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Leo Tolstoy
Confession

How often I wanted to be like the poor people, without all of my learning. The teachings of the church which sounded foolish to me were no problem at all for them. They could take the foolishness as easily as they could take the truth that was in the Church. It seemed that only I could see that truth and lies were mixed together, and that I must take one without the other.

For about three years I lived in this way. At first, when I was just starting to learn the truth, I only listened to what was clear and I did not worry about what I could not understand. If I could not understand it, I would say that it was because I was full of sin and that I would understand it in time. But as my understanding of the truth grew, with it came an understanding of the lies for what they were. I could see clearly that there is a difference between things that I cannot understand because I cannot understand them and things that I cannot understand without lying to myself.

I wanted to stay with the Church, but some questions forced me to take a stand against the Church. The first such question was about how the Orthodox Church acts toward other churches – toward Catholics and toward Protestants. Because of my interest in religion, I had made friends in other churches. Some of these were very sincere believers. I wanted to be a brother to each of them. But what happened? The teaching that had brought me to the Church in the first place – the teaching that perfect Truth only comes by working with other believers, even if you do not agree with them – that teaching in the person of its best leaders, told me that these other men of faith were all living a lie; that they were of the devil; that we alone had the truth. I learned that all who are not part of the Orthodox Church are said by the Church fathers to be following the devil. And I learned that the Catholics and others say the same things about us. Each group tries to hide it, but they secretly see the other groups as enemies.

I can understand how this could happen: (1) If others say that I am bad and they are good, I feel hurt by this and find it easy to say the same thing about them; and (2) if I love my brothers, I cannot help but feel angry if I think that someone is trying to lead my brothers into spiritual danger.

But it seems that the more people study the teachings of the Church, the more they feel that others are the enemy. I had come to the Church in the first place because I believed that we can only know truth by working together in love with other believers, even when we do not agree on everything. But now I was learning that the very Church that had been teaching this to bring me into itself, did not follow the same rule toward believers who were outside of it.

It is very easy for someone like myself, who has travelled and lived in other countries, to see that all religions are doing the same thing; that is, they are each saying that they are right and that all the others are wrong. When we can see that there is good in all of them, then we cannot believe such a teaching from any of them. A perfect understanding of truth must leave room for people who are not in your own group to have faith too.

I felt there must be a good reason for what was happening, so I read all I could and asked all I could to find an answer. Sad to say, the only answer I found was that the church is no different from any other group in the world. People will always think their own group is the best, if for no other reason than that they are in it All that each church leader could tell me was that they believed themselves to have the truth and the others to be false, and in need of their prayers. Of all the experts that I asked, only one even tried to give an answer to why this happens, and his answer was such that I never tried asking anyone more about it.

This is how it happened:
I had told the man that educated people wanting to believe in God would always come to the question of other religions. Anyone who has been to high school would know that Protestants and Catholics both argue as strongly as the Orthodox Church that they are the only true way to God. Each one bends the truth to make it say that they are right and the others are wrong.

I asked this man why we could not move up to a higher understanding of truth, where we could overlook the differences, and see the sincere faith in people from all religions, as God himself must see it. I pointed out that in the Orthodox Church we had come to an agreement with the Old Believers, who have a differently shaped cross and a different way of walking around the front of the church, and different words that they use in praying to God. We have agreed that these little differences are not the most important things, and we have said that, as long as they agree with us on the most important things, then we will not argue about the other differences. Now, if we can see that the differences are not important enough to separate us from these other Orthodox brothers and sisters, why can't we do the same with the Catholics? We could say that we agree with them on the important things, and that they are free to believe what they like about such things as who should be the leader of the church. And if we can do that with the Catholics, why not do the same with the Protestants?

The man I was talking to agreed with what I had been saying, but he said that if the church was to do this, it would bring problems, because it would make the leaders of the past look bad for not having done it earlier. This would lead to arguments between people who agreed with the old way and people who wanted to try this new way. What is most important, he said, is that the church leaders be able to keep the Orthodox believers working together smoothly without such problems.

And from this I could understand it all. I had been looking for faith, but they were looking for the best way to keep peace between their followers. In trying to find political answers they were forced to use political weapons. For all their talk of love and prayers for believers in other religions, in the end, they would always turn to force. If anyone teaches something that the church believes is wrong, the church has no answer but to burn the teachings and, in one way or another, stop the teacher. If the teacher will not give in, there is no answer but to cut off his or her head, or put him or her in prison. The cruelest way of punishing such a person will always be used by the church, and it will always argue that such cruel action is needed because the man (or woman) is of the devil.

On thinking about what is done in the name of religion, I was filled with anger. I came close to turning strongly against the Orthodox religion for this reason alone.

Then there was a second question that troubled me. It had to do with war, and the killing of people by the government.

At that time, Russia was at war. In the name of Christian love, Russians were killing other people. How could anyone not see that killing people was evil, and that it went against all that Christ taught? Yet the church was praying that God would help our weapons to kill many people, and they were teaching that this killing grew out of their faith.

And even when the wars were over, and there was fighting between people in our own country, I saw church leaders at each step on the ladder agreeing to the killing of young people from our own country who, for one reason or another, took part in these fights. All of this made me deeply angry.

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