>>218854
"Among the many deviations of Christ’s [teaching from the Sermon on the Mount], the chief deviation [is] the failure to acknowledge the commandment of non-resistance to evil, which more obviously than any other shows the distortion of Christ’s teaching [by] church doctrine.
[Christ’s teaching was essentially that] we should oppose evil by every righteous means in our power, but not by [being compelled to act against one’s will]. Christ [advised us to turn the] other cheek, judge not, forgive [those who] wrong us, and love our enemies.
The Church as a church, whatever it may be, in so far as it is a church, cannot but strive …to conceal the real meaning of Christ's teaching and to replace it by their own, which lays no obligation on them, excludes the possibility of understanding the [Truth, and] justifies the existence of priests supported at the people's expense.
And what is most important of all – [is that] the man who has been instructed by the Church in the profane doctrine cannot be saved by his own powers, which, they assure him, is sinful to trust in, but [rather only through their] means of salvation… the teaching of every Church, with its redemption and sacraments, excludes this teaching of Christ…
[Thus, one might conclude that] if a man can be saved by the redemption, by sacraments, and by prayer, then he does not need “good works.”
[It is not] without good reason [then], that Christ's only harsh and threatening reproof was directed against hypocrites and hypocrisy. It is not theft nor robbery nor murder nor fornication, but falsehood, the special falsehood of hypocrisy, which corrupts men, brutalizes them and makes them vindictive, destroys all distinction between right and wrong in their conscience, deprives them of what is the true meaning of all real human life….
[It is from this seed of falsehood, that] …the governments in our time — all governments, the most despotic [to] the most liberal — have become … organizations of violence, which [are ultimately] now employ[ed] for the enslavement and oppression of men…”
The [authorities] do not now lean… even on the semblance of justice, but on an artificial organization which, with the aid of the [social] sciences, encloses all men in the circle of violence, from which there is [little] possibility of tearing themselves away. This circle is now composed of four means of influencing men (intimidation, bribary, hypnotization, and conscription), [which] are connected and sustain one another, as the links in the ring of a united chain.
…There is left but one sphere of human activity which is not usurped by the governmental power — the domestic, economic sphere, the sphere of the private life and of labor. But even this sphere, thanks to the … communists and socialists, [has] slowly [been] usurped by the governments, so that labor and rest, the domicile, the attire, the food of men will by degrees be determined and directed by the governments…
…The attempts of these men at freeing themselves [through violent revolution] only give the governments a convenient excuse for strengthening their power, and actually provoke its strengthening.
[Now,] after eighteen centuries, [we] are faced again with the necessity of solving the question, so long evaded …, as to the acceptance or non-acceptance of Christ’s [central] teaching [of nonresistance to] evil by violence, because it alone frees [us] from that condition of slavery in which [we] have become entangled …
But it is not merely the wretchedness of men’s condition that brings [us] to this necessity… There was a good reason why, in the course of eighteen centuries, the best [of] men …, having recognized the truths of the teaching by means of an inner, spiritual method, should have borne witness to them before men, in spite of all threats, privations, calamities, and torments. With this their martyrdom these best men have put the stamp of truthfulness upon the teaching and have transmitted it to the masses.
[Therefore,] let each man, according to his [own free will], at once realize in his life the truth he knows, or at least cease to support the falsehoods he is supporting in the place of the truth, and at once, [we shall witness] such reforms [man has so long hoped for]-the emancipation of men and the reign of truth upon the Earth.
"[If a] man loves himself, his family, and even his native country, [then why] should he not [also] love humanity? That would be such an excellent thing [and] it is precisely what is taught by Christ."
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This was a distillation and readaptation* of Leo Tolstoy’s writings from his classic thesis, “The Kingdom of God is within You” https://archive. org/details/TheKingdomOfGodIsWithinYou
*[The words in brackets were mine]