A Dreamer with a Heart
In an age of false philosophies and loveless societies, we have never been more in need of a true philosophy about loving our neighbours.
I have only ever cried once from a movie, and that was The Green Mile (The Notebook was a close call). The closest I have come to crying from a book was Washington Square, but those would’ve been tears of boredom. This changed after I recently finished Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment. The Russian got to me.
Crime and Punishment is often cited as the greatest novel ever written. I therefore write about it knowing that I tread a well-trodden path - perhaps a path too treacherous for me. Academics have dedicated their lives to this book, and countless papers have been written on it. But I cried, and that must mean something.
The protagonist, Raskolnikov, is a destitute drop-out law student who lives in a suffocatingly small room in the chaotic and dusty St Petersburg. He is constantly anxious, depressed, sleepless, and stifled in his minute abode. He has no friends. His only family, a mother and sister, live far away. Life for Raskolnikov is not good.
But he is a dreamer. He drinks beer to ‘put out a fire in his belly.’
He is intellectually gifted, and he knows it. He thinks that hardly anyone ever says anything new. And so, he writes an article for the local newspaper about an idea that forms the central message of the book. Raskolnikov argues that there are, and have always been, two types of people: ordinary and extraordinary.
Ordinary people uphold and obey the laws of the land. But they also ‘demand a total lack of personality… they’d rather do with other people’s ideas… they’re not alive – they have no will of their own: they’re servile and won’t rebel.’
Extraordinary people break the law, not for arbitrary personal gain, but for the betterment of humanity. They are ‘those who possess the gift or talent to say something new.’
Raskolnikov posits that ordinary people are masters of the present, and extraordinary, of the future. The former despise the latter, yet both are essential for society. But it is of course the extraordinary person that keeps Raskolnikov up at night.
He ponders over the extraordinary people of history and concludes that all of them were, to varying degrees, criminals. These great souls see, like everyone else, that the system is failing, but they then do something about it – they change it. To change the law, the law has to be broken, so these people are, by definition, criminals. They create a new law by transgressing an old one. Napoleon spilled much blood in achieving much greatness.
Where the ordinary man spills blood and then repents of it, the extraordinary man has no remorse because he knows that it is for the greater good. Stepping over a few bodies on the treacherous path to Eden is a small price to pay.
Extraordinary people lead ‘the destruction of the status quo for the sake of a better world’, and Raskolnikov argues that they are therefore morally justified in committing crimes. After all, no one else will do what they do.
Raskolnikov is an atheist, but at one stage he prays to God to lead his steps. Soon after, God gives him the chance to test his grand idea.
He knows a pawnbroker who is sitting on a fortune. She is a horrible old woman. She lives with her much younger mentally challenged sister, Lizaveta, whom she treats as a servant. She ruthlessly charges high interest rates. She is cut-throat and tight-fisted.
The first coincidence happens when Raskolnikov is sitting in a pub, and he overhears a conversation between two men. The one man proclaims his foolproof idea to the other, which is to murder and rob the horrible old woman. She is rich. She is old. She is a thief. We are all poor. We are all young. We are honest and hard-working. Murdering and robbing one bad person would be good for everyone else.1
But these men are ordinary, and so they do nothing. It is only talk. Raskolnikov, on the other hand, is extraordinary - at least he thinks so. The idea therefore haunts him.
The second coincidence happens when Raskolnikov overhears another conversation between Lizaveta and her employer, who says that she must work overtime on a certain day. Raskolnikov can therefore be sure that she will not be at home with the old woman at that time.
He has coincidentally, miraculously, been given everything he needs to commit the murder. God gives him the freewill to live out his grand idea.
Raskolnikov kills the old woman with an axe. He kills Lizaveta too, as she comes home after work and witnesses the crime because Raskolnikov accidentally left the front door open. He robs them and hides the money and possessions, but doesn’t spend a cent of it.
This happens early on. The rest of the book tells of his gradual mental and spiritual unwinding. It answers the murderer’s question: am I a monster, or a victim?
Raskolnikov genuinely believes that he is extraordinary, to the extent that he didn’t think he was committing a crime. But to be truly extraordinary, he must continue living without remorse. He must support his ‘good deed’ wholeheartedly…
‘Those (extraordinary) men possessed the strength to carry on, and therefore they were in the right.’ However, right after he murders, he wants to confess. His conscience convicts him. He acted, but his heart is divided.
Raskolnikov represents a concoction of the most pernicious philosophies in Dostoevsky’s Russia: nihilism, rationalism, and utilitarianism, which are embodied by the squalor and wretchedness of St Petersburg.
Raskolnikov is in continual rebellion against himself, society, and God. Dostoevsky predicted that utilitarian ideas like Raskolnikov’s would wreck humanity on a large scale, and they then did, shown most clearly by Nazi Germany. Since then, these philosophies have not waned in popularity.
