In Dostoevsky's book, Crime and Punishment, the main character undertakes an experiment of living that takes him down a very dark road. Apart from the darkness of the path he choose to go down, I think it is interesting because he decides to turn his thoughts and ideas about life into a life he actually lives. Dostoevsky says, "In place of dialectics life had arrived..." Life is often an imposing force that does not allow us to merely think about it passively, but forces decisions and actions out of us.
This is also usually the hard part. It is one thing to think and talk about life, what it means to live life, and how it should be done. It is a completely different thing, however, when that life theorized about in conversations arrives. Do we tend to act in accordance with the things we talk about doing - do what we say should be done? Or do we merely continue to have impassioned conversations about universal moral maxims and platitudes that are then kept at a safe distance from our day to day life?
I find this to be a real struggle. I can see clearly why the Reformation idea of 'vocation' and of serving one's neighbor is first based in a life of repentance. With so many failings in life - both in terms of doing and not doing - it can be easy to be paralyzed with the weight of failure. We deeply need something, indeed, Someone to pull us out of the catch-22 of life's imposition. The challenge is to be aware of needs so deeply that they are no longer merely an idea for conversation, but a desired reaction to forgiveness' removal of failure's millstone and the recurrence of life's imposition.
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