Reading this quote from Dostoevsky’s House of the Dead novel reminded me of Stalin, Hitler, Mao and their totalitarian regimes that brought the enslavement and destruction of so many tens of millions. “Tyranny is a habit capable of being developed, and at last becomes a disease. I declare that the best man in the world can become hardened and brutified to such a point, that nothing will distinguish him from a wild beast. Blood and power intoxicate; they aid the development of callousness and debauchery; the mind then becomes capable of the most abnormal cruelty in the form of pleasure; the man and the citizen disappear forever in the tyrant; and then a return to human dignity, repentance, moral resurrection, becomes almost impossible. That the possibility of such license has a contagious effect on the whole of society there is no doubt. A society which looks upon such things with an indifferent eye, is already infected to the marrow.”
Fyodor Dostoyevsky. The House of the Dead; or, Prison Life in Siberia / with an introduction by Julius Bramont (Kindle Locations 3557-3562). Kindle Edition.
Enjoy this Light Magazine article and feel free to repost. Praying for the soul of Russia.
Leo Tolstoy’s battle for the tortured soul of Russia
By Rev. Dr. Ed & Janice Hird
After publishing his wildly successful War and Peace in 1865, Tolstoy thought of writing a novel on Peter the Great. So, he began learning ancient Greek.
Tolstoy called the time of terrible uncertainty between writing projects “the dead time.” His self-doubt perhaps meant that he would never write anything again. He was plagued by fears that he himself was finished as a writer. “It was all over for him; it was time for him to die.”
Two years after finishing War and Peace, he still felt so depressed that he privately told a friend that he had no will to live, and had never felt so miserable in all his life. It would be three years before Tolstoy started Anna Karenina, a novel in which both key characters Anna Karenina and Konstantin Levin struggled with great self-doubt about their relationships and even life itself. It seems that many of Tolstoy’s more painful emotions were projected onto Anna Karenina.
Perhaps more than any other, Anna Karenina is Tolstoy’s novel that readers consistently say they cannot stop reading. If you are still mystified to why Russia recently invaded Ukraine, read Anna Karenina. The intense humanity of Tolstoy’s complex characters allows us to read it again and again with new insights about the Russian soul. Many consider Anna Karenina to be the best novel ever written. Over 300,000,000 people have purchased it so far. You could be next. Tolstoy saw it as his first novel, as he refused to call his earlier War & Peace a novel.
Why did Tolstoy write such an intense novel about adultery? Biblically speaking, adultery is often a metaphor for spiritual idolatry. As Romans 1 puts it, we are tempted to abandon ourselves to the twin temptations of adultery and idolatry.
How was Tolstoy able to write so vividly and realistic about adultery and idolatry? Because like the Apostle Paul, he considered himself to be the chief of sinners. In his 1882 book Confessional, he commented:
I cannot recall those years without horror, loathing, and heart-rending pain. I killed people in war, challenged men to duels with the purpose of killing them, and lost at cards; I squandered the fruits of the peasants’ toil and then had them executed; I was a fornicator and a cheat. Lying, stealing, promiscuity of every kind, drunkenness, violence, murder – there was not a crime I did not commit… Thus, I lived for ten years.”
His mother died when Tolstoy was two year’s old. Raised as an aristocratic orphan, he came into massive wealth and landholdings at age 19. His wild gambling debts in the military forced him to sell off villages that he owned, before he finally lost his principal house itself. Similarly, Levin, the hero of the Anna Karenina novel, struggled with gambling temptations before getting married and settling down. Many of the Russian aristocracy in the 1800s were renowned for massive gambling debts in the military, while simultaneously despising money itself. Is the reckless Russian invasion of the Ukraine an expression of this same gambling addiction?
Like many in the Russian aristocracy, Tolstoy was trained to see hunting and warfare as vital to masculine courage and bravery. Many of Tolstoy’s books, including Anna Karenina, give a seldom-seen, up-close view of the battlefield. He was the first newspaper war correspondent. Tolstoy no more glorified warfare than John Newton glorified slavery. Both Tolstoy and Newton, however, because of their first-hand experience, were able to give a first-hand critique of what was really happening in their time. Both helped turn many others to peace and reconciliation.
