Sample reading of The Gospel According to Ivan Ivanovich

The Gospel According to Ivan Ivanovich

A Novel in Two Parts by Nathaniel Ernest

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Published by Ernest Publishing House, Pennsylvania 2023

Contents

List of Principle Characters in the Order They Appear (6)

The Gospel According to Ivan Ivanovich

Prologue to Part One (9)

I: The Genesis of Ivan Ivanovich (14)

II: A Eulogy for Vera Pavlovna (31)

III: The Epistle to Nataliya Igoryevna (45)

IV: The Confession of Fyodor Alekseyevich (63)

V: The Proverbs of Olga Andreyevna (100)

VI: The Revelation of Olga Andreyevna (116)

VII: The Exodus of Olga Andreyevna (124)

Prologue to Part Two (144)

I: The Condemnation of Marina Igoryevna (155)

II: Ivan Ivanovich Meets Lyudmila Antonyevna (159)

III: The Condition of Lyudmila Antonyevna (175)

IV: Ivan Ivanovich Gets Married (182)

V: Ivan Ivanovich Gets Divorced (193)

VI: The Lamentations of Lyudmila Antonyevna (211)

VII: The Prayer of Ivan Ivanovich (223)

VIII: The Book of Olga Andreyevna (248)

IX: The Gospel According to Ivan Ivanovich (261)

Notes (282)

List of Principle Characters in the Order They Appear

Though not a comprehensive list of the characters that appear in The Gospel According to Ivan Ivanovich, this list is intended to be used as a reference should the reader require. Russian names consist of a first name, patronymic, and family name. When formally addressing a person, both first name and patronymic are used. Diminutives are shortened versions of the first name and are used between family, friends, and in some cases, when a superior addresses a subordinate. Transliteration of Russian names is not completely standardized and therefore may vary from transliteration to transliteration.

s Narrator

s Ivan Ivanovich Chernov, diminutive-Vanya, the protagonist

s Lyudmila Antonyevna Yugovskaya (Chernova), Diminutive-Mila, Ivan Ivanovich Chernov’s wife

s Ivan Ivanovich Chernov, Ivan Ivanovich’s father, referred to as Chernov

s Nataliya Igoryevna Simonova (Kovalskaya), Diminutive-Natasha, childhood friend and romantic interest of Ivan Ivanovich, sister to Marina Igoryevna Simonova.

s Vera Pavlovna Silovoya, wife of Fyodor Alekseyvich Silovoy

s Fyodor Alekseyevich Silovoy, husband of Vera Pavlovna Silovaya, most frequently referred to as Silovoy.

s Marina Igoryevna Simonova, Nataliya Igoryevna’s half-sister

s Igor Igoryevich Simonov, father of Nataliya and Marina Igoryevna

s Andrey Vladimirovich Kovalskiy, fiancée and eventual husband to Nataliya Igoryevna

s Olga Andreyevna, no relation to other characters, refers to herself as Olha Andriyivna (Ukrainian pronunciation)

s Sergey Kirilovich Kremenin, a dog thief

s Elizaveta Mikailovna, the madame of a house owned by Chernov

s Valerya Stepanovna Yugovskaya, Lyudmila Antonyevna’s mother

s Oleg Andreyevich Petrov, controversial writer, excommunicated from The Russian Orthodox Church

s Sergey Aleksandrovich, Chief of Police

s Matvey and Bogdan, Svyatogorodok town police officers

s Darya Fyodorovna, diminutive-Dasha, Ivan Ivanovich’s housekeeper

The Genesis of Ivan Ivanovich

“It shouldn’t have been possible,” Ivan Ivanovich Chernov usually liked to start out this way, and whether or not one was acquainted with him, or even if they’ve heard the story before, Ivan would corner his victim and recite the miracle of his birth as if he were capable of remembering it. “The doctors had seen this condition (a condition that Ivan Ivanovich never explicitly defined) in many women before my mother, and we all know that our doctors are the best in the world. Yes, it shouldn’t have been possible. Nevertheless, my birth was the first miracle of many I’d experience throughout my life. That was February 26, 1860. People are surprised when they learn my age, they often comment that I look younger than I am. The doctors told my mother that they were quickly running out of options and that the odds of both her and my survival were not favorable. But at the very moment of diagnosis, it was as if I and the Lord decided that we made our own options, and I was born the natural way, in only a matter of a few minutes, and both my mother and I survived the traumatic event.” The condition that rendered his unfortunate mother incapable of birthing a child could not be explained, and documentation shows, that she had another child after Ivan, and perhaps even one before him.

