> SOUTHERN INDIANA — Since words don’t come together on their own, a writer has to do it, and then he has to pick a topic before writing something. I did and it was politics. When writing about politics, you need to transfer your mind into a kind of Disney World where the characters are all Goofy. And then, I thought, no, I do not want to write about Mickey and Donald running for the same office, both advised by Elmer Fudd. Therefore, I changed the topic to a less controversial one — religion, where the faithful never play politics.

Thomas Jefferson thought they did, and he tried to keep politics out of religion. In a previous article, I wrote about how he took selected parts of the four Gospels and made his own Jefferson Bible, a moral guide for him to live by.

About 70 years later, Leo Tolstoy, the renowned Russian writer, did practically the same thing. He called it, “The Gospel in Brief.” [Whether Tolstoy had read the Jefferson Bible, I don’t know]. Born to power, wealth and privilege, and despite his success, fame and fortune, Tolstoy began to believe his life was empty and meaningless. At age 50, he contemplated suicide, but, instead, began a spiritual journey devoting much of his later years to the study of various religions, and wrote six books about his search for the true meaning of life.

Before beginning his spiritual quest, Tolstoy fought in the Crimean War, married Sophia Behrs, raised 13 children, managed his vast land holdings and wrote prodigiously, including numerous powerful shorter works and his masterpieces — “War and Peace” and “Anna Karenina.”

Tolstoy wrote that the official Christian Church of the late 19th-century Russia, “represented the same darkness and evil against which Jesus had struggled. It allowed believers to rationalize virtually any kind of inhumane treatment and yet still be assured of some sort of afterlife.”

Tolstoy, as Jefferson did, took the parts of the Gospels that were meaningful to him, and began to live a life the way Jesus taught. In “The Gospel in Brief,” he fused the four Gospels into one. Like Jefferson, he skipped around using various segments and verses from the four Gospels, but unlike Jefferson, Tolstoy “re-wrote” the verses into the language of his day. For instance, Matthew wrote that Jesus said, “Woe unto you scribes and hypocrites! Ye omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy and faith.” Tolstoy revised it: “They do the easiest thing, the external thing; that which is needful and difficult — love, compassion and truth — they leave undone.” John stated, “These things I command you, that you love one another.” Tolstoy revised it: “The teaching is summed up in this — Love one another.”

Whereas Jefferson’s Bible is 46 pages, Tolstoy’s “Gospels” are 189, compared to about 500 New Testament pages. His summary of the Gospels is clear, concise and to the point. He used passages that emphasized living in the present, as Jesus taught, living in the “light,” the spirit within, not the material “flesh,” struggling in the dark. Tolstoy organized his Gospel into 12 sections. When well into his work, he discovered he was following the 12 themes stated in the Lord’s Prayer, realizing that practically all of Jesus’ teachings were encompassed in that one brief prayer. In the second theme in the prayer, “which art in Heaven,” Tolstoy added, “God is the spirit in Man: Therefore man must work, not for the flesh, but for the spirit.”

Tolstoy is considered one of the greatest authors. He was experienced and knowledgeable, and wrote in a captivating, yet simplistic, style. Read him and you’ll think you’re there living the story with him.

 As he pointed out, Jesus taught the common folk, most of whom were illiterate and he used simple illustrations, the parables. How many times did he teach “the way” by illustrating the deep and sacred bond between sheep and their shepherd?

 To begin loving one another, Tolstoy gave up his vast fortune, deeding it to his wife and children, and broke somewhat from the confines of the material life. He found the “light” of the spiritual life by literally following Jesus’ teaching. He began to dress like the peasants and work with them in the fields. The Russian Orthodox Church excommunicated him and the government ostracized him, because, in his later life, spiritual superseded the material and political.

In 1910, at age 82, Tolstoy died in a dark railway depot, but in the light.



Contact Terry Cummins at TLCTLC@AOL.com