Tolstoy defined his essential family trait by the Russian word dikost which means wildness, shyness, originality and independence in thinking, much like the quintessential Russian bear. Not even the autocratic Tzar himself could tame Tolstoy. In his novels, Tolstoy could get away with saying things that would immediately exile other Russians to Siberia. He was so uncontrollable, almost like John the Baptist, so that even the top officials feared to criticize him publicly.
One of Tolstoy’s more scandalous behaviours was that he wrote his novels in the Russian language, rather than using any of the twelve other languages he knew. The accepted language of communication for the Russian aristocracy was French, which their serfs could not understand. Because the Russian literary language had been created specifically to translate the bible, the Russian Orthodox Church saw it as blasphemous to degrade the holy Russian language in the writing of ‘heathen’ folktales or novels. The Anna Karenina novel scandalized many religious officials by its thoughtful critique of religious hypocrisy and judgementalism, and its rejection of violence. He became a pacifist after fighting in the Crimea.
Tolstoy chose Romans 12: 19 “Vengeance is mine, says the Lord, I will repay” as an epigraph to Anna Karenina. Many people in life, even as Christians, are tempted to take revenge when they have been hurt. Just think of all the trauma that the Ukrainian people have been through recently. How could they ever forgive the Russians? Tolstoy, in Anna Karenina, shows us again and again how tempting revenge is, yet how unsatisfying it is to the soul. Kitty had to give up her desire for revenge regarding Anna & Vronsky before she could be well again and marry Levin. Similarly, Levin had to forgive Kitty for initially rejecting his marriage proposal, before he could give her a second chance. It is only when we trust that God alone will bring justice and fairness that we lose the need to even the score. Could God make a way where there is no way in the current mess between Russia and Ukraine?
Reading Anna Karenina reminds us of Isaiah 5:20 where it warns against calling evil good and good evil, putting darkness for light and light for darkness, bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter. Though Anna is initially used to save Dolly and Stepan Oblonsky’s marriage from his affair, everything following become a twisted web of deceit and half-truths. Again, it reminds us of Jeremiah 17:9 “our hearts are deceitful and desperately wicked; who can understand them?” Self-deception, which so many fell into, is the worst form of deception. Often our eyes and ears are closed shut, and we refuse to hear and see. We often deceive ourselves that we know better than God himself and His Word.
Anna was described as being clad in an impenetrable armour of falsehood. Deception ultimately kills relationships, as it did with Anna and Count Vronsky. Romans 3:23 has never stopped being true; the wages of sin and self-deception are still death. Tolstoy symbolizes this at both the beginning and ending of the novel, where the railway station is the place not only of progress, but also of death. Progress, for its own sake, only turns us into unfeeling machines.
By contrast, the joy of Levin and Kitty’s marriage was that it became a relationship without guile or deceit. They held back no secrets on each other. They were who they were, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and health. As a result, they went from being tortured souls to becoming healthy souls. What might it take for tortured Russia to rediscover the deeply Christ-like, profoundly human souls of Levin and Kitty? Lord, have mercy on Russia and their neighbours, in Jesus’ name. Amen.
My wife, being a prolific reader of novels, is always going with me to return books to the local library. At the very front of libraries is a section for recommended new books. While there, I was pleased to find a brand new book Gandhi Before India. It was news to me that Gandhi was excommunicated by his own Bania caste from daring to go to England to become a lawyer: “For his transgression, the boy would be treated as an outcaste; anyone who spoke to him or went to see him off would be fined.”[1] Gandhi’s family sacrificed greatly to send him to England, even pawning the family jewels. While in England, Gandhi for the first time read the Bible, finding the New Testament compelling, especially the Sermon on the Mount. [2] As Gandhi commented, it ‘went straight to my heart’. The lines about offering one’s cloak to the man who had taken away one’s coat touched him greatly.[3] Gandhi demonstrated that the Sermon on the Mount will radically change one’s life and one’s society if put into practice.
