The 306-page book takes the reader on an adventure that includes Moyle’s time in Central Europe, when communism crushed peoples’ will and freedom was nonexistent. Moyle looks back at that era in recent history with an eye on the present, not in a political way but a moral one.   

“The communist period in Central Europe showed that an over-emphasis on the communal could crush the personal. But in the Western world, a growing individualism has led to a crisis of  loneliness and identity,” Moyle notes. “Neither provides an adequate framework to describe or answer human needs.” 

Moyle writes from experience. During the Cold War, he and his wife, Tuula, organized book translation and distribution behind the Iron Curtain. In the post-communist years, the couple helped people set up publishing houses and engaged in research on a variety of social issues.

Where do we go from here? Moyle writes that “a moral framework” is needed. 

“How can the communal and personal be held in a healthy tension that benefits both, respecting each person’s uniqueness and the common good? The question is essential to the search for a better country,” he writes.  

In fact, this book addresses the human desire for justice and a better way of life by attempting to awaken our moral imagination to the potential of a trusting community. Ultimately, this comes from God and the Ten Commandments. 

“The Decalogue,” Moyle writes, “is as much an expression of his character as it is a call on our behavior. It points to goodness that makes absolute power safe because it is not self-absorbed, but intent on the goodness and benefit of the other.” 

Moyle, knowing that secularism and not religious faith is the norm in the West, makes the following astute observation that readers need to contend with: “Believing in a morally good, personal and infinite God is a step too far for some readers. I understand that and would not expect it to be otherwise in a society steeped in a century of naturalism. I hope I’ve given enough reasons to entertain at least the possibility that God, freedom and goodness are not necessarily in opposition but might even be connected.” 

Another book seeking to make sense of the world is “The Surprising Rebirth of Belief in God.” Not only does it attempt to do that, but it offers a hopeful Christian message in its 251 pages.