Ivan Ivanovich was well known in our town of Svyatogorodok,[i] but for completely different reasons than he imagined. He perceived himself to be exceptionally good, smart, important, and impressive; and though there was nothing particularly impressive about him, before he died, several people agreed that he managed to accomplish the most impressive thing that they had ever witnessed.

He suffered from an excessive quantity of self-importance accompanied by chronic dishonesty. Many people are afflicted by excessive self-importance, vanity, and similar things; however, the case of Ivan Ivanovich seems to have been amplified by the deep religious convictions he held so dearly. These convictions started at an early age and had been with him as long as he could remember. The reader should consider, that Ivan Ivanovich’s childhood convictions were innocent and pure, and it would be wrong to assume that his early childhood experiences were pretended, imagined, or nonexistent; and it would be a disservice to attribute falsity to Ivan Ivanovich during his childhood years because early childhood is the most innocent and honest time of a person’s life, and if the reader will only take a few moments, find a quiet place, reflect on her[ii] own childhood, envision certain moments from that special time, and remember her own childhood face, she will rediscover a familiar joy, and she will know with a certainty that she was good and happy then, and such was the case with Ivan Ivanovich.

Something happened to Ivan Ivanovich when he was two or three years old, no older than four, and several people recall something similar from their early childhood. All he could remember was that it felt as though he was in the presence of a light. This light was different than what we are used to, it was as though it were of a different composition, it was white, and it felt as though he had just opened his eyes for the first time. It was strangely familiar and dual-natured, possessing the quality of extreme clarity while simultaneously possessing a certain degree of fogginess. The most meaningful thing about this experience, he once recalled, was the feeling that it brought. It was a feeling that could only be described as good; however, it cannot be sufficiently captured by words. It was as though the child were coming into consciousness; as though God himself was speaking to the child without words saying, “here you are, and you are mine.”

This experience was real, and Ivan kept this experience in the repository of his soul as he grew. And as he grew, he began to read, and he began to read about his relationship with God. He read in Jerimiah, “Before I formed thee in the belly, I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb, I sanctified thee, and I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations;”[iii] and he read in Romans, “For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God…the Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God.”[iv]

And Ivan Ivanovich began to identify himself as though he were one with God, a knower and speaker of God’s will, and this was the image of himself that he wanted to project into the world. He began to obsess over religious ceremony and came to believe that religious ceremony and tradition were the equivalents of pure religion. He encouraged, and often even demanded that others obsess over religious ceremony as he did, preying on whatever degree of scrupulosity the person exhibited to bring them into agreement. Ironically, it was this dedication to religious ceremony that caused him to begin to forget Jesus, and his religion became more about himself than God. This was something that he could never admit, and the irony of it is, is that he claimed to do all things in the name of Jesus. His sincerest belief was that he was ever approaching the likeness of God, and that observation of religious ceremony and tradition was the vessel by which the likeness of God could be obtained. He believed he would earn the likeness of God by strict adherence to a pharisaical checklist, and interestingly, he believed he met all the requirements on his self-prescribed checklist, even though he didn’t. When examining Ivan Ivanovich’s religious beliefs, it should be noted, that to Ivan Ivanovich, they weren’t beliefs at all. In his mind, he categorized his religious convictions as absolute truth and pure knowledge.

