“Do you practice what you preach?” This is the most natural question of all and one always asked of me. And it is usually asked victoriously, as though it were a way of silencing me.
And I answer that I do not preach, that I am not able to preach—though I passionately wish to. I can preach only through my actions, and my actions are vile… And I answer that I am guilty and vile and worthy of contempt for my failure to carry them out.
At the same time, not in order to justify, but simply in order to explain my lack of consistency, I say, “Look at my life today compared with my former life and you will see that I do attempt to live out the Gospel; and I am ashamed to this because I have not lived out a thousandth of it. But I failed not because I didn’t wish to, but because I was unable to. Teach me to escape from this net of temptation surrounding me—help me and I will live it out, even without help I wish to fulfill it…
Attack me, I do this myself, but attack ME rather than the path I follow and which I point out to anyone who asks me where I think it lays. If I know the way home, and am walking along it drunkenly, is it any less the right path because I stagger side to side? If it is not the right way, then show me another—but if I stagger and lose the way, you must help me, you must keep me on the true path, just as I am ready to support you. Do not mislead me, do not be glad I have got lost, do not shout joyfully, “Look at him, he was going home but now crawls in a ditch!” Do not gloat, but give me help and support.
-Leo Tolstoy
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