An Infallible Judge in Our Soul
Yesterday I finished reading Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy and was impressed by the story of Konstantin Levin’s search for truth and meaning in life that was resolved at the end of the novel. Though raised a Christian, he had mentally moved away from the faith despite his goodness and kindness he showed to others. The novel relates, “The question was summed up for him thus: ‘If I do not accept the answers Christianity gives to the problems of my life, what answers do I accept?’ And in the whole arsenal of his convictions, so far from finding any satisfactory answers, he was utterly unable to find anything at all like an answer…. Instinctively, unconsciously, with every book, with every conversation, with every man he met, he was on the lookout for light on these questions and their solution.” He searched in books and in the ideas of philosophers but was never satisfied with their answers. He thought to himself, “Without knowing what I am and why I am here, life’s impossible; and that I can’t know, and so I can’t live.” But he did not take his life, and he kept living with these questions, but he understood that he knew right from wrong and the things that he should do: “When he did not think, but simply lived, he was continually aware of the presence of an infallible judge in his soul, determining which of two possible courses of action was the better and which was the worse, and as soon as he did not act rightly, he was at once aware of it.” Levin seemed to understand what Mormon taught about each of us being given the Spirit of Christ to know good from evil when we came into this world: “For behold, my brethren, it is given unto you to judge, that ye may know good from evil; and the way to judge is as plain, that ye may know with a perfect knowledge, as the daylight is from the dark night. For behold, the Spirit of Christ is given to every man, that he may know good from evil” (Moroni 7:15-16).
One
day Levin was speaking with a peasant named Fyodor who was comparing two men, Mituh
and Fokanitch. Of the first Fyodor said, “He’ll get his share, however he has
to squeeze to get it! He’s no mercy on a Christian.” But of Fokanitch, Fyodor
remarked, “Where there’s debt, he’ll let anyone off. And he’ll not wring the
last penny out. He’s a man too.” When Levin questioned him further as to why
this second man was so generous, Fyodor responded, “Folks are different. One
man lives for his own wants and nothing else, like Mituh, he only thinks of
filling his belly, but Fokanitch is a righteous man. He lives for his soul. He
does not forget God.” This was the spark that became the answer for Levin who
ran off to be on his own with these thoughts, “Not living for his own wants,
but for God?... He said that one must not live for one’s own wants, that is,
that one must not live for what we understand, what we are attracted by, what
we desire, but must live for something incomprehensible, for God, whom no one
can understand nor even define…. What
of it? Didn’t I understand those senseless words of Fyodor’s?... I understood
him, and exactly as he understands the words. I understood them more fully and
clearly than I understand anything in life, and never in my life have I doubted
nor can I doubt about it…. Fyodor says that Kirillov lives for his belly.
That’s comprehensible and rational. All of us as rational beings can’t do
anything else but live for our belly. And all of a sudden the same Fyodor says
that one mustn’t live for one’s belly, but must live for truth, for God, and at
a hint I understand him! And I and millions of men, men who lived ages ago and
men living now—peasants, the poor in spirit and the learned, who have thought
and written about it, in their obscure words saying the same thing—we are all
agreed about this one thing: what we must live for and what is good. I and all
men have only one firm, incontestable, clear knowledge, and that knowledge
cannot be explained by the reason—it is outside it, and has no causes and can
have no effects.” What is rational from man’s perspective is to only live for oneself,
but the knowledge we all have been given (but cannot explain) is that we are
meant to love and help and bless others. What Jesus taught is what we instinctively
already know deep within us: “Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men
should do to you, do ye even so to them: for this is the law and the prophets”
(Matthew 7:12).
Levin
came to the realization that he “had been living rightly, but thinking wrongly.”
He had lived based on his inherent knowledge of right and wrong and sought to
do right, even if he didn’t understand why. The novel continues, “He had lived
(without being aware of it) on those spiritual truths that he had sucked in
with his mother’s milk, but he had thought, not merely without recognition of
these truths, but studiously ignoring them. Now it was clear to him that he
could only live by virtue of the beliefs in which he had been brought up. ‘What
should I have been, and how should I have spent my life, if I had not had these
beliefs, if I had not known that I must live for God and not for my own
desires? I should have robbed and lied and killed. Nothing of what makes the
chief happiness of my life would have existed for me.’ And with the utmost
stretch of imagination he could not conceive the brutal creature he would have
been himself, if he had not known what he was living for. ‘I looked for an
answer to my question. And thought could not give an answer to my question—it
is incommensurable with my question. The answer has been given me by life
itself, in my knowledge of what is right and what is wrong. And that knowledge
I did not arrive at in any way, it was given to me as to all men, given,
because I could not have got it from anywhere. Where could I have got it? By
reason could I have arrived at knowing that I must love my neighbor and not
oppress him? I was told that in my childhood, and I believed it gladly, for
they told me what was already in my soul. But who discovered it? Not reason.
Reason discovered the struggle for existence, and the law that requires us to
oppress all who hinder the satisfaction of our desires. That is the deduction
of reason. But loving one’s neighbor reason could never discover, because it’s
irrational.’” As the Savior said to Peter, “Flesh and blood hath not revealed
it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven” (Matthew 16:17). We learn what
is right and good—to love our neighbor and not oppress him—not because it is
rational but because it has been instilled in us by God.
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