After completing his law degree in England, Gandhi returned to India for a short while before moving to South Africa. While there are numerous books on Gandhi, many skip over Gandhi’s foundational twenty-one years in South Africa. Even the excellent Gandhi movie by Richard Attenborough doesn’t do justice to the prolonged complexity to Gandhi’s time in South Africa. Dr. E Stanley Jones commented that South Africa provided the rehearsal for the real drama of India: “He might have floundered had he tried India straight off.”[4] Sadly in South Africa when Gandhi was most interested in the Gospel, he encountered the greatest restrictions: “To allow Gandhi to sit along white worshippers was impossible. The vicar’s wife, out of solidarity and sympathy, offered to sit with him in the vestibule, from where they heard the service.”[5] One of the people who had the greatest impact on Gandhi was Leo Tolstoy, especially his book The Kingdom of God is within You: “he was ‘overwhelmed by the independent thinking, profound morality, and the truthfulness of this book.”[6] Gandhi purchased and gave out even to his jailers countless copies of Tolstoy’s ground-breaking book on peacemaking in the Sermon on the Mount.[7]
Upon returning to India, Gandhi was initially rejected by other Indians who feared that they might become ritually polluted by even offering a cup of water to someone of the wrong caste.[8] When Gandhi successfully stood up for their rights, he became hailed as a hero and liberator. Gandhi campaigned nonviolently for the independence of India for numerous decades, spending 2,089 days in Indian jails (almost six years).[9]
Dr. E Stanley Jones described Gandhi as the architect of the new India.[10] In many ways, Gandhi was like an Abraham Lincoln bringing freedom to hundreds of millions of his fellow citizens. Louis Fischer compared Gandhi to David standing up to the Goliath of racial discrimination.[11] Gandhi went from being an initial supporter of caste discrimination to being a campaigner against its divisiveness. Jones commented:
…in his life, (Gandhi) breaks all the rules of caste, transcends them, adopts an outcaste as his daughter, and in the end does more to break down the system of caste than any other man, living or dead.”[12]
Jones held that “in Gandhi the word of freedom became flesh. When he spoke, freedom spoke. Gandhi was India.”[13] Most people believe in democratic freedom. Not many are willing to sacrifice over many decades to obtain such goals. Before Gandhi, it was mostly the Indian intelligentsia campaigning for democracy. Because Gandhi humbled himself and unselfishly served the poor and untouchables, both rich and poor awoke to the vision of an independent India.[14] Gandhi made room for all regardless of race, religion and wealth. Albert Einstein said regarding Gandhi: “Generations to come will scarce believe that such a one as this ever in flesh and blood walked upon this earth.”[15] In reading Jones’ book Gandhi: Portrayal of a Friend, Martin Luther King Jr. was inspired to launch the nonviolent Civil Rights Movement.[16]
Jones described the complexity of Gandhi’s personality as like Mount Everest:
Gandhi was simple and yet very complex amid that simplicity. You thought that you knew him and then you didn’t. It was intriguing. There was always something there that eluded your grasp, that baffled you. And yet out of that many-sidedness which amounted to complexity, there arose simplicity, a unified character, simple and compelling.[17]
In an India full of racial, religious and economic division, Gandhi brought people together, giving them a vision for an independent democratic India. Gandhi , whose favorite hymn was ‘When I survey the Wondrous Cross’, chose the costly way of the cross, of sacrificial love even for his enemies.[18] On the wall of his mud hut was a black and white picture of Jesus Christ under which was written ‘He is our peace’.[19] Gandhi was a peace-maker who chose to forgive those who despised him and rejected him. Every day he would read Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, motivating Gandhi to peacefully love his adversaries. Jones, who had been a friend of Gandhi in India for many years, said once to him: ‘You understand the principles. Do you know the person?’ Gandhi was very drawn to the person of Jesus Christ. My prayer for those reading this article is that we may embrace both the principles and person of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount.
Rev. Dr. Ed Hird, BSW, MDiv, DMin
-An article previously published in the North Shore News/Deep Cove Crier
–Dial in today to check out the online July 10th to 12th North American Christian Ashram. There is no registration cost. Donations are welcome. (If you have any trouble using Google Chrome to register, just use your mouse’s scroll button.)
