Love to Defeat Violence
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Love to Defeat Violence
Leo Tolstoy talks of how important the concept of love is among individuals and groups of people. He states that if love exists, there will not be anyone to hold captive human beings. He discusses how science and religion have held captive humanity in so many different ways and how this can be ended. First, he discusses religion and focuses on Christianity, how it has made human beings captives and how wrong this has been all through. After Christianity, he also discusses science and how even those nations like china and japan, which Christianity did not torment, are now being tormented by science as they see science as the whole truth of everything needed for people to believe and live. These are very important concepts as the world evolves from religion into science. However, amid all these issues, he firmly states that love still holds and will continue to hold up to the end as the most important virtue of humanity. Therefore, his paper discusses and analyses the writing by Leo Tolstoy and its meaning to humanity in the contemporary world.
Tolstoy states that religion and science cause violence. Religion in the first place is the major cause of violence when looked at from the eyes of history. For example, Christianity and Muslim had one of history’s most renowned chaos and fought called the crusades. It is a clear indication of what Tolstoy says is the nature of religion. Even though love does away with all kinds of human suffering and difficulties, it is also true that it has been corrupted over time. It is visible in the Christian realm whereby loving oneself is even more important in some instances than loving others. For example, when Christians state that a righteous person should not move in the paths of the evildoers, that means it is love but love for the righteous, which means putting away some people like the wrongdoers who ought to be corrected with love.
Even though Christianity and other types of religion advocate for the love and the presence of God in people’s lives, there was still a lacking part as time grew and the people continued to live in these religions. For instance, they believe that power comes from God, and therefore it was important for a person to fully submit to the power which rules them because it is from God grew to be misused by many people with time. Therefore this belief watered down. The leaders most of the time used those under them, and therefore, this was a type of violence.
On the other hand, science is also a very big power that is the basis of violence in the contemporary world. Unlike religion, which was just used to lure some people, science has been embraced by everyone, which puts the world at risk. The risk comes out because apart from the world being subject to science, science can also make destructive products which can be used to cause violence to a very great deal and therefore this has to be dealt with in the right manner.
In conclusion, Tolstoy states that non-violence is the best thing to approach violence in any part of the world. This is because love crowns it all, and it makes things better as violence only hurts people. He states that science and religion cannot lure a person who is deep-rooted in the virtue of love to do anything wrong or anything which is not per the principles of love.
Work Cited
Bajaj, Ritu. “A Letter to a Hindu—Essay of Leo Tolstoy.” Contemporary Literary Review India 2.1 (2018): 25-27.
