Some of you know I’ve been reading this book and I’m really enjoying it, even though the writing is sometimes hard to get through and Tolstoy’s arguments are often hard to come to terms with.  But I wanted to share these thoughts because they seemed so significant.

Read it slowly and take some time to think about these.  Some very deep ideas here.  The bold-ing & nderlin-ing  were done by me to emphasize the “meat” of this particular text (for me anyway).

I hope you enjoy it.

Again, the book is called “The Kingdom of God Is Within You: Christianity Not as a Mystic Religion but as a New Theory of Life” by Leo Tolstoy – 1894

“People talk about the liberty of the Christian Church, about giving or not giving freedom to Christians. Underlying all these ideas and expressions there is some strange misconception. Freedom cannot be bestowed on or taken from a Christian or Christians. Freedom is an inalienable possession of the Christian.

If we talk of bestowing freedom on Christians or withholding it from them, we are obviously talking not of real Christians but of people who only call themselves Christians. A Christian cannot fail to be free, because the attainment of the aim he sets before himself cannot be prevented or even hindered by anyone or anything.

Let a man only understand his life as Christianity teaches him to understand it, let him understand, that is, that his life belongs not to him—not to his own individuality, nor to his family, nor to the state—but to him who has sent him into the world, and let him once understand that he must therefore fulfill not the law of his own individuality, nor his family, nor of the state, but the infinite law of him from whom he has come; and he will not only feel himself absolutely free from every human power, but will even cease to regard such power as at all able to hamper anyone.

Let a man but realize that the aim of his life is the fulfillment of God’s law, and that law will replace all other laws for him, and he will give it his sole allegiance, so that by that very allegiance every human law will lose all binding and controlling power in his eyes.

The Christian is independent of every human authority by the fact that he regards the divine law of love, implanted in the soul of every man, and brought before his consciousness by Christ, as the sole guide of his life and other men’s also. [emphasis mine]

The Christian may be subjected to external violence, he may be deprived of bodily freedom, he may be in bondage to his passions (he who commits sin is the slave of sin), but he cannot be in bondage in the sense of being forced by any danger or by any threat of external harm to perform an act which is against his conscience.

He cannot be compelled to do this, because the deprivations and sufferings which form such a powerful weapon against men of the state conception of life, have not the least power to compel him.

Deprivations and sufferings take from them the happiness for which they live; but far from disturbing the happiness of the Christian, which consists in the consciousness of fulfilling the will of God, they may even intensify it, when they are inflicted on him for fulfilling his will.

And therefore the Christian, who is subject only to the inner divine law, not only cannot carry out the enactments of the external law, when they are not in agreement with the divine law of love which he acknowledges (as is usually the case with state obligations), he cannot even recognize the duty of obedience to anyone or anything whatever, he cannot recognize the duty of what is called “allegiance”.

For a Christian the oath of allegiance to any government whatever—the very act which is regarded as the foundation of the existence of a state—is a direct renunciation of Christianity. For the man who promises unconditional obedience in the future to laws, made or to be made, by that very promise is in the most positive manner renouncing Christianity, which means obeying in every circumstance of life only the divine law of love he recognizes within him. [emphasis mine]

Under the pagan conception of life it was possible to carry out the will of the temporal authorities, without infringing the law of God expressed in circumcisions, Sabbaths, fixed times of prayer, abstention from certain kinds of food, and so on. The one law was not opposed to the other. But that is just the distinction between the Christian religion and heathen religion. Christianity does not require of a man certain definite negative acts, but puts him in a new, different relation to men, from which may result the most diverse acts, which cannot be defined beforehand. And therefore the Christian not only cannot promise to obey the will of any other man, without knowing what will be required by that will; he not only cannot obey the changing laws of man, but he cannot even promise to do anything definite at a certain time, or to abstain from doing anything for a certain time. For he cannot know what at any time will be required of him by that Christian law of love, obedience to which constitutes the meaning of life for him. The Christian, in promising unconditional fulfillment of the laws of men in the future, would show plainly by that promise that the inner law of God does not constitute for him the sole law of his life.” [emphasis mine]

[Leo Tolstoy, The Kingdom of God Is Within You: Christianity Not as a Mystic Religion but as a New Theory of Life]

So what do you think of Tolstoy’s points?

What about this section jumped out at you besides the bold & underlined bits?

Is this part of why Christianity has lost its “way” – has the deeper (perhaps truer) meaning of Christianity been obscured by the desire for power and dispensing justice through violent means?

Wish I had known this guy

Leo Tolstoy 1893

“In these letters, expressing their [Quakers] sympathy with my views on the unlawfulness for a Christian of war and the use of force of any kind, the Quakers gave me details of their own so-called sect, which for more than two hundred years has actually professed the teaching of Christ on nonresistance to evil by force, and does not make use of weapons in self-defense. The Quakers sent me also their pamphlets, journals, and books, from which I learnt how they had, years ago, established beyond doubt the duty for a Christian of fulfilling the command of nonresistance to evil by force, and had exposed the error of the Church’s teaching in allowing war and capital punishment.”

“In a whole series of arguments and texts showing that war—that is, the wounding and killing of men—is inconsistent with a religion founded on peace and goodwill toward men, the Quakers maintain and prove that nothing has contributed so much to the obscuring of Christian truth in the eyes of the heathen, and has hindered so much the diffusion of Christianity through the world, as the disregard of this command by men calling themselves Christians, and the permission of war and violence to Christians.

““Christ’s teaching, which came to be known to men, not by means of violence and the sword,” they say, “but by means of nonresistance to evil, gentleness, meekness, and peaceableness, can only be diffused through the world by the example of peace, harmony, and love among its followers.””

““A Christian, according to the teaching of God himself, can act only peaceably toward all men, and therefore there can be no authority able to force the Christian to act in opposition to the teaching of God and to the principal virtue of the Christian in his relation with his neighbors.””

““The law of state necessity,” they say, “can force only those to change the law of God who, for the sake of earthly gains, try to reconcile the irreconcilable; but for a Christian who sincerely believes that following Christ’s teaching will give him salvation, such considerations of state can have no force.””,

“Further acquaintance with the labors of the Quakers and their works—with Fox, Penn, and especially the work of Dymond (published in 1827)—showed me not only that the impossibility of reconciling Christianity with force and war had been recognized long, long ago, but that this irreconcilability had been long ago proved so clearly and so indubitably that one could only wonder how this impossible reconciliation of Christian teaching with the use of force, which has been, and is still, preached in the churches, could have been maintained in spite of it.”, [Leo Tolstoy, The Kingdom of God Is Within You: Christianity Not as a Mystic Religion but as a New Theory of Life 1893]

AMEN! AMEN! AMEN! BROTHER TOLSTOY!!!

Something profound from Pharyngula

There’s something interesting on Pharyngula today.  Well, to be fair, there’s always something interesting over there aside from the religion bashing and name calling.

Dr. PZ Myers has reviewed a book entitled “Don’t Be Such a Scientist:  Talking Substance in an Age of Style.”

In his review, he writes:

There are lessons worth learning throughout the book; one of them is one I’ve known for a long time, that science is at odds with popular culture because it is largely an exercise in constant criticism, and people hate being criticized. We encourage a culture of negativity, because it works for us…which means, of course, that I can’t simply let the book slide by with a happy two thumbs up. I must be such a scientist. One of the things Randy seems to be oblivious to is the fact that character and personality are an essential part of the style element he is endorsing, and scientists can capitalize on their particular, peculiar, aggravating set of common characteristics. He tells his story of being the scientific dufus in the company of artists; the guy who takes things too literally, who has strange stories, who can obsess over odd stuff that no one else cares about, and who has enough character that his friends can talk about “being a Randy” and everyone knows exactly what they’re talking about. He writes as if this was a problem, and I can sympathize with some of his embarrassing moments…but it was a strength. He sounds like he was one of the interesting people in his group.

So I end up feeling a bit torn. He’s telling us “Don’t be such a scientist”, and it’s true that there are many occasions when the scientific attitude can generate unnecessary obstacles to accomplishing our goals. At the same time, though, I want to say “Do [emphasis his] be such a scientist”, because it’s part of our identity and it makes us stand out as unusual and, like Randy, interesting, even if it sometimes does make us a bit abrasive. But, you know, some of us revel in our abrasiveness; it’s fun.”

I find these thoughts very profound and insightful, though perhaps not for the reasons they were intended.

Read on and I’ll explain….

Do we as humans ALWAYS have to demonize other people groups?

Are we genetically predetermined to demonize other people groups, who believe differently than we do?

Are we somehow hard wired to “hate” others?  To mock them?  To ridicule them?

WE are the human race – WE are in this together.  Blacks, Whites, Asians, Jewish, Protestant, Catholic, Intelligent and Ignorant.  WE are no better than our neighbor.  WE are no worse than our neighbor.

One man kills another.  One man rapes a woman.  A woman murders another and cuts out her fetus.   A man robs a store and kills 3 people – motive unknown.  A man shoots up a fitness club – motive loneliness.

If circumstances had been different, if things had gone a different way, perhaps we might have been that person.  Many small things add up to the whole of who we become.

People demonize people of religion.  Religious people demonize non-religious people.  IT SUCKS.

All the while, the “demon-izers” claim to be “better” than the “demons”.

That man who shot up the fitness club in PA made a diary entry and in this diary entry he talked about God.

The intellectual heavy weights (specifically *some of* the commentators) over at Pharyngula (who espouse scientific method as one of the highest principles of living) choose to make a case of this as “religion is bad”.  GIVE ME A BREAK.

Pharyngula: http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/08/another_mass_murder.php

NOW, to be fair, many Christians are just as bad.  Two sides of the same freaking coin and they don’t even know it.

Well, I was going to post a link to a Christian blog abusing Atheists, but they seem to be harder to find. (I know they exist, but they don’t seem to be as prolific as the anti-Christian/anti-Religion blogs – if you would like to submit one, I’ll update this post with the appropriate entry). ** UPDATE: What I really need is a Christian blog post where the commenters (?) / commentators are bashing atheism/atheists as ignorant, evil, despicable people as PZ’s blog post itself doesn’t do that – that is found in the comments.

Here some purported Christian blogs that would be representative of the “bad side” of Christianity (the other side of the coin) (DISCLAIMER: I have my doubts these are truly Christian bloggers and may be pretenders much like “Angry Xtian” was but to be fair, I’ll include them)

Atheistwatch
Atheist-Fools

I SINCERELY HOPE that neither group is truly representative of their groups as a whole.  God helps us if they are.

Chris

(I’ve made some corrections to this post as it was pointed out to me that my post lumped all of the people at Pharyngula into the same “boat” so to speak)

I find myself suspended between two worlds

I recently asked a question on two “theology” lists that I belong to about Isaiah’s use of the words “Israel” and “Jacob” in the book of Isaiah.
I understand the difference between Israel and Judah, the divided kingdom, but there was something missing in my reading of Isaiah.  Why would the writer of Isaiah purposefully mention Jacob by both his names instead of by one proper name?

Either the Holy Spirit was poking me (in a sense) or my own background in reading was picking up on something.