So it was, that Ivan Ivanovich focused on the good and tried to drown the qualities he considered to be bad, wrong, or evil in the abyss of his unconscious. Yet despite his efforts to drown these qualities, they continued to exist unbeknownst to him.[v] And it came to be, that these qualities demanded that their existence be acknowledged, and they manifested themselves as a set of commandments that guided his life. They disguised themselves as God and his will, and yet they were demons. The demons of his unconscious became his masters, he became subject to them simply because he refused to acknowledge the truth about himself, which was that he was never as good, gifted, special, important, or chosen as he had hoped himself to be. The truth that he refused to acknowledge was that he was particularly ordinary.

The first commandment by which he lived his life, stemmed from the shadow of his belief that he was chosen by God, and not only chosen by God, but loved and favored by God above others. And because God loved him, he loved himself, but not as God loved him, and not in the way in which we say a person should love himself. We usually think of loving oneself as self-care or setting appropriate relationship boundaries, but this is not how Ivan Ivanovich loved himself. He loved himself in such a peculiar way, that it led him to believe that he could do no wrong and that everything he did was right and sealed with God’s approval. And so he did whatever he wanted at the expense of others, and it didn’t matter if they were hurt financially, physically, emotionally, or in any other way. And the first commandment of Ivan Ivanovich was, “thou shalt love thyself with all thy heart, might, mind, and strength.”

The second commandment was, “not thy will, O Lord, be done, but Ivan Ivanovich’s.”

It must be a confusing thing, to view oneself so highly that one honestly mistakes their own will for God’s. It is easy in a religious culture such as the one in our town, where everybody is Russian Orthodox, to convince people that what you want is the same as what God wants, especially when your will is disguised by facades of righteousness. And it is easy to use the name of God to get people to behave how you want them to behave.

For example, when Ivan was 17 years old, he became acquainted with a red-headed sverstnika,[vi] a girl of his age, from a common family. Her name was Liza[vii] Popova, and she once commented that she hoped to get married someday, which for some reason made Ivan jealous. Though they were only new acquaintances, Ivan began to covet her, and he imagined her being married to somebody else and giving herself to whomever that might be; this thought bothered him even though he didn’t particularly like her. And the third commandment was, “thou shalt covet whatever thou shalt feel like coveting.”

“Liza!” Ivan called out to her one summer evening when he saw her in the park. “I was thinking, you mentioned once that you wanted to marry, but why do you save yourself for marriage? In Mark, we read that they neither marry nor are given in marriage.”[viii]

That was how the conversation began, and Ivan impressed her with his knowledge of the scriptures and complimented her on many things. And before the night was through, he took her by the hand and led her to a private place.

On the next day, Liza was feeling particularly down and ashamed, but she was mostly sad because the experience was not what she had hoped it would have been, it was not the special occasion she had been saving herself for only the morning before. Her parents noticed her demeanor and she broke and confided in them because that is the kind of relationship they had. She later recalled, “I could talk with them about anything and be free of judgment or condemnation.” She told them how Ivan quoted scripture to make her believe that that was okay, though it was never what she really wanted, she never really wanted that. What she wanted was love and connection. She wanted a man to love her enough to look after her every need. But Ivan convinced her in the name of God that marriage was not necessary for that.

Liza’s parents, upon hearing about their daughter’s encounter with Ivan Ivanovich, took her and made their way over to the Chernov house to demand an explanation. The Popovs walked the path to the door, and with nervous hearts approached the two-story home. Mr. Popov knocked on the door loudly notwithstanding he was intimidated by the appearance of wealth.

Ivan opened the door.

“Young man,” Mr. Popov started, “this is a serious matter, and it should not be taken lightly. I understand you were with my daughter Liza last night, and that something happened. You seem to be from high-society, and so explain please how it is that you could take advantage of a young lady who is also from high-society.” (The Popovs weren’t actually from high-society, they had only hoped to be.)

It was during this confrontation that Ivan obeyed his fourth and fifth commandments, “thou shalt lie at any time you feel like, to anyone, for any reason if it gets you what you want, helps you avoid responsibility, or makes you look better than you actually are,” and “thou shalt delight in scorn.”[ix] So Ivan lied to them all about the encounter and then proceeded in an attempt to convince Liza that she didn’t understand what had really happened the night before.

