The Kingdom of God Is Within You by Leo Tolstoy (good novels to read TXT) π
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The Kingdom of God Is Within You is the most influential work of Christian anarchism. It might be considered the founding work of that tradition if it didnβt itself claim to merely be pointing out Christian anarchism as the plain meaning of the gospels.
Tolstoy argues that institutional Christianity with its doctrines, church hierarchies, and ritual practices, is anti-Christian. Christ, he says, explicitly told his followers to reject doctrines, church institutions and hierarchies, and ritual practices, and instead to love truth, to honor God, and to treat all people as your family and as you would want to be treated.
Tolstoy says that a Christian cannot participate in the political system, which is based on the use of violence to enforce the separation of people and the privileging of some people over others, and at the same time follow Jesus in his command to love your neighbor.
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- Author: Leo Tolstoy
Read book online Β«The Kingdom of God Is Within You by Leo Tolstoy (good novels to read TXT) πΒ». Author - Leo Tolstoy
For a Christian to promise that he will obey men or human laws is the same as for a laborer who has hired out to a master to promise at the same time that he will do everything which other men may command him to do. It is impossible to serve two masters.
A Christian frees himself from human power by recognizing over himself nothing but Godβs power, the law of which, revealed to him by Christ, he recognizes in himself, and to which alone he submits.
And this liberation is not accomplished by means of a struggle, not by the destruction of existing forms of life, but only by means of the changed comprehension of life. The liberation takes place in consequence of this, in the first place, that a Christian recognizes the law of love, which was revealed to him by his teacher, as quite sufficient for human relations, and so regards all violence as superfluous and illegal, and, in the second place, that those privations, sufferings, threats of sufferings and privations, with which the public man is brought to the necessity of obeying, present themselves to a Christian, with his different concept of life, only as inevitable conditions of existence, which he, without struggling against them by exercising violence, bears patiently, like diseases, hunger, and all other calamities, but which by no means can serve as a guide for his acts. What serves as a guide for a Christianβs acts is only the divine principle that lives within him and that cannot be oppressed or directed by anything.
A Christian acts according to the word of the prophecy applied to his teacher, βhe shall not strive, nor cry; neither shall any man hear his voice in the streets; a bruised reed shall he not break, and smoking flax shall he not quench, till he send forth judgment unto victoryβ (Matthew 12:19β ββ 20).
A Christian does not quarrel with anyone, does not attack anyone, nor use violence against one; on the contrary, he himself without murmuring bears violence; but by this very relation to violence he not only frees himself, but also the world from external power.
βAnd ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you freeβ (John 8:32). If there were any doubt as to Christianity being truth, that complete freedom, which cannot be oppressed by anything, and which a man experiences the moment he makes the Christian life-conception his own, would be an undoubted proof of its truth.
In their present condition men are like bees which have just swarmed and are hanging down a limb in a cluster. The position of the bees on the limb is temporary, and must inevitably be changed. They must rise and find a new home for themselves. Every one of the bees knows that and wishes to change its position and that of the others, but not one is able to do so before the others are going to do so. They cannot rise all at once, because one hangs down from the other, keeping it from separating itself from the swarm, and so all continue to hang. It would seem that the bees could not get out of this state, just as it seems to worldly men who are entangled in the snare of the social world-conception. But there would be no way out for the bees, if each of the bees were not separately a living being, endowed with wings. So there would also be no way out for men, if each of them were not a separate living being, endowed with the ability of acquiring the Christian concept of life.
If every bee which can fly did not fly, the rest, too, would not move, and the swarm would never change its position. And as one bee need but open its wings, rise up, and fly away, and after it a second, third, tenth, hundredth, in order that the immovable cluster may become a freely flying swarm of bees, so one man need but understand life as Christianity teaches him to understand it, and begin to live accordingly, and a second, third, hundredth, to do so after him, in order that the magic circle of the social life, from which there seemed to be no way out, be destroyed.
But people think that the liberation of all men in this manner is too slow, and that it is necessary to find and use another such a means, so as to free all at once; something like what the bees would do, if, wishing to rise and fly away, they should find that it was too long for them to wait for the whole swarm to rise one after another, and should try to find a way where every individual bee would not have to unfold its wings and fly away, but the whole swarm could fly at once wherever it wanted. But that is impossible: so long as the first, second, third, hundredth bee does not unfold its wings and fly, the swarm, too, will not fly away or find the new life.
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