The Apostle Peter said, "We are slaves to what masters us." In the order of life, failure to deal with our obsessions and compulsions will lead us into a form of slavery, bondage if you will, to the tormenting struggles that we all endure. Leo Tolstoy addresses this in his book "Anna Karenina" written over 100 years from the heartland of Russia. In this novel, he explores the themes of hypocrisy, jealousy, faith, fidelity, family, marriage, society, progress, carnal desire and passion.Anna Karenina (1877) tells parallel stories of an adulterous woman trapped by the conventions and falsities of society and of a philosophical landowner (much like Tolstoy), who works alongside the peasants in the fields and seeks to reform their lives.

Perhaps the popularity of his book, even today, is related to his boldness to face these realities. As we mentioned in our last post, reality is a nettlesome subject that we all struggle with. Denying the struggle or minimizing it brings a certain disability to our existence. This can freeze our emotional state  and leave us trapped in a world of make believe, assuming certain behaviors that protects our dignity and status...living behind a mask.

When we realize we are slaves to what masters us we raise the potential that we can move away from the struggle to do what is good while unable to carry it out.

In the finality of things, we want to do the right thing. Yet, when we try in our own power, we fall short. We end up doing precisely what we don't want to do. At some point, hopefully,  we come to realize we are not God. We admit we are powerless to control our tendency to do the wrong thing and that our life has become unmanageable.

Tolstoy, after reading Schopenhauer's The World as Will and Representation, emphasized this portion of the book:

But this very necessity of involuntary suffering (by poor people) for eternal salvation is also expressed by that utterance of the Savior (Matthew 19:24): "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God." Therefore those who were greatly in earnest about their eternal salvation, chose voluntary poverty when fate had denied this to them and they had been born in wealth. Thus Buddha Sakyamuni was born a prince, but voluntarily took to the mendicant's staff; and Francis of Assisi, the founder of the mendicant orders who, as a youngster at a ball, where the daughters of all the notabilities were sitting together, was asked: "Now Francis, will you not soon make your choice from these beauties?" and who replied: "I have made a far more beautiful choice!" "Whom?" "La poverta (poverty)": whereupon he abandoned every thing shortly afterwards and wandered through the land as a mendicant. – Schopenhauer, Parerga and Paralipomena, Vol. II, §170

As Americans, we live a life of nobility, compared the existence of the common man in Russia during Tolstoy's lifetime. Yet, we can hardly bear the thought of abandoning the American Dream and giving away our wealth. It's too painful for us. So, we live in this make believe world filled with denial, glossing over our struggles, and putting on the mask of respectability while outwardly manifesting religious behaviors necessary to live the gospel according to the American Dream, slaves to what masters us.