“I did see you at the park,” Ivan addressed Liza, “but you were with another young man. You were flirting wildly with him, but you did glance over at me occasionally, essentially telling me that you had wished you were with me and not him, but then it started to get dark, and I saw you go away with him. What’s more, is that I am a Christian and am saving myself for marriage, for that special someone. This is a standard that I guard diligently and wouldn’t readily give it away to someone of the likes of you, and your face is only mediocre, so even if I wanted to do that, which I didn’t do and never would, except for with my future wife, for whom I remind you, I am preserving myself. But even if I wanted to do that, you would have no chance of seducing me based on your appearance and societal standing, which despite what your parents say, you are not of high-society, the fact of which everyone is well aware. It is God’s will that we save ourselves for marriage, and I can point to the scriptures that say this if you are not convinced. So perhaps you should take the matter up with God and not me, after all, it is you who offended him, not I who offended you. You can now close your mouths.”

Mr. Popov nearly assaulted Ivan with blows, but wisdom intervened and he realized that such an assault would likely end up in a court case and that Ivan Ivanovich had proven his willingness to lie, exaggerate, insult, flatter, or do anything else he had to do to win the case, and that such a case would only smear his daughter’s reputation and cause rumors about her to be passed around town.

The Popovs knew they could not provide evidence of the encounter; they correctly judged that Ivan would admit no fault nor take any responsibility and that their emotions about the situation were to no effect, so they turned around and went home. Liza burst into violent sobs, and her parents vainly tried to reassure her that everything was okay and that all was not lost, but her encounter with Ivan Ivanovich Chernov and the insults that were heaped upon her after being used, was an unpleasant memory that she would involuntarily recall from time to time throughout her life.

Once the Popovs were gone, Ivan Ivanovich retreated to his room, fell on his knees, and thanked God for choosing him as his servant and for preserving him from the consequences of mingling with women of questionable character. As he concluded his prayer, he heard a knock at his bedroom door and turned around to see his father standing in the doorway with a note in his hand.

Ivan’s father, from whom he learned the sixth and seventh commandments, and who was also named Ivan Ivanovich Chernov, but will be referred to simply as Chernov to avoid confusion, inquired of his son as to what all the commotion was about at the front door.

“I would have come to see myself,” Chernov said, “but I was preoccupied with another matter, I had just received a note from the madam of one of my properties regarding a potential business opportunity. Do you know anybody with the initials F.A.S.? Oh never mind, it’s unimportant. I’ll figure it out. Tell me, what was all that commotion about?”

Ivan Ivanovich then proceeded to tell his father that he had been falsely accused of defiling a young lady from the lower-class and that he suspected it was probably an attempt to blackmail the family for money.

“They’ll not get a single kopek out of me! People will stoop to unbelievably low levels for money,” Chernov complained as he looked back down at the note in his hand and walked away.

Ivan then repeated the words his father had spoken only moments before, “A potential business opportunity.”

sss

Ivan knew the family business well, his father had groomed him in the affairs of the business since he was 12 years old, which was property ownership and management. A primary focus of the Chernov home was to acquire

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wrong. So it is, that the atheist is murdered, and his murderer has avoided the authorities and lived out the rest of his life in happiness and bliss, was never arrested, and he was never judged by man; and because the atheist says God does not exist, the murderer will not be judged by God either. Therefore, the murder of the atheist, according to the atheist, is not good, but it is not evil, it just is what it is. And yet, the atheist persists in the knowledge of what is good and what is evil, otherwise, he wouldn’t conform himself to societal norms; and if he conforms himself to societal norms only out of fear of punishment, then he is a coward and fails to live up to his own ideals. And so it is that the atheist knows good from evil, yet readily dismisses the account of where this knowledge of good and evil came from. Like our first parents, who reached into eternity and became as gods, able to judge what is good and what is evil, so are the atheists.

To answer the question of why God would create an evil being is no simple undertaking. To understand this, we must understand the mind of God, which may be an impossible task, but nonetheless, the invitation is there. For thus sayeth the Lord, “come now, and let us reason together.”[i] So let us reason with God if we have the courage to face him. Let us learn of him and his ways. Let us also learn of that which is created in his image, but even learning of ourselves is no easy undertaking, because honest examination of ourselves will reveal both pleasant and unpleasant things, both good and evil, both light and darkness.

