BBC Radio 4 2016-02-08

BBC Radio 4 2016-02-08

For all those of you, like me, who are going to miss the BBC’s adaptation of War and Peace, here is another rough adaptation of a Tolstoy short story called The Three Questions - perhaps suitable as a reflection for the beginning of Lent, which starts this Wednesday.

There was once a king who asked his advisors a number of questions. When is the right time to start things? Who are the right people to listen to? What’s the most important thing to do? His priests spoke of religion, his doctors of health, and his soldiers of war.

But unsatisfied with these answers, the king travelled deep into the forest to find a wise hermit who only spoke with simple people. Leaving his bodyguard a distance away, the king put on peasant clothes and approached the frail hermit who was breathlessly digging a hole. But the hermit didn’t answer the king. He just spat on his hands and kept on digging.

All of a sudden a strange man ran out of the forest and collapsed in front of the king with blood pouring from his side. The king and the hermit carried the man into the house, and washed and bandaged his wounds. Then they all fell asleep.

When the king woke up the strange man was staring into his eyes. “Do I know you?” the king asked, feeling uncomfortable. “I came here to kill you,” said the strange man. “I came here to take revenge on all the ways you have wronged me. And as I approached this cottage, your bodyguard recognized me and stabbed me. I would have bled to death had you not saved me. Now I am in your debt. I beg you to forgive me.”
The king was pleased he had made peace with his enemy but was still wanting an answer to his questions, so he returned to the hermit and demanded a reply. Looking up from his spade, the hermit sighed. “You don’t get it, do you” he said to the king, “you already have your answer.”

It’s a very Lenten story and typical of late Tolstoy. For the Lenten journey, a journey of self-discovery, begins with us stripping ourselves down, and throwing away our finery. And it’s a journey in which enemies are reconciled and peace is established. Tolstoy was no fan of the Russian church or their establishment answers - indeed he was excommunicated in 1901. But increasingly in his old age, he found wisdom in the folk teaching of the poor, just as the restless Count Bezukhov did in last night’s episode of War and Peace. For Tolstoy, Christianity was best understood as the simple preaching of non-violence and forgiveness: the sermon on the mount, love God and love your neighbour. And it was this teaching that so influenced the likes of Gandhi, with whom Tolstoy regularly corresponded.

The answers to the king’s question weren’t clever or difficult. He didn’t need reports or special advisors. All he needed was the courage to care for the threatening stranger and to recognize him as a friend and not as an enemy.