Its all too hard isn't it ? Taking God seriuously

 Tolstoy in Anna Karenina  makes the point a lot of us make about taking God seriously .
paraphrasing
" I don't see why i should take on all that baggage from the past and seek to know God who is never seen  My gripe when the hero (he) gets married is I have more against God than for him , I can feel grief for people I have hurt , but how can I feel anything for someone i never see ."

Saint Paul recognizes the argument as a real one and one that is interpreted by many as a reason to ignore God in Romans .
"If God  forgives,, what is there to stop us sinning and just handing out forgiveness. Who is God to make claims on us nnyway? Why doesn't he do more for the peasants as i am trying to do ?   So many of the people who say they trust God are not only no better but nuttier and more thick about questions of life that me  "

Tolstoy is not persuaded from his/our  normal preoccupation with our own logic ( he says trying to be rational doesn't work )  because all the above is true.
Tolstoy is persuaded like Dostoevsky and millions before us,  that there is more to a real ,deeper and happier life than our ability to rationalize our way through it . Just seeking  happiness ( even in others as he shows in the book  ) doesn't work,  so forget it . 

The book shows it dangerous and destructive to waste our time on the many false and messy mix  of virtues vices and pleasures . There has to be a way of sorting ones priorities that works and that isn't just ,as the maid says " what ever makes you happy " at the time .  . 

What persuades Tolstoy  to take on the peasants view of history and faith in " the mysterious God" is the reality that unless you truly repent and accept that God's way is the best way for you ( and that crazy and incomplete family of which you were destined to be part of )
you, like Anna Karenina can miss the way .That's a tragic end and reality of a frustrated self focused logic that doesn't work . Once you see Anna as she is,  you see something to avoid at all costs . 

All the players in his story have obsessions , but only some obsessions are truly worthy and work for good.  God is not clearly against pleasure but can show us how to find pleasure with and within the pain .
Avoiding pain is not what will help you live . In Fact,  we have to accept some surgery
Matthew 18 describes both the wonder of living like a child BUT also doing our own painful surgery  like an ADULT because its all good being and doing that is good for YOU.

A hard way is best but as Tolstoy says -  who can walk that way without God by your side ?