Remove the temptation to understand yourself by means of your interests. There are those who believe their existence is defined by what interests they have or what they do for a living. A person may be a listener of a particular genre of music, a lawyer, or a doctor; a person may be an author or an analyst. The temptation to define ourselves by our interests, our titles, or by the activities with which we concern ourselves, is ever present; and to define oneself by a title is a concept not unknown by Kierkegaard.[ii] Does it really mean anything if we define ourselves by a title? Surely, we would still exist without our titles. What’s worse, is to define oneself by a title but to not be that thing. If I call myself a Christian, yet I anxiously await opportunity to heap insults on those who disagree with me, am I really a Christian? Or do I only imagine myself to be one?

To understand oneself, one must ponder upon that which constitutes human existence, and if one’s physical body is removed from one’s existence, what is left? Does one still exist? Death separates bodies from consciousness, but does that mean that at death we cease to exist? It stands to reason that it cannot be! If we can communicate with our kind via language (and the reader, if she continues, will discover from whom I learned this linguistic phenomenon) even after we die, through words that fill otherwise empty space or move over sound waves, then what else are we capable of? This linguistic phenomenon is the reason Kierkegaard can say what he has to say today, even though he died nearly 170 years ago. This linguistic phenomenon is unique only to us, and the ability to communicate with language, even after we die, literally makes us the word. We are more than empty shells wandering the earth aimlessly. If one thinks about what they are, outside of their interests and body, they are left with only intangible elements of existence, and though such elements are intangible, they are undeniably real and observable, though science cannot measure them. Therefore, upon death and the removal of our bodies, only consciousness, feeling, thinking, knowing (though we don’t know all things), judging, the word, and the will remain; and because the will is a part of our existence, we can choose what we will further implement into our beings. Will we be good? Will we be evil? Will we be loving? Will we be kind? By this logic, if I were to summarize what I am; I am consciousness, I am feeling, I am thinking, I am judging, I am the word, I am the will, I am…and because I am, all those like me are; and because we are these things, we have eternally existed in some compacity or another, we are as eternal as God himself. And this is where God comes back into the picture. What is his role in our present state with all the components of eternal existence housed in mortal bodies? What is the purpose of these mortal bodies if there are components of our existence that lie outside of mortality? If God had a purpose for us, all of us, even Ivan Ivanovich, what would the purpose be in housing the components of eternal existence in mortal bodies that are subject to pain, illness, evil, and death?

There are those who would say that they cannot believe these things because only things that can be seen are worth believing, and yet they use their reason to reason these things, which reason is ironically something that cannot be seen. However, God proves himself by both body and spirit, and he did show himself to us by taking upon himself flesh and blood, which must have required tremendous humility on his part, therefore let our highest admirations be directed towards the humility of God. According to John, in the beginning was the Word, and the

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Ivan Ivanovich gets Married

The day of the wedding arrived, it was nearly February[i] and a very good day for a wedding, light snow had fallen just that morning, and it was still cold enough, that the ground remained frozen and didn’t get muddy. Lyudmila Antonyevna was genuinely happy despite the fact that her wishes regarding the reception location went completely unconsidered. She had been looking forward to it, she loved Ivan Ivanovich and he looked particularly handsome that day; his clothing fit perfectly, and he tried to comb his curly hair backward, which Lyudmila found endearing. Because he looked handsome that day, his confidence was boosted and he acted with even more assuredness than usual.

Lyudmila was so strikingly beautiful that people commented that they had never realized just how beautiful she was; and because she was genuinely happy, she couldn’t help but smile, which was the most stunning part of her wardrobe. Apart from her striking physical beauty, there was something wholly attractive about her, it was a certain joy she had, a playful look in her hazel eyes, an extroversion of her finest personality traits displayed for the pleasure of all who had the privilege of interacting with her.

