The kingdom of God is within you

Leo Tolstoy

excerpts from the book

....Men who are used to the existing order of things,who like it and dread its being changed,try to take the doctrine as a collection of revelations and rules which one can accept without their modifying one's life.Whilst Christ's teaching is not only a doctrine which a man must follow,it unfolds a new meaning in life,and defines a whole world of human activity quite different from all that has proceeded it and appropriate to the period on which man is entering....'

....stagnation is death.

.....We think today that the requirements of christian doctrine-of universal brotherhood,suppression of national distinctions,abolition of private property,and the strange injunction of non-resistance to evil by force-demand what is impossible.But it was just the same thousands of years ago,with every social or even family duty,such as the duty of parents to support their children.of the young to maintain the old,of fidelity in marriage.Still more strange and even unreasonable,seemed the state duties of submitting to the appointed authority,paying taxes,and fighting in defence of the country and so on.All such requirements seem simple,comprehensible,and natural,to us today and we see nothing mysterious or alarming in them.But three or five hundred years ago they seemed to require what was impossible.'

'The slavery of antiquity'

'Outlived the age of Christian mysticism'

'The mistaken notion of scientific men that the essence of Christianity consists in the supernatural,and that its moral teaching is impracticable,constitutes another reason of failure of men of the present day to understand Christianity.'

'The ideal is not to desire to do do ill to anyone,not to provoke ill-will,to love all men.The precept,showing the level below which we cannot fall in the attainment of this ideal,is the prohibition of evil-speaking.and this is the first command.The ideal is chastity even in thought..of purity in marriage,avoidance of debauchery.The ideal is to have no thought about the future,to live in the present moment.'

'Christ taught men not angels'

A brief critique

by A brother

The works of Tolstoy have always captivated me though that would seem very strange for a devout Catholic to say.I feel as long as Christianity exists,Tolstoy will be relevant because his books always puts on display a side of us that's 'uncomfortable' and 'latent' but nevertheless 'true'.And this less trodden path of self introspection and justice has to be pursued on a daily basis by every christian because it is only the road to Calvary that leads to liberation.As Tolstoy so eloquently puts it 'stagnation is death'

My one and only complaint is,and has always been that for all the intellectual and academic brilliance that the man exhibits in his works,he always employs an almost puerile argumentative technique especially when it comes to the Church.With a brief stroke of the pen the contributions of the Catholic Church in the past 2000 years are stricken off,the Francis Assiss of the world,the Father Damiens,the Mother Teresas,the hundreds and thousands of priests and Nuns who have always stood for the downtrodden and neglected albeit in secret are told,'Well,you just missed the boat!'.And what about the myriad 'ignorant' religious laity who lived such blessed and fulfilling lives around 'their' church?Well,they might well be burning in hell!(which incidentally does not exist).All this is done in a language and tone that is laced with so much contempt and malice that his writings on love and forgiveness sometimes become a parody of himself.

When Tolstoy rejects the divine truths of The Trinity,the resurrection,the motherhood of The Blessed Virgin,the necessity of God's grace etc. by sighting sacred scripture,he does exactly what every crafty,two bit pseudo evangelist has been doing for years,that of quoting the favourable and leaving the unfavourable unsaid.

However,if you can get past the 'Catholic bashing',you should certainly give Tolstoy a place in your Christian library.I genuinely feel that a book by Tolstoy can do more good than ten Christian books written in the heights of some fleeting religious fervour.