Have you come to the place in your life where you figure "what's the point in going on living"? If you have, then you are in good company. The Russian author Leo Tolstoy had it all- fame (he was one of the most famous people in Europe), money (he had extensive land holdings with thousands of peasants working for him), health, and a loving family (a wife and eight surviving children). Yet in his mid-40's, here, in his own words, is what life had become for him (from his book A Confession):
"During that whole year, when I was asking myself almost every moment whether I should not end matters with a noose or a bullet.... my life came to a standstill. I could breathe, eat, drink, and sleep, and I could not help doing these things; but there was no life, for there were no wishes the fulfillment of which I could consider reasonable. If I desired anything, I knew in advance that whether I satisfied my desire or not, nothing would come of it. Had a fairy come and offered to fulfill my desires I should not have know what to ask."What happened?!?!? He had everything people could possibly dream about having. And yet....
"...and it was then that I, a man favored by fortune, hid a cord from myself lest I should hang myself from the crosspiece of the partition in my room where I undressed alone every evening, and I ceased to go out shooting with a gun lest I should be tempted by so easy a way of ending my life."
What stopped him cold in his tracks and took away whatever joy he could experience is best summed up by this parable from the above mentioned book:
"There is an Eastern fable, told long ago, of a traveller overtaken on a plain by an enraged beast. Escaping from the beast he gets into a dry well, but sees at the bottom of the well a dragon that has opened its jaws to swallow him. And the unfortunate man, not daring to climb out lest he should be destroyed by the enraged beast, and not daring to leap to the bottom of the well lest he should be eaten by the dragon, seizes a twig growing in a crack in the well and clings to it. His hands are growing weaker and he feels he will soon have to resign himself to the destruction that awaits him above or below, but still he clings on. Then he sees that two mice, a black one and a white one, go regularly round and round the stem of the twig to which he is clinging and gnaw at it. And soon the twig itself will snap and he will fall into the dragon's jaws. The traveller sees this and knows that he will inevitably perish; but while still hanging he looks around, sees some drops of honey on the leaves of the twig, reaches them with his tongue and licks them. So I too clung to the twig of life, knowing that the dragon of death was inevitably awaiting me, ready to tear me to pieces; and I could not understand why I had fallen into such torment. I tried to lick the honey which formerly consoled me, but the honey no longer gave me pleasure, and the white and black mice of day and night gnawed at the branch by which I hung. I saw the dragon clearly and the honey no longer tasted sweet. I only saw the unescapable dragon and the mice, and I could not tear my gaze from them. and this is not a fable but the real unanswerable truth intelligible to all.The deception of the joys of life which formerly allayed my terror of the dragon now no longer deceived me. No matter how often I may be told, "You cannot understand the meaning of life so do not think about it, but live," I can no longer do it: I have already done it too long. I cannot now help seeing day and night going round and bringing me to death. That is all I see, for that alone is true. All else is false.
The two drops of honey which diverted my eyes from the cruel truth longer than the rest: my love of family, and of writing - art as I called it - were no longer sweet to me.
'Family'...said I to myself. But my family - wife and children - are also human. They are placed just as I am: they must either live in a lie or see the terrible truth. Why should they live? Why should I love them, guard them, bring them up, or watch them? That they may come to the despair that I feel, or else be stupid? Loving them, I cannot hide the truth from them: each step in knowledge leads them to the truth. And the truth is death.'
Tolstoy had realized that living for its own sake was pointless. Once you come to this conclusion there's no going back... every endeavor loses its value when you put it against the backdrop of death and a meaningless universe. Good, evil, saint sinner, philanthropist, murderer, they're all going to die and be buried beside each other, and it will have all been for nothing."I did not myself know what I wanted: I feared life, desired to escape from it, yet still hoped something of it."
The only hope Tolstoy had was in the one permanence in the universe; God. He realized that:
- If there was a God, he created the universe for a purpose
- Since Tolstoy was one of His creations, then Tolstoy had a purpose.
- Life had meaning, and everything in his life had a meaning
But it wasn't as simple as turning off his mind and having blind faith. In fact he felt he could not "just believe"- he had to know- it had to be a "reasonable faith". He WANTED to believe- he knew it was his only hope. Yet he struggled. He turned to science and philosophy and studied them in depth, but they could not provide any meaningful or important answers.
"But again and again, from various sides, I returned to the same conclusion that I could not have come into the world without any cause or reason or meaning; I could not be such a fledgling fallen from its nest as I felt myself to be. Or, granting that I be such, lying on my back crying in the high grass, even then I cry because I know that a mother has borne me within her, has hatched me, warmed me, fed me, and loved me. Where is she - that mother? If I have been deserted, who has deserted me? I cannot hide from myself that someone bored me, loving me. Who was that someone? Again "God"? He knows and sees my searching, my despair, and my struggle."
WHY did he have this struggle? Could blind forces of chance produce this in him? It was impossible. That the ordered and reasonable universe was an accident was impossible to him. He was close to his answer, but still...
"He exists," said I to myself. And I had only for an instant to admit that, and at once life rose within me, and I felt the possibility and joy of being. But again, from the admission of the existence of a God I went on to seek my relation with Him; and again I imagined *that* God - our Creator in Three Persons who sent His Son, the Saviour - and again *that* God, detached from the world and from me, melted like a block of ice, melted before my eyes, and again nothing remained, and again the spring of life dried up within me, and I despaired and felt that I had nothing to do but to kill myself. And the worst of all was, that I felt I could not do it... not twice or three times, but tens and hundreds of times, I reached those conditions, first of joy and animation, and then of despair and consciousness of the impossibility of living.*Finally*, Tolstoy came to a conclusion that changed his life- joy was his at last:
"What is this animation and dying? I do not live when I lose belief in the existence of God. I should long ago have killed myself had I not had a dim hope of finding Him. I live, really live, only when I feel Him and seek Him. "What more do you seek?" exclaimed a voice within me. "This is He. He is that without which one cannot live. To know God and to live is one and the same thing. God is life."
What had he discovered? That God is the starting point of life, not the end of it. By finding Him Leo could finally live- he could enjoy his family, his career, everything. More importantly, he could now live purposefully- with each passing day his relationship with this God who loved him would grow... this God who wanted to carry on with him through life... and even through death to a new life.
Jesus said:
'Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and will dine with him, and he with Me.
(Rev 3:20)
Job, another man who was seeking God in his distress and found Him:
"I have declared that which I did not understand, Things too wonderful for me, which I did not know...... I have heard of You by the hearing of the ear; But now my eye sees You" (Job 42:3-5)
Further reading:
Tolstoy's "A Confession" online:
"How Can I know God?" By Timothy Keller
The book of Ecclesiastes, from the bible- especially chapter 2:
