The truth will set you free

Just wanted to share this excerpt from the final chapter of The Kingdom of God is Within You by Leo Tolstoy. As a quick summary, the book argues that society is built on explicit and implicit violence, and that commitment to Christian non-violence on the part of each individual is the only path to achieving social justice. The first step is recognizing this truth, the second is to proclaim it and live it in your own life, and finally to have faith that the truth will convert others and the violent order will fall. The socially just order that will replace it is the coming of the Kingdom of God that the Bible promises, and in Tolstoy's analysis, all this is what is meant by the passage in Luke 17:20-21:

The kingdom of God cometh not with outward show; neither shall they say, Lo here! Or, Lo there! For behold, the kingdom of God is within you.

Reading this has been one of several things in my post-undergrad experience that has reminded me to value of the internal world of the individual - their heart/mind/soul - in the struggle to end oppression, and not just external social-political-economic arrangements. I don't consider myself Christian, but there is much to learn from the more radical Christian traditions. Enjoy!

It is precisely those people who profess most anxiety for the amelioration of human life, and are regarded as the leaders of public opinion, who assert that there is no need to [strengthen the consciousness of Christian truth on the part of each individual man], and that there are more effective means for the amelioration of men’s condition. They affirm that the amelioration of human life is effected not by the efforts of individual men, to recognize and propagate the truth, but by the gradual modification of the general condition of life, and that therefore the efforts of individuals should be directed to the gradual modification of external conditions for the better. For every advocacy of a truth inconsistent with the existing order by the individual is, they maintain, not only useless but injurious, since it provokes coercive measures on the part of authorities, restricting these individuals from continuing any action useful in society. According to this doctrine all modifications in human life are brought about by precisely the same laws as in the life of the animals.

So that, according to this doctrine, all the founders of religions, such as Moses and the prophets, Confucius, Lao-Tse, Budda, Christ, and others, preached their doctrines and their followers accepted them, not because they loved truth, but because the political, social, and above all economic conditions of the peoples among whom these religions arose were favorable for their origination and development.

And therefore the chief efforts of the man who wishes to serve society and improve the condition of humanity ought, according to this doctrine, to be directed not to the elucidation and propagation of truth, but to the improvement of the external political, social, and above all economic conditions. And the modification of these conditions is partly effected by serving the government and introducing liberal and progressive principles into it, partly in promoting the development of industry and the propagation of socialistic ideas, and most of all by the diffusion of science. According to this theory it is of no consequence whether you profess the truth revealed to you, and therefore realize it in your life, or at least refrain from committing actions opposed to the truth, such as serving the government and strengthening its authority when you regard it as injurious, profiting from the capitalistic system when you regard it as wrong, showing veneration for various ceremonies which you believe to be founded on error, serving as a soldier, taking oaths, and lying, and lowering yourself generally. It is useless to refrain from all that; what is of use is not altering the existing forms life, but submitting to them against your own convictions, introducing liberalism into the existing institutions, promoting commerce, the propaganda of socialism, and the triumphs of what is called science, and the diffusion of education. According to this theory one can remain a landowner, merchant, manufacturer, judge, official in government pay, officer or soldier, and still be not only a humane man, but even a socialist and revolutionary.

Hypocrisy, which had formerly only a religious basis in the doctrine of original sin, the redemption, and the Church, has in our day gained a new scientific basis and has consequently caught in it nets all those who had reached too high a stage of development to be able to find support in religious hypocrisy. So that while in former days a man who professed the religion of the Church could take part in all the crimes of the state, and profit by them, and still regard himself free from the taint of sin, so long as he fulfilled the external observances of the creed, nowadays all who do not believe in the Christianity of the Church, find similar well-founded irrefutable reasons in science for regarding themselves as blameless and even highly moral in spite of their participation in the misdeeds of government and the advantages they gain from them.