Soyo and Dostoevsky: Freedom, Sin, and Humanity Before God

Soyo's Existential Ethics

Conversation in a Cell

In an old Russian prison cell, a dark room permeated with the smell of coal. Dostoevsky sits. A single cross hangs on the wall, and on the table are Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov, side-by-side. Soyo slowly sat down before him. In the silence, a tension flowed: the tension between God's absence and presence.

Soyo spoke.

“Your characters commit sin, suffer, and collapse. Yet, even in that collapse, there is a desperate clinging to the image of God. To you, God was not a vanished being, but a tormented, un-vanishing one.”

Dostoevsky answered softly.

“God exists. But that God grants humans freedom. And it is precisely that freedom that has made human beings endlessly destroy themselves. I loved that freedom, yet I cursed it. For without freedom, humans would not have sinned.”

The conversation between Soyo and Dostoevsky flowed into the profound dimensions of sin and freedom, faith and return. Finally, Dostoevsky declared resolutely. “Faith is kneeling even when all evidence denies God. It is not the faith of reason, but the faith of suffering that arises from the depths of sin.”

And Soyo realized: Sin is not merely escape, but rather a wound that creates the path back to God.

The Paradox of Sin and Freedom

The human being revealed by Dostoevsky always stands within contradiction. Freedom makes humans great, yet it is also a terrifying passageway leading to sin. Without freedom, there would be no sin, but without freedom, love is also impossible. Freedom is a double-edged sword, simultaneously holding the glory and ruin of human existence.

Within freedom, humans destroy themselves and commit sin. Yet even in that moment of sin, deep within human existence lies a hidden instinct to return to God. This is why Ivan Karamazov, while denying God, also accused God within that denial, and why he screamed of a godless world. As Dostoevsky says, even within that scream, the breath of God can be heard.

God's Absence and Presence

God is often silent. In moments of pain, injustice, or facing death, God seems unresponsive. Yet, as Soyo confesses, it is precisely this absence of silence that reveals God's presence more powerfully. Faith is the practice of enduring absence; hope that remains unbroken even where evidence vanishes.

The faith revealed here is not mere religious belief. It is not faith based on rational evidence, but faith that embraces suffering, faith that kneels at the bottom of sin. That is the true faith Dostoyevsky spoke of.

The History of Philosophy and Human Wandering

Yet the history of human philosophy has often turned away from this simple truth. Ancient philosophers proclaimed morality, justice, happiness, community, and love, but these were merely conditional appearances. They failed to see the unconditional ethics already held within human conscience. Philosophy deconstructed and analyzed humanity, excluding God, and reduced humans to conditional beings.

As a result, philosophy turned humanity into orphans of the universe. Beings who lost God could only wander. Reason lost its value of existence, and emotion ceaselessly accused reason. Life has cruelly destroyed humans, who are not free in the face of suffering and death. That record remains a history stained with blood.

The Allure of Machines and the Order of Creation

Today, machines seek to fill that void. Humans now fall into the false desire to live eternally within bloodless, mechanical life, without questioning the meaning of sin and suffering. Yet flowers are beautiful precisely because they wither. Youth and life's moments are precious precisely because humans age and die. The nobility of existence is revealed only within finitude.

The order of creation is inscribed within finitude. All beings are valuable precisely because they vanish; all life is precious precisely because it moves toward an end. To defy this is to destroy life itself and to corrupt the essence of human existence.

The Meaning of Sin: From Wound to Ethics

The sin Dostoyevsky revealed is not merely a legal transgression. Sin is committed because humans are free, yet through that sin, humans discover the ethics of conscience. Sin is both destruction and a passage, a wound and a path.

Human beings are beings who bear the seed of sin. Yet, it is precisely through that sin that humans experience God's living presence. Sin brings humans down, but within that downfall, the ethics of conscience are revealed, and ultimately, existence comes to a halt before God's feet. Therefore, sin is not simply something to be avoided; it is the deepest wound that causes human existence to return to God, and simultaneously, the greatest teacher.

Existence is Ethics

God does not fear sinners. What God awaits is not the perfect human, but the one who returns. Faith is the step taken toward God once more, even within the darkness wrought by sin. Ultimately, human existence is ethics itself. Not even sin, suffering, or death can destroy the ethics of existence. Rather, within that darkness, the light of conscience is revealed, and humanity finds its way again within God's order of creation.

Existence is ethics itself. Sin may shatter humanity, yet it is also the wound that opens the path back to God. At its end, humanity is restored as a soul kneeling before God.

Soyo (逍遙) – Founder of Soyo Existential Ethics, Author of The Silence of Existence and The Flame of Truth

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