Although Raskolnikov is an extremist, a murderer, critical of people, arrogant, lazy, and a recluse, he has echoes of a good heart. He once ran into a burning building to save two children. He fiercely protects his sister from a suitor with evil intentions.
He says, ‘I can’t count the number of times I’ve had a real row with someone and then dashed back to make it up.’ He gives the last of his money to a family in the throes of poverty. He is kind to Sonya, the daughter in this family who has resorted to prostitution to provide for her starving siblings.
Sonya loves Raskolnikov with a pure and deep Christian love which brought me to tears. She introduces Him to Jesus. The murderer and the prostitute read the Holy Scriptures together. She prays with him, and afterwards, Raskolnikov exclaims, ‘There is life! I was just alive now, wasn’t I?... I’m drunk, but drunk without a drop to drink!’
Being convicted by the truth, Raskolnikov’s mental and spiritual anguish eventually becomes too much for him, and he confesses his crime to Sonya. Lizaveta, whom Raskolnikov killed, was Sonya’s friend. But Sonya forgives him because she knows that she herself doesn’t deserve forgiveness.
He says, ‘You’re such a strange girl, Sonya, to be hugging and kissing me when I’ve just told you about that… how could you ever love such a vile character?... A long and unfamiliar feeling flooded his heart, immediately softening it.’
… ‘He looked at Sonya and felt the sheer force of her love for him.’ He says, ‘But why should they love me so much, if I don’t deserve it!’
Sonya tells Raskolnikov to go to the crossroads and to kiss the earth in confession to all creation. She says, ‘Shout out to everyone “I am a murderer!” and then God will give you a new life.’ She leads him to repentance so he can redeem himself through the acceptance of suffering.
He goes to the police station and turns himself in. In prison, the protagonist reflects…
‘I wanted to be a Napoleon, that’s why I killed… through that stupid action I only wanted to achieve independence.’ It was never about the money. It was about staying true to an idea above all else. It was pride.
Raskolnikov quickly realized that, while he had the boldness to act on his idea, he was not ‘strong’ enough to support it. He couldn’t overstep the law without regretting it. In trying to do so, in trying to ignore his God-given conscience, he hurt himself. It was his wounded pride that made him ill. Raskolnikov didn’t kill an old woman. He killed himself.
He had to admit that his idea was flawed, but more simply, that he is flawed. Raskolnikov is not a victim, but a monster. A monster with a conscience.
Through it all, Sonya never leaves his side. She tells him, ‘God has prepared a life for you.’
At the prison grounds, the narrator reflects: ‘There was so much unbearable suffering and so much infinite happiness lying ahead of them! But he had been raised from the dead, and he knew it – he felt it in all of his resurrected being.’
Jesus Christ arrived on earth when the world was in a bad way. The law wasn’t working, and so Jesus changed the law - He broke the law. He made many enemies in the process and was widely considered a criminal. He died with a criminal on His left and His right.
Jesus broke the law and gave us a new one so that we don’t have to. We don’t have to conceive great ideas to be extraordinary, because He has given us every great idea. We are all extraordinary because we are made in His image: ‘I have said, Ye are gods; and all of you are children of the most High.’2
But as Christians, Dostoevsky calls us in a real sense to rebel against the status quo of the world. To think of ambitious Godly ideas, and to pursue them. To not get others to do our thinking - including our pastors. To rebel against our prejudices. He calls us to unremorsefully step out and do Christ’s difficult and radical work. Jesus calls us to be prepared to die for an idea.
Dostoevsky gives us a brutal reminder of the importance of humility, and of the severe dangers of false philosophies, which are like diseases. Raskolnikov was the epitome of intellectual pride, the chief sin of Satan.
The truth is, we do not know best. Doing what we think is best and following our lofty ideas leads to suffering for everyone. God’s truth is the foundation and springboard for every good idea. We are otherwise lost…
‘Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths. Be not wise in thine own eyes: fear the Lord, and depart from evil.’3
More than anything, Dostoevsky shows us the sheer beauty of Christian love. Before being liberal, conservative, protestant, or catholic, we must be loving – especially to those with the wackiest worldviews, especially to great sinners, and especially to the unlovable.
Sonya and Raskolnikov ‘were regenerated by love – one heart held infinite springs of life for the other.’ Through Sonya’s love, Raskolnikov was born again.
He was a dreamer, but she gave him a heart.
With the current pandemic of evil, expedient, false, and specious philosophies, let us hold ever stronger to the truth of Jesus Christ, for only from Him can we find joy, peace, and life itself.
Only from Him can we truly dream.
This is a classic trolley problem.
Psalm 82:6
Proverbs 3:5-7