I recently read some of Leo Tolstoy’s books that Russia banned in the 1890s; my analysis is divided into two parts. The first is about his existential crisis called My Confession, and the second part is his personal spiritual foundation that he laid out in his treatisie titled: The Kingdom of God Is Within You.
Tolstoy went right into the heart of darkness, for that is precisely where philosophy, science, and his lifestyle led him to. Asking the former, he could get no real answer that could help him live, instead, telling him that life was evil and vain. Likewise, the sciences only told him he was a temporary, random amalgamation of particles. It was bruttally indifferent, and also did not answer the question of what is the meaning of life that he desparately needed an answer to.
I admire his struggle, because he undertook it with honesty and humility, along with an ability to articulate it clearly. His capacity to reason is one I would like to learn. I do believe one flaw was his rejection of miracles due to a rationalistic worldview. Overlooking that the most apparent and miraculous thing has already occured, and there is documentation every time your eyes dart hither and thither. It is the fact of life, creation, and everything there is being brought into being. The Law of Conservation of Mass asserts that matter cannot be created nor destroyed, only transformed. So where does all this matter come from if it can’t be created? The brightest minds in astronomy traced the birth of the universe back to a single point in time called a singularity. They named it the big bang. What happened was big indeed. It was the very event in which the universe was set into motion. It was the unique manifestation of new matter that henceforth could only be transformed. And I, as well as others of sound mind ask…how could something be produced by nothing? It can’t.
The materialist has only one option, and it is one that involves just as much faith, but without the accountibility or humility that comes with a supernatual creation. Maybe they desire to remain the most intelligent being in the universe, thereby denying the One whom gave them the ability to think and observe an ordered universe. There’s cosmological order, as well as atomic order. Even our very DNA, at its core, is ordered information. The other option of the followers of the religion of science is to only accept what the scientific method has to say, without probing the mystical realities which science can’t push past. Atheists accept the existance of the universe by faith that it happened randomly despite the fact that nothing can’t cause something. This is why science falls short when confronting the questions of meaning. This does not make science bad in any way, it just answers different questions. No scientist is doing expiraments on the meaning of life, and in that way the search continued for Tolstoy into the promising field of philosophy.
But, philosophy’s greatest mind, Socrates, stated that “one draws closer to the truth as they depart from life”. This, when followed logcially, states that meaning and truth is clouded by life on earth, and that to really understand you must die. This appears to be what Tolstoy was getting at in the observation that “philosophy and reason can only connect the infinite to the infinite”. In response to his question that had life or death consequences, Schopenhuer said that the most reasnoble thing is to end your life becuase it is not infinite and at least in death you would return to the same state as the unborn. Even Solomon, in all his wisdom, came to the same dilemma of despair. Vanitiy of Vanities he states. And, once again he couldn’t answer the question by wisdom. As he didn’t connect the finite to the infinite until the very end of Eccliesastes which resulted in a call to faith despite the vain and seemingly evil way of life. In other words, faith was put over reason. I disagree with Tolstoy calling Solomon an Epicurean, pleasure seeker in spite of the looming shadow of inevitable death. Mainly, becuase he shifted from pleasing his heart’s carnal desires towards doing the will of a higher Master without demanding more than the gift of “enjoying life with the wife whom he loved” (Ecclessiastes 9:9).
Tolstoy’s existence was empty and meaningless despite having fame, money, and a loving familiy. He realized that in order for him to truly live, he needed to be wrong; he turned away from the educated who had the same problems as him, and embraced the poor working class in search of what made them tick. He found it was same foolish faith he casted away at a young age. But, not the faith of the Pharisees and great theologians. It was much simpler and was true. After attempting to conform to the traditions and beliefs of the Church, He felt that she mixed a truth with a lie. That the important thing is man’s relationship to the divine, and to love your neighbor. For him, the most important function of spirituallity is to connect the infinite to the finite. And that faith alone can accomplish this task. I think Tolstoy is often cast out as a heretic, or completely ignored by Christians today and in his time, becuase he denied miracles, the trinitarian view of God, and many other dogmas that are virtually universal in protestant, catholic, and orthodox traditions. Just becuase Tolstoy threw the baby out with the bath water does not mean we should do the same to him. He grasped the two greatest commandments from the entire Bible. Love the Divine Sustainor of all Life, who is Good, and love your neighbor as yourself. In this way he flew like Icarus,…but without the power of the resurrection (which he denied), he fell crashing back down to earth.
