What I Believe

Chapter 8

Granting, then, that the doctrine of Christ gives bliss to the world; granting that it is rational; and that man, as a rational being, has no right to renounce it; what can one man do alone, amidst a world of men who do not fulfill the law of Christ?  If all would agree to practice the doctrine of Christ, its fulfillment would be possible; but what can the efforts of one man avail, if the whole world is against him?  How often do we hear it said, ‘If, amidst a whole world of men who do not fulfill the doctrine of Christ, I alone begin to follow it, by giving up what I love, by letting my cheek be struck, or even by refusing to take an oath, or to have any part in war, I shall be robbed, and, if I do not starve, I shall be either beaten to death, or imprisoned, or shot; and I shall have destroyed the happiness of my whole life, and even my life itself, in vain.’

We often hear men argue thus, and I said the same myself, until I had entirely set aside the influence of Church teaching, which had prevented my taking in the full meaning of Christ’s doctrine about life.

Christ gives His doctrine as the means of salvation from the corrupt life that those who do not follow His teaching lead, and yet I say that I should like to follow it, but cannot make up my mind to ruin my life!  It would seem, then, that I do not consider my life as corrupt, but as something real and good, and something that is my own.  It is just in the conviction that this earthly, individual life is something real, and something that actually belongs to us, that the misunderstanding lies, which prevents our comprehending the doctrine of Christ.  Christ knows the delusion by which men consider their own individual lives as something real, and something to which they have a personal right; and He shows them, in a series of sermons and parables, that they have no claims on life, that they have, indeed, no life at all, until they attain true life by renouncing the shadow of which they call their life.

In order to understand Christ’s doctrine of salvation, we must, first of all, comprehend what the prophets Solomon, Buddha, and all the sages of the world have said concerning the individual life of man.  We may, as Pascal says, live on without thinking of all this, holding a screen before our eyes, which hides from us the abyss of death, toward which we are all hastening; but we need only reflect upon what the individual life of man is to be convinced that his entire life, if it is only the individual life, is of no importance for each separate man.

In order to understand the doctrine of Christ, we must first of all consider ourselves and repent, so that in us may be fulfilled the μετανοια, which the precursor of Christ, John the Baptist, speaks of when preaching to men who, like ourselves, had gone astray.  He says first of all, ‘Repent,’ i.e., consider yourselves, ‘otherwise you shall all perish.’  He says, ‘The axe is already laid to the root of the tree to hew i…