God Sees the Truth but Waits

MORAL LESSON This, I think sometimes, god waits before delivering his justice, not because he wants to hurt you but because the most appropriate punishment that the criminal deserves, and the most appropriate compensation that the victim deserves, can be awarded only after the passage of that time period. Nothing could be more rewarding for Aksionov than the attainment of that highest and most pleasurable state of consciousness in which, the self merges with the cosmos by letting go of its 'ego', and thus becomes omnipotent and omnipresent, and nothing could be more painful a punishment for Makar, than 'flogging' his soul, for the pain he had caused to an innocent fellow being. Any material compensation that god may have given to Aksionov, or any material punishment that he may have given to Makar, would have been 'lesser' than the most optimal ones. Ultimately, Aksionov's interpretation of his 'grey hair' dream comes out to be true, it indeed proves to be the most lucky day of his life.

COMMENT God Sees the Truth, But Waits is a short story by Russian author Leo Tolstoy first published in 1872. The story, about a man sent to prison for a murder he didn't commit, takes the form of a parable of forgiveness. The concept of the story of a man wrongfully accussed of murder and banished to Siberia also appears in one of Tolstoy's previous works, "War and Peace", during a philosophical discussion among two characters who relate the story and argue how the protagonist of their story deals with injustice and