Love only wins if it actually wins. If Christ stayed in the grave then hatred and death win. Thankfully loves wins, not just in our day to day lives, but cosmically… for all time.
I admire Tolstoy’s striving for moral perfection in all areas of life even though he couldn’t do it. He was still living far better than he was as a pompous teacher who “taught what he did not know”. His maximilist views were revolutionary due to the fact he was trying to embody and live out a revolutionary teaching, that of the Sermon on the Mount. He wanted to see heaven on earth. Not a new heaven and a new earth. But a immediate change and revolt against the “current order of things” in favor of peace, brotherhood, and purity. He wanted a utopia. After all, heaven is a utopia, is it not? A place of no tears, no death, no darkness, only Love. The problem with the utopia that Tolstoy wanted was that when he himself tried to reach the moral perfection in order to carry out his part, he failed. He did bring us a little closer to that utopia, but closer doesn’t create heaven. It is possible, but it is not possible alone.
In “My Confession” he admitted to wrongly stating that life is meaningless and so he applied that idea to life in general…when it really applied only to his life becuase he was living it in a meaningless way. He goes on in this other work to make similar baseless generalizations without seeing that he is doing the same thing. Primarily, through disbelief in those who do believe in God’s Word, the Creation of the world, and miracles. Going as far as to say that nobody else in our age really believes them and propagates this lie (religion) in an insideous way to their children. Just becuase he didn’t believe that miracles happened does not mean that everyone is faking it. Tolstoy was constantly burdened by his intelect that brought him success, as well as torment, and pride.
He stated, matter of factly, that the Sermon on the Mount and the belief that Jesus was crucified on the cross for the salvation of men were exclusive beliefs. It was either one or the other. I don’t understand why they have to be. The sermon on the mount lays out the perfection we ought to strive for. But sooner or later, every last one of us fails in living it out. And that failure to achieve perfection is met with mercy. Tolstoy sees elements of God that are contrary to his definition of good and loving and so instead of leaning into “[God’s] ways being higher than our ways, and [His] thoughts higher than our thoughts” (Isaiah 55:9), he cherry picks a morality gospel, instead of realizing what Christ was saying in full.
Tolstoy saw non-resistance and moral perfection as the highest truths. Much of his writing is still deeply relavant today to Christians, churches, and the world at large.
This world runs on money and power, that hasn’t changed. Tolstoy pointed out how Russia has been drenched in innocent blood. Just as the U.S has been, and Argentina, and China, and Rwanda, and Myanmar, and the Middle East. The list could go on and on. What Isreal is doing right now to Palastine is not right whether or not they are a recognized country, they are first and foremost human beings. And the U.S is funding this humanitarian crisis on the part of the aggressors. The merciless terrorist attack on October 7th was not right either, it becomes complicated after an attack on home soil, you obviously don’t want that to happen again, so they made the whole country pay for what a radicalized minority decided to carry out. In a man on the street style interview, one common Isreali young man saw the military action as deserved, and even if civilian children are getting killed “they are still guilty and will grow up to be terrorists.” If the spirit of retalation is present in the middle East, its counterparts are presenting themselves in both American and Russian leadership as greed and lust for power.
I had a conversation that put the recent events of United States involvment in (Venezuela and Iran) in a new light as protecting the global reserve.
If I had to live on 20 dollars a day becuase America’s economic interests have failed due to lack of use of force in the middle east. I would glady do it knowing that men didn’t die for the sake of luxury. That is what America fights for after all in the 21st century. Sadly not for freedom, but only power and oil dressed up and wrongfully attributed as freedom. We fought for freedom three heroic times that I can think of off the top of my head. The colonial United States immediately used force on Native Americans, and forced labor on the African Americans. I do think complete non-resistance is unrealistic. I’m not going to try to reason with someone who is bombing my city and putting my family in immediate danger. Self defence is not at all the same as engaging in rataliation. But that is not the case for the U.S in 2026. When you sign up for the military, you don’t sign up for only the just causes… but also the unjust, the political, and the killing of those who are not immediate threats. You sign yourself over to the mercy (or lack thereof), of the state.
