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I have been skipping through some of Leo Tolstoy of late, and came upon William Shirer\u2019s incredibly insightful study, Love and Hatred, which details the turbulent relationship of Leo and Sonya Tolstoy. For years and years they fought and warred and called one another hateful things, and then worked out their feelings in their diaries. The pattern was set: fight all day long, write about it at night, apologize, make up (which they didn\u2019t always do), and then start all over with the same cycle of violent emotions the next day.<\/p>\n
And what got me going was that Tolstoy converted to the gospel of peace and nonviolence, chucked all his previous thoughts and dreams, and in such a state couldn\u2019t bring it to bear on his relationship with his wife \u2014 whom he loved. She loved him, too. <\/p>\n
When he died in the cottage across the street from the forlorn train station, he did so because he had run from his wife and the turbulence at home.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve been writing a book, A Weekend called Grace, in which I am seeking to explain the gospel by explaining that we don\u2019t understand the gospel until we learn that we are \u201ceikons\u201d of God (images of God; \u201ceikon\u201d is the Greek term; I think \u201cimage\u201d is too colorless, and the Hebrew \u201ctselem\u201d will get you nowhere!). Made as \u201ceikons,\u201d designed to reflect God\u2019s glory to all around us, we choose to sin and are hence \u201ccracked eikons.\u201d<\/p>\n
Is this what explains the turbulence of Tolstoy? Why couldn\u2019t he be more eikonic in his real life?<\/p>\n
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I have been skipping through some of Leo Tolstoy of late, and came upon William Shirer\u2019s incredibly insightful study, Love and Hatred, which details the turbulent relationship of Leo and Sonya Tolstoy. For years and years they fought and warred and called one another hateful things, and then worked out their feelings in their diaries. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":197,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[806],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-317","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gospel"],"yoast_head":"\n
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