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Leo Tolstoy
Confession

I turned from the life of my circle of friends, to the life of the poor working people in my country – Russia – for answers. I had seen that the life of the rich was not, and is not, true life. Instead, it is a cruel lie that hides the truth from us. So I knew that if I was to learn the meaning of life, I would have to find it with those who make life – the working people.

I now live with them, and what I have learned from them is that each one of us comes into the world by the will of God. God gives each of us freedom to destroy our soul or to save it. To save our soul, we must live as he wants us to live. He wants us to be humble, loving, hard working, and to turn away from wanting a rich life. The poor people have learned this from their church leaders and from what has been handed down to them through history.

This much was clear to me. I agreed with it and I loved it. But there were other things that went with this that turned my stomach. I could not see that they were needed at all. They were things like baptism (and other actions that the poor people believe have magic in them), going to church meetings, not eating some foods on special holy days, and loving little idols. But, because the people could not separate one from the other, I did not try to separate them either. I went to the meetings, praying morning and night, eating as they did, and getting ready to eat the special holy bread with them as they do each Sunday.

…loving little idols.

At first, I did not fight with it at all. I was just glad to be with them and happy to be alive.

When I was younger, I had many things that I wanted to do with my life, and I could see no need for faith.

Because I could see no need for it at that time, I thought little about throwing it away. Now I knew strongly that I needed faith, and many of the things that I had earlier believed were not important, were very very important to me by this time. What I had been happy to throw away as foolishness when I was young, I now believed had a meaning that I would, in time, learn to understand.

I argued that faith must be different for different people, because each person has different needs. Faith must give answers to a dying king, a tired slave, a foolish child, a smart old man, a stupid old woman, a young happy wife, and a young person with strong emotions. All these people from many walks of life are asking the same question: "Why do I live, and what will be the end of my life?" The answer will, in some ways, be the same for each of them, but in other ways it will come to each of them in different ways. So with this argument I was able to understand these poor uneducated people doing things that I did not feel right doing myself. I wanted very badly to be able to join with them in their religion, but I did not want to lie to myself by doing things that I did not believe in.

This is where our new Russian church writers came to help me.

They said that the most important rule in our faith is that the Church can do no wrong. From that, we must believe that all that the Church teaches is true. The Church is a group of true believers brought together by love. Working together in this way, they said, the church is able to find truth that is more perfect than anything that one person on his or her own could ever find.

It was good for my pride to receive this teaching. I could see from it that, to find perfect truth, I must not separate myself from the Church; and to be part of the church I must go along with some things that I did not agree with. At the time I could not see the holes in this line of reasoning. I did not see that love and truth are two diff-erent things, and working together in love gave us no promise that we would find the truth. And I did not see that true love would not force people to say a thing is true before they were able to see it for themselves.

But, as I said, I did not see the lie behind the teaching, and so I was able for some time to go along with many things that I did not understand. I tried with all my strength to stay away from arguments about them, and to see some truth in what the Church was saying.

When going through the actions that the Church told me to go through, I was forced to stop thinking and to stop asking myself why I was doing some of the things I did, I did this, believing that I was following the understanding of all the many people who had lived before me. I was one with my parents, and their parents and their parents. I was one with the millions of poor people that I loved.

And it wasn't that the Church was asking me to do something that was bad or selfish. When waking up early to go to church, I knew I was doing something good, if only because I was doing something that was difficult so that I could be one with others and so that I could find the meaning of life.

I used the same kind of reasoning in the weeks when I was making myself ready for the day when I would first receive the holy bread; and I used this reasoning when I was following all of the rules about prayer and about what not to eat. In the Church meetings I listened closely to every word, trying to give them meaning when I could. And the most important words in the whole meeting were: "Let us love one another by doing the same things!"

The words coming after that I tried not to think about, because I could not understand them.

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