The ceremony held to our traditions and the bride and groom were preceded by the icon bearers. Weddinggoers observed nervousness in the bride’s delicate hands as she gripped her candle.[ii]

Though Ivan did invite everyone in town, the church was not nearly as full as he hoped it would have been.

sss

I will ask the reader to now find it in her heart to forgive me, but I must now temporarily depart from the narrative and break my word which I gave in the prologue to part one when I said I would not bore her with the details of my research and research methods. However, now I feel so inclined to share one of those details that I said I would not, and thereby have found myself in quite the dilemma. If I am to maintain honesty, then I would not mention what it is I am about to mention because it is breaking my word, but at the same time, leaving out this information would also be dishonest because I would be knowingly withholding information from the reader and thereby prevent her from seeing the entire picture. If I keep my word, I am being dishonest; yet if I break my word, I am also being dishonest, such is my dilemma.

As it turns out, I happened upon two accounts of the wedding ceremony, the first account was in Lyudmila’s journals, which I mentioned her descendants granted me access to. The second account was from a letter correspondence between Ivan and a distant cousin. The cousin wrote Ivan to congratulate him on his wedding and ask his forgiveness for not being in attendance because he lived far away and for certain reasons was unable to make the journey for the ceremony. Ivan responded that it was better that he wasn’t able to come because there was no guarantee he would even be able to see the ceremony because the church was “packed to overflowing.” Of the two accounts, it is more likely that Lyudmila’s version is more accurate because as has been demonstrated, Ivan was inclined to be dishonest about both big and small things and things that mattered and things that didn’t, and it seems that he was even dishonest about things simply for the sake of being dishonest about them. It is for this reason, that I have selected Lyudmila’s version of the wedding to put into the narrative.

sss

People began arriving at the inn at six o’clock in the evening for the reception. Ivan was particularly annoyed because it seemed that more people came to the celebration than to the ceremony. Ivan took special notice of Silovoy, who wasn’t at the ceremony but was at the celebration afterward, and who brought a gift for the newly married couple. Ivan hired the best chefs and provided alcohol for everyone, and as more and more people arrived, they started to do what everybody does when they arrive at a social gathering and looked for that group of people with whom they wanted to associate most. And the doctors and lawyers, including Silovoy, gathered around one table and talked about how smart they were. And the academics gathered around another table and talked about how smart they were. And the government employees gathered around another table, and if the reader ventured to guess that they too talked about how smart they were, she would not be mistaken. And the rich people too gathered around a table and talked about how smart they were, and they discussed a topic that is common among people belonging to the rich class, and that is the belief that they have been blessed by God above others, and that their wealth is a symbol of divine favor. Have people with such beliefs read the gospels? Do they not know the words of Christ regarding the matter, if they had, and if they truly believed what Christ says about money in the gospels, then they would not see wealth as a blessing, but rather a means by which their souls are gradually corrupted; they would not see it as a divine gift. The parable of the five talents does not justify one’s misinterpretation of wealth and is misrepresented by the wealthy, it is like this:

A man travelling into a far country compelled his servants and delivered unto one five talents, unto another two talents, and unto a third servant, one talent. The first took his lord’s money and doubled it by trade, the second did likewise. The third, he who received one talent, went to his lord and said, “you are a dishonest man! You harvest what you have not planted, you take what is not yours! And I was afraid to be part of this wickedness, so I took the money you gave me, and I buried it in the earth so as to not be tempted by it, and your money remains in the earth to this day!”

And his lord called him lazy and unprofitable and said, “I know that I harvest what I don’t plant, I know that I take what is not mine! You should have done as the others, so that when I arrived, I could have received my money with usury! I therefore will give the money I entrusted to you to the first servant, and I will cast you into a foreign prison where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth!”

And then Jesus said, he who has ears to hear, let him hear![iii]

Ivan approached one of the groups and one of them jeered, “Congratulations Ivan Ivanovich!” He raised his glass, “to Ivan Ivanovich!” His eyes were red and watery, already intoxicated. “You’ll excuse my appearance,” he said, “my allergies torture me every spring and summer.”

