“Man acts in his own best interest.”
Do we really?
That’s how Chapter 7 begins. A smug, Enlightenment-era belief: that humans are rational, moral agents who pursue what’s good for them.
But the Underground Man spits at that idea.
And to be honest, so do I.
Because I know what it’s like to sabotage myself.
To say the right things, believe the good things, even preach them—then turn around and do the opposite.
And that contradiction—it cuts deeper than I sometimes admit.
He introduces a “friend”—a well-mannered gentleman who acts against his own ideals.
“This friend, reader, is not only mine—but yours too.”
That line stung.
Because I am that friend.
I’ve given advice that I haven’t followed.
I’ve called out evil in the world while hiding my own.
And I’ve done what I hate—like Paul says in Romans 7:
“The good that I want to do, I do not do; but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing.”
There it is again—that loop, that war within.
What the Underground Man calls contradiction… the Bible calls sin.
Not just confusion. Not just moral irony. But a deep fracture in the will.
And yet, unlike the Underground Man, Paul doesn’t stay there.
“Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God—through Jesus Christ our Lord.”
Later in the chapter, Dostoyevsky brings in Attila the Hun and Stenka Razin—violent men remembered as heroes.
It’s like he’s saying:
“If humans are so rational, why do we celebrate destruction?”
Then he speaks of Cleopatra—rumored to have tortured slave girls for pleasure.
And he mocks modern readers who gasp at this and say: “We’re better now.”
But are we?
That part brought me to a quiet ache.
Because I’ve heard people say, “How could people stay silent during the Holocaust?”
And I’ve whispered in my heart:
“What about now? What are you doing about today’s suffering?”
I see oppression around me.
And most of the time…
I do nothing.
That includes me. 🥹
There’s something brutal and brilliant about how this chapter tears through our self-image.
But here’s where I step off the Underground train:
I don’t stay in contradiction just to admire the wreckage.
I don’t turn my failures into clever philosophies.
I name them. I call them sin. And I bring them to the Cross.
Because Jesus didn’t die for men who are “slightly confused.”
He died for those of us who know what’s right and still do wrong.
He died for the friend who betrays, the coward who stays silent, and the sinner who stares at their hands and says:
“Lord, have mercy.”
End of Entry.
Let the tears fall. Let grace rise.
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