Maxim Gorky’s Gods
Image by Gemini AI Russian writer Maxim Gorky (1868-1936) gave up God though his grandfather, grandmother, and Nanny gave him three different versions of God to choose from when he was a child. Since Gorky lost his parents as a little boy, he was brought up by his maternal grandparents and an old woman whom Gorky called Nanny (a housemaid of sorts). These three old people presented the same Christian God to Gorky in their own unique ways. Grandfather’s God was the traditional Catholic God, a moral terror with harsh laws, sin and punishment, and demanded absolute submission to authority. The old man was himself quite a tyrant. Each one of us shapes our God in our own image. Grandpa’s God was cruel, petty, bureaucratic, and vengeful, a God who could be used expediently to justify violence, hierarchy, and submission. Gorky’s grandmother’s God was quite the opposite: loving, compassionate, and deeply intertwined with the beauty of the natural world. Grandma created God in her own i...