P. S. Click this Amazon link to view for free the first two chapters of our new novel Blue Sky.
“I’m afraid there’s been an accident…”
Sandy Brown and her family have just moved to Spokane, Washington where her husband, Scott, is pastoring a new church. With a fresh start, Sandy is determined to devote more time to her four children. But, within weeks of settling in their new life, the Brown family is plunged into turmoil.
Sandy receives shocking news that her children aren’t safe, which brings back haunting memories of the trauma she experienced as a girl. Then, the unthinkable happens…
A brutal attack puts Sandy on the brink of losing everything she’s loved. Her faith in God and the family she cherishes are pushed to the ultimate limit.
Is healing possible when so many loved ones are hurt? Are miracles really possible through the power of prayer? Can life return to the way it was before?
Blue Sky reveals how a mother’s most basic instinct isn’t for survival… but for family.
If you’re a fan of Karen Kingsbury, then you’ll love Blue Sky. Get your copy today on paperback or kindle.
-The sequel book Restoring Health: body, mind and spirit is available online with Amazon.com in both paperback and ebook form. Dr. JI Packer wrote the foreword, saying “I heartily commend what he has written.” The book focuses on strengthening a new generation of healthy leaders. Drawing on examples from Titus’ healthy leadership in the pirate island of Crete, it shows how we can embrace a holistically healthy life.
To receive a personally signed copy within North America, just etransfer at ed_hird@telus.net, giving your address. Cheques are also acceptable.
-Click to purchase the Companion Bible Study by Jan Cox (for the Battle of the Soul of Canada) in both paperback and Kindle on Amazon.com and Amazon.ca
Many of our books include references to and stories about E. Stanley Jones. To purchase any of our six books in paperback or ebook on Amazon, just click on this link.
To receive a personally signed copy of any of our books within North America, just etransfer at ed_hird@telus.net, giving your address. Cheques are also acceptable
-Click to purchase the Companion Bible Study by Jan Cox (for the Battle of the Soul of Canada) in both paperback and Kindle on Amazon.com and Amazon.ca
[1] Ramachanadra Guha, Gandhi Before India (Random House Canada, Toronto, 2014), p. 34-35.
[7] Guha, p.308: “Before he left Volksrust Prison (in 1908), he presented a kindly warder with an inscribed copy of Tolstoy’s The Kingdom of God is within You.”
[8] Guha, p. 225 “Raj Kumar Shukla took Gandhi to Champaran and Patna the capital of Bihar. …since no one knew their caste, even the servants shunned them. The maids refused to draw from the garden well when Gandhi used it, for fear that even a drop of water from Gandhi’s bucket might pollute them.”
[10] E Stanley Jones, Gandhi: Portrait of a Friend (Abingdon, Nashville, 1948), p. 1.
[11] Louis Fischer, Gandhi: his life & message for the world (Signet Classics, New York, NY, 1954, 1982), p. 20.
[12] Jones, p. 6; Arthur Herman, Gandhi and Churchill (Bantam Dell, New York, NY, 2008), p. 120-121 The early Gandhi in 1921 supported caste discrimination: “Prohibition against intermarriage and interdining (between Hindu castes) is essential for the rapid evolution of the soul.” By 1932, he rejected such prohibitions. By 1946, he only permitted inter caste weddings on his premise.
[14] Jones, p. 22 “…it was Gandhi who aroused (the rural people), made them shed their fears, and made them conscious of their destiny. Before the advent of Gandhi, the nationalist movement was among the intellectuals.”
[15]The Words of Gandhi, selected by Richard Attenborough (Newmarket Press, New York, NY, 1982), p.9.
My wife, being a prolific reader of novels, is always going with me to return books to the local library. At the very front of libraries is a section for recommended new books. While there, I was pleased to find a brand new book 
Sermon on the Mount, motivating Gandhi to peacefully love his adversaries. Jones, who had been a friend of Gandhi in India for many years, said once to him: ‘You understand the principles. Do you know the person?’ Gandhi was very drawn to the person of Jesus Christ. My prayer for those reading this article is that we may embrace both the principles and person of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. 
Sandy Brown and her family have just moved to Spokane, Washington where her husband, Scott, is pastoring a new church. With a fresh start, Sandy is determined to devote more time to her four children. But, within weeks of settling in their new life, the Brown family is plunged into turmoil.
Edhird's Blog 