“Ha-ha! Oh wow, you are drunk already,” another observed. “It’s January, everybody knows there are no allergies in January!”

“I hate the springtime,” the first one continued as if he didn’t catch a single word the other guest had just spoken, “and all that comes with it. I hate the grass, I hate the flowers, I hate the trees, I can’t even eat half of the things that grow in Ivan Ivanovich’s beautiful garden because if I do, it’ll make my throat itch, and then I’ll try in vain to scratch my throat with my tongue, but it will just keep getting worse and worse. My wife doesn’t believe me when I say I have allergies, she thinks I make the whole thing up to get attention. I bet your wife believes you Ivan Ivanovich! I bet she believes you!”

“Well, I’ve only been married for a few hours now, ha-ha! I guess we’ll have to wait and see! How was your Christmas?” [iv]

“I hate the warm seasons,” continued the drunken guest, “beautiful as they are, because of my allergies. Funny, how something so beautiful could bring so much suffering. I hate spring so much, that I wish it was never spring at all! If it could be winter the entire year, I’d be happy. And you know what would make me even happier? If it was winter the entire year and never Christmas! Ha-ha! Can you imagine?”

“But why never Christmas?” Ivan queried.

“Because, instead of it being a time that it was originally intended for, that is the celebration of the birth of Christ, it has become a time when I am expected to give gifts to my entire family. This causes undue financial burden, not to mention, if I get a gift for my entire family, including my millionaire cousin, who earned his fortune by telling half-truths, taking advantage of people’s naivete, then I give him the false impression that I like him, and if I give him the false impression that I like him, then I am being dishonest, and I don’t want to be dishonest, and so I choose to not give my millionaire cousin a gift for the holiday. And then, the next time I see the family, I hear snickers and jeers about how stingy I am. Yes, how stingy I must be because I am broke and I refused to give my millionaire cousin who earned his money by telling half-truths a Christmas present.”

The guest kept rambling, but Ivan excused himself to greet the other guests and to see what they were talking about. Another group of about six had gathered around another table.

“Congratulations,” was heard from all in the group and they raised their glasses in honor of Ivan Ivanovich. Ivan was pleased.

“Thank you, I’m happy you all came.”

“Ivan,” the loudest guest in the group said, “we were just discussing the ideas of Oleg Andreyevich Petrov. Have you heard of him?”

“That controversial author who fled to Paris, why everybody’s heard of him. Rumor is that he’s been excommunicated from the church because he refuses to take back his open criticisms.[v] He also advocates for Ukrainians and Jews. His publications have been banned, yet somehow they still make their way into the empire and his ideas are widely discussed. I think the whole thing is devilish, it’s just devilish.”

“You see!” blurted the loud one, “Ivan Ivanovich agrees with me.”

“A wolf in sheep’s clothing, anybody who openly criticizes our church ought to be ignored. Moscow is the third Rome, the capital of true Christianity.”

“But where is that written in scripture,” a quiet yet determined voice sounded from behind Ivan.

“Ha-ha!” laughed the loud one, “married for only a few hours and already their first point of disagreement!”

“Oleg Andreyevich is right,” Lyudmila continued, “we’ve integrated so many aspects of our culture into our religion that now nobody can tell the difference between our religion and our culture, I think…

“You’re wrong,” blurted Ivan interrupting his wife, unable to conceal his astonishment that his wife held a different view. He reverted to his habit of speaking over the person who disagrees with him to drown out their opinion. “God has always chosen a people, it was the Israelites before Christ, then after Christ, it was the Romans, and when Rome fell it was then the Ottomans, and when Constantinople fell, the headquarters of Christianity was transferred to Moscow. Christianity must have a capital, and that capital is Moscow. Russia is the very heart of Christianity. If, heaven forbid, Moscow were to fall, that would be the end of Christianity as we know it. All those sects in Europe, the Catholics in Spain, the protestants in Germany and England, all of them are wrong.”

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Sample Reading of The Gospel According to Ivan Ivanovich by Nathaniel Ernest

Sample reading of The Gospel According to Ivan Ivanovich

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