What A Murdered Russian Dissident Can Teach Us About Moral Courage

Russell Moore (Christianity Today Op-Ed), What a Murdered Russian Dissident Can Teach Us About Moral Courage:

Alexei Navalny was willing to stand alone—knowing he’d never be alone in the bigger story.

Russian president Vladimir Putin murdered another Christian this week. It was just another day in Putin’s supposed project of protecting “the Christian West” from godlessness. After all, they tell me, one can’t create a Christian nationalist empire without killing some people.

Before the world forgets the corpse of Alexei Navalny in the subzero environs of an Arctic penal colony, we ought to look at him—especially those of us who follow Jesus Christ—to see what moral courage actually is. ...

Navalny repeatedly referenced his profession of Christian faith. My Christianity Today colleague Emily Belz discovered a 2021 trial transcript at Meduza, in which Navalny explains, in strikingly biblical terms, what it means to suffer for one’s beliefs.

“The fact is that I am a Christian, which usually sets me up as an example for constant ridicule in the Anti-Corruption Foundation, because mostly our people are atheists, and I was once quite a militant atheist myself,” Navalny said (as rendered by Google Translate). “But now I am a believer, and that helps me a lot in my activities because everything becomes much, much easier.”

“There are fewer dilemmas in my life, because there is a book in which, in general, it is more or less clearly written what action to take in every situation,” he explained. “It’s not always easy to follow this book, of course, but I am actually trying.”

Specifically, Navalny said, he was motivated by the words of Jesus: “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be satisfied” (Matt. 5:6, NASB).

“I’ve always thought that this particular commandment is more or less an instruction to activity,” Navalny said. “And so, while certainly not really enjoying the place where I am, I have no regrets about coming back or about what I’m doing. It’s fine, because I did the right thing.”

“On the contrary, I feel a real kind of satisfaction,” he said. “Because at some difficult moment I did as required by the instructions and did not betray the commandment.” ...

Navalny recognized ... that the allure of moral cowardice when standing in courage means standing alone. A conscience can always reassure itself that being quiet right now is the right thing. Navalny recognized the terror in the thought of being left outside a field of belonging—being branded as a traitor by fellow countrymen and a heretic by fellow churchmen. ... Navalny recognized that one must, as the evangelical missionary Jim Elliot once put it, embrace “strangerhood.” ...

This was the root, I believe, of Navalny’s moral courage, his willingness to stand alone, his willingness to die. It’s not just that he knew Bible verses; the pro-Putin patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church no doubt knows more. It’s the way he seemed to know Scripture. He seemed to recognize not just the bare “instructions” from Jesus about hungering and thirsting for righteousness, about being blessed in persecution, but also the story behind and around them. He knew these words seem strange. He knew they sound crazy. ...

The very point of “hungering” and “thirsting” is that one is prompted to see that something’s missing—that the satisfactions on offer aren’t enough. The very appetite for such things is a sign that what one is hungering for, thirsting for, is really out there.

A person can see that, sometimes, even from a gulag. That’s strange. That’s crazy. But that’s what at least one Person I know would call “blessed.”

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Other op-eds by Russell Moore:

• Why Young Men Are Failing To Launch—And What The Church Can Do About It (Jan. 28, 2024)
• There’s No Better Time To Be An Evangelical Christian (Jan. 21, 2024)
• What Does It Profit A Christian To Protect An Institution But Lose Their Soul? (Nov. 26, 2023)
• American Christians And The Anti-American Temptation (Nov. 19, 2023)
• Losing Our Religion: An Altar Call For Evangelical America (Aug. 6, 2023)
• I Already Miss Tim Keller’s Wise Voice (May 28, 2023)
• A Christmas Conversation About Christ (Dec. 25, 2022)
• Dave Chappelle, Reinhold Niebuhr, And The Gospel (Nov. 28, 2021)
• Stop The Tax On Houses Of Worship (Nov. 25, 2018)