The Kingdom of God is Within You

For the past few weeks I have been reading a book called The Kingdom Of God is Within You by Leo Tolstoy. It is one of those books that you read and then later on when you are in conversation say something like “This book changed my life.” It is one of those kinds of books. This book was one Mahatma Gandhi’s biggest inspirations for his peaceful overthrow of the British Empire. Much of it has to do with the doctrine of Non-resistance to evil and the law of love as taught by Christ. It was banned in Russia (although at that time, what wasn’t banned in Russia) and continues to be the sort of book that persons in authority and government cringe at. It is an obscure book that not a lot of people have heard about, probably for good reason. It is also in the anarchists reading list, which may I just say is pretty bad-ass.

The basic point of the book, as best as I’ve come to grasp because there are many, is that true Christianity puts an end to all government. We do not need the government. In fact there are many times when social systems, class hierarchies, religious dogma and so on stand in direct opposition to the teachings of Christ. The two cannot co-exist. Ever since Constantine adopted Christianity as its state religion, we have begun to notice that whenever the Christian faith aligns itself with power structures of the day, things begin to go horribly wrong.

Tolstoy believes that the Kingdom of God will be ushered in by us, as believers, when all men take part in these five commandments of Christ: 1. Live in Peace with all men. 2 Be Pure. 3. Take no oaths. 4. Resist not evil. 5. Renounce national distinctions. He goes on to explain how true Christianity, the true gospel is hindered by church authorities, the government and so on. When we align ourselves with a nation over our fellow Christian brothers in another part of the world, when we kill the innocent simply because our country says it is in our best interest, when we swear allegiance to men rather than to God and when we worship the same idols of wealth, success, fame, power, revenge and so forth, we remove ourselves from the Kingdom of God. Tolstoy says, “The Christina doctrine shows that the essence of his soul is love—that his happiness depends not on loving this or that object, but on loving the principle of the whole—God, whom he recognizes within himself as love, and therefore he loves all things and all men.
This is a great book, and has some of the most accurate ideas and thoughts regarding true Christian living. We do not need governments or worldly possessions, all we need are the brothers around us—true Christian community, Loving God, loving others.