“Do not be afraid of men’s sin, love man also in his sin,” states Zosima in Of Prayer, Love, and the Touching of Other Worlds, which precisely explains and summarizes is perspective on life. Zosima believes that by seeing beauty in everything possible that a man will unequivocally see the face of God. This ideology is clearly laid out by his citations of loving sinners, earth, and children above one’s self.
Zosima beseeches the reader to love the listener to see beauty and love most of all the sinful. The idea comes not just from Jesus walking with the sinners who presumably committed the worst crimes in the New Testament but from the overarching idea of the existence of God’s beauty being ubiquitous. Zosima, through his own sin and empathy, is able to understand the pain others go through and is aesthetically pleased by the process of self-reflection.
Furthermore, Zosima encourages us to love those who have not sinned: plants, animals and children. In the same respect that Mr. Graham requested students, doubting the existence of God, to spend a week in the woods last Spring, Zosima asks the listener to “Love all of God’s creation, both the whole of it and every grain of sand. Love every leaf, every ray of God’s light.” Even emphasizes how children and animals are sinless, unlike man, which although it sounds contradictory, is effective in placing the reader in the situation to not look introspectively with moral standards based on relativity but more inclined to reflect on what they have done wrong.
Zosima’s ideology is correct with respect to both Christian theology and from a pragmatic standpoint. Statements, such as “Love children, especially, for they, too, are sinless,” which opposes the conservative/traditional notion on original sin, can be explained by interpreting them as being purely persuasive. Zosima’s ideology ultimately asks a person to do as Jesus did and take on the sins of the world in complete understanding of them.
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