 29:7). God commands nothing less than the engagement of the exiled. The believer shall not allow himself to be depressed by conditions but act responsibly to promote the welfare of a city that is not his own and will always take second place only in his hierarchy of values.
This sounds contradictory, and many evangelicals, tempted like other human beings to rationalize, have often voted for their first loyalty without recognizing the Lord’s orders for the second! But, having that higher point of reference and faculty of discernment in mind, who should be better equipped than the evangelical to look after the welfare of people, with a loyalty to his commission that is not diminished by adverse experiences?
The book of Daniel presents us with an admirable example for the Christian to follow during his earthly run of time. Like Daniel, he is to exercise his statesmanlike task and prerogative to help sustain the world even if there are only ten just men in a city. And at the same time, like Daniel, he needs to have “his windows open toward Jerusalem” (Dan. 6:10), to honor his eternal calling in prayer and in everything he does.
