TOLSTOY’S
REASON TO LIVE

Topics: Conversion; Meaning of Life; Pleasure; Purpose; Questions; Significance; Sin; Worldliness

References: Psalm 16:11; Matthew 6:19–21; 1 Timothy 1:12–17

Leo Tolstoy, known for his classic work War and Peace, also wrote A Confession, which tells the story of his search for meaning and purpose in life.

Tolstoy rejected Christianity as a child and went to a university seeking pleasure. In Moscow and St. Petersburg he drank heavily, lived promiscuously, and gambled frequently. His ambition was to become wealthy and famous, but nothing satisfied him.

In 1862, he married a wonderful woman, and they had thirteen children. He had everything, yet he was so unhappy that he was on the verge of suicide. “Is there any meaning in my life which will not be annihilated by the inevitability of death, which awaits me?” he said.

Tolstoy searched for the answer in every field of science and philosophy. As he looked around, he saw that people were not facing up to the basic questions of life, such as: Where did I come from? Where am I going? Who am I? What is life all about? Eventually he found that the peasant people of Russia answered these questions through their Christian faith, and he, too, came to realize that only in Jesus Christ do we find the true meaning of life.

—Nicky Gumbel, Questions of Life (Kingsway, 1993)