What Russia is doing to Ukraine right now is also crooked, and it is being backed by the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC). Meanwhile, the Orthodox Church of America prays every Sunday for the cessation of the conflict in Ukraine, in the middle East, and for the end of all wars everywhere. How can the ROC be in agreement with the conflict? Even going as far as to state that “Russian soldiers who die in Ukraine will have their sins forgiven” (Patriarchite Kirill). Meanwhile the Orthodox Church’s teaching states that salvation is unknown to man and not for any of us to decide.
One wrong leader does not mean the entire institution is corrupt. The other patriarchites are holding him accountable as he, first and foremost, ought to be a servant of God, not of Russia. There is thankfully accountibility on the part of the Greek patriarch. And none of Kirill’s views or the other leaders are binding…the faith is still the same, so it is claimed. But actions are the fruit of the faith you profess. On the outside he has the same faith, but not internally, this is not a merely political matter but pierces to the heart of Christian teaching as the Ukrainian Orthodox have rebutted. This might actually in a sense prove, less so Orthodoxy, and more so the teachings of Christ being true. Truth that is thought to be grasped in its fullness slips trough the cracks, thereby diluted and distorted. This can happen without one even noticing through spiritual blindness, or by willful ignorance. Not by God, but by men.
Orthodoxy claims to be a human institution whose teachings are ALL infallable, becuase it is under the guidence of the Holy Spirit. I wonder if the Holy Spirit is guiding all Churches and working in all men for the most important things while the “fluff” is the distortion of men. One such example is the use of indulgences by the Catholic church that extorted men, and made a joke of salvation. Another clear example is the use of coersion and force during the Inquisition. Yet, neither of these mean that the faith is a farce…just that the hearts of men are corruptible as JRR Tolkien put forth in the Lord of the Rings. This corruptibility can also be seen in fundementalist, nationalistic protestant churches here in America. The Orthodox church has bloodied its hands too. But truth dipped in blood is still truth. It just means that the pure in heart in every Christian tradition is doing the will of God.
At the end of the day, I would rather be like the thief on the cross who repented and believed in his heart at the last moment without ever being baptized in water, or taking communion. Christ is freedom, the sacrements are meant to be means of grace, not a shackle, or a get out of jail free card. That makes it Pharisaical. And I don’t think most view it that way, but it is still in there lurking, and I even feel it in myself sometimes. I find the necessity to venerate icons as a not so subtle overstep. Maybe I just have issues with control and so I lack trust when it comes to things the church practices which didn’t arise into common practice until the 4th century. Orthodoxy is divine and good though despite all of this, but so is the Catholic faith, and so are the faithfull protestants, and all who have goodness at work in them.
I am not going to abandon ship and throw out the treasures of faith just becuase one Russian writer said the church was a psyop. He said his goal was to sift the truth from the lies. And I think that his work too, contains not lies, but shortcomings that miss the point of faith. In one sense he grasped it, and another, he did not. I think that no mortal can hold the FULL, complete truth without diluting it by his fallen nature. Even christians who believe in their heart don’t have the fullness but merely see a dim reflection (1 Corinthians). They’re still getting it, just not all of it.
I noticed that Tolstoy only paid attention to the ugly side of the institutional Church. Christians and churches have had an infinitely large impact on the entire world. Food banks, schools, hospitals, shelters, I would like to shout out the Catholic church specifially depite the fact the Vatican has a bank. Faith-based non-profits are making real impacts across the country, such as Cross Purpose based in Denver.
Could the faithless (if they were without faith) fathers of doctrine, be leading sheep into a confusing trap like Tolstoy proposed? I don’t know. First I would have to read them. Here’s my list of the faithful: the apostle Paul, John, Father Arseny, and the desert fathers are among those who lived what they taught. Thank God these are the men I read and not the faithless who make Tolstoy writhe with uneasiness. They interacted quite differently in that they truly obeyed and lived their faith until they breathed their last. These are the men that Tolstoy could look at who fear not death, suffering, nor poverty. But instead embrace it. Neither clinging to the pleasures of life, nor living in naive ignorance of life’s deeper questions. Nay, they did not despair in the face of father time and mother earth while living a life of weakness. They rose up and lived lives that were full to the brim with meaning.
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