I’m finally getting to The Brothers Karamazov this week. It’s been on my shelf since January and I kept putting it off because there were easier books to read. I love Pevear and Volokhonsky’s translations of Dostoevsky and I’ve actually been looking forward to reading this. I’m already enchanted, although it is complicated and I can only stick with reading it for about an hour at a time. I’ve ordered a couple easier books to fill in my daily three hours I hope to achieve this year!
I thought I’d write about some of lines I highlighted as I go instead of waiting until the end. I know this is a LONG and pretty dry book for most, but it does have some interesting thoughts in it!
Here’s what I have today!
Page 52 “If you are repentant, it means that you love. And if you love, you already belong to God…with love everything is bought, everything is saved.”
LOVE that! What does repentant mean? “Feeling sincere remorse or regret.” What other reason would you feel that way about something you’ve done hurting someone if you didn’t love that person? I regret cutting off the person behind me on the freeway because I recognize their humanity and I love them. I didn’t mean to, or I did mean to but didn’t realize it would make them so angry. As a Christian, we believe God is love. To love is be part of God. To love is to recognize the image of God in all of us.
Page 57 “’I love mankind’, he said, ‘but I am amazed at myself: the more I love mankind in general, the less I love people in particular, that is, individually, as separate persons.’”
And then this one, “and yet I am incapable of living in the same room with anyone even for two days, this I know from experience. As soon as someone is there, close to me, his personality oppresses my self-esteem and restricts my freedom.”
Don’t I know it! Actually, I underlined the first line but the next one is funnier to me and I can really relate to it. The first line confuses me. Why would that be? I can understand thinking that when you really get to know individual people and try to love them, the more you don’t love mankind as a whole. But this is the opposite? Not sure what he means here.
Page 64 “What would become of him if the Church, too, punished him with excommunication each time immediately after the law of the state has punished him? Surely there could be no greater despair, at least for a Russian criminal, for Russian criminals still have faith. Through who knows: perhaps a terrible thing would happen then – the loss of faith, perhaps, would occur in the desperate heart of the criminal, and what then? But the Church, like a mother, tender and loving, withholds from active punishment, for even without her punishment, the wrongdoer is already too painfully punished by the state court, and at least someone should pity him.”
Such a pretty picture. If you punish a person so much that they are completely outside of society and cannot return, you may as well kill them because they will become more dangerous to society. It gives a human no reason whatsoever to become a better person. The State may punish you for breaking its rules, but the Church should still honor your soul and treat you as a brother.
Page 67 “A socialist Christian is more dangerous than a socialist atheist.”
Thinking about that one. Maybe because you can damage or destroy a person’s soul by it, not just their life on this earth? Socialism requires force and if a Christian Church were to force you to participate in socialism and punish you by ostracism if you did not comply, it may turn you against Jesus and forever separate you from God.
Page 69 “…European liberalism in general, and even our Russian liberal dilettantism, has long and frequently confused the final results of socialism with those of Christianity.”
140 years ago! I hear or at least see memes about Jesus being a socialist so often and it seems like such a shallow understanding of what Jesus preached. Again, socialism requires force to accomplish its goals. If people could leave, take their money and labor elsewhere, it wouldn’t work. Jesus preaches free will and a voluntary acceptance of His gifts. You could say that it is forced because to accept it means you “go to hell” but that can be debated as well. I personally don’t believe in a literal hell but a figurative one. Jesus’ gift is a reunion with God after death. Without him, our body dies and we are forever separated from Him. You cannot have what you do not accept freely. I realize that can be debated and I respect that, but these are my views.
Page 77 “Let worldly men follow their dead with tears; here we rejoice over a departing father.”
Isn’t that what Jesus said to do? Let the dead bury their own dead. We, who have accepted the gift of Jesus of everlasting life with Him, should be rejoicing to know that those who leave this world with that gift go to be forever with the Lord in joy and we will see them again soon. I didn’t grieve that much over the “loss” of my Grandmother. I miss her sometimes. I wonder what she would do or say about things that are happening now. I feel like she’s on a long trip without me and we will be reunited someday. She isn’t gone. She’s having the time of her life with God. How can I be sad? It’s the same when my kids are off somewhere doings something awesome or my Mom is living up in Fernley. They are happy. Why would I not want my loved ones to be happy, even if it is without me? How could anyone be so selfish.