After Lenin established the Soviet Union in 1922, and even as early as 1917, anti-religious campaigns began and gradually increased, leading to a period of great persecution especially against the church. Under the pressure of Soviet communism, churches were closed, church officials and believers were imprisoned, and they were subjected to many horrific practices including exile and torture that would ruin their lives.

According to the practice of the time, when followers of Jesus Christ were caught, they were asked to deny Jesus Christ. If they denied their faith, they would be reunited with their lives and families and could regain their lives or "freedom" without ever going to church again... Naturally, millions of people denied Jesus during this period...

There were also those who didn't deny... Some of those who didn't deny died, some spent their lives in prisons, lost their children and families, experienced great pain yet remained faithful to their faith - and I am married to a wonderful woman who blossomed from the seeds of faith planted by her grandmother who endured such persecution...

However, this pressure did not last forever...

In the 1980s, with Mikhail Gorbachev and new political and social freedoms, the church also began to breathe. Freedom didn't come alone; it brought with it those who had abandoned the church, denied Jesus, and thus escaped persecution...

At this time, the church was shining brightly with the wounds it received during persecution. People who had spent time in dungeons away from their families because they didn't deny their faith, who had lost their loved ones, been denied by their spouses, gathered secretly in homes, had their lives practically expropriated but never compromised their faith were now sitting there, or their children, grandchildren... Or others who met Jesus through them...

These were the people that those who had denied their faith wanted to come and sit with in repentance...

What would happen now?

The Bible speaks of GOD'S judgment regarding those who deny Jesus, but it also speaks of the grace granted to another denier, Simon Peter...

Of course, God's mercy is infinite, but could those who had suffered many pains for not denying their faith worship side by side with those who had denied their faith to avoid these pains?

Dear reader,

First, I wish I could say that what you are about to read would answer these and similar questions, but the solution to some issues that have been discussed for centuries in both church and philosophical thought platforms may not be this easy. Still, we certainly won't give up trying to achieve the right balance of salt and light that pleases God in our journey of being transformed into Christ's glory.

Why are Sin and Morality and even ethics important, isn't knowing sin enough? Is morality alone sufficient?

Morality is a name given to external, behavioral perceptions that vary according to cultures, affecting what is good or right, bad or wrong, our desires, our actions... Of course, in today's post-modern culture, since perceptions of good and bad are quite relative, the concept of morality also gets its share from this relativity. A relationship with someone other than your spouse is bad in some societies while encouraged in others. In some societies, theft is a very bad and dishonorable behavior, while in others it is a behavior that gains incredible social status if not caught. The culture that a Jesus Christ follower should follow is the Bible, but what should be done in situations that require more special, more open-ended, more situation-specific solutions?

 

This is where we need to start talking about another concept. Ethics!

The concept of ethics, derived from the Greek word "Ethos" meaning character, is a kind of philosophy that tries to solve good and evil and many other issues according to unwritten laws. So what does this have to do with us? Of course, there are many valuable ethics professors and teachers today, and it's not my place to explain this while they are around, but if we return to our story of the persecuted church told above...